Billy was a professional diver. He was a good worker when sober, but a different man when he drank—which was whenever he wasn’t actually working. He had been jailed forty times for fighting and drunkenness. Every time he got into prison he would mourn over his condition and make a lot of good resolutions. He would vow within himself that he would never touch another glass. Well, Billy’s good resolutions soon faded when he got out of prison, for his old friends would gather around him and soon persuade him to “take just a little drink” again.
When drunk, he had a habit of going out into the street and calling for any man within hearing to come and fight him. He would drag his coat up and down the street, while crying out, “Let any man come and tramp on the tail of my coat.” Very rarely was the invitation accepted, as Billy was feared by all. One day a man accepted the challenge and they fought, but the man soon fled from Billy and ran into a house and locked the door behind him. Billy ran and dived straight through the window glass into the house to continue the fight!
For years Billy went on in this way, unable to break the chains of sin which bound his poor soul. Sometimes he went on recklessly, and at other times he tried to change his ways. But every effort was vain. Christ alone can deliver from that bondage.
One Sunday, some time after Billy had served his fortieth term of imprisonment, he was going down to the bar for his usual drink. On the way he saw a crowd of people listening to a man preaching the gospel of Christ. Stopping to listen, he heard the good news of the love of God—that God had sent His Son to save poor, lost and wretched sinners. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:99Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. (John 4:9)). Words of grace and love such as this came from the preacher’s lips, and the Spirit of God revealed to Billy, right where he stood, his need and his terrible condition before a holy God.
The meeting ended and Billy left, but not to go on to the bar and to his drinking. All desire for drink was gone. There remained only that awful sense of having to meet God, the sense of being under the overwhelming wrath of the God whom he had despised.
He went home to pray—to cry out to God in his need and deep distress of soul. For several days he was under such conviction of sin that he could not sleep at night. And then one day in the middle of the week, as he was at work on a scow in the harbor, he was overwhelmed with a sense of his guilt and he fell on his knees and called upon the Lord. There and then he saw that Christ had paid the mighty debt for him and had died for him on the cross. He rose from his knees knowing by faith that his guilt was gone—washed away in that precious blood shed on Calvary. “The blood of Jesus Christ . . . cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. (John 1:7)).
Immediately after his conversion Billy started to tell to others what a Saviour he had found, and many an evening he would stand on a box or barrel in front of his old drinking corner and proclaim the good news of a Saviour. Many of his old acquaintances were brought to Christ and saved by grace.
God also saved the man that Billy had dived through the window to reach, and in later years they both preached Christ from the same platform.
You may think, “That man needed salvation. He was so wicked, but I have never lived a life like that.” But God says, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” That takes everyone in. He also says, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-98For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8‑9)).
“God commendeth His love
toward us, in that,
while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.”