The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1889-11-23


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 in
tellect foundered, and morality sank.
They are old sailors, having answered
many a signal of distress, and endured
great stress of weather, and gone scud-
ding under bare poles; and the old folks
know what they are talking about.
Look at that man-in his cheek the
glow of internal 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! wolff"
Yet he once said the Lords Prayer at
his mothers knee, and against that in
iquitous brow once pressed a pure moth
er'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 Pacifcsl Lost Pacifics!
Another lesson from the subject is
that Christians are always safe. There
did not seem to be much chance for Pau
getting out of that shipwreck, did there?
They had not, in those days, rockets
with which to throw ropes over founder
ing vessels. Their lifeboats were of but
little worth. And yet, Notwithstanding
all the danger, my text says that Paul
escaped safe to land. And so it will al
ways be with Gods children. They may
be plunged into darkness and trouble,
but BY the throne of the eternal God, |
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 hogs
heads 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 OF the ocean
beach and find the hulks of vessels, and
on the streets of our great cities there
is many n wreck. Mainsail slit with
bankers pen. Hulks abeam's end on
insurance counters. Vast credits sink
ing, having suddenly sprung a leak.
Yet all of them who are Gods children
shall at last, through His goodness and
mercy, escape safe to land. The Scandi-
navian warriors used to drink wine out
Of the skulls of the enemies they had
slain. Even so God win help us, out of
the conquered ills and disasters of life,
to drink sweetness and strength for our
souls.
You have, my friends, had illustra-
tons il your own life of how God de-
livers His people. / have had illustra-
tions in my own life of the same truth.
l was once in what on your Mediterra-
mean you call a euroclydon, but what on
the Atlantic W call a cyclone, but the
same storm. The steamer Greece, of
the National Line, swung out into the
Mersey at Liverpool. bound for New
York. We had on board seven hundred,
crew and passengers. We came together
strangers-Italians Irishmen, English
men,, Swedes, N~orwegians, Americans.
Two flags fioated from the masts-Brit-
ish and American ensigns. We had a
new vessel, or one so thoroughly remod-
ele1 that the voyage had around it all
the uncertainties of a trial trip. The
great steamer felt it's way cautiously
out into the sea. The pilot was dis
C charged; 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. TWAS
rough nearly all the way-the sea with
strong buffeting disputing our path.
But n 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. 1t came
down so suddenly that we had not time
to take in the sails or to fasten the
matches. You may know hat the bot
tom Of the Atlantic is strewn with the
are cruel winds. They have hot breath,
as though they came up from the in
fernal furnaces. Their merriment is
the cry of affrighted passengers. Their
play is the laundering of steamers.
And, when a shipgoes down, they laugh
Until both continents hear them. They
60 in circles, or, as L describe them with
my hand-rolling on! rolling on!
with finger of terror writing on
the white sheet Of the wave
this sentence of doom: Let all
that come within this circle perishl
B%rigantines, 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 matches and port
holes, it lowers away, thousands of feet
down, farther and farther, until at last
1t strikes the bottom; and all is peace,
for they hav landed. Helmsman, dead
at the wheel! Engineer, dead amid the
extinguished furnaces! Captain, dead
in the gangway! Passengers, dead in
the cabin! Buried in the cemetery of
dead steamers, beside the City of Bos-
ton, 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
matches.
thought that / had seen storms on
the sea before, 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 t make one's
hair turn white. We came out of the
berths, and too in the gangway, and
looked into the steerage, and sat in the
cabin. While seated there we heard
overhead something like minute guns.
1t 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 frag-
ments; pieces of the table getting loose,
swung across the saloon. 1t seemed as
If the hurricane took that great ship of
thousands of tons and stood it on end,
and said: "Shall l sink it, or let it go
this once?" And then it came down with
such force that the pillows trampled
ove it, each mounted Of a fury.
We felt that every thing depended on
the propeling screw. If that stopped for
an instant we knew the vessel would
fall off into the trough of tie sea and
sink, and so we prayed that the screw,
which three times since leaving Liver
pool had already stopped, might not
stop now. Oh! how ~anxiously we list
anod for the rapular thumn Of the ma