Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-10-02

world! The author of the text felt the
pull C tic Hidden vegetation of the
Mediterranean, whether or not he ap-
preciated its beauty. as he cried out,
ssThe weeds were wrapped about my
head
Let my subject ckeer s,l those who
had friends who have l,een buried at sea
or in our great American lakes. Which
of US brought up on the Atlantic coast
las not had kindred or friend thus sep
ulchered? We had the useless horror OF
thinking that they were denied proper
resting place. We said: "Oh, if they had
lived to come ashore and had then eA-
pired! What an alienation of our trouble
Fl would have been to put them in some
beautiful family plot, where we co1id
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.
Before 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 slumber
Hear it, mothers and fathers of sailor
boys whose ship went down in our last
August hurricane! There are no Green
woods or Laurel Hills OF Mount Auburns
so beautiful on the land as there are
! banked and terraced and scooped and
! hung in the depths of the sea. The bod
les Of our foundered and sunken friends
are girdled and canopied and housed
with such glories as attend no other
| Metropolis.
They were swamped in Ifeboats. OF
they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal
beach OF the Skerries, and were never
heard of, or disappeared with the City
Boston, or the Vile de Havre, or the
! Cymbria or were run down in a fishing
smack that put out from Newfoundland.
But dismiss your previous gloom about
the horrors Of ocean entombment.
THE MISTAKES OF JONAH.
When Sevastopol was besieged in the
Anglo-French war, Prince Mentchikof,
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 roadstead, and SO 100
vessels sank When, after the war was
over, our American engineer, Gowan, de-
scended to the depths in diving bell, it
was an impressive spectacle.
One hundred buried ships! But it is
that way nearly all across the Atlantic
ocean. Ships sunk not by command of
adlnirals, 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 maui
solemn with walls incrusted with pre-
cious stones and built by the great mo-
| gul of India over his empress. Your
| departed ones were buried in the gar
dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges of
coralline.
The greatest obsequies ever known on
the land were those of Moses, where no
one but God was present. The sublime
/ 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, ''The Lord buried
/ Them AS Christ was buried in q gar
! den, so your shipwrecked friends and
/ those who could not survive till they
reached port were put down amid iri-
descence-.'In the midst of the garden
there was q sepu1cher.'
It has always been mystery what was
4 the particular mode by which George G.
/ Goodman, the pulpit orator of the Meth
I odist church and the chaplain of the
American congress, left this life after
embarking for England on the steamship
President March II, 1871. The ship
never arrived in port. No one ever
signaled her, and Oh both sides Of tie
ocean it has for so years been questioned
! what became of her. But this [ know
about Coolzman-that whether it was
iceberg OF confagration midsea or col
1ision he had more garlands on his ocean
tomb than if, expiring on land, each Of
his million friends had put q bouquet
on his casket. In the midst of the garden
was his sepulcher.
But that brings me to notice the mis-
/ homer in this Jonahitic expression Of
the text. The prophet not only made o
mistake by trying to go to Tarshish
when God told him to go to Nineveh,
but he made mistake when he styled
as weeds these growths that enwrapped
him on the day he sank. A weed is
something that is useless. 1t is some
thing you throw out from the garden.
It is something that cholzes the wheat.
1t is something to be grubbed out from
among the cotton. It is something un-
slightly to the eye. 1t is an invader of
the vegetable or floral world.
But this growth that sprang up from
the depth of the Mediterranean or
foated on it's surface was among the
most beautiful things that God ever
makes. 1t was a water plant known as
the red colored alga and no weed at all.
1t comes from the loom of infinite
beauty It is plante1 by heavenly love.
1t is the star of a sunken armament. It
is a lamp which the Lord kindled. It is
3 cord by which to bind whole sheaves
bf practical suggestion. It is poem all
those cantoS are ring BY divine good