IT was with these words that a young sunburnt sailor flung himself into his widowed mother’s outstretched arms.
The joy of heaven, as we read of it in Luke 15, found its bright reflection in this humble earthly home, and the mother’s heart rejoiced, as it echoed the heavenly strain, “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found,” for long had she mourned her only son as one lost and dead.
His history, a bright witness to the sovereign grace of God, as shortly related to me, was as follows: ―
He was the only child of very godly parents, and they, feeling the all-importance of eternal things and longing to have their son one with them in the enjoyment of salvation, had pressed persistently, perhaps not too wisely, the things of God upon him. The result was that, when about twelve years of age, to escape from their prayerful importunity, and the constant hearing of the Word of God, which in his heart he hated, he ran away from his village home to a neighboring seaport town. There, without loss of time, he shipped him as a cabin boy on board a vessel that was just leaving the port.
He grew up, as might be expected, with such a beginning, and amid such evil influences as attend a sailor’s life, to be an utterly godless man, and, as an able-bodied seaman before the mast, became notorious for his blasphemous, drunken, and violent ways. But the constant and agonising prayers of his parents to God for their lost son had not been unheeded. God’s eye had followed the wanderer, and, when about twenty-two years of age, He brought him to Himself and saved him in the following remarkable manner.
The sailing vessel in which he was, when about mid-ocean on one of her homeward voyages, suddenly encountered a severe storm. “All hands aloft to take in sail!” at once was shouted out by the captain, and with several others he was quickly at his post to carry out the order. He was the farthest out on the main-yard, and the ship was already pitching heavily. In a “devil-may-car” manner, as he afterward described it, he was leaning over the yard-arm gathering up the sail, when the vessel gave a tremendous lurch, and he was pitched headlong into the raging ocean.
Instantly the cry was raised, “Man overboard!” and as soon as possible a boat, with four men at the oars and one at stern and bow, was lowered to go to his rescue. With all their efforts, it was some little time before they could get even near where he was struggling in the waves, and as they were approaching him they saw him sink. Knowing he would rise again to the surface in about a minute, they rowed with all their energy so as to be near him. He rose to the surface a short distance ahead of the boat, but quickly sank again. The boatmen knew that their only chance of saving him now lay in their being within reach of him when he should rise for the third and last time. “Give way, my lads, with all your might!” cried the man in the bow, “we will have him yet!” and with determined energy he leaned as far out over the bow of the boat as he could. By God’s providential mercy, the drowning man rose immediately under his outstretched hand. He seized him by the hair of his head, and, with the help of the others, soon had him in the boat.
During this time the vessel, having put about, was nearing the boat, and as quickly as possible the apparently lifeless form was hoisted up on to the deck of the vessel. The doctor, with the aid of others under his direction, at once set to work with the usual measures adopted in such cases to restore animation. For more than an hour they continued their efforts to do this but without any result, and some of the eager watchers began to say, “It is no use trying any longer, doctor; poor Bill has done with this world.” For a moment they desisted, but the doctor cried out, “Let us try again; it is wonderful how long the life remains in them sometimes.”
They again set to work, lifting up his arms over his head and then bringing them down again to his sides, with pressure on the chest walls so as to induce artificial breathing, and another quarter of an hour had hardly passed when the lips of the seemingly dead man began to move, and, to the utter amazement of those about him, he gasped out, “Jesus Christ has saved.” He immediately became again unconscious, but the spark of life had been rekindled, and after continuing their efforts a little longer breathing was fully restored, and they were able to carry him to his bunk.
Saved thus miraculously from a watery grave, when he was fully recovered, he told this tale to his wondering listeners: — “When I fell headlong from the yard-arm into the sea, in a moment of time all my sins and my awfully wicked life came before me, and it seemed to me that the angry waves of hell were tossing, tossing themselves to receive me, when, quicker than thought, a verse I had often heard from my mother’s lips shot into my mind, like a voice, saying, ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’ In my agony I cried out, ‘Lord Jesus, save me!’ and, as it seemed to me, before I reached the water He threw His mighty saving arms around me. Anyway, while I was battling with the waves for dear life, I felt sure in my mind that my soul was saved, and that I should not go to hell even if I was there and then drowned.”
His subsequent life and behavior during the rest of the voyage showed plainly to his mates that “Bill” had not only had his body saved from drowning, but his soul saved from sin and the power of the devil. He showed “out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom,” and gave evidence to all who subsequently knew him of the reality of the work of God in his soul; not simply in the fact that he knew with certainty that he was saved from hell, but that he “was dead to sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
His one great desire now was to get back to his parents, so as to tell them what God had done for him, and how sorry he was for all his bad conduct to them, and the sorrow he had given them in running away from home.
As soon as the vessel reached port, and he was paid off, he took his way home, and, as he neared the well-remembered cottage, for the first time it came across his mind whether his parents were still living, and his heart beat fast at the thought of whether he might ever see his loving mother again. Slowing his eager footsteps, he crept softly to the cottage door, and looking in saw, sitting by the fireside, his mother in a widow’s cap. A father’s arms were no longer, then, to receive him; but the mother looking up, at once recognized in the stalwart, sunburnt sailor-man her long-lost boy, and in another moment he was in her outstretched arms, with the exclamation, “Mother! Jesus Christ has saved me!”
And now, dear reader, can you say, “Jesus Christ has saved me”? And if not, why not? You may not have gone so far in a life of sin as the one you have just read of; you may not have so striking a providential circumstance as he had to awaken you to your condition before God; but you are a sinner, and nothing but a sinner in His sight. “All have sinned, and come short of His glory,” and “There is none righteous, no not one,” the Word of God tells us. On the other hand, that same Word tells us, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and “God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Do you believe this? Have you come to Jesus, and believed in Him as your Saviour? If not, let me remind you of His own words, “If you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” And if you were to die in your sins, what then?
C. W.