London is a wonderful city full of monuments, museums, parks and places of interest and is served by the Underground system and also by taxis. Taxis are plentiful and each taxi driver knows just about every street in the capital. The licensed taxi trade in London is said to be the oldest regulated public transport system in the world due to Oliver Cromwell. In 1654 he set up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages by Act of Parliament and obviously the first Hackney Carriages were horse-drawn and the name ‘Hackney’ comes from the French word for a working horse.

The size of taxis was laid down by the Public Carriages Office in 1906 with enough room to accommodate a man in a top hat and for two people to sit opposite each other without their knees touching. Taxi drivers have a responsibility to pick up a fare if they ‘standing in the street’ and cannot refuse a journey of up to six miles or that will take less than an hour. This was designed to prevent the now non-existent horse from becoming fatigued or thirsty! The rules still apply.

Taxis can take people to many places but cannot take us to Heaven. The rules for Heaven are laid down very clearly in the Bible and are summarised in Ten Commandments. We should not kill, steal, commit adultery and so on. The rules are not just about action but also about attitude. We may not have killed someone but to hate someone or have unreasonable anger towards them is to kill in attitude.

The Ten Commandments were not designed like ten skittles in a bowling alley. Knock down two or three but seven or eight are still standing and therefore I am okay because I have kept some of them. They must be seen as ten links in a chain and we hang on the end, and any linkage broken plunges us down to destruction. Therefore, they expose our failure, disobedience and sin and so the vehicle for eternal life is not found in what we do but in whom we trust. That person is Christ who died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven if we allow Him into our lives by faith.

Jesus said “I am the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE; no-one comes to the Father but BY ME” John chapter 14 verse 6