WHEN I was a girl of sixteen, our family spent the summer in a pretty watering place. Quite close to the cottage where we lived, there was a coast-guard station, to which my brother Tom and I often went to see the men practicing with the rocket, and the life-preserving apparatus. Out on the sea a boat was anchored to represent the wreck. We were sometimes allowed on board to act as part of the shipwrecked crew, and we thought if great fun to be brought to shore in the basket, or on a life-belt. Many a calm summer evening was spent in this way to our great amusement. I remember one night the old coast-guard shaking his head and saying to me:
“You find great fun in playing with the life-belts, my girl, but if you were shipwrecked on a stormy coast as I have been, von would make a different use of them.” And then he added in a kind but firm voice; laying his hand on my head:
“And it’s just the same with the Saviour. until you know your need of Him.”
I thought that was a strange remark, but the remembrance of it never left me.
After that calm evening came a sudden storm. The wind blew a hurricane. the waves rose like mountains, and just as we were going to bed, a cry of distress was heard out on the stormy sea.
In a very few minutes we were all on the shore, and found there the whole of the coast-guards with the life-saving apparatus, firing rockets across a schooner which had struck on a rock, and was fast sinking in the surf. Clinging to the mast were several half-clad sailors, and it was feared that others had found a watery grave. As the old coast-guard passed me he gave a meaning look, as if he meant to enforce the word spoken the night before. There was no need, for the sad sight of that wrecked vessel had done that already. In half an hour, one dripping, exhausted sailor was brought to shore by means of the very life-belts I had played with, but O, how different his grasp of them was from mine. Poor fellow, he had been battling with grim death for hours before the life-belt reached him, and when it came, he had laid hold of it with a death-like grip, as his last and only chance of being saved. One after another of the poor fellows were brought to shore, and we were all glad to see them safely housed and cared for before we returned home.
Next morning my father and I were down early and found them gathered around the bright fire, while the aged coast-guard conducted a short thanksgiving service to give God praise for their deliverance from a watery grave. He did not forget to tell them of another Deliverer, even Jesus, who could save them from the penalty and the power of sin, and ended his short discourse by saying:
“But only those who see their need of Jesus will trust in Him; all others play with His message, just as our young friends here do with the life-belts in a calm sea, but the drowning man lays bold on them, and commits himself to them to keep him out of a watery grave,”
The rescued men seemed to feel the force of these words, and others there did also, for I never saw as I did that moment how great my need was as a sinner, of a Deliverer and a Saviour.
Soon after this on a Sunday evening I went to hear a stranger who was in our town on a passing visit, and somehow I felt he would have a word of help of some kind for me, and his message seemed all for me. Whether I ever heard the gospel put so simply before, I do not know—possibly I had, but had not seen my need of a personal Saviour—but the Saviour presented at this time in all His beauty, able, willing and ready to save sinners, and to sustain and satisfy them after He did save them, was just the One I needed. So I cast myself upon Him—just as the perishing sailors cast themselves upon the life-belts—and He saved me. Yes, the Lord saved me there as I sat. I have praised Him ever since for His wonderful love and grace to me, and shall continue to do so throughout the never-ending eternity.
Dear young reader, have you as a lost and needy sinner come to the Saviour, trusting yourself to Him, and to His saving power? Or do you trifle with His gospel message as one who knows no need, and sees no danger?
“Why unbelieving? thou canst be blessed, Jesus will pardon, He’ll give thee rest.
“Why wilt thou longer wait?
Haste to the open gate,
Come, ere it be too late,
To Jesus come.”
ML 10/06/1918