THE PILOT


I was near "the end of my rope"--I was not frightened, or discouraged;
my mind was perfectly clear; I was not stampeded. Of course, I had
thought of God and of prayer, but I was a skeptic, as I supposed, and
considered both not proven. But the steady contemplation of the
probability of death, for seven successive days, under conditions that
compelled candor, raised questions that skepticism could not answer, and
gave to my questions answers that skepticism could not refute. There
comes a time, under such conditions, when common sense asserts itself
and sophistry fails to satisfy. Since I made this discovery in my
personal experience, I have learned that my case was not peculiar, but
in keeping with a general law in human experience, long understood and
admirably stated in the 107th Psalm. Such words as these have come "out
of the depths" and it is sometimes necessary to go down into the depths
to prove them to be true.

"They wandered.... in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in.
Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the
Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses,
and he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of
habitation.... Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being
bound in affliction and iron; because they rebelled against the words of
God, and contemned the counsel of the Most High: therefore he brought
down their heart with labor; they fell down and there was none to help.
Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of
their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of
death, and brake their bands in sunder..... They that go down to the sea
in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the