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A STORY OF CHRISTMAS DAY
A Faith of a Sailor-A Grand Christmas Gift
T. DeWitt Talmage
[Welland Telegraph, 25 December 1891]
I never like a Christmas season to pass without telling to someone a thrilling incident which happened at my house just eight year ago this coming Christmas. Perhaps I have told it to you, but I think not. A child from a neighbor’s house came in to say her father was dead. It was only three doors off, and, I think, in two minutes we were there. There lay the old Christmas sea captain, his face upturned toward the window as though he had suddenly seen the headlands, and with an illuminated countenance as though he were just going into harbor. The fact was he had already got through the “Narrows.” In the adjoining room were the Christmas presents awaiting for his distribution. Long, ago, one night when he had narrowly escaped with his ship from being run down by a great ocean steamer, he had made his peace with God, and a kinder neighbor than Captain Pendelton you would not find this side of heaven.
He had often talked to me of the goodness of God, and especially of a time when he was about to go into New York harbor with his ship from Liverpool, and he was suddenly impressed that he ought to put back to sea. Under the protest of the crew and under their very threat he put back to sea, fearing at the same time he was losing his mind, for it did seem so unreasonable that when they could get into harbor that night they should put back to sea. But they put to sea, and Captain Pendleton said to his mate, “You call me at ten o’clock to-night.” At twelve o’clock at night the captain was aroused and said: “What does this mean? I thought I told you to call me at ten o’clock and here it is twelve.” “Why,” said the young mate, “I did call you at ten o’clock , and you got up, looked around and told me to keep right on this same course for two hours, and then to call you at twelve o’clock.” Said the captain, “Is it possible? I have no remembrance of that.” At twelve o’clock the captain went on deck, and through the rift of the cloud of the moonlight fell upon the sea and showed him a shipwreck with one hundred passengers. He helped them off. Had he been any earlier or any later at that point of the sea he would have been of no service to those drowning people. On board the captain’s vessel, they began to band together as to what they should pay for the rescue, and what they should pay for the provisions. “Ah,” says the captain, “my lads, you can’t pay me anything: all I have on board is yours; I feel too greatly honored of God in having saved you to take any pay. Just like him.
Oh, that the old sea captain‘s God might be my God and yours. Amid the stormy seas of life may we have always someone as tenderly take care of us as the captain took care of the drowning crew and the passengers. And may we come into the harbor with as little physical pain and with as bright a hope as he had; and if it should happen to be a Christmas morning, when the presents are being distributed, and we are celebrating the birth of Him who came to save our shipwreck world, all the better, for what grander, brighter Christmas present could we have than Heaven?
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