TRUE SEAMANSHIP

TRUE SEAMANSHIP

Storms, all natural philosophers tell us, clear the atmosphere; but it is only those who outlive the storm who can appreciate that as a moral truth. It would be a poor consolation to a mariner in a sinking ship.

The great thing in a storm is to outlive it. If it has overcome you, it is useless to talk of the good of it afterwards; your history is at an end. I consider a man has not outlived a storm in the church, if he has been driven on the rocks, and stranded high and dry. It has carried him, and made a butt of him. But a man has outlived the storm, if he has put his head to the wind, and has hauled down every bit of canvas, and stood out boldly to sea. He knows there is a storm, he has made everything snug on board, but he refuses to be driven by it, he resists it, and really only wants to hold his own.

Now, apart from figure, my impression as to your course at this time is, that you have to go on, not ^[p. 372] indifferent to the storm, but refusing to be influenced by it. Your course and progress may be retarded and checked, as indeed it must be, but persistent purpose to maintain the course as God has taught it to you will weather the storm. The difficulty is simply to hold your own, to be as isolated as a ship at sea, and as true to your course as if you had the most prosperous weather. You may feel how small you are, how lonely you are. The fine fleet you set out with may seem to you almost all dismasted and wrecked, but your safety, remember, may be the safety of many. It is not any great battle deeds you are called on to do, but it is simply to keep yourself safe, to outlive the storm, not to be as one under it in any way. You may reply, This is no easy matter; but there is nothing for which there is not power with God. Go on firmly, not as if there had been no storm, but as if it had not altered you one bit. You are as inflexibly bound to your post as if there had been none, but you are aware all the time how others have suffered, and were driven by it. Your help to them consists in showing them how little it has baffled you; when there comes a lull, if you are safe yourself you can do great service to the wrecked ones. You will not preach navigation to them, but you will minister to their wants, and seek to restore their shattered frames to health and vigour, before you even indirectly allude to the bad and ignorant seamanship by which you were so exposed. You will, in fact, gather up the fragments, you will try to articulate the disjecta membra. A patient should never be allowed to touch on his malady until he is well of it. Occupy yourself with all the good that remains; as you do, you may be thought frigid, but as the ice of the dirtiest water is pure, your work will be pure and lasting. When God acts, even in nature, be it in ice or in evaporation, He always separates the precious from the vile. The former is the thing to be preserved, and this, in my judgment, is your path at this time.