THE MAN AT THE WHEEL

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 24, 1878

THE MAN AT THE WHEEL.

THE following instructive extract is from a volume of sermons by N. Adams, D. D., of Boston, recently published by D. Lothrop & Co.:—

“In a voyage of a hundred and eleven days to San Francisco, and thence to the Sandwich Islands, China, the East Indies, and New York, there was a man at the wheel every moment, day and night, in storm and sunshine. Every man, except the officers, was, in his turn, two hours at a time during the whole voyage, the man at the wheel. Not till the word of command was given inside the Golden Gate, ‘Let go the anchor,’ was the wheel deserted. Every two hours the man at the wheel was relieved by some shipmate who knew when it came his turn. The man at the wheel would say what point of the compass must be kept in mind; the man taking his place would repeat his words. ‘Southwest by south, half south,’ says the man who seizes the wheel to take his place.

“Going on deck at midnight, there is the man at the wheel. Coming up to watch the sunrise, you salute the man at the wheel. During a gale, if you venture on deck, curious to see the swelling ocean, you find the man at the wheel. In a dead calm, the ship motionless, there stands the man at the wheel. The sea runs high, the wave looks down upon you as though it would swallow you up. ‘Meet her!’ cries the mate; the man at the wheel swings the bowsprit in the teeth of the billow; you go up to the heavens, then down again into the deep.

“You always feel on shipboard that there is one man doing something for you. During divine service on Sabbath morning, two men at least, are always absent; one, the officer of the deck, the other, the man at the wheel. If you start in your sleep, you instantly think: There is at least one who is awake, the man at the wheel. I never passed him, day or night, without giving and receiving a salutation. You feel that he is your personal friend.

The compass lies directly in front of the wheel; the binnacle lamp shines all night upon the compass, which points the way the ship is headed, and the man at the wheel is told to keep her so. If the wind sets her off her course, the endeavor is to get as near to it as the wind will allow, keeping the sails ‘full and by’ the wind, the steersman using his discretion how to do so.

“One cannot see himself thus continually kept on his course through the deep without being reminded that if he is a child of God, he has Jesus Christ as the man at the wheel to his soul as truly as at every moment of a voyage, however long, he has a man at the wheel of his ship. Without the presumption, but with the utmost confidence, with full assurance of faith, every one who loves God may say to the Saviour, ‘Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.’ He may be as confident of the incessant guidance of his soul by Christ as the passenger is of the perpetual service of a man at the wheel.

“It used to occur to me: Suppose that instead of having twenty-eight men taking turn, each of them two hours at a time, to steer me across the globe, the service were done by a single man who, day and night, should be my steersman, standing every moment at the wheel, buffeted by the gale, pelted by the rain, scorched by the sun, straining every sense in the dark nights to guard against collisions, till finally I should see the anchor dropped in the desired haven, without any casualty, delay, loss, damage, from the beginning to the end of the voyage; I could not part with that man without emotions unutterable. Yet here I am on the voyage of life with one at the wheel who has been there from my infancy to the present hour, to whom I may with joyful confidence repeat these words, ‘Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.’”