“I SHALL be glad to hear of your former life,” I said; “when you first began really to think about unseen things, and to guide yourself with reference to them. I suppose there was such a beginning, and that until such beginning, your life was as really careless and prayer-less as other lives. It will be instructive and helpful to me if you will just tell me, in your own words, why you wish to turn from the people of the world to the people of God.” The deep red bronze of a sea life upon a thoughtful and kindly face, bespoke the calling of the one thus questioned, and here is his reply:―
“I was as careless as I could be, until my return from my last voyage but one,” he replied; “but something that happened while I was at home was always in my thoughts; it seemed to come across me in every way, meeting me at every step, and where it was least expected. You remember old Langford, what a dirty, drunken old character he was, filthy in person and thought and speech; as griping, selfish, and unbelieving an old wretch as ever lived. I used to hate the very sight of him, crawling when sober, reeling when drunk, about the streets.”
“Your picture is as unsparing as it is true,” I replied, “but not at all colored by gentleness of judgment.”
“I want you to see him as I saw him,” he replied, with a smile,” that you may understand how he affected me. I saw you and him together one Sunday morning, when you had the great breakfast, and service afterward. I did not want the breakfast, but intended to go and hear the preaching; and I did so. Then I saw you meet the old man, and speak kindly to him, and offer him a ticket. I heard him blackguard you for your offer; and I thought you were foolish to waste your time over such an old ‘rep.’ I heard you try and try again, till you got him to take the ticket and promise to come; and I thought you more foolish than ever―that you had wasted your breakfast as well as your time. I resolved to watch the old man; and I went into the great breakfast hall, and sat down behind him. I saw him receive a large bag of food and some coffee; and I saw the old man wanted it badly, by the way he ate and drank; and I pitied him, while I scorned his dirty, drunken habits. Then the service was announced, and I expected to see him get up and go out, laughing at you for your ‘softness’; but he sat still, and listened to the singing, and reading, and praying that followed one another.
“Then that middle-Aged man with the pleasant face came forward and began to speak, and I forgot old Langford for a little while. It was like long-forgotten music returning to hear him talk of peace and comfort, of good hope and good cheer, of our loving Father, and the Saviour that gave Himself for us and ours. But when he was done I looked at old Langford, and he was a sight to see; he was all up of a heap, and the big tears had washed two clean lines down his dirty face, and were dropping from the end of his fiery nose. I could hardly believe it was in the old man; but there he was before my eyes. And there he sat all through the service―all of a heap, and the big tears cleaning his face as he wiped them with the back of his hand.
“I saw him the next time on Sunday evening creeping into your church, and I said to him, ‘Hallo! old chap! come to the wrong shop, eh?’ He looked up and growled out, ‘No! no I come to the right at last!’ and slinked into a corner for almost the first time in his life, I thought. I watched him next day hanging about―no drink, no tobacco, no swearing, but with a clean face, looking for a job. Day by day I watched till Thursday, and then at your service you gave out the ‘tokens’ for the Lord’s Supper; and I saw the old man come up and try to get one. I was close by, and I heard you refuse him, telling him he was mistaken in supposing it was money that was given. He said he knew they were for the Lord’s Supper, and he wanted to come. Then I saw you hand him over to someone else to be spoken with, and afterward talk with him yourself. Next I saw him at the Lord’s Supper, and I was astounded. Clothed in rags but clean—there he was, and there I was not! and it went through me like a knife.
“But I watched on still; I thought him an old hypocrite, and determined to find him out and expose him. All that week I watched, but you remember how well he lived, how true and humble he was; and I could but feel and own that his conversion was real, and that he was changed as from black to white. On the Saturday he had a job, and fell down with an apoplectic stroke while doing it. He lived unconscious till the next Thursday, and died during your evening service.
“When I heard he was dead I was almost stunned; it was like one of our narrow escapes at sea, only more important. Just a few days to make such a difference! and then I remembered how I thought you a fool for trying to get him, and how you had got him for Jesus, and that he died safe through your perseverance; I remembered also your telling us ‘they that turn many to righteousness shine as the stars’; and I thought he was one for you at any rate; and I was miserable and lonely because I was not another.
“Then I went away to sea, and in the work and change of my life I sought to find ease and forgetfulness. But I could not; I had a horrid feeling of being unsafe, of some unseen danger very near me, and I could not shake it off. Through all the months of our outward passage this feeling clung to me. I dared not speak of it to my shipmates, but kept it secret, and thus suffered from it the more.
“We were upon our way home again, and it was my midnight watch; the sea was rolling in mountain waves in the pitchy darkness, and I was alone on the head of the vessel looking out. Suddenly there came a mighty wave and swept me from the vessel far out upon the rolling waters. I could feel that I was borne forward on the crest of a great wave as helplessly as a straw. I knew that I could not be missed from my station for a short time, or seen if I was missed. The roar of the waves around drowned my weak attempt to cry out, and I felt that there was no hope for me. Oh! the horrible, heart-sinking agony! my wife widowed! my children fatherless! only a great void where I had been! Oh, the awful upspringing of unknown horrors within me! all my life flashing at once in a blaze of strong blinding light upon me! I thought of Langford, of you, of the sermons I had heard, of my lost chances, and my death close at hand; all this while struggling fiercely with the dashing water, and the wave that was blinding and choking me!
“No hope! no hope! a grave in the black, unfathomable, raging sea; and then from the black water to the scarlet fire of the unforgiven; and it was near the, close upon me―a matter of a few seconds―and then eternal darkness and sorrow! Oh! how I straggled with the choking waters. I was going fast; my strength was failing me; a little more struggling and it would all be over. Then my heart went up in a mighty cry for pardon; all that there was in me of life, and sense, and feeling, was in that cry. I had given up all hope of being saved, but I struggled on that I might cry and pray; and prayer after prayer, as swift as lightning, went from my heart, as I strove more and more feebly with the raging wave that was killing me.
“My senses were fast going, all hope of life had left me, when I suddenly felt something near my hands, and I clutched in desperation. It was one of the ropes of our ship! She had forged forward while I was in the belly of the wave, and I reached again the deck, safe and uninjured, except by the fright I had passed through. I had not been missed. But when my watch was out, and I could go below, the first thing I did, in the presence of all the watch, was to fall upon my knees, and humbly and heartily thank God that my life was brought again from the dead. There was no mocking; they stood in respectful appreciating silence, as feeling that I was doing that which it was quite right to do.
“And since then I have always prayed; morning and evening and noon has my cry been unto Him who was out upon the wild waters that night with me, and whose loving, pitying hand snitched me from water and fire, gave me back to my wife and children, and has led me in safety home!”
C. J. W.