The Iola register., 1889-11-29

|
was destroyed. There are great many
people who now say of ministers: "They
know nothing about the world. They
can not talk to us!' All, my friends, it
is not necessary to have the Asiatic
cholera before you can give it medical
| treatment in others. 1t is not necessary
to have your own arm broken before you
can know how to splinter 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 Fair
HaveBs it would go to destruction. "Re-
joice, 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 God 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. have had illustra-
tions in my own life of the same truth.
/ was once in what on your Mediterra-
mean you call a euroclydon, but what on
the Atlantic we call 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, Norwegians, Americans.
Two flags fioated from the masts-Brit-
ish ana American ensigns. We had a
new vessel, or one SO thoroughly remod-
eled that the voyage had around it all
the uncertainties of a trial trip. The
great ateamer 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 it's 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
fernal furnaces. Their merriment is
the cry of affrighted passengers. Their
play is the laundering of steamers.
And, when ship goes down, they laugh
until both continents hear them. They
go 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 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
extinguished furnaces! Captain, dead
in the gangwayi 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.
l 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 mos
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 ar
American, and he was fool. Oh! what
time it was! A night to make one:
hair turn white. We came out of the
berths, and stood in the gangway, ant
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 oul
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 a:
if the hurricane took that great ship O
thousands of tons and stood it on end
and said: shall 1 sink it, or let it g
this once?" And then it came down with
such force that the billowS trampleG
over it, each mounted of fury.
We felt that every thing depended OF
the propeling screw. If that stopped fol
an instant we knew the vessel would
fall off into the trough of the sea ant
sink, and so we prayed that the screw
which three times since leaving Liver
} pool had already stopped, might no
stop now. Oh! how anxiously We list
ened for the regular .nump of the ma
chinery upon which our lives seemed tx
depend. After awhile some one said
'The screw is stoppedr' Nos its sound
ndu only Deeu oNerpoWereu ny tue uP
roar of the tempest, and we breathed
easier again when we heard the regula,
pulsations of the overtasked machinery
going thump, thump, thump. At three
o'clock in the morning the water GOV
cred the ship from PROV to stern
and the skylights gave way! The
deluge rushed in, and we felt that
one or two more waves like that mus
swamp US forever. As the water rolled
back and forward in the cabins anG