We were boys together—David and I—and lived in the same town. My father was a business man, while David’s father was a doctor—a fine handsome man.
A dangerous epidemic broke out and the doctor himself fell ill from the infection. He died leaving his young wife and family to struggle on alone.
David and I were fond of ships, and our greatest amusement was to board the vessels and climb the masts. Our best friends were captains of some of the trading and whaling ships.
David knew that it would go hard with his mother and that the education he had hoped for was now impossible, so bracing himself up he declared he would go to sea and be able to help his mother with the education of his younger brother and sisters. He had an uncle who was a ship captain and who took him aboard for his first voyage.
At the end of long voyages David came to visit us. Once the ship he was on came into port and I had several pleasant hours on board with him. I had found the Lord as my Saviour by that time, and I felt it would be my duty to speak to my friend of Christ, which I did. With tears of joy, he told me that he too had sought and found the Saviour. His experience seemed very interesting to me. I can never forget it.
It was one terrible night at sea, he said. The ship was rolling in the waves and every few minutes they threatened to swallow it up. Now and then the deck was swept by a huge breaker, and it was with considerable difficulty that even the best sailors could save themselves from being washed overboard.
David’s uncle, the captain, ordered David below to stow away some things that would be rolling about. Down into the darkness, through a hatch below the level of the wild waves, he went, and as he did so, he imagined that his uncle believed the ship would go down, and that he had better be below when it did. A heavy lurch just then rolled him over in the darkness, and he felt as if the ship would never right herself. A terrible feeling that he would be drowned like a rat, along with the rats about him, came over him. He thought of his mother, left without husband or son, to fight the battle of life alone. Then there came the thought of his father in heaven and the fear that he would never see him again; and the fear brought before his mind visions of all his sins. They seemed hopelessly many and great. Then his mother’s teaching and her many entreaties to seek the Lord came to his help. Falling on his knees in that dark hold, with a broken contrite spirit, and a strange sense that even there God would hear, he cried for mercy.
“Oh, God, forgive me, for Christ’s sake,” he whispered amid the din of the waves and the cracking, creaking timbers and sails, and rolling cargo—unheard by any living soul, but heard by the Lord of glory, and speedily answered, for scarcely had the words been uttered than the dear fellow felt as if the light and joy of heaven had flooded the darkness, and it seemed that the Lord was there. His work done, he went again on deck and felt like a new boy. The flood of light was within his soul—the joy of heaven was in his own bosom, and he knew now what it was to be a saved, forgiven, redeemed soul.
From henceforth he feared not the waves; he felt that God loved him, and that He had the sea in the hollow of His hand. What if he were to be drowned? He would go and be where his father was in glory, he would be with the Lord Jesus who had died for him, and had saved him and washed him from his sins in His own blood.
The storm passed away but the sweetness of a new life remained, and at his first opportunity David wrote home to tell his mother that her fondest wish had been realized, that her earnest prayers had been answered, for her boy was now saved by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Years passed away, and David became a ship captain himself. The Lord prospered him even as his soul prospered (3 John 22Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. (3 John 2)). Regularly he sent home funds to his mother and a brighter home took the place of the dull one into which at first as a poor widow she had crept. Then one day she looked on with feelings of thankfulness as her manly son walked the deck of a fine new ship to which his owners had promoted him as captain.
ML 05/09/1965