Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1893-10-19

THE weeds were wrapped about my
head. .
Let my subject cheer all those who
had friends who have been buried al
sea or in our great American lakes
Which ofus brought up on the Atlantic
coast has not had kindred or friend
thus sepulchered? We had the useless
horror of thinking that they were de
MED proper resting place. We said
oh, if they had lived to come ashore,
and had then expired What an ale
Walton of our trouble it would have
been to put them in some beautiful
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 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 or Mount Au-
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-
kolf,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 so one hundred vessels sank
When. after the war was over, our
American engineer, Gowan, descended
to the depths in diving-bell, it 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 adj
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
eoraline.
The greatest obsequies ever known
on the land were those of Moses. 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-"The
Lord buried them" As Christ was
buried in garden, so your shipwrecked
friends. and those who could not sur !
vive till they reached port, were put
down amid irridescence-''In the midst |
of the garden there was a sepulcher."
II has always been mystery what was |
the particular mode by which George |
G.. Goodman, the pulpit orator of the |
Methodist church, and the chaplain OF |
the American congress. left this life |
after embarking for England on the |
steamship President March II. 1871. |
That ship never arrived in port. No one |
ever signaled her, and on both sides of /
the ocean II has for fifty years been 1
questioned what became of her. But |
this | know about Goodman, that |
whether it was an iceberg, or confla-
grafton mid-sea. or collision, he had |
more garlands on his ocean tomb than
if, expiring on land, each of his million
friends had put bouquet on his cas-
ket. In the midst of the garden was
his sepulcher.
But that brings me tonotice the mis-
homer in this Jonahitic expression of
the text The prophet not only made
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. weed is
something that is useless. 1t is some
thing you throw out from the garden.
1t is something to be grubbed out from
among the cotton. 1t is something un-
slightly to the eye. 1t is an invader of
the vegeta BILE or floral world But this
growth that sprangup from the depths
OF the Mediterranean, or foated on its
surface, was among the most beautiful
things that God ever makes. II was a
water plant known as the red -colored
Alga, and no weed at all. It comes
from the loom of infinite beauty Its
planted by heavenly love. 1t is the star
of sunken armament. 1t is lamp
which the Lord kindled. It is cord BY
which to bind whole sheaves of practi-
cal suggestion. 1t IS poem all whose
cantos are rung by divine goodness Yet
we all make the mistake that Jonah
made in regard to it, and call it a weed.
ssrhe weeds were wrapped about my ,