“LIGHT HO, SIR!” “LIGHT HO, SIR!” BY FRANK T. BULLEN AUTHOR OF “CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT” [Illustration] NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1901, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY. CONTENTS PAGE LIGHT HO, SIR! 7 MY NIGHT WATCH IS OVER 21 “LIGHT HO, SIR!” Those people who are always striving to trace back to a man’s early training or surroundings the real reason for any startling change in his life after he has long grown up, and do not believe in what the Bible calls the New Birth, must often be sorely puzzled. They seek for that which they wish to find, and often ignore any evidence which militates against their preconceived theories. Yet the majority of them would be horrified were they told that this method of research is dishonest and misleading. But in spite of what people may feel about the matter, it is of no use blinking the fact that very much of the so-called scientific investigation (which is not commercial) that is pursued to-day is tainted with this radical defect. Especially is this so in matters of inquiry into religious experience. There are many exceedingly clever and well-educated persons who would have their readers believe that in all cases where a man or woman has become a Christian, and from serving the devil has turned and consistently served God, the change has been due to early impressions, which, accidentally encrusted over for a term, have been suddenly revived in all their pristine force, and have compelled the mind back into the channels in which it was originally taught to move. Now, if this were all that these reasoners said, one might remind them, or inform them gently, that they were only partially right--that while it is undoubtedly blessedly true that early influences for good do exert themselves most forcefully and unexpectedly in after years in a large number of cases, yet it is most untrue and God-dishonoring to suggest that Christianity is purely a matter of education, of environment, of a long acquaintance with religious persons and matters. So far from this being the case, it is a truism with Christian workers that very frequently their most hopeful converts have been those who never heard the Gospel before, or at least had never listened to it with the slightest attention, even though they may have actually caught the tones of the preacher’s voice. To such simple ones the Water of the Word of Grace comes like the monsoon rains upon the burnt-up breadths of India, causing the apparently dead soil to put on at once a glorious garment of living green, life-giving, life-sustaining, beautifying and blessing all around it.