Some years ago a ship was sailing down the east coast of America. A sailor on the lookout, surrounded by the vast stretches of the ocean, suddenly heard a telephone bell sounding out across the water. Startled and wondering, he looked around. Was he dreaming or only half awake? What was the matter? Where did it come from?
The bell sounded again! He was sure it was a telephone bell, but where was it? How could there possibly be such away out there on the ocean, with nothing to be seen but the endless waves. He called one of his mates, who, coming on deck from below, also heard it. They told the captain, and he heard it too.
They stopped their ship, and some of the crew went off to investigate. They were not long in finding a buoy floating amid the waves with a telephone fixed to it. The line was connected to a submarine in distress. The sub was under water except for a few feet of the stern and swinging about in a most helpless manner. Inside the men were suffering from lack of fresh air, having been thirty-five hours in this dangerous situation.
When the sailors returned to their ship, a radio message was sent to the U.S. Admiralty for help. The ship was brought close to the sub and a hawser firmly attached to it until more help came. Then they cut a hole in the upturned stern of the sub through which fresh air and hot drinks were poured through for the exhausted men.
In the meantime an American boy, named Moore, trying out his homemade wireless set, picked up the ship’s message. Thrilled to have received so important a communication, he sent a telephone message to the Navy Department, and was more delighted than ever to find that he was the first to have received the call for help.
Ships and tugs were immediately dispatched to the scene at once. The hole in the sub was soon enlarged, so that the men could get out. What joy it must have been to the sailor who first heard the telephone bell, to see twenty-seven men step out of the submarine, saved from a horrible death, and know that he had played the first part in their release.
This wonderful rescue came about first, because the imprisoned men by means of the telephone bell sent out a cry for help; second, the sailor heard the bell, and third, the young boy, Moore, on shore, picked up the wireless message and sent for powerful help. Had the man on the lookout been deaf, the poor men in the sub would probably have perished, for few ships passed that way.
Twenty-seven men were saved, because they cried for help, and because two people heard.
But greater wonders are going on around us every day, for men and women, and children in distress are constantly crying for help, and their cries are heard at an immeasurable distance by One, and that One, God Himself, who is willing, and able to save. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
On the other hand there are multitudes who are daily sinking down to death and judgment, without God and without hope, to be lost forever in the ocean of eternal woe. O dear young reader, do not you be among them! God loves you; Christ died for you. His arm is not shortened that it cannot save. You can be saved now. Only call upon Him and you will be safe forever.
ML-05/22/1977