Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: Malta, five miles from the metropolis of that island called Civita Vecchia. After a two weeks tempest, when the ship was entirely disabled and captain and crew had become completely demoralized, an old missionary took command of the vessel. He was small, crooked-backed and sore-eyed, according to tradition. It was Paul, the only unscared man aboard. He was no more afraid of a Euroclydon tossing the Mediterranean Sea, now up to the gates of heaven and now sinking it to the gates of hell, than he was afraid of a kitten playing with a string. He ordered them all down to take their rations, first asking for them a blessing. Then he insured all their lives, telling them they would not be drowned, and, so far from losing their heads, they would not lose so much of their hair as you could cut off with one click of the scissors; ay, not a thread of it, whether it were gray with age or golden with youth. There shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you. Knowing that they can never get to the desired port, they make the sea on the fourteenth night black with overthrown cargo, so that when the ship strikes it will not strike so heavily. At daybreak they saw a creek, and in their exigency resolved to make for it. And so they cut the cables, took in the two paddles that they had on these old boats, and hoisted the main sail so that they might come with such force as to be driven high up on the beach by some fortunate billow. There she goes tumbling toward the rocks, now prow foremost, now stern foremost, now rolling over to starboard, now a wave dashes clear over the deck and it seems as if the old craft has gone forever. But up she comes again. Paul s arm around a mast, he cries: All is well. God has given me all those that sail with me. Crash! went the prow with such force that it broke off the mast. Crash! went the timbers till the seas rushed through from side to side of the vessel. She parts amidships, and into a thousand fragments the vessel goes, and into the waves two hundred and seventy-six immortals are precipitated. Some of them had been brought up on the seashor &·e and had learned to swim, and with their chins just above the waves and by stroke of both arms and propulsion of both feet, they put out for the beach and reach it. But, alas, for those others! they have never learned to swim or they were wounded by the falling of the mast or the nervous shock was too great for them. And others had been weakened by long seasickness. Oh, what will become of them? Take that piece of a rudder, says Paul to one. Take that fragment of a spar, says Paul to another. Take that table, Take that image of Castor and Pollux. Take that plank from the life-boat. Take anything and head for the beach. What a struggle for life in the breakers! Oh, the merciless waters, how they sweep over the heads of men, women, and children! Hold on there! Almost ashore, keep up your courage! Remember what Paul told you. There, the receding wave on the beach leaves in the sand a whole family. There crawls up out of the surf the centurion. There another plank comes in with a life clinging fast to it. There another piece of the shattered vessel with its freightage of an immortal soul. They must by this time be all saved. Yes; there comes in last of all, for he had been overseeing the rest, the old missionary, who wrings the water from his gray beard and cries out: Thank God, all are here! Gather them around a fire and call the roll. Paul builds a fire, and when the bundles of sticks begin to crackle, and, standing and sitting around the blaze, the passengers begin to recover from their chill and their wet clothes begin to dry and warmth begins to come into all the shivering passengers, let the purser of the vessel go around and see if any of the poor creatures are missing. Not one of the crowd that were plunged into the sea. How it relieves our anxiety as we read: Some on broken pieces of the ship, and so it came to pass they all escaped safe to land. Having on previous occasions looked at the other passengers, I now confine myself to an examination of those who came in on broken pieces of the ship. There is something about them that excites in me an intense interest. I am not so much interested in those that could swim. They got ashore as I expected. A mile of water is not a very great undertaking for a strong swimmer, or even two miles is not. But I cannot stop thinking about those on broken pieces of the ship. The great Gospel ship is the finest vessel of the universe and can carry more passengers than any craft ever constructed, and you could no more wreck it than you could wreck the throne of God Almighty. I wish all the people would come aboard of her. I could not promise a smooth voyage, for oftentimes it will be tempestuous, and a chopped sea, but I could promise safe arrival for all who take passage on that Great Eastern, so called by me because its comma &ºnder came out of the East, the star of the East a badge of his authority. But a vast multitude do not take regular passage. Their theology broken in pieces and their life broken in pieces and their habits broken in pieces and their worldly and spiritual prospects broken in pieces and yet I believe they are going to reach the shining shore, and I am encouraged by the experience of those people who are spoken of in the text: Some on broken pieces of the ship. One object in this sermon is to encourage all those who cannot take the whole system of religion as we believe it, but who really believe something, to come ashore on that one plank. I do not underrate the value of a great theological system, but where in all the Bible is there anything that says: Believe in John Calvin and thou shalt be saved; or, believe in Arminius and thou shalt be saved; or, believe in the Synod of Dort and thou shalt be saved; or, believe in the Thirty-nine Articles and thou shalt be saved? A man may be orthodox and go to hell, or heterodox and go to heaven. The man who in the deep affection of his heart accepts Christ is saved, and the man who does not accept him is lost. I believe in both the Heidelberg and Westminster catechisms, and I wish you all did, but you may believe in nothing they contain except the one idea that Christ came to save sinners, and that you are one of them, and you are instantly rescued. If you can come in on the grand old ship, I would rather have you get aboard, but if you find only a piece of wood as long as the human body, or a piece as wide as the outspread human arms, and either of them is a piece of the cross, come in on that piece. Tens of thousands of people are today kept out of the kingdom of God because they cannot believe everything. I am talking with a man thoughtful about his soul, who has lately traveled through New England and passed the night at Andover. He says to me: I cannot believe that in this life the destiny is irrevocably fixed; I think there will be another opportunity of repentance after death. I say to him: My brother, what has that to do with you? Do you not realize that the man who waits for another chance after death when he has a good chance before death is a stark fool? Had not you better take the plank that is thrown to you now and head for shore rather than wait for a plank that may by invisible hands be thrown to you after you are dead? Do as you please, but as for myself, with pardon for all my sins offered me now and all the joys of time and eternity offered me now, I instantly take them rather than run the risk of such other chance as wise men think they can peel off or twist out of a Scripture passage that has for all the Christian centuries been interpreted another way. You say: I do not like Princeton theology or New Haven theology or Andover theology. I do not ask you on board either of these great men-of-war, their portholes filled with the great siege-guns of ecclesiastical battle. But I do ask you to &½ take the one plank of the Gospel that you do believe in and strike out for the pearl-strung beach of heaven. Says some other man: I would attend to religion if I was quite sure about the doctrine of election and free agency, but that mixes me all up. Those things used to bother me, but I have no more perplexity about them, for I say to myself: If I love Christ, and live a good, honest, useful life, I am elected to be saved; and if I do not love Christ, and live a bad life, I shall be damned, and all the theological seminaries of the universe cannot make it any different. I floundered a long while in the sea of sin and doubt, and it was as rough as the Mediterranean on the fourteenth night when they threw the grain overboard, but I saw there was mercy for a sinner, and that plank I took, and I have been warming myself by the bright fire on the shore ever since. While I am talking to another man about his soul he tells me: I do not become a Christian because I do not believe there is any hell at all. Ah, don t you? Do all the people, of all beliefs and no belief at all, of good morals and bad morals, go straight to a happy heaven? Do the holy and the debauched have the same destination? At midnight, in a hallway, the owner of a house and a burglar meet each other and they both fire and both are wounded, but the burglar died in five minutes and the owner of the house lives a week after. Will the burglar be at the gate of heaven waiting when the house-owner comes in? Will the debauchee and the libertine go right in among the families of heaven? I wonder if Herod is playing on the banks of the River of Life with the children he massacred. I wonder if Charles Guiteau and John Wilkes Booth are up there shooting at a mark. I do not now controvert it, although I must say that for such a miserable heaven I have no admiration. But the Bible does not say: Believe in perdition and be saved. Because all are saved, according to your theory, that ought not to keep you from loving and serving Christ. Do not refuse to come ashore because all the others, according to your theory, are going to get ashore. You may have a different theory about chemistry, about astronomy, about the atmosphere, from that which others adopt, but you are not therefore hindered from action. Because your theory of light is different from others, do not refuse to open your eyes. Because your theory of air is different you do not refuse to breathe. Because your theory about the stellar system is different, you do not refuse to acknowledge the existence of the North Star. Why should the fact that your theological theories are different, hinder you from acting upon what you know? If you have not a whole ship that was fashioned in the theological dry-docks to bring you to wharfage, you have at least a plank: Some on broken pieces of the ship. But I don t believe in revivals! Then go to your room, and all alone with your door locked give your heart to God and join some church where the &À thermometer never gets higher than fifty in the shade. But I do not believe in baptism! Come in without it, and settle that matter afterward. But there are so many inconsistent Christians! Then come in and show them by a good example how professors ought to act. But I don t believe in the Old Testament! Then come in on the New. But I don t like the book of Romans! Then come in on Matthew or Luke. Refusing to come to Christ, whom you admit to be the Saviour of the lost, because you cannot admit other things, you are like a man out there in that Mediterranean tempest and tossed in the Melita breakers, refusing to come ashore until he can mend the pieces of the broken ship. I hear him say: I won t go in on any of these planks until I know in what part of the ship they belong. When I can get the windlass in the right place and the sails set and that keel-piece where it belongs and that floor timber right, and these ropes untangled, I will go ashore. I am an old sailor and know all about ships for forty years and as soon as I can get the vessel afloat in good shape I will come in. A man drifting by on a piece of wood overhears him and says: You will drown before you get that ship reconstructed. Better do as I am doing. I know nothing about ships and never saw one before I came on board this and I cannot swim a stroke, but I am going ashore on this shivered timber. The man in the offing while trying to mend his ship goes down. The man who trusted to the plank is saved. Oh, my brother, let your smashed-up system of theology go to the bottom while you come in on a splintered spar! Some on broken pieces of the ship. You may get your differences settled as Garibaldi, the magnetic Italian, got his gardens made. When the war between Austria and Sardinia broke out he was living at Caprera, a very rough and uncultured island home. But he went forth with his sword to achieve the liberation of Naples and Sicily, and gave nine million people free government under Victor Emanuel. Garibaldi, after being absent two years from Caprera, returned, and, when he approached it, he found that his home had by Victor Emanuel, as a surprise, been Edenized. Trimmed shrubbery had taken the place of thorny thickets, gardens the place of barrenness, and the old rookery in which he once lived had given way to a pictured mansion where he might live in comfort the rest of his days. And I tell you if you will come and enlist under the banner of our Victor Emanuel, and follow him through thick and thin and fight his battles and endure his sacrifices, you will find after a while that he has changed your heart from a jungle of thorny skepticisms into a garden all abloom with luxuriant joy that you have never dreamed of. From a tangled Caprera of sadness into a Paradise of God! I do not know how your theological system went to pieces. It may be that by your parents you were started with only one plank, and you believe little or nothing. Or they may have been too rigid and sever &Ãe in religious discipline, and cracked you over the head with a psalm-book. It may be that some partner in business who was a member of an evangelical church played on you a trick that disgusted you with religion. It may be that you have associates who have talked against Christianity in your presence until you are all at sea, and you dwell more on things that you do not believe than on things you do believe. You are in one respect like Lord Nelson, when a signal was lifted that he wished to disregard and he put his sea-glass to his blind eye and said: I really do not see the signal. O my hearer, put this field-glass of the Gospel no longer to your blind eye, and say I cannot see; but put it to your other eye, the eye of faith, and you will see Christ, and he is all you need to see. none If you can believe nothing else, you certainly believe in vicarious suffering, for you see it almost every day in some shape. You remember when the steamship none Knickerbocker, none of the Cromwell Line, running between New Orleans and New York, was in great storms, and the captain and crew saw the schooner none Mary D. Cranmer, none of Philadelphia, in distress. The weather cold, the waves mountain-high, the first officer of the steamship and four men put out in a life-boat to save the crew of the schooner, and reached the vessel and towed it out of danger, the wind shifting so that the schooner was saved. But the five men of the steamship coming back, their boat capsized, yet righted again and came on, the sailors coated with ice. The boat capsized again, and three times upset and was righted, and a line was thrown the poor fellows, but their hands and arms were frozen so they could not grasp it, and a great wave rolled over them, and they went down never to rise till the sea gives up its dead. Appreciate that heroism and self-sacrifice of the brave fellows we all can, and can we not appreciate the Christ who put out in a more biting cold and into a more overwhelming surge to bring us out of infinite peril into everlasting safety? The wave of human hate rolled over him from one side, and the wave of hellish fury rolled over him on the other side. Oh, the thickness of the night and the thunder of the tempest into which Christ plunged for our rescue! Come in on that one narrow beam, the beam of the Cross. Let all else go and cling to that. Put that under you, and with the earnestness of a swimmer struggling for his life put out for shore. There is a great warm fire of welcome already built and already many, who were as far out as you are, are standing in its genial and heavenly glow. The angels of God s rescue are wading out into the surf to clutch your hand, and they know how exhausted you are, and all the redeemed prodigals of heaven are on the beach with new white robes to clothe all those who come in on broken pieces of the ship. My sympathies are for such all the more because I was naturally skeptical, disposed to question everything about this life and the next, and was in danger of being farther out on the theological sea than any of the two hundred and seventy-six in the Mediterranean breakers, and I was sometimes the annoyance of my theological professor because I asked so many questions. But I came in on a plank. I knew Christ was the Saviour of sinners, and that I was a sinner and I got ashore and I do not propose to go out on that sea again. I have not for thirty minutes discussed the controverted points of theology in thirty years. And during the rest of my life I do not propose to discuss them for thirty seconds. I would rather, in a mud-scow, try to weather the worst cyclone that ever swept up from the Caribbean than risk my immortal soul in useless and perilous discussions in which some of my brethren in the ministry are indulging. They remind me of a company of sailors standing on Ramsgate pier-head, from which the life-boats are usually launched, and coolly discussing the different style of oar-locks, and how deep a boat ought to set in the water, while a hurricane is in full blast and there are three steamers crowded with passengers going to pieces in the offing. An old tar, the muscles of his face working with nervous excitement, cries out: This is no time to discuss such things. Man the life-boat! Who will volunteer? Out with her into the surf! Pull, my lads, pull for the wreck! Ha! ha! Now we have them. Lift them in and lay them down on the bottom of the boat. Jack, you try to bring them to. Put these flannels around their hands and feet, and I will pull for the shore. God help me! There! Landed! Huzza! When there are so many struggling in the waves of sin and sorrow and wretchedness let all else go but salvation for time and salvation forever. I bethink &Èmyself that there are some here whose opportunity or whose life is a mere wreck, and they have only a small piece left. You started in youth with all sails set and everything promised a grand voyage, but you have sailed in the wrong direction or have foundered on a rock. You have only a fragment of time left. Then come in on that one plank. Some on broken pieces of the ship. You admit you are all broken up, one decade of your life gone by, two decades, three decades, four decades, a half century, perhaps three-quarters of a century gone. The hour-hand and the minute-hand of your clock of life are almost parallel and soon it will be twelve and your day ended. Clear discouraged are you? I admit it is a sad thing to give all our lives that is worth anything to sin and the devil, and then at last make God a present of a first-rate corpse. But the past you cannot recover. Get on board that old ship you never will. Have you only one more year left, one more month, one more week, one more day, one more hour come in on that. Perhaps if you get to heaven God may let you go out on some great mission to some other world, where you can somewhat atone for your lack of service in this. From many a death-bed I have seen the hands thrown up in deploration something like this: My life has been wasted. I had good mental faculties and fine social position and great opportunity, but through worldliness and neglect all has gone to waste save these few remaining hours. I now accept of Christ, and shall enter heaven through his mercy, but, alas, alas, that when I might have entered the haven of eternal rest with a full cargo, and been greeted by the waving hands of a multitude in whose salvation I had borne a blessed part, I must confess I now enter the harbor of heaven on broken pieces of the ship A Sea-Hurricane Act_27:44 : So it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land. One November day, lying snugly in port at Fair Havens, was an Alexandrian corn-ship. These Alexandrian corn-ships stood, amidst the ancient shipping, as the Cunarders stand now amidst modern steamers. Respect was paid to them especially; and they were the only vessels that had a right to go into any port without lowering their topsail. On board that vessel at Fair Havens are two distinguished passengers: one, Josephus, the historian, as we have strong reasons to believe; the other, a convict, one Paul by name, who was going to prison for upsetting things, or, as they termed it, turning the world upside down. This convict had gained the confidence of the captain. Indeed, I think that Paul knew almost as much about the sea as did the captain. He had been shipwrecked three times already; he had dwelt much of his life amidst capstans and yardarms and cables and storms; and he knew what he was talking about. Seeing the equinoctial storm was coming, and perhaps noticing something unseaworthy in the vessel, he advised the captain to stay in the harbor. But I hear the captain and the first mate talking together. They say: We cannot afford to take the advice of this landsman, and he is a minister. He may be able to preach very well, but I don t believe he knows a marline-spike from a luff-tackle. All aboard! Cast off! Shift the helm for headway! Who fears the Mediterranean? They had gone only a little way out when a whirlwind, called Euroclydon, made the torn sail its turban, shook the mast as you would brandish a spear, and tossed the hulk into the heavens. Overboard with the cargo! It is all washed with salt-water , and worthless now; and there are no marine insurance companies. All hands ahoy, and out with the anchors! Great consternation comes on crew and passengers. The sea-monsters snort in the foam, and the billows clap their hands in glee of destruction. In a lull of the storm I hear a chain clank. It is the chain of the great apostle as he walks the deck, or holds fast to the rigging amidst the lurching of the ship the spray dripping from his long beard as he cries out to the crew: Now, I exhort you to be of good cheer; for there shall be no loss of any man s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before C\'e6sar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Fourteen days have passed, and there is no abatement of the storm. It is midnight. Standing on the lookout, the man peers into the darkness, and, by a flash of lightning, sees the long white line of the breakers; and knows they must be coming near to some country; and fears that in a few moments the vessel will be shivered on the rocks. The ship flies like chaff in the tornado. They drop the sounding-line, and by the light of the lantern they see it is twenty fathoms. Speeding along a little farther, they drop the line again, and by the light of the lantern they see it is fifteen fathoms. Two hundred and seventy-six souls within a few feet of awful shipwreck! The mariners or crew of the vessel, pretending they want to look over the side of the ship and undergird it get into the small boat, expecting in it to escape; but Paul sees through the sham, and he tells the soldiers on board that if the sailors are allowed to go there will be no hope for the others. The vessel strikes! The planks spring! The timbers crack! The vessel parts in the thundering surge! Oh, what wild struggling for life? Here they leap from plank to plank. Here they go under as if they would never rise, but, catching hold of a timber, come floating and panting on it to the beach. Here, strong swimmers spread their arms through the waves until their chins plow the sand, and they rise up and wring out their wet locks on the beach. When the roll of the ship is called, two hundred and seventy-six people answer to their names. And so, says my text, it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land. I learn from this subject, first, that those who get us into trouble will not stay to help us out. These shipmen got Paul out of Fair Havens into the storm; but as soon as the tempest dropped upon them, they wanted to go off in the small boat, caring nothing for what became of Paul and the passengers. Ah me! human nature is the same in all ages. They who get us into trouble never stop to help us out. They who tempt that young man into a life of dissipation will be the first to laugh at his imbecility, and to drop him out of decent society. Gamblers always make fun of the losses of gamblers. They who tempt you into the contest with fists, saying: I will back you, will be the first to run. Look over all the predicaments of your life, and count the names of those who have got you into those predicaments, and tell me the name of one who ever helped you out. They were glad enough to get you out from Fair Havens, but when with damaged rigging you tried to get into harbor, did they hold for you a plank or throw you a rope? Not one. Satan has got thousands of men into trouble, but he never got one out. He led them into theft, but he would not hide the goods or bail out the defendant. The spider shows the fly the way over the gossamer bridge into the cobweb; but it never shows the fly the way out of the cobweb over the gossamer bridge. I think that there were plenty of fast young men to help the prodigal spend his money; but when he had wasted his substance in riotous living, they let him go to the swine-pastures, while they betook themselves to some other newcomer. They who take Paul out of Fair Havens will be of no help to him when he gets into the breakers of Melita. Hear it, young man, hear it! none I remark again, as a lesson learned from the text, that it is dangerous to refuse the counsel of competent advisers. Paul told them not to go out with that ship. They thought he knew nothing about it. They said: He is only a minister! They went, and the ship was destroyed. There are a great many people who now say of ministers: They know nothing about the world. They cannot talk to us! Ah! my friends, it is not necessary to have the Asiatic cholera before you can give it medical treatment in others. It is not necessary to have your own arm broken before you can know how to splinter a fracture. And we who stand in the pulpit, and in the office of a Christian teacher, know that there are certain forms of belief and certain kind &Ã’s of behavior that will lead to destruction as certainly as Paul knew that if that ship went out of Fair Havens it would go to destruction. Rejoice, oh young man! in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. We may not know much, but we know that. Young people refuse the advice of parents. They say: Father is over-suspicious, and mother is getting old. But those parents have been on the sea of life. They know where the storms sleep, and during their voyage have seen a thousand battered hulks marking the place where beauty burned and intellect foundered and morality sank. They are old soldiers, having answered many a signal of distress, and endured great stress of weather and gone scudding under bare poles; and the old folks know what they are talking about. Look at that man in his cheek the glow of infernal fires. His eye flashes not as once with thought, but with low passion. His brain is a sewer through which impurity floats, and his heart the trough in which lust wallows and drinks. Men shudder as the leper passes, and parents cry: Wolf! wolf! Yet he once said the Lord s Prayer at his mother s knee, and against that iniquitous brow once pressed a pure mother s lip. But he refused her counsel. He went where Euroclydons have their lair. He foundered on the sea, while all hell echoed at the roar of the wreck Lost Pacifies! Lost Pacifies! Another lesson from the subject is, that Christians are always safe. There did not seem to be much chance for Paul getting out of that shipwreck, did there? They had not, in those days, rockets with which to throw ropes over foundering vessels. Their life-boats were of but little worth. And yet, notwithstanding all the danger, my text says that Paul escaped safe to land. And so it will always be with God s children. They may be plunged into darkness and trouble, but by the throne of the Eternal God, I assert it, they shall all escape safe to land. Sometimes there comes a storm of commercial disaster. The cables break. The masts fall. The cargoes are scattered over the sea. Oh! what struggling and leaping on kegs and hogsheads and corn-bins and store-shelves! And yet, though they may have it so very hard in commercial circles, the good, trusting in God, all come safe to land. Wreckers go out on the ocean s beach, and find the shattered hulks of vessels; and on the streets of our great cities there is many a wreck. Mainsail slit with banker s pen. Hulks abeam s-end on insurance counters. Vast credits sinking, having suddenly sprung a leak. Yet all of them who are God s children shall at last, through his goodness and mercy, escape safe to land. The Scandinavian warriors used to drink wine out of the skulls of the enemies they had slain. Even so God will help us, out of the conquered ills and disasters of life, to drink sweetness and strength for our souls. You have had illustrations, in your own life of how God delivers his people. I have had illustrations in my own life of the same truth. I was a passenger on the steamer none Greece, none of the National Line, when she swung out into the River Mersey at Liverpool, bound for New York. We had on board seven hundred, crew and passengers. We came together strangers Englishmen, Irishmen, Italians, Swedes, Norwegians, Americans. Two flags floated from the masts British and American ensigns. So may they ever float, and no red hand of war ever snatch either of them down. In the same prayer that we put up for our own national prosperity, we will send up the petition: God save the queen! We had a new vessel, or one so thoroughly remodeled that the voyage had around it all the uncertainties of a trial trip. The great steamer felt its way cautiously out into the sea. The pilot was discharged; and committing ourselves to the care of him who holdeth the winds in his fist – we were fairly started on our voyage of three thousand miles. It was rough nearly all the way the sea with strong buffeting disputing our path. But one week ago last night, at eleven o clock, after the lights had been put out, a cyclone a wind just made to tear ships to pieces caught us in its clutches. It came down so suddenly that we had not time to take in the sails or to fasten the hatches. You may know that the bottom of the Atlantic is strewn with the ghastly work of cyclones. Oh! they are cruel winds. They have hot breath, as though they came up from infernal furnaces. Their merriment is the cry of affrighted passengers. Their play is the foundering of steamers. And, when a ship goes down, they laugh until both continents hear them. They go in circles, or, as I describe them with my hand rolling on! rolling on! With fingers of terror writing on the white sheet of the wave this sentence of doom: Let all that come within this circle perish! Brigantines, go down! Clippers, go down! Steamships, go down! And the vessel, hearing the terrible voice, crouches in the surf, and as the waters gurgle through the hatches and portholes, it lowers away, thousands of feet down, farther and farther, until at last it strikes bottom; and all is peace, for they have landed. Helmsman, dead at the wheel! Engineer, dead amidst the extinguished furnaces! Captain, dead in the gangway! Passengers, dead in the cabin! Buried in the great cemetery of dead steamers, beside the City of Boston, the Lexington, the President, the Cambria waiting for the archangel's trumpet to split up the decks and wrench open the cabin-doors and unfasten the hatches. I thought that I had seen storms on the sea before &Ø; but all of them together might have come under one wing of that cyclone. We were only eight or nine hundred miles from home, and in high expectation of soon seeing our friends, for there was no one on board so poor as not to have a friend. But it seemed as if we were to be disappointed. The most of us expected then and there to die. There were none who made light of the peril, save two: one was an Englishman, and he was drunk, and the other was an American, and he was a fool! Oh! what a time it was! A night to make one s hair turn white. We came out of the berths and stood in the gangway and looked into the steerage and sat in the cabin. While seated there, we heard overhead something like minute-guns. It was the bursting of the sails. We held on with both hands to keep our places. Those who attempted to cross the floor came back bruised and gashed. Cups and glasses were dashed to fragments; pieces of the table getting loose, swung across the saloon. It seemed as if the hurricane took that great ship of thousands of tons and stood it on end, and said, Shall I sink it, or let it go this once? And then it came down with such a force that the billows trampled over it, each mounted of a fury. We felt that everything depended on the propelling screw. If that stopped for an instant, we knew the vessel would fall off into the trough of the sea and sink; and so we prayed that the screw, which three times since leaving Liverpool had already stopped, might not stop now. Oh! how anxiously we listened for the regular thump of the machinery, upon which our lives seemed to depend. After a while some one said, The screw is stopped! No; its sound had only been overpowered by the uproar of the tempest, and we breathed easier again when we heard the regular pulsations of the overtasked machinery, going thump, thump, thump. At three o clock in the morning the water covered the ship from prow to stern, and the skylights gave way! The deluge rushed in, and we felt that one or two more waves like that mšust swamp us forever. As the water rolled back and forward in the cabins, and dashed against the wall, it sprang half-way up to the ceiling. Rushing through the skylights as it came in with such terrific roar, there went up from the cabin a shriek of horror which I pray God I may never hear again. I have dreamed the whole scene over again, but God has mercifully kept me from hearing that one cry. Into it seemed to be compressed the agony of expected shipwreck. It seemed to say, I shall never get home again! My children will be orphaned, and my wife will be widowed! I am launching now into eternity! In two minutes I shall meet my God! There were about five hundred and fifty passengers in the steerage; and as the water rushed in and touched the furnaces, and began violently to hiss, the poor creatures in the steerage imagined that the boilers were giving way. Those passengers writhed in the water and in the mud, some praying, some crying, all terrified. They made a rush for the deck. An officer stood on deck, and beat them back with blow after blow. It was necessary. They could not have stood an instant on the deck. Oh! how they begged to get out of the hold of the ship! One woman, with a child in her arms, rushed up and caught hold of one of the officers, and cried, Do let me out! I will help you! do let me out! I cannot die here! Some got down and prayed to the Virgin Mary, saying, O blessed Mother! keep us! Have mercy on us! Some stood with white lips and fixed gaze, silent in their terror. Some wrung their hands and cried out, O God! what shall I do? what shall I do? The time came when the crew could no longer stay on the deck, and the cry of the officers was, Below! all hands below! Our brave and sympathetic Captain Andrews whose praise I shall not cease to speak while I live had been swept by the hurricane from his bridge, and had escaped very narrowly with his life. The cyclone seemed to stand on the deck, waving its wing, crying, This ship is mine! I have captured it! Ha! ha! I will command it! If God will permit, I will sink it here and now! By a thousand shipwrecks, I swear the doom of this vessel! There was a lull in the storm; but only that it might gain additional fury. Crash! went the lifeboat on one side. Crash! went the lifeboat on the other side. The great booms got loose, and, as with the heft of a thunderbolt, pounded the deck and beat the mast the jib-boom, studding-sail boom, and square-sail boom, with their strong arms, beating time to the awful march and music of the hurricane. none Meanwhile the ocean became phosphorescent. The whole scene looked like fire. The water dripping from the rigging, there were ropes of fire; and there were masts of fire; and there was a deck of fire. A ship of fire, sailing on a sea of fire, through a night of fire. O my God! l &Ýet me never see anything like it again! Everybody prayed. A lad of twelve years of age got down and prayed for his mother. If I should give up, he said, I do not know what would become of mother. There were men who, I think, had not prayed for thirty years, who then got down on their knees. When a man who has neglected God all his life feels that he has come to his last time, it makes a very busy night. All of our sins and shortcomings passed through our minds. My own life seemed utterly unsatisfactory. I could only say, Here, Lord, take me as I am. I cannot mend matters now. Lord Jesus, thou didst die for the chief of sinners. That is I! Into thy hands I commit myself, my wife, my children at home all the interests of thy kingdom. It seems, Lord, as if my work is done, and poorly done, and upon thy infinite mercy I cast myself, and in this hour of shipwreck and darkness commit myself and her whom I hold by the hand to thee, O Lord Jesus! praying that it may be a short struggle in the water, and that at the same instant we may both arrive in glory! Oh! I tell you a man prays straight to the mark when he has a cyclone above him, an ocean beneath him, and eternity so close to him that he can feel its breath on his cheek. The night was long. At last we saw the dawn looking through the portholes. As in the olden time, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came walking on the sea, from wave-cliff to wave-cliff; and when he puts his foot upon a billow, though it may be tossed up with might, it goes down. He cried to the winds, Hush! They knew his voice. The waves knew his foot. They died away. And in the shining track of his feet I read these letters on scrolls of foam and fire, The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. The ocean calmed. The path of the steamer became more and more mild; until, on the last morning out, the sun threw round about us a glory such as I never witnessed before. God made a pavement of mosaic, reaching from horizon to horizon, for all the splendors of earth and heaven to walk upon a pavement bright enough for the foot of a seraph bright enough for the wheels of the archangel s chariot. As a parent embraces a child, and kisses away its grief, so over that sea, that had been writhing in agony in the tempest, the morning threw its arms of beauty and of benediction; and the lips of earth and heaven met. As I came on deck it was very early, and we were nearing the shore I saw a few sails against the sky. They seemed like the spirits of the night walking the billows. I leaned over the taffrail of the vessel, and said, Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters! It grew lighter. The clouds were hung in purple clusters along the sky; and, as if those purple clusters were pressed into red wine and poured out upon the sea, every wave turned into crimson. Yonder, fire-cleft stood opposite to fire-cleft; and here, a cloud rent and tinged with light, seemed like a palace, with flames bursting from the windows. The whole scene lighted up, until it seemed as if the angels of God were ascending and descending upon stairs of fire, and the wave-crests, changed into jasper and crystal and amethyst, as they were flung toward the beach made me think of the crowns of heaven cast before the throne of the great Jehovah. I leaned over the taffrail again, and said, with more emotion than before, Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters! So, I thought, will be the going off of the storm and night of the Christian s life. The darkness will fold its tents and away! The golden feet of the rising morn will come skipping upon the mountains and all the wrathful billows of the world s woe break into the splendor of eternal joy. And so we came into the harbor. The cyclone behind us. Our friends before us. God who is always good, all around us! And if the roll of the crew and the passengers had been called, seven hundred so &áuls would have answered to their names. And so it came to pass that we all escaped safe to land. To that God, who delivered me and my comrades, to that God I commend you. Wait not for the storm and darkness before you fly to him. Go to him now and seek his pardon. Find refuge in his mercy. And may God grant that when all our Sabbaths on earth arc ended, we may find that, through the rich mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, we all have weathered the gale! Into the harbor of heaven now we glide Home at last! Softly we drift on the bright silver tide, Home at last! Glory to God! All our dangers are over, We stand secure on the glorified shore. Glory to God! we will shout evermore. Home at last! Act_28:15 : He thanked God and took courage. Paul had just landed at Puteoli and was getting off him the sea dizziness, and was about to cross the country to Rome. Hospitable Christian people at Rome heard he was coming and went out to greet him and escort him up to the city, and if any man ever deserved a triumphal entrance it was Paul. No sooner had he looked upon these people than two sentiments took possession of his soul: Gratitude and hopefulness. He thanked God and took courage. Standing here in the first morning of the new year, these two sentiments are dominant in my own soul, and in yours. Gratitude to God for the past hopefulness for the future. It is only a few hours ago, at the midnight, that the door of eternity opened and let in amid the great throng of departed centuries the old dying year. Under the twelfth stroke of the brazen hammer of the city clock, the old patriarch fell dead, and the stars of the night were the funeral torches. Three hundred and sixty-five times hath the clock struck twelve for the noon, twelve for the night. During that time, how many marriage garlands have been woven, how many graves dug, how many fortunes won, how many victories achieved, how many defeats suffered, how many souls lost, how many immortals blessed! Year of assassination and of triumph, of conflagration and of harvest, of joy and of sorrow, twist a garland half of amaranth and half of cypress the amaranth for the joy and the cypress for the grief and I put the garland on the brow of the old dead year. And right beside the grave of the dead is the cradle of the new year. This season of the year to me is very suggestive. It is more than an anniversary to me. The season is full of suggestiveness and full of solemnity, and full of gratit &Ã¥ude, and full of hopefulness and kinds of emotion commingling in my soul. I thank God and I take courage. In the Christian Church, it has been a year of great prosperity. We have blown the Gospel trumpet and the people have come in by hundreds and hundreds and yielded their hearts to God, and these altars again and again have been thronged with people who stood up in the presence of three worlds and acknowledged the Lord who bought them, and it has been a perpetual harvest home, and there now is a great multitude this morning in the house of God, children of light, who only a year ago were the children of darkness. I have thought it might be well to talk with you in rehearsal of some things we have been trying to do during the past year, and to state some things we hope to do during this coming year. And in the first place, in this Church I have during the last year tried to be worthy of your confidence and love not by sycophancy or by consultation of your prejudices, but by preaching a straightforward Gospel, whoever it might hit. When a minister stands in the presence of a congregation who do not believe in him, his usefulness is done. When a congregation come to believe that a pastor has in his soul the principles of selfishness and worldliness dominant, he had better be away. When a congregation wish that their pastor might be called to some other field of usefulness he really is called to go. A minister has no more right to kill a Church than a Church has a right to kill a minister. There is a time to come and there is a time to go. I knew a minister of religion who had his fourth settlement. His first two Churches became extinct as a result of his ministry, the third Church was hopelessly crippled, and the fourth was saved simply by the fact that he departed this life. On the other hand, I have seen pastorates, which continued year after year, all the time strengthening, and I have heard of instances where the pastoral relation continued twenty years, thirty years, forty years, and all the time the confidence and the love were on the increase. So it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Spencer, so it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Gardiner Spring, so it was with the pastorate of a great many of those old ministers of Jesus Christ of whom the world was not worthy. Many years ago, in England, a lad heard Mr. Flaville preach from the text: If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha. Years passed on. The lad became a man. He came to this country. He lived to be a hundred years old and yet had not found the Lord. Standing at that age in the field one day, he bethought himself of a sermon which he had heard eighty-five years before, and of the fact that when Mr. Flaville had finished the discourse and came to the close of the service, he said, I shall not pronounce the benediction. I cannot pronounce it when there may be in this audience those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ and are anathema maranatha. The memory of that old scene came over him, and then and there he gave his heart to God the old sermon eighty-five years before preached coming to resurrection in the man s salvation. Would God that those of us who now preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ might utter some word that will resound in helpfulness and in redemption long after we are dead. none Standing in your midst during the past year you have seen in me many imperfections, but you could not have had such consciousness of them as I have had consciousness of them, and I verily believe that the relation between us is strengthening, and that the friendship that began on earth will be resumed in heaven. Tis not a cause of small importance. The pastor's care demands; But what might fill an angel's heart, It filled a Saviour's hands. They watch for souls for which the Lord Did Heavenly bliss forego; For souls which must forever live In raptures or in woe. Again: we have during the past year tried to culture in this congregation, and we shall try to do the same in the years to come, the spirit of Christian sociality. There are Churches which are Arctic seas, iceberg grinding against iceberg. People come into such a Church and sit down as they sit in a ferryboat, side by side, no nod of recognition, no grasp of the hand, no throb of brotherly or sisterly affection. From Saturday to Monday, they are simply ferried over by Christian ordinances. Now, my brother, if you have a hard nature, if you have a malicious nature, if you have a bad nature, the higher the wall you build around yourselves the better; but if there be in you anything loving, anything kind, anything genial, anything sympathetic, anything useful, let it shine out. There is a vessel crashing into the rocks. One man crawls up on the beach from the shipwreck. He walks right up the beach, goes into the fisherman s hut and sits down to warm himself, utterly reckless of the fact that there are fifty men struggling in the surf. O! how selfish and how mean, you say that is. How much better the spirit of the survivors of the Atlantic steamer who, having escaped to land themselves, went out as far as they could toward the breakers, and the waters were cold, and they tried to bring the suffering and the drowning to the shore, and pulled away until the left arm gave out in the cold water, and then the right arm gave out, and then with their teeth they caught the garments of the suffering and the drowning and pulled them shoreward. Alas! my friends, if you and I having escaped from the dark wave of sin and death and got fairly ashore, we sit down to warm our Christian graces by the fires of the Christian Church, utterly reckless of the fact that there are thousands of Christians in the surf. The Church ought to be a great home circle of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. That would be a very strange home circle where the brothers and sisters did not know each other, and where the parents were characterized by frigidity and heartlessness. The Church must be a great family group the pulpit the fireplace, the people all gathered around it. Who is that sitting before you? I don t know, you say. Who is that sitting behind you? You say, I don t know. Who is that sitting at the right and left of you? You say, I don t know. You ought to know. I declare that you have the privilege of giving the right hand of fellowship to every fellow-worshiper. Many a time when the Gospel sermon may have failed, and the Chris­tian song may have failed, and the Scripture lesson may have failed, one good, hearty shake of the hand on the way to the door and an expression of personal interest in the man s salvation have done that which all the other services of the day could not accomplish. If fish go in shoals, if sheep go in flocks, if flowers go in tribes, if stars swing in galaxies, then let all those who worship in the same Church move in loving and shining bands. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one glassy sea, one doxology, one heaven. Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above. From sorrow, toil, and pain And sin we shall be free, And perfect love and friendship reign Through all eternity. But I have also to remark that, during the past year I have tried, as I shall this coming year try, to preach to you a very practical religion. I know, as you know, the vast majority of the people who attend Church are business men and business women. There is no need of my dealing in abstractions. I know what your troubles are, what your annoyances are, what your perplexities are, what your exasperations are. I care very little about the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Jebuzites. I would rather look after your annoyances and your perplexities and your enemies which are trying to keep you out of the Promised Land. So I only preach a Gospel that is not only appropriate to the home circle but is appropriate to Wall street, to Broadway, to Fulton street, to Montague street, to Atlantic street to ever &ðy street not only a religion that is good for half-past ten o clock Sunday morning, but good for half-past ten o clock any morning; or good for half-past seven o clock Sabbath night, but good for half-past seven o clock of any night. Now, suppose here were a case of diphtheria and a physician came in; would he give medicines appropriate to the yellow fever, or to cholera, or marasmus! O! no. He gives a specific for diphtheria. And there is a large company of promises here, a great collection of promises, and there is one just adapted to your case. It is a specific. It will cure! The fact is that a vast multitude of business men get no practical use from their religion. If you are sick, or if a member of your family dies, you say, We must have religious consolation; send for the minister. But suppose you are in a business corner, suppose the sheriff is after you, suppose your partner in business has played you a mean trick, suppose there are half a dozen men in the front office w &ñith duns for debts you cannot pay, suppose you can no more sleep at night than you could sleep on the top of a mast in a Mediterranean hurricane, suppose at midnight you walk the floor with flushed cheek and your head aching as though it would split open do you take practical advantage of your holy religion? O! no. You wait until the morning and then you send for some old skinflint and try to borrow a thousand dollars from him at two per cent. a month, and he will not lend it. Or you go to some friend that you helped in the day of trouble. You say he will surely help you. He will not. I knew a man who in the panic of 1857 helped many through their troubles. He loaned a thousand dollars to this man, and five thousand to that man, and ten thousand to another man. He took other men into his own bank and said, Give this man all the accommodation he wants, and he saw many through their financial troubles. They said, Thank you. Five years passed along and his day of trial came. Where were &ò his friends he had helped? All gone. Most of them out of town, or if they came in it was to say, God bless you; knowing right well that one ounce of financial help would have been worth fifty tons of God bless yous! Nothing makes a man so mad as to have you say God bless you when you ought to bless him. Well, now, what have you done in the midst of your trial? Not at all what you ought to have done, my dear brother. You ought to have gone into the private office and locked the door, and then knelt down and said: O! God, Thou hast said, Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and this is a day of trouble; fulfill Thy promise. There is that note in the bank and I cannot pay it, and my rent is due, and I cannot meet it. Lord God, fulfill Thy promise. Would He have done it? Just as certainly as there is a God on the throne. But many of you, instead of making your religion a robe in which to wrap yourself warm from the chill of this world, make it a sort of string of beads around the neck, that looks very beautiful, but nothing more. In the panic of 1873, there was a business man found in his back office on Wall street, with a loaded pistol on the table, and he was writing a farewell letter to his family. A friend came in and mistrusted what was going on. He said, This is my pistol. What did that frenzied merchant want? Did he need advice of the brokers? Did he want help from the note shavers? Not so much as he wanted God. I saw a man go right through all the perturbations of business life. He was faithful to God. I saw him one day worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I saw him the next day and he was not worth a farthing. I said, Mr. Stevens, they say you have been unfortunate. Yes, said he, it is all gone. O, no, I said, it is not all gone. Yes, said he, it is all gone. I put my name where I ought never to have signed. It is all gone. I said, William Stevens, I am your pastor, and I &ôhave a right to talk to you plainly. You say it is all gone. It is not all gone. Who put the iron fence around the village church? Said he, I did. Said I, Who gave three thousand dollars toward the building of this village church? Said he, I did. Said I, Do you suppose God has forgotten that? It is not all gone. You have made an investment for eternity. All the rest of his life he was a clerk in the great manufacturing establishment over which he had presided. He was all that time happier than Henry VIII on the day when Anne Boleyn came to the palace, happier than Napoleon III at the time of his coronation, happier than any man who puts his trust in this world when he ought to put his trust in God. O! how I should like to take the lamp of this Gospel and put it right down in your counting-room, right down on your carpenter s table, right down in your importing establishment, right down amid your commercial interests. I cannot help but see that the same trouble that makes one man ruins another. I stood at Long Branch and I looked off on the ocean, and there was a very strong wind blowing, and I saw one vessel going this way, and another vessel going that way. Why, I said, that is very strange vessels going in opposite directions, propelled by the same wind; but I looked again and I saw it was the way they had the sails up. And I see people under the strong tempest of disaster, one man driven on the rocks, the other man driven into the harbor of God s mercy. It is the way you have the sails up. One man has the sail of pride up, the other man has the sail of faith in God up. none But I see some among you business men trying to put your trust in God; yet, my brother, you make a dreadful mistake; you put your trust in God and then you take it away. A vessel comes across the sea. It is nearing the Narrows. A pilot comes on board. Now, he says, captain, you have had a very rough time, go and rest; I will take you up to the wharf in safety. The captain goes to rest, but he feels nervous. He says, Now, how if that pilot does not understand his business; how if he should run us on the rocks? He goes up and says to the pilot, Here is a very peculiar current and there are headlands; now be very careful. I think I had better help you in this charge. No, says the pilot, I will take all the charge of this vessel, or I will take none. We put our confidence in God. We say, O! Lord, take possession of our heart, our life. We will trust Thee for the future. We get nervous and say, We are going on this rock and that rock, this misfortune and that misfortune. God will take entire charge, or He will take none. Only trust Him, only trust Him, just now. Again: I have during the past year tried, as I shall try this year, to preach a Gospel of comfort. This is the most delicate work a pastor has. If you do not know how to dress a wound you had better not touch it. There is a good deal of spiritual quackery that comes to a wound that irritates it and poisons it, but does not cure it. It may take no special skill to take a sloop across the North river, but it does take a great deal of ingenuity and skill of navigation to take a steamer from New York to Liverpool. It may take no special skill to comfort a small trouble, but to comfort an immortal soul, all God s waves and billows going over it, and in the Euroclydon of bereavement, it does take a great deal of grace, a great deal of skill. During this past year, how many of my flock have been touched, and during my pastorate of nearly thirteen years there is hardly a family in my congregation but has been sorely touched. Where are those grand old men, those glorious Christian women who used to worship with us? Why, they went away into the next world so gradually that they had concluded the second stanza or the third stanza in heaven before you knew they were gone. They had on the crown before you thought they had dropped the staff of the earthly pilgrimage. And then the dear children. How many have gone out of this church. You could not keep them. You folded them in your arms and said, O! God, I cannot, I cannot give them up. Take all else, take my property, take my reputation, but let me keep this treasure. O! if we could all die together, if we could keep all the sheep and the lambs of the family fold together until some bright spring day, the birds a-chant and the waters a-glitter, and then we could all together hear the voice of the good Shepherd and hand in hand pass through the flood. No, no! If we only had notice that we are all to depart together, and we could say to our families, The time has come. The Lord bids us away. And then we could take our little children to their beds, and straighten out their limbs, and say. Now, sleep the last sleep. Good night, until it is good morning. And then we could go to our own couches and say, Now, altogether we are ready to go. Our children are gone, now let us depart. No, no! It is one by one. It may be in the midnight. It may be in the winter and in the snow coming down twenty inches deep over our grave. It may be in the strange hotel, and our arm too weak to pull the bell for help. It may be so suddenly we have not time even to say goodbye. Death is a bitter, crushing, tremendous curse. I play you three tunes on the Gospel harp of comfort. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. That is one. All things work together for good to those who love God. That is the second. And the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. That is the third. Once more, I remark that I have during the past year tried, as I shall this coming year try, to present Jesus Christ as the only hope in life and death. I have tried to show that if a man is not born again he cannot get to heaven. If the Bible is plain on anything, it is plain on that point. If there is anything about God, or Christ, or the judgment, or heaven, or hell that I have not presented, I wish you would tell me that I might preach that truth. Believe and live. Refuse and die. That is the Gospel. I have tried as far as I could, by argument, by illustration, and by caricature, to fill you with disgust with much of this modern religion which people are trying now to substitute for the religion of Jesus Christ and the religion of the apostles. I have tried to persuade you that the worst of all cant is the cant of scepticism, and instead of your apologizing for Christianity, it was high time that those who do not believe in Christianity should apologize to you; and I have tried to show that the biggest villains in the universe are those who would try to rob us of this Bible and that the grandest mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is that of bringing souls to the Lord a soul-saving Church. There will be during this coming year, I suppose, multitudes of strangers in our churches. The vast multitude of them perhaps we will meet only once. Will you by your prayer, and shall I by my exhortation, meet the case of any of these? How many will you save? A thousand? five hundred? one hundred? twenty? ten? one? or none? All other work seems stale and insipid compared with the work of soul-saving. Now the year is gone. If you have neglected your duty, if I have neglected my duty, it is neglected forever. Each year has its work. If the work is performed within the twelve months, it is done forever. If neglected, it is neglected forever. We cannot call that year back again. When a woman was dying, she said, Call them back. They did not know what she meant. She had been a disciple of the world. She said, Call them back! They said, Who do you want us to call back? Oh, she said, call them back, the days, the months, the years I have wasted. Call them back! But you cannot call them back; you cannot call a year back, or a month back, or a week back, or an hour back, or a second back. Gone once, it is gone forever. When a great battle was raging, a messenger came up and said to the general, who was talking with an officer, General, we have taken a standard from the enemy. The general kept right on conversing with his fellow-officer, and the messenger said again, General, we have taken a standard from the enemy. Still the general kept right on, and the messenger lost his patience, not having his message seemingly appreciated, and said again, General, we have taken a standard from the enemy. The general then looked at him and said, Take another. Ah! forgetting the things that are behind, let us look to those that are before. Win another castle, take another standard, gain another victory. Roll on, sweet day of t he world s emancipation, when the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the wood shall clap their hands, and instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier will come up the myrtle-tree, and it shall be unto the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that cannot be cut off. The song of love, now low, now far, Ere long shall swell from star to star; That light, the breaking day which tips The golden-spired apocalyse. 65692