The Boatman’s Message

“DON’T tempt me,” Father Gynn would say, grasping his staff and bundle. “So long as the Master gives me strength, I must bear His message. I am the one to preach the Glad Tidings; I have no family, and am welcome to any craft. I can sit with the sailors in the forecastle and tell them about Him Who holds the waters in His hand. And on shore there’s many a house that will never have the Bible, except I go there. I’m grateful to you, friend, but I must be moving on. When my work is done, the good Lord will give this body rest till the bright morning!”
Everybody on the coast knew Father Gynn, who for long years traveled on foot from house to house, a self-appointed missionary. He was quite old before his step faltered or his energy abated. But still he refused a home, although more than one fisher’s hut on the coast offered him a shelter for his declining years. In the burning heat of summer, as well as in the bleak winter, the pilgrim was ever seeking to give the word of cheer to those who lived remote from other laborers. He met the fisherfolk by the fireside, or on the seashore as they mended their nets; his self-sacrificing life and cordial interest in their welfare giving wonderful power to his words. To many a rude son of the sea he had been indeed a father, often helping them in sudden poverty and distress from his own scanty pittance.
On one occasion the good man felt impelled to make an excursion farther inland, and, continuing his journey in the early dawn, found himself on the bank of a river. It could be crossed only by a ferry. The boat was moored on the opposite bank, near the ferryman’s hut. Father Gynn, familiar with the customs of the region, summoned him with a horn which he found suspended from a tree. At last the man of the ferry came, and gazed listlessly across the stream as if he cared not for a passenger, gruffly asking:
“What’s wanted at this early hour?”
“A friend to take me over,” said Father Gynn.
The tiny craft came slowly over. Then, as the rower scanned the stately figure of the preacher, he said, apologetically:
“It isn’t often I’m roused up at daybreak.”
Father Gynn made no reply until he had entered the boat, when he said gently:
“Friend, I’m sorry to trouble you at this unreasonable hour, but I had urgent business.”
The boatman, who had scarcely taken his troubled eyes off this striking passenger, made no remark; yet it did not seem as if his close scrutiny was prompted by that idle curiosity that Father Gynn often found among those who are isolated from large centers. To the practiced eye of the evangelist he seemed no ordinary man, despite his abrupt way. Father Gynn opened the conversation in his quaint manner: “I bear a message, and must not rest until it be delivered.”
“Not bad news?” said the other, with a touch of interest.
“That depends upon the way it is received,” was the grave reply. “My word is from a good Father to a wayward child. If that child will return, he shall be as a prince before a king. If he refuses, he will be an outcast; the inheritance will go to another. It all lies with the child,” added Father Gynn, searching the face of the ferryman, who evidently had not comprehended; for he said:
“You may be after Ike Stevens. He hasn’t written or spoken to his father since he moved into these parts, and that’s near fifteen years.”
Father Gynn bent upon him a still more intense look, as if he would know whether he was feigning ignorance.
“You’re old to travel on such an errand,” added the man; “and if it’s Ike Stevens, we might as well turn about, for he’s a hard case”; but seeing that his passenger was watching him with an expression of painful interest, “It is none of my concern,” he added.
“Indeed, it is,” said the evangelist, with sudden earnestness. “I know not the man of whom you speak, but if he be such as you describe, you can present the message as well as I, if you love the Father.”
His meaning flashed upon the mind of the ferryman.
“So you’ve been preaching to me on the sly!” he cried, his voice thick with emotion. “I warn ye, it won’t do any good. Your talk about the Father and the message won’t move me. Look here,” he asked abruptly, “if He were my Father, would He rob me of my wife and children in one hour? They were drowned before my eyes; I could not lift a finger to save them.” The veins of his forehead knotted with the agony of that hour. “The water closed over them; they were lost to me Forever.” He bent to his oars in silence a moment till they had passed the swift current, then burst forth again; “I vowed then that I’d done with churches and religion — my wife was great in those things — and came here that I might be let alone!”
“God sent me this way, then,” said the Evangelist, “for till this moment I knew not your urgent need. It was for you I was compelled to come into this region. Don’t fret against it, my friend, for the Spirit of God is striving with you.” For in Father Gynn’s experience this depth of despair was often the prelude to peace in believing.
“I want to be let alone,” repeated the man, avoiding the keen glance that seemed to read his thoughts. “Why should you care what I believe?”
Father Gynn leaned on his staff in silence till they reached the shore, then said, with touching humility:
“Friend, I had no wish to offend you. Be patient with an old man whose time is short. Very soon I shall cross another river, deep and wide. I shall not have to summon the boatman as I did you this morning; the boatman of that river will summon me.”
His melodious voice alone broke the silence of the early morning; as he finished, the east became radiant with the dawn. Father Gynn gazed into the glory-crowned clouds for an instant as if he beheld a beatific vision. The ferryman regarded him in silence, a curious blending of emotion on his face.
On reaching the shore the good man was distressed to find, after searching his pockets, that he had not a penny to pay the fare. He had emptied his purse for the relief of a poor wanderer the day before, and with his usual preoccupation had forgotten that he was moneyless.
“Never mind,” said the ferryman, with grim humor, “we’ll call it square, since you brought me a message for nothing!”
“It was poorly delivered, or you would not trifle with me,” said Father Gynn, sorrowfully, adding with the simplicity of a child; “But I have a little change in my other coat pocket. I will get it and return and pay what I owe.”
And so, feeling that to discharge his debt was the first duty, he recrossed the river and started for the coast. Several weeks had elapsed when he again summoned the ferryman.
“I did not forget,” said Father Gynn. “Here is what I owe you. Now let me rest awhile before I return. The days that were given me to bear the message are numbered.”
He seated himself on the gnarled roots of a tree, leaning his head upon his staff in a weary way unusual to him. He did not note the new light on the ferryman’s face, that softened his sombre features like the rift in a cloud.
“I’m glad you came,” was the broken response. “The message was for me! I was that child, and He was my Father! It was right for Him to take my family; they are at rest.” He knelt beside the aged saint overcome with joy. His heart of stone had been softened, but with what a struggle!
“It was what you said about being summoned by the boatman,” he added, “that was in my mind whenever they blew the signal for me. I could not rest for thinking, ‘Was I fit to cross the dark, fearful river?’ I knew that though the Boatman came sudden to my wife and children, they were ready. “They,” he paused to control himself, “they went over the riving smiling; I saw the peace on their faces when they were buried. He took them, and left me because I wasn’t ready.”
Father Gynn could find no words to express his joy. When he did speak, he placed his trembling hand upon the head of the man at the ferry.
“ ‘The Lord bless thee, and cause His face to shine upon thee’; the Lord comfort thee, and make thee ‘mighty in the Scriptures,’ and one to draw many to Him! Let us pray.”
So, on the bank beside the murmuring water, Father Gynn consecrated the young disciple to the work which he was soon to lay aside.
“Don’t leave me,” whispered the young ferryman, as they rose; “live with me and teach me more about Him!”
This came to Father Gynn as a call to duty.
“If the Lord permit, I will shortly return to you. There are men on the seashore, and women and children in their homes, waiting for my last words to them. Then, if strength be given, I will come to you.”
After that last visit to the fishermen of the coast, the man of God went to dwell beside the river. Many who crossed the ferry will remember him who sat daily in the door of the cottage, like a prophet of old, with his long, silvery beard, and heaven’s peace upon his face. And the ferryman, in daily converse with him, and study of the Scriptures, somehow grew wondrously like him in spirit. And when, soon after the change, Father Gynn was summoned by the Boatman, he trustingly crossed the river, and “his mantle fell from him,” and the spirit of the pilgrim preacher “rested on” the ferryman!
O Comforter of God’s redeemed,
Whom the world does not see,
What hand should pluck me from the love
That stays my soul on Thee?
Who would not suffer grief like mine,
To be consoled like me?
— A. L. Waring.
Divine Photography
A Gospel Address, delivered at the Victoria Hall, Exeter,
by Heyman Wreford.
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they arc together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it said to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” —Rom. 3:10-19.
There is no fear of God before their eyes. It is a fearfully solemn reality, and as inconceivable as it is solemn, that men have “no fear of God before their eyes.” Within the limits of his human life man fears a thousand things, but the fear of God never troubles him. He will fear the darkness of the night, and fly from peril in the day, but the overwhelming thought of God never troubles him at all. In his anger he will curse his God, and blaspheme the Saviour, and call on God to damn him. He will make a mock of the most sacred mysteries of salvation, and challenge the very devils in his unbelief.
I well remember, when a lad, teaching in a Sunday School. Living near the school was an infidel. One day he sent for me to come and see him. I went to his house, and he began complaining of the noise the children made when coming out of school. He then began to blaspheme God and the Lord Jesus, and before his children, said the most awful things about Christ that I ever heard. I could not tell you what he said about the blessed Saviour. I was so horrified that I looked him in the face and said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak in this manner before your children.” I then spoke of what Christ was to me. He became almost livid with rage, and seizing a knife that was on the table, threatened to kill me if I did not leave the room. His hatred of the Lord was blazing from his eyes. I left him with words of warning on my lips, which I emphasized in a letter I wrote to him next day. I never saw him again, but I shall never forget the awful passion that possessed him when I spoke of Christ.
Three young men were seated together the last night of the year. Two were saved and one was not. The two Christians were pleading with their companion to come to Christ. He listened impatiently for awhile, and then said, “I don’t want to be saved; and if there is a hell I am willing to go to it.” There was silence for a while, and then one of his companions took his watch from his pocket and said, “Do you decide here, in the presence of God, on this last night of December at fifteen minutes past eleven, to reject Christ as your Saviour, and to choose hell as your eternal portion?” He answered, “I do.”
Ah! Christ of Calvary! Thou avast made sin for the sinner there. Let these sinners before Thee realize that Thou art “the Lamb of God that bearest away the sin of the world.” Thou didst keep God’s holy law Thyself, and Thou hast died for those who could not keep it. Bear with these unbelievers a little longer, gracious Saviour; perchance tight the fear of God will come upon them, and they will come to Thee for salvation. And Thou wilt not cast them out; Thou wilt receive them even now.
God destroys the negative when we believe in Christ.
As long as the photographer has the negative, so long can he reproduce the photographs. When the negative is destroyed there is an end to it.
Now, as long as you are a sinner in your sins, so long are those sins reproduced day by day in your godless life. And if you die in your sins and stand before the Great White Throne, you will find that divine photography has kept a record of all your sins in the books that will be opened there. The faithfulness of God’s portraiture of you that we have been looking at this evening will be manifest then. You will have to admit what perchance you will deny now, that the likeness of the third of Romans is a good one of you. But if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and accept Him as your Saviour, then it becomes true of you what the apostle says in Rom. 6:5, 6, 7, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.”
We are, as believers, identified with Christ in the likeness of His death, and we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. And then the knowledge comes to us that our old man is crucified with Him, so that the whole body of sin should be destroyed.
We are no longer identified with the old world that crucified cur Lord, but through faith in His death we are dead with Christ and have Him for our life, Who died for us; we now belong to the sphere where He lives in resurrection life. He has conquered death for us, and because of this we are sure of resurrection. We are crucified with Christ, nevertheless we live: yet not we, but Christ liveth in us; and the life which we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved us and gave Himself for us.
I have no time to enter into the fullness of this great theme, but it is a fact that I have a part in His death, and in His resurrection.
Would to God that all my hearers could enter into this, that “he that is dead is justified from sin.” And sin can no longer be laid to my charge if I am dead with Christ, and have Him for my life.
It is thus that the body of sin is destroyed. “Old things have passed away, and all things have become new.”
Listen to what a well-known saint of God wrote as to this:—
“The ‘I’ that was crucified together with Christ, and died together with Him, is what I was — a creature made for its Creator’s glory and praise, but in its lapsed condition living from itself, and by its own power, and to itself — this I reckon dead; the I, yet not I, is myself as part of the new creation...
“But Rom. 6 goes further, because it not only makes an appeal to our heart’s affections, but shows God’s thoughts and counsels, and His view of Christ’s death; that He, occupied with Christ’s death, counts me dead who believe in Him; and that I am bound to count or reckon myself so, too. Now, this meets the difficulties of the greatest and of the least of us. We that believe have been brought out of that system in which self is looked at as everything, into another, in which Christ is looked at by God, and we too, in Him, the alive One. He only is the fountain, stream, end of all God’s good pleasure, but we get our place both in Him before God, and with God in His thoughts about Him: for the Spirit is in us.”
It takes some a long time to realize these things. A poor woman had lived without Christ for seventy-eight years. She was saved, and the magnitude of the love that had saved her over helmed her. “Just think of it,” she would say. “I lived seventy-eight years in the dark, and now I’m saved, and Jesus has done it all.” And then in her simple way she illustrated her salvation on the cottage table. She began at one end of the table, and drew a line with her finger to within half-an-inch of the edge on the other side; then she stopped and said, “I went that far in my sins, nearly over, but there I trusted Jesus, and so I am saved by grace.”
Yes, planted together in the likeness of His death.
“Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again.” Planted also in the likeness of His resurrection.
And now my time has gone. What mysteries of eternal love and grace have passed before us! We have seen our portrait as sinners taken by God Himself. And God has given us our portraits as saints in Christ. Let us look at one or two of these portraits as we conclude: — “Ye are complete in Him.” Nothing wanting in that picture. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” The devil’s negative destroyed, and the heavenly photograph preserved forever.
“And hath made us kings and priests unto His God and Father.” What a change! From the filthy rags of sin, to be arrayed in royal raiment, and to be clothed in priestly beauty, and thus arrayed to stand before a holy God. “Made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” —we who once “sat in darkness and the shadow of death.” What a wondrous transforming through the operation of the Holy Spirit in us! Praise and glory to His Name Forever and forever.