Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-11-28

people who now say Of ministers: 'The!
know nothing about the world. They
can not talk to u.s." All, my friends, i
is not necessary to have the Asiatit
cholera before you can give it medica
treatment in others. 1t is not necessary
to have your own arm broken before yoJ
can know how to splinter a fracture
And we who stand in the pulpit, and in
the Office of Christian preacher, know
that there are certain styles Of belief
and certain kinds of behavior that will
lead to destruction as certainly as Paul
knew that if that ship went out of FAN
Ravens it would go todestruction. RE
ioice, o 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 Sod will bring thee into
Judgment" We may not know much,
but we know that.
You have, my friends, had illustra-
tions in your own life of how God de-
livers His people. l have had illustra-
tons in my own life of the same truth.
1 was once in what on your Mediterra-
mean you call euroclydon, but what on
the Atlantic we 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 ard passengers. We came together
strangers-Italians, Irishmen, English
men, Swedes, Norwegians, Americans.
Two flags floated from the masts-Brit-
fish and American ensigns. We had a
new vessel, or one so thoroughly remod-
eled that the voyage had around it all
the uncertainties of trial trip. The
great steamer felt its way cautiously
out info the sea. The pilot was dis
C harged; 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 one night, at eleven o'clock, after
the lights had been put out, cyclone
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 that the bot
tom of the Atlantic is strewn with the
CHASTITY work of cyclones. Oh! they
are cruel winds. They have hot breath,
as though they came up from the in
fernaI furnaces. Their merriment is
the cry of affrighted passengers. Their
play is the laundering of steamers.
And, when a ship goes down, they laugh
until both continents hear them. They
go in circles, or, as l describe them with
my handA-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 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 matches and port
holes, it lowers away, thousands of feet
down, farther and farther, until at last
it strikes the bottom; and all is peace,
for they have landed. Helmsman, dead
at the wheel! Engineer, dead amid the
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 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 fool! Oh! what
a time it was! A night to make ones |
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.
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 1 sink it, or let it go |
this once?" And then it came down with |
such force that the pillows trampled |
over it, each mounted of fury.
We felt that every thing depended on
the propeling screw. If that stopped for
an instant we knew the vessel would |
tall off into the trough of the 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
ened for the regular thump of the ma
,hinery upon which our lives seemed to
depend. After awhile some one said:
The screw is stopped!'' No; its sound
had only been overpowered by the up
'oar of the tempest, and we breathed
easier again when we heard the regular
Dulsations of the overtasked machinery
going thump, thump, thump. At three
o'clock in the morning the water COW
cred the ship from PROV to stern,
md the skylights gave way! The
ieluge rushed in, and we felt that
one or two more waves like that must
swamp us forever. As the water rolled
back and forward in the cabins and
dashed against the wall, it surang half