'Why was there this difference? Why was the handkerchief harder to move than the boat? The answer to that question was to be found at the other end of the green. There were other pullers at the rope that day, pulling with all their might in an exactly opposite direction. It was not a united pull, and therefore for a long time there was no result, and we watched on, until at length one side was proved the strongest, and the handkerchief was drawn by them triumphantly across the line.
'To-day, dear friends, I speak to you of yet another tug of war. The place is the same, Runswick Bay and our village green, 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 mate 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 God-ward, Christ-ward, heaven-ward.
'Yet, oh, my dear friend, 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, you know it, crossed the line which divides the saved from the unsaved. Why is this? Why, oh, why are you so hard to move?
'Oh, my friend, do you ask why? Surely you know the reason! Is it not because there are other hands on the rope, other pullers drawing in an exactly 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 towards what? Oh, dear friend, towards what? What are the depths, the fearful depths towards which you are being drawn?'
He said a good deal more, but I did not hear it. That question seemed burnt in with 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 green, but Jack had brought me close to the boat where the choir stood, and there was no escape. I should have to sit it out; 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 leant over the side of the boat, and poked my head with his hymn-book. 'Sing, big Mr. Jack, sing,' he said aloud, and then, for very shame, 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 to which they sang it:—
'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 heartily glad when the service was over, and I went on the shore at once, to try to walk the sermon away. But I was not so 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 had not looked at it in that light before. I had been quite willing to own that I was not religious, that I was leading a gay, easy-going kind of life, that my Sundays were spent in bed, or in novel reading, or in rowing, 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 fellow than I knew myself to be. But as for feeling any real alarm or anxiety with regard to my condition, such a thought had never for one moment crossed my mind.
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 towards something worse, towards the depths, the fearful depths, of which he had spoken.