I Set Up Another Sail

Eading the other evening in the experimental diary of our Covenanter saint, I came on this suggestive expression: ‘ Now,’ he said, ‘ at this point I set up another sail.’ And reading on I came on this also: ‘ I forthwith set up some more sails,’ he said. He had built his boat, and he had taken his cargo on board, and he had set up one or more sails, and he had taken his seat at the helm, but he soon discovered that he was not making much way; if, indeed, he was making any way at all. There was a good west wind blow¬ ing all the time. But such were the cross-currents, and such was the strength of the incoming tide, that he sometimes stood still, and sometimes was simply tossed about backwards and forwards among the chopping seas. Wearied out and at his wits-end he at last bethought himself of some good sail-cloth that lay neglected and forgotten under his hatches. And bringing it up he had scarcely got the extra canvas hoisted on the mast when away went his little ship like a sea-bird before the breeze. But all that is surely a parable of that Covenanter’s spiritual life? you will say. And you are right. It is indeed a parable, and an eloquent parable too, of the spiritual life in the soul of that man. And as I follow out that same spiritual log-book, I come on not a few entries concerning the building of that boat: concerning the cargo that was on board: concerning the sea, and the shoals, and the rocks: and then concerning the port toward which he is steering. But I am to confine my attention this evening to some of the sails that this seaman set up from time to time in his recorded voyage through his spiritual seas.

You will have difficulty in believing it about a canonised Covenanter: but there it stands, in black and white, over his own signature. Covenanter and all; converted student at college and all; I am afraid to repeat it; but let the truth be told — he scarce ever opened his Bible, unless it was at family worship at home, or in church to look for the text. When I told you that he was a Covenanter you would have said that whatever sail he had set up, or had taken down, at any rate his Bible would never be neglected or forgotten. Your Bible and mine are so nailed to our masthead that we can scarcely believe that about any man who bears his honoured name. We never take a journey at home or abroad, for health, or for business, or for pleasure, without having our Bible in our handbag. When nobody is looking we steal a glance at our Bible in the train. We never see the day anywhere, that we can come safely and successfully through it without leaning anew on our Bible. We never, nowa¬ days, see the night in which we can lie down and sleep in peace till our Bible bas spoken pardon and peace to our sinful and sad hearts. All the same, you must not too much blame, or too much despise, this misguided man; for, better late than never. Just listen to him now, and henceforth. ‘ I set up another sail,’ he says. ‘ I began to hold a secret tryst with God in His Word,’ he says. Not only so; but he goes on to tell us just what Scriptures they were that made his heavenward ship take such a new start. ‘ Those Scriptures did me immediate and great good,’ he says. ‘They suited my state so well. They helped me forward so much.’ Now, if by any chance there is any man here who is attempting the sea of life without this mainsail up let that man believe that he has been brought into this house this evening to learn this lesson from this now Bible-reading Covenanter. For just listen to him as he goes on. ‘ How smoothly my little ship went through the sea under its new sail! ’ he says. ‘ How the happy waves danced and sang under her bows! ’ he says. ‘ How the clouds scattered, and how the sun came out,’ he says. ‘ And how the very hillsides smiled down upon me as I swept past their feet! ’ he says. ‘ From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures,’ says Paul, ‘ which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.’

What would our sea-going men not give for a sail that was never once set up but it was that moment filled with a favourable breeze? A sail that seemed to create the very wind for strength and for direction that its owner needed? A sail that at once discovered and commanded its own wind where no wind was before that sail was set up. No sail has ever been set up on any earthly sea of which such a miraculous thing could be said as that. No, of course not! The thing is impossible and inconceivable. Yes, with men; but not with God. For there are actually both sails and winds like that on the heavenward seas: sails and winds that it hath not entered the heart of any earthly ship¬ builder or sailmaker to conceive. Just listen to our Covenanter-seaman on this wonderful matter. So wonderful is it that I give you his own words about it. ‘ Here I was counselled to set up one other sail. For before that I had gone apart to pray only morning and evening; but I was counselled by one to set some time apart every midday, and, doing that, I immediately found the effect to be wonderful.’ And again: ‘ Let never any man neglect the sail of prayer, though the call to it seems to him to be so unreasonable and untimeous. For, against hope, and sense, and reason, when I was put upon prayer, though it was but the cry of oppressed nature, it was never in vain.’ And then, lest it should seem to be so unreasonable and so altogether impracticable to set up our sail of prayer in that way, and to that amount, he fills his page with Bible men from Abraham down to Paul, our Lord and all, who sailed all their seas under this divine sail; the wind that bloweth where it listeth always coming out of its secret cave whenever and wherever and by whomsoever it saw the sail of prayer set up.

Surely, then, there must be something in it: against nature, and against reason, as at first sight it seems! Yes! there is something in it! Yes: everything is in it! For God himself is in it. And the Everliving Intercessor is in it. And the Holy Ghost, the whole life and breath of the Godhead, is in it. What would you say, then, to try it? It could do you no harm, surely, to try it on the waterlogged ship of your stagnant life. You who are making no headway at all: you whose ship now strikes upon the rocks and now runs aground among the shoals, what would you say just to try that wonder-working sail of which such testimonies are given and such praise is offered by so many successful seamen? ‘ I was counselled

by one who knew,’ says our author, ‘ and I obeyed the counsel, and I immediately found the effect to be wonderful.’

In still going on to tell all that fear God what the God of his salvation had done for his soul, and what God had set him on doing for his own soul, our author is most emphatic concerning his Sabbaths and other more special seasons for the deepening and the enriching of his spiritual life. He is most urgent on us about the duty and the necessity of retiring from our ordinary life, now and then, for a season of reading and meditation and prayer, if our spiritual life is to grow in depth and strength. You need not be afraid or suspicious. He was a stiff Covenanter and was as far from Popery and

C’ULROSS

ritualism as you are. But since he had the happiest experiences himself of the great good of taking seasons now and then to be alone with himself and with God he urges his readers to try his way of it. ‘ For my own part,’ he says, ‘ I cannot express how needful, nay, how necessary and how profitable those separate and silent days have been to me.’ ‘ Every rightly constituted man,’ says German Keim, ‘has his time of retreat where he may be his true self, and where, by dint of rest and recollection, he may maintain his true life, and from which he can compel the whole world to submit itself to his soul’s interest.’

On one occasion the parish minister of Culross was out in his boat fishing along with his beddlus, as he always nicknamed his handy man. And the fish having changed their bed that season, the old expert suggested to his master that they should set up another sail and shift out to a bank where he felt sure a good boatload of cod awaited them. Agreed, said his master. And off they sped under the added canvas. And before an hour was over their boat was full of the best fish in all the Firth of Forth. Till you will not wonder that all the way home that Monday afternoon the minister’s heart was full of the wisdom of setting up another sail. And till that extra sail that day was spiritualised by the spiritual minister, and by his equally spiritual beadle, so that neither of them ever forgot the lesson of that afternoon. Indeed the thing was so much in the minister’s mind all that week that he took Mai. iii. 16, 17, for his text next Sabbath morning, when he frankly told his people all about the sails of Scripture and of prayer he had been setting up of late in his own spiritual life, nailing down the doctrine with the little story of the fishing of last Monday, and with the rich conversation he and his beadle had enjoyed all the way home. And till the congregation ever after connected ‘another sail’ with their own secret reading of Scripture, secret prayer, and confidential conversation. And till any day you would have seen three or four poor old women of Culross sitting at a door in the sun and talking about the things of God, and always returning to the ‘ extra sail ’ of the minister and the beadle, their so successfully fishing neighbour.

Now, the propelling winds on our earthly seas and sea-lochs are not always the most propitious for our earthly seamen. But happily on the heavenward waters the wind of God always listeth to fill the sails of the heavenward seamen. Only, the pity here is that the heavenward wind does not always find the sails of our souls spread out to catch the fulness of the heavenward gales. On the spiritual seas it is not the want of sufficient wind, but it is the want of sufficient canvas. Here it is always the bad shipbuilding, and the bad steer¬ ing, that delays the ship and endangers the voyage. Then, again, on the heavenward seas, as well as on the earthward, the sails are made, and are hoisted, and are filled with wind according to the carrying power of the ship. A ship of narrow beam and small draught can carry comparatively little canvas, and can thus command comparatively little of the propelling wind. But there was once a splendid Ship built on the Sea of Galilee that caught every breath of the wind of God, and that had that heavenward Wind without measure. And, after that Pattern-Vessel other lesser, but somewhat similar vessels have been built on that and on other seas, that have followed in its wake, and have been propelled by the same Wind, till they anchored and discharged their freight in the same harbour. The name of that masterpiece of shipbuilding and shipsailing, and the main names of the fleet that followed it will have already occurred to everybody.

Now, my brethren, is there a nobler or a more heart-thrilling sight to be seen than a stately ship, well out at sea, with every inch of sail spread and every sail filled to all its fulness with a steady and a propitious wind As often as our eyes are gladdened by that sight at sea, our hearts are carried away till we call out, — God speed that stately ship to its desired and destined haven! And what must it be for that great company of saints and angels who stand waiting and watching on the heavenly shore, to see one human soul after another making for the haven above, and with every sail spread, and every spread sail filled to its utmost content with the Wind of God, and being wafted nearer and nearer to their predestined harbour every day and every hour! And with what a cheering of saints and angels do those happy ships anchor on the heavenly shore; safe for ever from the seas and the storms and the shipwrecks of this world.

My brethren, the sum is this: When at any time or in any place a breeze from heaven begins to blow, that moment up with all your sails! Under a sermon; or with your Bible in your hands at home; or when you are tarrying before God in secret; when you feel the rising breeze beginning to blow on your forehead, up with all your sails. And, if you are always on the watch to do that, you will soon be in that harbour where so many of your former friends are waiting you on the heavenly shore.