06. Sailing Day and the Voyage

Sailing Day and the Voyage The mighty deep, the great rolling waves, the days on days of water, water, only water, the feet lifted up from off the dear homeland and not yet planted on the new homeland—all these furnish suggestion and opportunity for thoughtful meditation. To our John this voyage in the autumn of 1892 was a time of heart-searching and prayer. He received a letter to which he afterwards makes reference in an Indian publication. He says, "My father had a friend who greatly desired to be a foreign missionary, but was not permitted to go. This man wrote me a letter directed in care of the ship. I received it a few hours out of New York harbor. He urged me to seek for the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the great qualification for mission work. When I had read the letter I crumpled it up in anger and threw it on the deck. Did this friend think that I had not received the baptism of the Spirit, or that I would think of going to India without this equipment ? I was angry. But by and by better judgment prevailed and I picked up the letter and read it again. Possibly I did need something which I had not yet re- ceived. The result was that during the rest of that voyage I gave myself much to prayer that I might indeed be filled with the Spirit and know by an actual experience what Jesus meant when he said, "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts I :8 R. V.). These prayers on shipboard were finally answered in a marvelous way.