“Now,” she continued, “you have been trusting in the wealth which, with so much toil and danger, you have been collecting, to enjoy a life of ease and comfort on shore. Suppose God said to you, ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!’ as He does to many; can you face Him?”
“But I don’t see that I have been a bad man. I have always borne a good character, and, except when the blood was up, and I have been fighting with the enemy, or when I have been on shore, may be for a spree, I have never done anything for which God could be angry with me.”
“God looks upon everything that we do, unless in accordance with His will, to be sinful. He does not allow of small sins any more than great sins; they are hateful in His sight; and He shows us that we are by nature sinful and deserving of punishment, and that, as we owe Him everything, if we were to spend all our lives in doing only good, we should be but performing our duty, and still we should have no right in ourselves to claim admittance into the pure, and glorious, and happy heaven He has prepared for those alone who love Him. He has so constituted our souls that they must live for ever, and must either be with Him in the place of happiness, or be cast into that of punishment. But, my friend, Jesus loves you and all sinners, and though God is so just that He cannot let sin go unpunished, yet Jesus undertook to be punished instead of you, and He died on the cross and shed His blood that you might go free of punishment. If you will but trust in Him, and believe that He was so punished, and that, consequently, God no longer considers you worthy of punishment, but giving you, as it were, the holiness and righteousness which belong to Christ, will receive you into that holy heaven where none but the righteous can enter.”
The wounded man groaned and answered slowly, “I am afraid that I am a sinner, though I have been trying to make out that I am not one. But I really have had a very hard life of it, and no good example set me, and shipmates around me cursing and swearing, and doing all that is bad; and so I hope if I do die, as you say I shall, that God won’t keep me out of heaven.”
“Jesus Christ says, ‘There is only one way by which we can enter; there is but one door.’ ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.’ ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God.’ Jesus also says, ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life;’ and again, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ Jesus came not to call the righteous, or those who fancy themselves good enough to go to heaven, as you have been doing, but sinners, to repentance—those who know themselves to be sinners. Think how pure and holy God is, and how different you are to Him, and yet you must be that holy as He is holy to enter heaven. Christ, as I have told you, gives you His holiness if you trust to Him; and God says, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool;’ and, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far will I put your sins from me.’ Believe what God says; that is the first thing you have to do. Suppose Jesus was to come to you now, and, desperately wounded as you are, tell you to get up and walk; would you believe Him, or say that you could not? He said that to many when He was on earth, and they took Him at His word, and found that He had healed them. There was, among others, a man with a withered hand. When He said, ‘Stretch forth thine hand,’ the man did not say, ‘I cannot,’ but stretched it forth immediately. Just in the same way, when God says, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,’ do believe on Him, and trust to Him to fulfil His promise. God never deceives any one; all His words are fulfilled.”
Day by day the young girl spoke to the dying seaman, and, though witnessing scenes abhorrent to her feelings, influenced by God’s grace, she overcame her repugnance, and faithfully continued to attend him. She had the satisfaction of hearing him cry, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner!” and confess that he had a full hope of forgiveness, through the merits of Jesus alone.
Two of the other men, though apparently not so severely injured as Webb, owing to the ignorance of the surgeon, sank from their wounds. They died as they had lived, hardening their hearts against the Saviour’s love.
Had Miss Kitty not been very firm, Mrs Podgers would have prevented her from attending the mate or the other wounded men.
Mr Falconer, though for some time confined to his cabin, was at length able to get on deck.
“Glad to see you about again,” said the captain, as he appeared, in his usual gruff but not unkind tone. “When I brought the ladies aboard, I didn’t think that they’d prove so useful in looking after the sick; though I doubt if she,” and he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at his wife, “has troubled you much with her attentions.”