The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-10-14

OF wrath, and It's most rollicking fun Is a
shipwreck, The mutinous crew would
have killed Columbus had it not been
for the general opinion on shipboard
that he was the only one that could take
them back home in safety. The promise
| OF silk waistcoat and forty dollars in
| money to the man who should first dis
| cover land appeased them somewhat, but
the indignation and blasphemy and
threats Of assassination must have been
awful, Yet God sustained the great
sailor commanding the Santa Maria.
Every evening ON shipboard they had
prayers and sung vesper hymn. But
after all the patience of those on board
the ships Lad been exhausted, and the
great captain or admiral had been
cursed by every anathema that human
lips could frame, one night sailor saw
light moving along the shore, and then
moving up and down, and then disap-
pearing. On Friday morning at two
o'clock, just long enough after Thurs.
day to make it sure that it was Friday,
and so give another blow at the worlds
idea of unlucky days-on Friday morn
ing, Oct. 12, 1902, a gun from the Pinta
signaled Gland ahead"
Then the ships lay to, and the boats
were lowered, and Captain Christopher
Columbus first stepped upon the shore,
amid the song of birds and the air
surge Of redolence, and took possession
in the name of the Father, and the Son
and the Holy Ghost. So the voyage
that began with the sacrament ended
with "Gloria in Excelsis Deo." From
that day onward you say there can be
nothing for Columbus but honors, re.
wards, rhapsodies, palaces and world
wide applause. No! no! On his way
back to Spain the ship was SO wrenched
by the tempest and so threatened with
destruction that he wrote brief &C.
count of his discovery and put it in a
cask and threw it overheard that the
world might not lose the advantage of
his adventures.
Honors awaited him on the beach, but
he undertook second voyage, and with
it came all maligning and persecution
and denunciation and poverty. He was
called land grabber, a liar, cheat, a
fraud, a deceiver of nations. Specu-
lators robbed him of his good name,
courtiers deprecated his discoveries, and
there came to him ruined health and i'm
prisonment and chains, of which he said
while he ratified them ON his wrists, 81
will wear them as a memento of the
gratitude of princes" Amid keen APP
probation of the worlds abuse and
cruelty, and with body writhing in the
tortures of oout he groaned out his last
words, SIN manus tuas Domino COM
mendo spiritum meum"-"Into thy
hands, 0 Lord, commend my spirit.
Of course he had regal obsequies.
That is the way the world tries to atone
for its mean treatment of great benefac-
tors. Many man has had fine ride |
to his grave who during this life had to
walk all the way. A big funeral, and
instead of bread they give him stone
that is tombstone. But death, that
brings quiet to the body of others, did not
bring quiet to his. First buried in the
church of Santa Maria. Seven years
afterward removed to Seville. Twenty
three years afterward removed to San
Domingo. Finally removed to Cuba.
Four postmortem journeys from sepul-
cher to sepulcher.
wish his bones might be moved just |.
once more, and now that they have come
SO near to America as Cuba they night
during the great Columbian year be
transported to our own shores, where
they belong, and that in the fifth cen
fury after his decease the American con-
tinent might build mausoleum worthy |
of him who picked this jewel Of hemi- !
sphere out of the sea and set it in the
crown of the worlds geography.
But the bright monday sun of that
old sailors prosperity went down in
thickest night, and though here and
there monument has been lifted in his
memory, and here and there city called
after him, the continent that he was the
means of founding was named after an
other name, and no fitting commemora-
ton OF his work has been proposed until |
nearly four hundred years after his body
turned to dust May the imposing DEM
onstration now being made in his honor
on the Atlantic coast and to be made |
next year in his honor midcontinent, be I
brilliant enough and far resembling
enough and Christian enough and mag
nificent enough to atone for the neglect |
of centuries! May the good Lord allow
that most illustrious sailor of all time to |
look over the amethystine battlements
long enough to see some of the garlands |
wreathed around his name and hear
something of the hemisphere shout that
shall greet his memory!
What most impresses me in all that
wondrous life, which for the next twelve
months we will be commemorating by
sermon and song and military parade
and Worlds fair and congress of ma
tons, is something | have never heard
stated, and that is that the discovery of
America was a religious discovery and
n the name Of God Columbus, by the
'tNdy OF the prophecies and by what
1echariah and Micah and David and
Isaiah had said about the lends Of the
earth, was persuaded to go out and find
the sends Of the earth" and he felt him
self called by God to carry Christianity
to the tends of the earth" Then the
administration of the last supper before
they left the Gulf of Cadiz, and the
evening prayers during the voyage, and
the devout ascription as soon as they saw
the New World, and the doxologies with
which they landed confirm me in saying
that the discovery of America was re-
ligious discovery.
Atheism has no right here; infidelity
has no right here; vagabondism has no
right here. And as God is not apt to
fail in any of his undertakings lat any
rate have never heard of his having
anything to do with failure), America
is going TO be Gospelized, and from the
Golden Gate of California to the Mar
rows of New York harbor, and from the
top of North America to the foot of
South America, from Behring straits to
Cape Horn, this is going to be Imman-
uel's land. All the forms of irreligion
and abomination that have cursed other
parts of the world will land here-yea,