Some years ago a ship was wrecked on the coast of Cornwall. All on board were drowned except one sailor boy who was washed on shore nearly dead. He lay for weeks sick in bed. A young Christian man visited him and spoke the gospel to him.
“When your ship was in pieces around you,” he said to the boy, “and you were sinking, if a plank had floated by you and you had been able to clutch it, and you felt it would bear your weight, would you have thanked God for that plank?”
“Yes,” said the boy, and he was led to understand that the “plank” for his sinking soul was Christ, and that he had only to commit himself to Christ as in drowning he would to the plank.
Many years afterward the same Christian man visited a hospital. A man was dying there, a stranger to him. “Is it well with your soul?” he said as he bent over him.
The dying man turned his head; there was a smile of recognition, a grasp of the hand, and he said, “God bless you, sir; the plank bears, the plank bears!”