My mind was made up! I would not attend the service on Sunday. So when a pink paper floated down on my easel on Saturday morning, I caught it and shoved it into my pocket, without even looking to see what the sermon topic was to be.
“Have you got it, Mr. Jack?” said the child’s voice above me.
“All right, little man,” I answered; “it’s all safe and sound.”
I made my plans for Sunday with great care. I asked for an early breakfast, so that I could walk over to Kettleness, a place about two miles off along the coast. It could only be reached at low tide, and when I was there, on the other side of the bay, I determined to be in no hurry to return, but to arrive at Runswick too late for the service on the sands. If Duncan and Polly missed me, they would simply conclude that I had found the walk longer than I had expected.
But, just as I was ready to set out for Kettleness, it started to rain hard.
“You’ll not go walking in this weather, Sir?” said Duncan, anxiously.
“Oh, no, of course not,” I answered lightly. I thought he looked more concerned than the occasion warranted, and I feared that he suspected the real reason for my early walk.
I could do nothing but wait till the shower was over, and by then it was impossible to go to Kettleness without appearing to avoid the service deliberately.
At last the sun came out, and by eleven o’clock the sky was clear. The fishermen spread tarpaulins on the sand for the congregation to sit on, and I found myself, much against my will, being led to the place by little Jack.
“At least there is no need for me to listen,” I said to myself; “I will plan out a new picture, and no one will know where my thoughts are.”
But in spite of my determination, from the moment that Jack’s father began to speak, my attention was caught, and I could not help listening.
“‘The Tug of War’ is our subject today, dear friends,” he began, “and a very suitable subject, I think, after what we witnessed here during the past week. We have seen, have we not, a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, as that heavy crab boat was dragged up from the beach. How well she came, what progress she made; with each yodel we brought her farther from the sea. We, all of us, gave a helping hand. Fishermen, wives, visitors, friends, all laid hold, and all pulled, and the job was soon finished. Why? Because we were all united. It was a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together.
“And let me remind you of another event during this past week. The place is the same, our grassy area. The same rope was used, and those who pulled were the very same brawny, powerful fishermen. Yes, you pulled your hardest; if possible you worked harder than when the crab boat was drawn up, and yet, strangely, there was no result — the rope did not move an inch. What were you pulling? What was the mighty weight that you had to move? What was it that, for such a long time, resisted the strength of the strongest among you? The weight you could not move was not a heavy boat, but a light handkerchief!
“Why was there this difference? Why was the handkerchief harder to move than the boat? The answer to that was to be found at the other end of the rope. There were other pullers that day, pulling with all their might in the opposite direction. It was not a united pull, and therefore there was no result, and we watched until at length one side proved to be the stronger, and the handkerchief was drawn by them triumphantly across the line.
“Today, dear friends, I speak to you of yet another tug of war. The place is the same, Runswick Bay, but the weight to be drawn is not a boat, not a handkerchief; the weight is a human soul. It is your soul, my friend, your immortal soul; you are the one who is being drawn.
“And who are the pullers? Oh, how many they are! I myself have my hands on the rope. God only knows how hard I am pulling, striving with all my might, if possible to draw you, my friend, to Christ. But there are other hands on the rope besides mine. Your conscience pulls, your good old mother pulls, your little child pulls, your Christian friend pulls. Each sermon you hear, each Bible class you attend, each hymn you sing, each prayer uttered in your presence, each striving of the Spirit, each God-given yearning after better things, each storm you come through, each danger you escape, each sickness in your family, each death in your home, each deliverance granted you, gives you a pull Godward, Christward, heavenward.
“Yet you know as clearly as you know that you are sitting there, that, so far, Christ’s pullers are drawing in vain. You have never yet, and you know it, crossed the line which divides the saved from the lost. Why is this? Why, oh why are you so hard to move?
“Ask yourself why? Surely you know the reason! Is it not because there are other hands on the rope, other pullers drawing in the opposite direction? For Satan has many an agent, many a servant, and he sends forth a great army of soul-pullers. Each worldly friend, each desire of your evil nature, each temptation to sin, each longing after wealth, each sinful suggestion, gives you a pull, and a pull the wrong way, away from safety, away from Christ, away from God, away from heaven, away from home. And toward what? Oh, dear friend, toward what? What are the depths, the fearful depths toward which you are being drawn?”
He said a good deal more, but I did not hear it. That question seemed burned by a red-hot iron into my soul. What are the depths, the fearful depths into which you are being drawn? I could not shake it off. I wished I could get away from the group, but Jack had brought me close to the boat where the choir stood, and there was no way to escape. I would have to stay; it would soon be over, I said to myself.
The service ended with a hymn. Another of their queer, wild, irregular tunes, I thought; I was not going to sing it. But when Jack saw that I did not open my book, he leaned over the side of the boat, and poked my head with his hymnbook. “Sing, big Mr. Jack, sing,” he said aloud, and then I had to find my place and begin. I can still remember the first verse of that hymn, and I think I can recall the tune they sang it to: Oh, tender and sweet was the Master’s voice, As He lovingly called to me: ‘Come over the line! it is only a step—I am waiting My child for thee!’
‘Over the line!’ Hear the sweet refrain! Angels are chanting the heavenly strain!
‘Over the line!’ Why should I remain, With a step between me and Jesus?
I was very relieved when the service was over, and I went at once to the beach to try to walk off the effect the sermon had on me. But I was not as successful as I had been the Sunday before. That question followed me; the very waves seemed to be repeating it. What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn? I hadn’t looked at it in that light before. I’d been willing to own that I was not religious, that I was leading a care-free, easy-going kind of life, that my Sundays were spent in bed, or in novel reading, or in boating, or in some other amusement. I was well aware that I looked at these things very differently from what my mother had done, and I had even wondered sometimes, whether, if she had been spared to me, I should have been a better person than I knew myself to be. But I never for one moment felt any real alarm, or anxiety about my condition.
Yet if this man was right, there was real danger in my position. I was not remaining stationary, as I had thought, but I was being drawn by unseen forces toward something worse, toward the depths, the fearful depths, of which he had spoken.
At times I wished I had never come to Runswick Bay and been made so uncomfortable; at other times I wondered if I had been brought there on purpose to hear those words.
I went back to dinner, but, much to Polly’s distress, I could not enjoy it. It rained hard all afternoon, and as I lay on my bed upstairs I heard Polly washing the dishes and singing the hymn we had had at the service “Come over the line to me.”
There seemed no chance of forgetting the words that had made me so uneasy. That night. I had a strange dream. I thought I was once more on the shore. It was a wild, stormy night; the wind was blowing hard, and the rain was falling, yet through the darkness I could distinguish crowds of figures gathered on the shore. On the side farther from the sea there was a bright light streaming through the darkness.
I wondered in my dream what was going on, and I found that it was a tug of war, taking place in the dark of night. I saw the huge cable, and gradually as I watched, I caught sight of those who were pulling. I walked to the side from which the light streamed, and there I saw a number of holy and beautiful angels with their hands on the rope, and among them I distinctly caught sight of my mother. She seemed to be dragging with all her might, and there was such an earnest, pleading, beseeching expression on her face that it touched my heart to look at her. I noticed that close beside her was the preacher, little Jack’s father, and behind him was Duncan. They were all intent on their work, and took no notice of me, so I walked to the other end of the shore, the one nearest the sea, that I might see who was there. It was very dark at that end of the rope, but I could dimly see evil faces, and dark, strange forms that I could’nt describe. Those on this side seemed to be having it much their own way, I thought, for the weight, whatever it was, was gradually drawing near to the sea, and, lo and behold, I saw that they were close to a terrible place, for mighty cliffs stood above the shore, and they were within a very short distance of a sheer precipice.
Then, as I continued watching, I saw that the precipice was nearly reached, and that both those who pulled and the weight they were dragging were on the point of being hurled over, and suddenly it flashed upon me in my dream that it was my soul for which they were struggling, and I heard the cry of the pullers from the other side of the shore, and it seemed to me that, with one voice, they were calling out that terrible question, “What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn?” And through the streaming light I saw my mother’s face, and a look of anguish crossed it, as suddenly the rope broke, and those who were drawing it on the opposite side went over with a crash, dragging my soul over with them.
I woke in terror, and cried out so loudly that Duncan came running into my room to see what was the matter.
“Nothing, Duncan,” I said, “I was only dreaming; I thought I had gone over a precipice.”
“No, thank God, you’re safe, Sir,” he said. “Shall I open your window a bit? Maybe the room’s stuffy; is it?”
“Thank you, Duncan,” I answered; “I’ll be all right now. I’m so sorry I woke you up.”
“You haven’t done that, Sir; me and Polly have been up all night with the little lad. He’s sort of funny, too, Sir, burning hot, and yet he shivers like, and he clings to his daddy; so I’ve been walking a mile or two with him up and down our bedroom floor, and I heard you calling out, and says Polly, ‘Run and see what ails him.’ So you haven’t disturbed me, Sir, not one little bit, you haven’t.”
He left me then, and 1 tried to sleep, but sleep seemed far from me. I could hear Duncan’s footsteps pacing up and down in the next room; I could hear little John’s fretful cry; I could hear the rain beating against the window; I could hear the sighing and whistling of the wind; I could hear Polly’s old eight-day clock striking the hours and the half-hours of that long, dismal night, but through it all, and above it all, I could hear the preacher’s question, “What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn?”
I found it impossible to close my eyes again, so opened the curtains, and, as morning began to dawn, I watched the pitiless rain and longed for day. The footsteps in the next room ceased as the sky lightened, and I concluded that the tired child was at last asleep. I wished that I was asleep too. I thought how often my mother, when I was a child, must have walked up and down through long weary nights with me. I wondered whether, as she did so, she spent the slow, tedious hours in praying for her boy, and then I wondered how she would have felt, and how she would have borne it, had she known that the child in her arms would grow up living for this world and not for the Christ she loved. I wondered if she did know this now, in the far-off land where she dwelt with God.
I think I must have dozed a little after this, for I was suddenly roused by Polly’s cheery voice, cheery in spite of her bad night “Have a cup of tea, Sir, it’ll do you good. You’ve not slept very well, Duncan says. I’ll put it down by your door.”
I jumped out of bed and brought it in, feeling very grateful to Polly, and I drank it before I dressed.
“I think it must have been a nightmare I had last night, Polly,” I said as I finished my breakfast and began to put my equipment and supplies in order.