Article May 2, 1914 Issue

Life-savers

CLAUDE W. WOODRUFF

At one of the life-saving stations on the Great Lakes the captain asked a new surfman this question: "If, while standing on the pier, your attention should be drawn to a man in the water, apparently drowning, what would be your first duty?" The novice's prompt reply was this: "To swim to the rescue immediately." "That would be wrong," said the captain. "You should first remove your shoes, divest yourself of all superfluous clothing, and loosen any remaining garment that might form a bag and so gather and retain water. If you yourself are hampered in your movements, how can you expect to render assistance to one who is in a similar plight?"

Then the captain asked what the surfman's second duty would be, but to this question no reply was given. "The rescuer should, when within hailing distance, assure the drowning man in a commanding voice that there is nothing to fear, as assistance is at hand," the captain told him. "Furthermore," he continued, "never approach a person who is frantically struggling, for in that case the chances are only one in ten that either the drowning man or the rescuer will be saved. Wait until the man has exhausted his strength, but be at hand to grasp him before he sinks."

Are these rules not paralleled in the Christian Scientists's duty to his brother man? Should we not at all times be so divested of the supposition that there is life in matter, or that there is any power or mind apart from God, that in going to the rescue of one who is seemingly about to go down in the waters of belief, there shall be nothing in our consciousness to which error can cling and thereby drag us, with the one we would help, beneath its surface? If we are prepared by reason of having "put off the old man with his deeds," will the result not be so apparent to the outsider that we can speak "as one having authority," and in so doing convince the one whom we would save that there is nothing to fear?

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