The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1893-10-04

head"
Let my subject cheer all those VINO
had friends who have been buried at
sea or in our great American lakes
Which ofus brought up on the Atlantc
coast has not had kindred or friend
thus sepulcheredp We had the useless
horror Of thinking that they were de-
MED proper resting place. We said'
''0h, If they had lived to come ashore,
and had then expiredl What an aile-
Walton of our trouble 1t would nave
been to put them in some beautifui
family plot, where we could have
planted flowers and trees over them
Why, God did better for them than we
could have done for them. They were
let down into beautiful gardens BE-
fore they had reached the bottom, they
had garlands about their brow. In
more elaborate and adorned place than
we could have afforded them, they
were put away for the last slumoer'
Hear it, mothers and fathers OF sailor
boys, whose ship went down in our last
August hurricane! There are no Green
WOOub VI VI NhOuAS
burns so beautiful on land, as there are
banked and terraced and scooped and
hung in the depths of the sea. The
bodies of our foundered and sunken
friends are girdled and canopied and
housed with such glories as attend no
other Metropolis.
They were swamped In lifeboats, or
they struck on Goodwin Sands or Deal
Beach or the Skerries, and were never
heard of, or disappeared with the City
of Boston, or the Vile de Havre or the
Cymbria, or were run down in fish
ing smack that put out from New
| foundland. But dismiss your previous
gloon about the horrors Of ocean en-
tombment, #'.
When Sebastopool was besieged in
the Anglo-French war, Prince Mentsch-
kotf, commanding the Russian navy, saw
that the only way to keep the English
out of the harbor was to sink all OF
the Russian ships of war in the road
stead, and 50 one hundred vessels sank.
! When, after the war was over, our
American engineer, Gowan, descended
to the depths in a diving-bell, 1t was
an impressive spectacle. One hundred
buried ships But it is nearly that
way all across the Atlantic Ocean.
Ships sunk not by command OF ad-
mirals, but by the command of cy-
clones. But they all had sublime
burial, and the surroundings amid
which they sleep the last sleep are
more imposing than the Tai Mahal, the
mausoleum with walls encrusted with
precious stones, and built by the great
Mogul of India over his empress. Your
departed ones were buried in the gar
dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges OF
coraline.
The greatest obsequies ever known
on the land were those of Noses where
no one but God was present. The sub
lime report of that entombment is in
the book Of Deuteronomy, which says
that the Lord buried him, and Of those
who have gone down to slumber in the
deep, the same may be said-"ThC
Lord buried them" AS Christ was
buried in garden, so your shipwreckec
l friends, and those who could not sur
, vive till they reached port, were put
. down amid irridescence-"In the mids
Of the garden there was a sepulcher.'
3 II has always been mystery what wa!
4 the particular mode by which George
. G. Cookman, the pulpit orator of the
7 Methodist church, and the chaplain o
:. the American congress, left this life
I after embarlsing for England on the
: steamship President, March II, 1s41
1 That ship never arrived in port. No ont
: ever signaled her, and on both sides o
: the ocean it has for fifty years beeI
! questioned what became OF her. Blu
s this | know about Goodman, tina
: whether it was an iceberg, or conha
t grafton mid-sea, or collision, he ha'
. more garlands on his ocean tomb thai
4 II, expiring on land, each Of his millioi
S friends had put a bouquet on his cas-
d ket. In the midst of the garden wa
u his sepulcher.
n But that brings me TO notice the mis-
n nomer in this Jonahitic expression O
d the text. The prophet not only mad
n a mistake by trying to go to Tarshis
n when God told him TO go TO Ninevef
Il but he made mistake when he style
# as weeds these growths that enwrnppe
II him on the day he sank. A weed
Z. something that Is useless. II is som'
o thing you throw out from the garder
:. 1t is something to be grubbed out frol
l. among the cotton. II is something VI
e slightly to the eye. 1t is an invader {
D. the vepeta BILE or floral world. But tn
l. growth that sprangup from the deptf
d of the Mediterranean, or foated on Il
IS surface, was among the most beautif'
n things that God ever makes. II was
Is water plant known as the redcolore
y Alga, and no weed at all. II CONT
" from the loom of infinite beauty. II
II planted by heavenly love. 1t is the st,
d of a sunken armament. 1t is lam
10 which the Lord kindled. II is cord /
n which to bind whole sheaves Of pract
% cal suggestion. 1t is a poem all who
II cantos are rung by divine goodness. v
10 we all make the mistake that iona
10 made in regard TO II, and call II wee
D. ''The weeds were wrapped about n
10 head" Ahl that Is the trouble on u
Is land as on the sea. We call those wee,
10 that are flowers. Pitched up on tl
Is beach Of society are children witho
ID homo, without opportunity for an
n thing but sin, seemingly without Go
IN They are washed up helpless. Tn
ID are called ragamufflns They are 81
D ken Of ss the ralxings OF the worl