Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1893-10-07

IL WOulQ nave Deeu 10 pun tHelu LII oolAiO
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.
Before they had reached the bottom they
had garlands about their brow.
In moro 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 hurricanel There are no Green
woods or Laurel Hills or 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 lifeboats, or
they struck on Goodwin sands OF Deal
beach or the Skerries, and were never
heard of, or disappeared with the City OF
Boston, or the Vile de Hayre, or the
Cymbria or were run down in a fishing
smack that put out from Newfoundland.
But dismiss your previous gloom about
tho 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 roadstcad, and so 100
vessels sank. When, after the war was
over, our American engineer, Gowan, de
scended to the depths in diving bell, 1t
was an impressive spectacle.
One hundred buried shipsl But 1t Is
that way nearly all across the Atlantic
ocean. Ships sunk not by command of
admirals, but by the command of cy-
clones, But they ali had sublime
burial, and the surroundings amid
which they sleep the last sleep are more
imposing than the Tai Mahal, the maui
soleum with walls incrusted with pre-
cious stones and built by the great mo-
Gull 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.n AS Christ was buried in gar
den, 80 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 sepulcher."
+ It has always been a mystery what was
the particular mode by,which George+G.
|. Goodman, the pulpit oratorso the Meth;
:odist-. c;h6rrc and the sch the
s. 8 gfass. q tsl
embarking for England on the Steamship
President, March H.. 1841. The ship
never arrived in port. No one ever
signaled her, and on both sides of the
ocean it has for 30 years been questioned
what became of her. But this l know
about Cookman-that whether it was
iceberg or conhagration midsea or col
lision he had more garlands on his ocean
tomb than If, expiring on land, each OF
his million friends had put g bouquet
on his casllet. 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 a
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 chokes the wheat.
1t is something to be grubbed out from
among the cotton. 1t Is something I'M
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
Aoated on its surface was among the
most beautiful things that God ever
makes. It was water plant known as
the red colored alga and no weed at all.
It comes from the loom of infinite
beauty. 1t is planted by heavenly love.
It is the star of a sunken armament. 1t
is q lamp which the Lord kindled. It is
cord by which to bind whole sheaves
of practical suggestion. 1t is poem all
whose cantos are rung by divine good
ness. Yet we all make the mistake that
Jonah made in regard to it and call it
weed.
1.-THE weeds were wrapped about my
head" Alb, that is the trouble on the
land as on the seal We call those weeds
that are flowers. Pitched up on the
beach Of society are children without
home, without opportunity for anything
but sin, seemingly without God. They
are washed up helpless. They are called
ragamuf6ns. They are spoken of as the
rakings of the world. They are waits.
They are street arabs. They are fotsam
and jetsam of the social sea. They are
something to be left alone, or something
to be trod on, or something to give up
to decay. Nothing bat weeds. They
are up the rickety stairs of that garnet.
They are down in the cellar of that tene-
ment house. They swelter in summers
when they see not one blade of green
grass, and shiver in winters that allow
them not one warm coat or shawl OF
shoe.
Such the city missionary found IN one
or our olty rooKe1es, ana wnen Jne poor
woman was asked If she sent he5 child.
dren to school she replied: mo, sir,
never did send 'em to school. / know 1t,
they ought to learn, but I couldn't.
49,, IN ehana him sometimes Ut Is my