SEEING IN A FOG | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1881

SEEING IN A FOG.

A FRIEND of ours last March, sailing down the coast, came on deck one morning to find the air pervaded by a fog so thick as to shut off the vision for even a few yards from the steamer. He had been aware during the night of a peculiar vigilance and activity on board, and ascertained that the fog had lasted since the previous evening. On inquiring of the captain concerning their whereabouts, he was told that they had passed Cape Hatteras in the night. “How did you know that? could you see the light?” “Oh, no, not in a fog like this!” Well, you certainly could take no observations without a star in sight?” “No, but we have other ways of seeing where we are, than those you have mentioned.” “How?” “By the lead. Our soundings told us when we were off the Cape, and when we had passed it.”

The spiritual have other means of seeing than what we call our sight. They see by the lead. That lead is faith. All distinctively Christian seamanship consists in the use of this “vision and faculty divine.” There are nights when the heavens seem walled above our heads, and no light shines from the shore, when through the moaning and midnight seas we have to pass the stormy and perilous crisis of our life. But we go on, sounding the very depths that encompass and emperil us, and find in the rocks and shoals themselves our chart and our security. For we know by faith, not by sight.—Intelligencer.