CAPTAIN JAMES WILSON is well known as the Commander of the ship “Duff” which carried the first Christian missionaries to the islands of the Pacific Ocean in 1796. His earlier life had been spent in battle and adventure in America and India, and its incidents read more like the wonders of fiction than a literal detail of truth and fact. The history of his attempt to escape from one of the prisons of Hyder Ali, and the sufferings to which he was subjected for two and twenty months after, would form the basis of a startling tale. In 1794 he returned to England, made rich by one fortunate enterprise, and bought an estate in Hampshire, where he hoped to repair his shattered health, and to enjoy happiness in the sports of the country and the fashionable society of the neighbourhood. On his return voyage he had frequent discussions on religious subjects with a missionary who was on board, and who was greatly scandalised at his infidel principles. He had come out of the furnace of suffering, insensible as the millstone to any feelings of gratitude or devotion, and his mercies had no better effect than his afflictions. He saw no Divine hand in the providence which had preserved him in deaths oft; in hunger and thirst and nakedness; in journeying and in prisons; in perils of waters; in perils in the wilderness; in perils by the heathen; and which, after all these dangers, had crowned his mercantile pursuits with wealth by means which appeared almost miraculous.
* From The Divine Life, by Rev. J. Kennedy, London.
Captain Wilson’s infidelity, his biographer says, may be ascribed mainly to two causes: the want of an early acquaintance with religion and his residence so many years in India, “a country which has proved fatal to the principles of Europeans, who, making wealth the sole object of their worship, prostrate their hearts before the shrine of this golden image with a more unhallowed devotion than if they bent the knee in the chambers of Asiatic idolatry. His mind had been rendered completely callous by the events and occupations of his life; and this baneful influence had darkened down upon his faculties so as to obliterate any remains of religion and all sense of God’s moral government among men. Like all other disciples of deism, he entertained lofty conceptions of human nature, and was deeply imbued with a self-complacent admiration of his own goodness. He considered that he had so conducted himself as to merit the congratulations of the world, and had done nothing he could reproach himself with as unjust to his neighbour or offensive in the eye of God. He had even in some instances behaved with a generosity that he thought could not fail to secure for him the divine approbation, and when compared with others of his countrymen in that part of the world, he flattered himself he ought rather to be celebrated as a man of exalted virtue than regarded as an unbeliever or a sinner. Besides, his many wonderful escapes, his singular preservation, and, above all, his success in his mercantile engagements, which had raised him to affluence, after being stripped of all he possessed, led him proudly to imagine that he was not only a child of fortune, but in special favour with the Deity.
“It is difficult to imagine,” says his biographer, “almost anything more unlikely than that the subjects of revelation should engage or interest a mind so wrapped up in the flattering opinions of superior worth and the romantic schemes of earthly happiness. The objections must have appeared to him numerous and formidable against receiving a book as a revelation from God, the design of which was to teach him that his heart was deeply depraved; that he had been a rebel through life against his Maker; that he had incurred His displeasure, and must expect pardon and happiness solely through the unmerited mercy of Him he had offended.”
Captain Wilson had a pious niece who superintended his household affairs, and though he regarded her religion as a weakness, her character was not without some influence on his mind. One of his neighbours, an old sea captain, often invited his attention to religion; but, though this man knew his Bible well, he was not sufficiently acquainted with the general evidences of Christianity to meet the reasonings of his sceptical friend. The Indian captain proudly defied the artillery of his denunciations against unbelievers, and smiled at his entreaties to abandon the ranks of scepticism. Occasionally, however, and at intervals, transient convictions would strike his conscience, like the flashes of lightning that cross the path of the benighted traveller. He would sometimes indulge the reflection that if Christianity were from God, his plan of life was altogether wrong, his estimate of himself erroneous, and his hopes of future happiness fallacious.
At the table of the old sea captain Mr. Wilson met Rev. J. Griffin of Portsea, and the authenticity of the Sacred Scriptures became the topic of conversation. The host pleasantly remarked that he had already been foiled on that subject, and referred the cause to his young friend the minister, who was better able to maintain the contest than he was. But the minister politely declined what might seem an obstruction of his sentiments on the company, and added that he thought the matter too serious and important for the occasion, although he was ready at all times to defend the truth, according to the best of his abilities. Captain Wilson smiled at the gravity of the clergyman and observed that it would be no obtrusion. “I assure you, sir,” he continued with a dogmatical air, “I am glad of the opportunity to converse on it; for I have never met with a clergyman yet, and I have conversed with several, that I could not foil in a quarter of an hour.” This challenge could not be declined, and when the party broke up the two combatants, embracing the delightful opportunity which a fine evening in July afforded, adjourned to a shady bower in the garden to debate the point whether Christianity was a revelation from God.
In that shady bower Mr. Griffin met all the objections of his new acquaintance to the religion of Christ, for hours, in a calm, intelligent, and earnest spirit. Step by step they advanced till the whole field of the Christian evidence was surveyed. The approach of night brought the discussion to a close, and the minister recommended to Captain Wilson such books as treated on the subjects they had been discussing. “From these,” he said, “your mind, I am persuaded, will receive such a refulgency of evidence that you will as readily admit the Divine authenticity of the Scriptures as you do that light is the medium of vision or that life is the cause of sensibility.”
The impression produced on Captain Wilson’s mind by this conversation did not amount to entire conviction, but he was thoroughly aroused to consider a question which he was now prepared to admit was the most important of all. For days he read the Scriptures carefully, and when the Lord’s Day arrived he offered to drive his niece to her place of worship, a distance of ten miles, but his chief object was to hear the minister who had interested him so deeply by his defence of Christianity. The simplicity of the worship, and the solemnity of the congregation impressed him much. “But,” says his biographer, “the text was rather unfavourable for disarming the prejudices of one who had objected to the mysterious doctrines of Christianity. It was taken from the 8th of Romans and treated of the subject of predestination. The preacher, who naturally felt anxious when on entering the pulpit he perceived an unexpected hearer in his late adversary, and would gladly have changed the subject, but he illustrated his difficult text in such a manner that the captain ever after regarded it as highly instrumental in his conversion to God. Notwithstanding the theme, the doctrine was presented to him in such a light as roused his soul to a sense of his danger and constrained him to seek in earnest for pardoning mercy and Divine teaching. He listened to it with fixed attention. It seemed to produce a conflict of feelings in his breast. His memory, reason, conscience, imagination and passions were all in agitation. His prejudices for and against the doctrine, his hopes and fears, his love and hatred, raised a storm in his soul which he could not subdue; for which his heart rose in rebellion against the sovereignty of God, the events of his whole life appeared before him as uncontestible evidences of its truth. The silent tears which he endeavoured to suppress, and which he was afraid to wipe off lest he should attract notice, excited in the bosom of his friend feelings of benevolent and sympathetic joy.”
On their way home Captain Wilson said to his niece, “If what I have heard to-day be true, I am a lost man.” Reason and conscience urged him to investigate the matter patiently, but the fear of enthusiasm and the dread of becoming an object of ridicule determined him to resist the current. The painful remembrance of former sins, and the fearful apprehensions of futurity, aggravated this internal conflict. He now became pensive and thoughtful; the Bible and religious books formed his constant and almost his only companions. He attended regularly the place of worship, joined with fervour in the service, and seemed wholly absorbed in the inquiry, “what must I do to be saved?” The change which he was undergoing attracted the notice of the gay society with which he mingled, and the artillery of wit which he had often poured on others now returned upon himself. He frequently tried to stem the torrent by argument; at other times he attempted to go with it, by joining in the laugh, till it had spent itself, but all in vain. They were resolved either to rout him out of his strange notions or to laugh him out of their society; but as they could not do the former, they gradually accomplished the other by breaking off the connection.
Captain Wilson gradually “obtained such a firm persuasion of the truth of revelation as to declare that nothing in the world, not even Satan with all his principalities and powers, could persuade him that the Bible was not the Word of the Most High; neither could anything have weaned him from his errors so completely as that precious volume had done. “He perceived that the sanctification of the Spirit forms the evidence of our witness for heaven, and is as essentially necessary to salvation as an interest in the justifying righteousness of Christ; he likewise saw that the atonement of the Redeemer, and the promises of God, constitute the foundation of our hopes of acceptance with him. On this basis he was enabled to build his faith, hope and practice.”
The retirement of Horndean and the luxuries of wealth could not now satisfy the mind or heart of Captain Wilson. He was in all the vigour of manhood—what could he do for the honour of his Saviour and the good of his fellow-creatures? The devotedness and self-denial of the worthies recorded in the Epistle to the Hebrews filled him with admiration. Was his faith like theirs? Could he suffer and serve like them, and give up all for Christ, and go forth at the Divine bidding? Circumstances occurred speedily which brought these questions to a practical issue. A missionary society was formed in London, and it was proposed to send the gospel to the lately discovered islands of the Southern Pacific. If called upon to take the command of the expedition, could he embark once more upon the deep, not in quest of worldly substance, but to carry to heathen lands treasures more valuable than the gold of nations? He felt that he could do it with pleasure; his faith was equal to the sacrifice; he could quit his home, encounter the perils of the ocean, and brave all the dangers and difficulties to which such an enterprise must necessarily expose him. And he did it. On the 10th of August, 1796, the ship “Duff” sailed from the River Thames, having for her flag three doves on a purple field, bearing olive branches in their bills. After a voyage of five months the missionaries landed at Tahiti, on the 4th of March, 1797. Thus auspiciously began the glorious enterprise through which fifty or sixty islands of these southern seas have already cast away their idols and returned to the living and true God.
“Who would have looked,” as Dr. Hawlis says, “for a convert in a haughty, unprincipled Indian merchant, or for a commander of a Christian mission in an infidel sailor, chained in a prison at Seringapatam? Who could expect the deist, who returned from India contradicting the faith of Christ and blaspheming the cause of the Cross, within five years afterwards on the quarter-deck, in the midst of prayer and praise, carrying the everlasting gospel to the isles of the Pacific Ocean? Yet such are the mysterious ways of Providence, such the irresistible influence of truth, and such the power and efficacy of Christian principles.”
Grace shall prevail against a torrent of corruption. Whence is this? The corruption is ours, but the grace is God’s. God leaves original corruption to make us long after heaven, where there shall be no sin to defile, no devil to tempt. When Elias was taken up to heaven, his mantle dropped off; so, when the angels shall carry us up to heaven, this mantle of sin shall drop off.—Thomas Watson.