The Plank Bears | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1863

“The Plank Bears.”

A ship was wrecked some time in the last century on the coast of Cornwall. All hands went down save one sailor boy who was washed on the shore, barely living, and who lay, bruised and ready to perish, for weeks, on a sick-bed. He was visited by a young man—whether in or out of the pastoral office matters little—a young man who strove to lead the sinking sailor-lad to the cross of Christ as the anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, in the storms which destroy both soul and body in hell. “Suppose,” said the missionary, “that when your vessel was in pieces round about you off the coast, and you felt yourself sinking, exhausted, under the surge—suppose you had caught hold of a plank as it floated by you, and felt that, as you clutched it it bore your weight and held you up till relief could come, you would thank God for that plank, would you not?”

“Yes, sir,” gasped the boy; and the boy was made to understand that that plank was Christ, bearing up the sinner in the tempest of wrath.

Many years rolled away, and the Christian missionary toiled on, miles after miles from the southern coast, in the midst of some northern city. One day he was again in a sick-room. Every thing showed that it was also a room ready for a death. They moved about silently and reverently, as men do when they expect the coming of the king of terrors. The sufferer was nearly, nearly gone. The visitor, true to his old calling, bent down to whisper to the dying man words about the great salvation, and the life after death. “Is it well with your spirit?” said the old missionary. And there was a sudden glance of the eye that had begun to fix, and the head turned round, and a last flush covered the white face, and then a smile—such a smile—“God bless you, sir! The plank bears, sir! the plank bears!” And so it did. It had borne him ever since, and clinging to it, he got safe to land.—Macedonian.