It was a beautiful starlight night. I shall remember it as long as I live. I was traveling by ship to take up a new assignment. The sea was calm. I had been down in the saloon, and wearying of the smell of the liquor and the foul, witless talk of the barroom, I went up on deck to get a breath of fresh air. I scarcely knew why, for usually I was in my element in such surroundings. I sat down on a deck chair and was mentally contrasting the pure, sweet atmosphere I now breathed with that which I had just left, when suddenly the heavens were aglow with the light emitted by a glorious shooting star. I had, of course, often witnessed a similar sight, but it had not previously made any impression on me.

I knew enough about astronomy to know that light, even though traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, would take many years to reach this earth from some of the distant heavenly bodies. I had heard the phrase, "the immensity of space," but had not realized what it meant. For the first time a real sense of the vastness of the universe dawned upon me. Leaning back in the chair, I surveyed the starry heavens, lost in wonder at their beauty and awed by their greatness. Such a universe, I thought, infinite in its variety and its immensity, demanded for its existence a first cause. I was conscious of the throb of the ship's engines beneath where I was sitting and felt that it was infinitely more probable that the ship came into being "by the fortuitous concourse of atoms" than that the universe as one great whole was brought into its present state by the same means. Besides, who made the atoms? Just as the ship demanded an architect, the collaboration of the carpenter, engineer, mechanic, and numerous other trades and professions before it could fulfill the purpose for which it was designed, so, I reasoned, this world, to say nothing of other worlds, demanded a Creator. My short-lived atheism vanished. I now believed in a Creator.

Then my thoughts were led into another channel. Surely this great Creator must in some way or other have revealed Himself to the highest of known intelligence—mankind. I could scarcely imagine that my loving mother, after bringing me into the world, would deny me any knowledge of herself. I felt it was only reasonable to assume that the great Creator must have provided a means by which men might be able to know Him.

I did not know then that God has given men two books by which they might know Him: the one being His creation, in which is clearly revealed His infinite wisdom, almighty power and knowledge; the other, the Bible, in which we have revealed His personality, His love, and His redemptive grace in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

—Capt. Guy Thornton

Note: After the events related above, Captain Thornton attended a gospel meeting in a country schoolhouse and came to a knowledge of Christ as His Saviour through believing the simple, clear message given by a local farmer. He was born again through faith in the Lord Jesus who died for sinners, and later became an Army Chaplain who was much used of the Lord in saving souls.

—From Agnosticism to Christ