The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-11-29

can not talk TO uSl' An, my friends, 1T
is not necessary to have the Asiatic
| cholera before you can give 1t medical
| treatment in others. 1t is not necessary
to have year own arm broken before you
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 Fair
Ravens 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. I have had illustra-
tions in my own life of the same truth.
1 was once in what on your Mediterra-
mean you call eurOclydcn, 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 and passengers. We came together
angers-Italians, Irishmen, English
men, Swedes, Norwegians, Americans
Two flags floated from the masts-Brit-
ish and American ensigns. We had
new vessel, or one SO thoroughly remOd-
eled 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 dis
C harged; and, committing ourselves to
I ~
in His fist, we were fairly started on our
voyage of three thousand miles. Itwas
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
: a wind just made to tear ships to pieces
: caught US in its clutches. 1t came
down so suddenly that we had not time
2 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 I 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
t that come within this circle perish!
r Brigantines, go down! Clippers, go
l down! Steamships, go down!" And the
t vessel, hearing the terrible voice,
g crouches in the surf, and as the waters
= | hn ha4 nd
= holes, it lowers away, thousands of feet
1 down, farther and farther, until at last
: it strikes the bottom; and all is peace,
@ for they have landed. Helmsman, dead
g at the wheel! Engineer, dead amid the
i extinguished furnaces! Captain, dead
|, in the gangway! Passengers, dead in
:: the cabinl Buried in the cemetery Of
t dead steamers, beside the City of Bos
n ton, the Lexington, the President, the
Cambria, waiting for the archangePs
e trumpet to split up the decks, and wrench
IS open the cabin doors, and unfasten the
t, matches.
|, thought that I had seen storms OF
y the sea before, but all of them tOgethel
?, might have come under one wing of tina
e cyclone. We were only eight or nint
S. hundred miles from home, and in higl
D. expectation of soon seeing our friends
e for there was no one on board so poor a.
y not to have friend. But it seemed a
lie if we were to be disappointed. The mos
ID of US expected then and there to die
is There were none who made light of tn
v peril, save two One was an Englishman
ii and he was drunk, and the other was al
American, and he was a fool! Oh! wha
a. a time it was! A night to make one
Of hair turn white. We came out of tn
le berths, and stood in the gangway, AM
ut looked into the steerage, and sat in tn
le cabin. While seated there we hear
1T overhead something like minute guns
s. 1t was the bursting of the sails. w
le held on with both hands to keep GU
lie places. Those who attempted to eros
= the floor came back bruised and gashed
m Cups and glasses were dashed to frag
as ments; pieces of the table getting loose
~ swung across the saloon. 1t seemed a
Id if the hurricane took that great ship c
@, thousands of tons and stood it on end
as and said ''Shau I sink it, or let it e
MS this once?" And then it came down wit
Id such force that the pillows trample
h. over it, each mounted of a fury.
vo We felt that every thing depended o
er the propeling screw. If that stopped fo
It. an instant we knew the vessel would
III fall off into the trough of the sea an
sink, and so we prayed that the screw
which three times since leaving Liver
to pool had already stopped, might nc
It, stop now. Oh! how anxiOusly we list
.ir ened for the regular thump of the ma
as chinery upon which our lives seemed
ey depend After awhile some one sale
lr- ''The screw is stopped" No; its SCUM
ul had only been Overpowered by the VI
an roar of the tempest and we breathe
ey easier again when we heard the regula
to pulsatiOns of the overtasked machiner
at going thump, thump, thump. At thre
i'll o'clock in the morning the water Coz
ty cred the ship from Prov to sterI
BY. and the skylights gave way! TIL
es deluge rushed in, and we felt tina
ito one or two more waves like that mu
i'll swamp US forever As the water role
ok back and forward in the cabins an
fe, dashed against the wall, it sprang hal
We way up to the ceiling. Rushing throug
nd the slxylights as it came in with sue
-er terrific roar, there went up from tt
ad cabin shrek of horror which l pra
air God 1 may never hear again. I han
ig- dreamed the whole scene over agar
lid but God has mercifully kept me fro