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, and who lay for weeks upon a sick bed. A young Christian man visited him, and spoke the gospel to him. “When your vessel was in pieces round about you," he said to the lad, " 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, you would 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, in a distant city, the same Christian man visited a death bed. The dying person was 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! And in this confidence his spirit passed away.