The weather was rough and wet, but we could not stay indoors as the sea air was necessary for the one for whom we had gone. The only thing was to have a tent, and a tent we had. We were sitting in it, enjoying the shelter and coziness the first day of our arrival, when suddenly we heard a voice saying: "Do you ladies know anything about the Master?”
And there stood our friend who let out the tents, at the door of our canvas room, strong, sturdy, bronze; his weather-beaten face fairly shining with happiness and goodness. In answer I put the book I was reading into his hands, and after that he often came to have a chat about the love of God and the preciousness of Christ.
"Yes," he said one day, "I often wish I could write down what the Lord has done for me. I was a sailor, and until I was five-and twenty years of age I could not read a word. Then a mate and I determined to learn together, and so we got a spelling book when in port and began. At first we used to pick out short words in the newspaper for practice. We could always get hold of one of those. But one day I hunted out of my box an old Bible my mother had given me, and I found in the Psalms short words that I could read. I said to my mate, Look here, Bill, here's just as easy words as in the newspaper. I shall read this.
"Well, the more I read, the more I began to feel my need of something; that I was not right. And one night some time after this, I dreamed such a dream. I can't tell it all to you, Miss, it was too much, but I dreamed that I was there standing over the brink of hell, and O! the terrors and agonies I went through.
"I was just going to fall in, and there was nothing and no one to save me, when suddenly a hand, stretched out from behind, pulled me back with a strong pull. Then I woke, and the next morning we got into port, and one of them from the shore came aboard and asked us to go to a mission preaching that evening. Well, full of my dream, I went, for you may be sure I had a sort of horror all day thinking about it, and after the prayer and the singing, the man gave out the text, `As in a dream when one waketh.'
"I felt as though I must leap off the seat, and rush to see if it was really in the Bible or not, but I managed to sit through it, and sure enough, I saw the Lord as the Savior of sinners, and right glad I was to accept Him. Bless His name.
"I go about the beach and talk to one and another, and find out those who know He is precious, and many of those who don't. But once there was a little missy whose parents had been down some time, and she seemed to like to come and talk to 'old Cooky,' as they call me, and one day she said, "Mr. Cook, I want very much to ask you a question.”
"Ask away Missy," I said.
"Are you sure you won't be offended? We are going away tomorrow, and O! I do so want to ask you before we go.”
"I won't be offended, you be sure, Missy." Then, she says, looking right into my face, "Do you love the Lord Jesus?" Aye! And I thought how faithful she was to the Lord. Could not I be faithful too.”
And he was faithful. Day by day he went in and out, speaking here and there a word of Christ and His love. I found he and his wife had quite a large work among the children in the town. Love seemed to characterize his every action. Love to Christ, and the love of Christ flowing through him to other souls.
Dear reader, can you see the love of God watching over that young sailor all those years? Can you see his mother's gift lying unused in the little box, while he went on year after year doing "business in great waters;" often, doubtless, in danger and peril on the wintry sea; often in just as much danger, if he only knew it, in the summer sunshine, for all the time there was no helmet of salvation on his head, no anchor for his soul. Can you see the love of God constraining him to draw out the little Book put there so long before, doubtless with many loving prayers from the mother's heart. The love showing him, through a dream, the brink on which he stood; the hell that is no fancy, no picture of dreams, but a reality for all who are out of Christ. The love preparing him for that message of Christ's finished work; the love revealing a crucified and risen Christ, drawing him from that brink to the gladness and the sunshine, not only of sins forgiven, but of being able to point other mariners on the ocean of life, to the haven he had found, the safety and the shelter he had been brought into.
That love is over you just as strong, just as patient, just as great. Will you resist and pass on towards that terrible future, away from God; or will you yield to the words of love and be drawn to the Savior's feet, to know and follow Him.