He lived in and was a native of Southern India. He had been taught from his infancy to worship and pray to the gods of fire and water. In that time and part of India the British Government had a college for teaching English to native young men, so that they might qualify for holding government situations. The head of this college was one who respected and believed God's written Word. So, in teaching these young men to read English, a portion of the Bible was read regularly each day.
At first, full of prejudice and unbelief, the young man strongly disliked having to do this and would show his contempt and dislike for the Bible by kicking it around when he had opportunity, even spitting upon it to show his fellow students how little he cared for or believed it.
But one day the reading lesson was in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, and somehow one verse fastened itself on his mind in a way that he could not shake off or forget, specially these words: "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:3737All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)).
He tried to forget them, but they were constantly returning to him and coming up again and again in his mind.
Not very long after this, a fire broke out in the military barracks close by, and he found himself running with others with water to put out the fire. All at once the thought struck him that, as a worshipper of fire and water, here he was running with a bucket of water to put out fire. In other words, trying to quench one god with another god. The absurdity of it so took hold of him that he gave up his old ideas entirely and became an atheist.
One day he went with a friend to swim in the sea not very far from the college. It was usual for them to watch the tide, and when it was lowest to swim a long way out to a sand bar on which they would rest and catch their breath and then turn back and swim ashore again. On this day he had somehow failed to watch the tide. Stripping off his clothes on the shore, he dived into the water and swam as usual to about the distance from shore where he expected to find the sand bar and rest before returning. To his dismay he found the water already over the sand bar, and, when he tried to touch bottom with his feet, found no bottom at all. It dawned upon him that he had mistaken the time, and that the tide was far above the sand bank.
Too exhausted to swim back to shore, he was helpless and hopeless. Nothing but death by drowning was before him. His friend had not followed him and was now too far off to help him. He tried to float but began to sink and, with death staring him in the face, began to look eternity in the face also. All his past life came up before him and here he was, his gods gone, and nothing left to trust in. The dreadful thought of going into eternity unprepared pressed on his terror-stricken soul.
At this point he remembered those words, which had so impressed him in John 6: "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." He had tried to reject and forget them then, but now, half doubting and half believing, he cried out: "Lord Jesus, if there is such a person, I come to Thee!"
The Savior met him just as he was and just where he was, revealing Himself as a living, loving Savior, as faithful to His own words as He always is, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."
Meanwhile, a boat had set out and they reached the spot just in time to save his life.
Saved—not only from drowning, but from eternal misery too. Saved—from a watery grave and saved from an eternity without God and without Christ. At once he confessed Christ to the one who had come down to swim with him.
He soon confessed Christ as his Lord openly and boldly to his own relations, who utterly disowned him for becoming a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. He went to England and became a teacher of oriental languages and also an earnest preacher of the gospel. There he told how the Lord Jesus met and saved his soul.
"When we were yet without strength,
in due time Christ died
for the ungodly."