“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps on the sea
And rides upon the storm.”
RETURNING by the Belfast night mail to my distant parish in the North, from the Dublin clerical meetings of the year 1839, I found myself placed opposite to a gentleman, whose appearance engrossed, rather than attracted, my profound attention. His age, as he afterward told me, was sixty. The coach in which we sat had scarcely cleared the pavement, and was rolling along the comparatively silent highway when my companion addressed me with great ease and politeness.
A few minutes sufficed to show that the predominating sentiment of his heart was religion. His conversation was almost exclusively of that character, and as he poured out the rich store of gospel truth and experience from the exhaustless treasury of a converted soul, the night had insensibly worn away and the sun was long risen as we changed horses at the last stage.
Little more than an hour remained, and I must probably part forever from a man by whose conversation I had been inexpressibly captivated. I felt, as may be easily conceived, a strong desire to learn his history, and thus to fix more permanently on my mind the impression he had made. Accordingly I asked him whether the turning of his heart to God had been caused by any sudden danger, or merely connected with his seafaring life (he had already told me that he commanded a vessel trading between Liverpool and America), or was of a gradual growth.
My question seemed to please him, at least he replied to it with the utmost courtesy, saying that in the last year but one of the last war, he was waiting in port with a fleet of merchantmen till convoy should arrive, it being deemed unsafe to sail without such protection. His habits, he observed, had always been irregular, to give them no stronger term, and he passed the period of detention in practices he could not look back upon without sorrow.
At length the signal to weigh anchor was made, and his ship, as were also many others, was so short of hands that he was glad to accept of any person who offered himself, however inexperienced he might be in navigation. At the very instant of departure a boat came alongside, out of which a tall robust man climbed actively on the deck, and gave himself in as a seaman willing to engage for the voyage. The boat which brought him had returned to the shore and the wind was blowing nearly a gale; but under every circumstance, my friend said, he was glad to get even the addition of an equivocal hand to his scanty crew.
His pleasure, however, was of short duration, for the newcomer was found to be of a most quarrelsome, intractable disposition, a furious blasphemer, and, when opportunity offered, a drunkard. Besides all these disqualifications he was wholly ignorant of nautical affairs, or counterfeited ignorance to escape duty. In short, he was the bane and plague of the vessel, and refused obstinately to give any account of himself, or his family, or his past life.
At length a violent storm arose, all hands were piped on deck, and all, as the captain thought, were too few to save the ship. When the men were mustered to their quarters the sturdy blasphemer was missing, and my friend went below to seek for him; great was his surprise at finding him on his knees, repeating the Lord’s prayer with wonderful rapidity, over and over again, as if he had bound himself to countless reiterations. Vexed at what he deemed hypocrisy or cowardice, he shook him roughly by the collar, exclaiming,
“Say your prayers in fair weather.”
The man rose up, observing in a low voice, “God grant I may ever see fair weather to say them in.”
In a few hours the storm happily abated, a week more brought them to harbor, and an incident so trivial passed quickly away from the mind of the captain; the more easily as the man in question was paid off the day after landing, and appeared not again.
Four years had elapsed, during which, though my friend had been twice shipwrecked, and was grievously hurt by the falling of a spar, he pursued without amendment a life of profligacy and contempt of God. At the end of this period he arrived at the port of New York after a very tedious and dangerous voyage from England.
It was Sunday morning, and the streets were thronged with persons proceeding to the several so-called places of worship with which that city abounds; but the narrator, from whose lips I take this anecdote, was bent on far other occupation, designing to drown the recollection of perils and deliverances in a celebrated tavern which he had too long and too often frequented. As he walked leisurely towards this goal, he encountered a very dear friend, the quondam associate of many a thoughtless hour. Salutations over, the captain seized him by the arm, declaring that he should accompany him to the hotel. “I will do so,” replied the other with great calmness, “on condition that you come with me first, for a single hour, into this house (a church) and thank God for His mercies to you on the deep.” The captain was ashamed to refuse, so the two friends entered the building together.
Already all the seats were occupied and a dense crowd filled the aisle; but by dint of personal exertion they succeeded in reaching a position right in front of the pulpit, at about five yards’ distance. The preacher, one of the most popular of the day, riveted the attention of the entire congregation, including the captain himself, to whom his features and voice, though he could not assign any time or place of previous meeting, seemed not wholly unknown. At length the preacher’s eyes fell upon the spot where the two friends stood, He suddenly paused—still gazing upon the captain, as if to make sure that he was laboring under no optical delusion—and after a silence of more than a minute pronounced with a voice that shook the building,
“Say your prayers in fair weather.”
The audience was lost in amazement; nor was it until a considerable time had elapsed that the preacher recovered sufficient self-possession to recount the incident with which the reader is already acquainted, adding, with deep emotion, that the words which his captain had uttered in the storm, had clung to him by night and by day after his landing, as if an angel had been charged with the duty of repeating them in his ears—that he felt the holy call as coming direct from above, to do the work of his crucified Master—and was now, through grace, such as they saw and heard.
At the conclusion of this affecting address he called on the audience to join in prayer with himself that the same words might be blessed in turn to him who first used them; but God had outrun their petitions—my friend was already His child before his former shipmate had ceased to tell his story. The power of the Spirit had wrought effectually upon him and subdued every lofty imagination. And so when the people dispersed he exchanged the hotel for the house of the preacher, with whom he tarried six weeks, and parted from him to pursue his profession, with a heart devoted to the Saviour, and with holy and happy assurances, which (as he declared to me, and I confidently rely in his truth) advancing years hallowed, strengthened, and sanctified.
From that companion of a night I then parted, probably not to meet again till we stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. His history is too palpably instructive to require that I should add my own reflections, and with one only I conclude—addressing those persons who seek God merely in the hour of danger and trouble—in the words of the captain, “Say your prayers in fair weather.”
[The above most interesting story of God’s grace has been sent to us for insertion. Our friend closes his letter by saying that he is “looking to the Lord to bless every effort to reach souls in these closing days. Time is short, the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” We add our earnest, Amen! ED.]