"Light Ho, Sir!"

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Those people who are always striving to trace back to a man’s early training or surroundings the real reason for any startling change in his life after he has long grown up, and do not believe in what the Bible calls the New Birth, must often be sorely puzzled. They seek for that which they wish to find, and often ignore any evidence which militates against their preconceived theories. Yet the majority of them would be horrified were they told that this method of research is dishonest and misleading.

But in spite of what people may feel about the matter, it is of no use blinking the fact that very much of the so-called scientific investigation (which is not commercial) that is pursued to-day is tainted with this radical defect. Especially is this so in matters of inquiry into religious experience. There are many exceedingly clever and well-educated persons who would have their readers believe that in all cases where a man or woman has become a Christian, and from serving the devil has turned and consistently served God, the change has been due to early impressions, which, accidentally encrusted over for a term, have been suddenly revived in all their pristine force, and have compelled the mind back into the channels in which it was originally taught to move.

Now, if this were all that these reasoners said, one might remind them, or inform them gently, that they were only partially right—that while it is undoubtedly blessedly true that early influences for good do exert themselves most forcefully and unexpectedly in after years in a large number of cases, yet it is most untrue and God-dishonoring to suggest that Christianity is purely a matter of education, of environment, of a long acquaintance with religious persons and matters. So far from this being the case, it is a truism with Christian workers that very frequently their most hopeful converts have been those who never heard the Gospel before, or at least had never listened to it with the slightest attention, even though they may have actually caught the tones of the preacher’s voice. To such simple ones the Water of the Word of Grace comes like the monsoon rains upon the burnt-up breadths of India, causing the apparently dead soil to put on at once a glorious garment of living green, life-giving, life-sustaining, beautifying and blessing all around it.

One of the most striking instances of this wonderful work of God in the soul that has ever come under my notice is that of a sailor who, strange as it may seem to-day, had never, until the time of which I speak, received the remotest idea of the relations of God to man, and had not the faintest conception of religion of any kind. Born in the squalid slums of a Lancashire town nearly sixty years ago, he became at a very early age a waif of the streets, losing all recollection of who were his parents, as they had forgotten all about him. It is hardly possible to conceive of a mind more perfectly desert than was John Wilson’s. Reading and writing were of course out of the question, and it is probable that any mental operations that went on in his dark mind were more nearly related to brute instincts than to any of the ordinary processes of human reasoning.

Now it is no part of my present plan, even if I had the necessary material, to trace Johnny’s career from the gutters of —— until he found himself in the position of boy on board a North Country collier brig, being then, as he supposed, about thirteen years of age. By some inherited tenacity of constitution he had survived those years of starvation, cold, and brutality, and was, upon going to sea, like a well-seasoned rattan, without an ounce of superfluous flesh upon him, and with a capacity for stolid endurance almost equalling a Seminole Indian.

Of kindness he knew nothing, and had any one shown him any disinterested attention, he would have been as alarmed as are the birds in a London garden when a lover of them goes out to scatter crumbs. He would have suspected designs upon his liberty, or something worse. Of the treatment he endured on board those East Coast colliers I do not dare to speak at present. The recital would, I know, arouse an almost frantic feeling of resentment that such things should have been possible such a handful of years ago, and readers would forget that, by the blessing of God, men’s hearts to-day, even in the lowest strata of our society, have been marvellously softened towards children. He learned many things on board those ships, he told me, but, so far as he knew, not one that was good. Blasphemy, drunkenness, cruelty, debauchery—all these he became an adept in as he grew up, and besides he knew every conceivable trick by means of which he could shirk duty and shift it on to the shoulders of others.

At last he reached the dignity of able seaman, but I can bear witness that a less useful able seaman than he never darkened the door of a shipping office. And why? Because he had devoted all his low animal cunning to the avoidance of learning anything, lest he should be compelled to put it into practice, at the cost of some trouble to himself; and what he was compelled to know he purposely practised as badly as possible, so that he should seldom be called upon to do it. Briefly, and in order to put the finishing touches to this unattractive picture, he was almost as perfect a specimen of unmoral animal as any course of training for the purpose of producing such an undesirable human being could have resulted in.

In this manner he passed the years of his life up to the age of thirty, drifting, like a derelict log, from ship to ship, and from shore to shore, all round the world. He was conversant with the interiors of most of the seaport jails in the world, for when under the influence of drink he was a madman, only to be restrained from doing deeds of violence by force, and utterly careless of the consequences of any of his actions. At last, in the course of his wanderings, he came to Calcutta, and was enticed by a shipmate up to the Sailors’ Rest in the Radha Bazaar one Sunday evening, when he had neither money nor credit wherewith to get drink. His shipmate was a Christian of very brief experience, but he had the root of the matter in him, and knew that the next best thing to preaching the Gospel one’s self was to bring one’s friends in contact with some one who could. So it came about that Harry Carter, finding Johnny wandering about the bazaars aimlessly and hungrily, proposed a feed to him, and by that means got him into the Rest, where, after his hunger was appeased, Harry succeeded in keeping him until the evening meeting.

At that time the meetings were conducted by two American missionaries to whom it was a perfect delight to listen, as they told in quaint language, loved and comprehended by sailors, the wonderful story of the coming of Jesus to save poor fallen man. Theirs was not preaching in a general way—every man in their presence felt that he was being individually conversed with, felt that the story of the Cross was a simple narration of absolute fact, no mere theory of mysterious import, which only men and women who were specially selected and educated for the purpose could ever hope to understand. They told the wonderful tale in manly fashion, letting the God-given message just flow through them on its way from their Father to their brethren.

And Johnny sat with eyes astare and mouth agape, as the straight, brave, certain words sank into his awakening mind. Wonder, incredulity, shame—all struggled within him, all newly born, for it could hardly be said with truth that he had ever realized any of these emotions before.