The address closed. Tom Hammond awoke from his intense absorption of soul. He had long since utterly forgotten Zillah. He had seen only himself, at first, his own sin, and that his sin had nailed Christ to the cross. Then, better still, he saw the Christ.
Only a few nights before he had paused to watch a Salvation Army open-air meeting. The girl-officer in charge of the corps had announced thirty-eight as the number of the hymn they would sing, and prefaced the reading of the first verse by saying:
“This hymn was written by an ex-drunkard—an ex-blasphemer. His name was Newton—drunken Jack Newton, he was often called by his mates, and by others who knew him. He was a sailor, on a ship trading to the African coast, at the time when his soul was aroused to its danger. He was in agony, not knowing what to do to get rest and peace.
“One night he was keeping anchor-watch. He was alone on the deck, the night was dark and eerie. His sins troubled him. All that he had heard of the crucified Christ—whom he had so often blasphemed—swept into his soul, and he groaned in the misery of his sin-convicted state.
“Suddenly he paused in his deck-pacing, and looked up. To his fevered imagination, the yard which crossed the mast high up above his head appeared like a mighty cross, and it was remembering this, with all the soul-experience of that night, that in after years, when he became a preacher of the gospel, and a noted divine, Dr. John Newton wrote:
“I saw One hanging on a tree
In agonies and blood,
Who fixed His dying eyes on me,
As near the cross I stood.
‘A second look He gave, which said,