Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-10-06


mothers and. fathers of sailor boys,
whose SIP went down in our last hur-
rlcan"' There are no Greenwoods or
laurel Hills or Mount Auburns SO beau
uful on the land, as there are banked
and terraced and scooped and hung in
( the depths of the sea. The bodies If
! our foundered and sunken friends are
girdled and canopied and housed with
such glories as attend no other NEGRO
polls.
They were swamped in life boats, or
they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal
and that the pictured and tessellated
sea floor will be as acce sible as Low
is to the Traveller the floor of the AL
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 own in fish
ing smack that put out from New
foundland. But dismiss your previous
gloom arout the horrors of ocean en-
tombment.
When Sebastopool was besieged in
the Anglo-French war, Prime Ment-
schikoff, commanding the Russian
navy, saw that the only way 10 keep
the English out of the harbor was TO
sink all of the Russian ships of war in
the roadstoad, and so one hundred yes
sells sank. When. after the war was
over, our American engineer, Gowan,
descended to the depths in a 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 admirals, but by the command
of cyclones. But they al 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
/ gardens of the sea, fenced off by hedges
! of coraline. 4 he greatest obsequies
{ ever known on the land were those of
/ Mo. es, where no one but God as pres
ent, The sublime report of that en-
tombment is in tie book Of Deuteron-
o@y, which says that the Lord buried
him, and OF t ose who have gone down
TO slumber in the deep, the same may
be said-"The Lord buried them"
AS Christ was buried in gar
den. so your shipwrecked friends,
and those who could not survive
till they reached port, were put
down amid iridesence-"In the midst
of the garden there was a sepulcher
1t has always been mystery what
WAS the particular node by which
George G.. Goodman, the pulpit orator
of the Methodist church and the cha D.
lain of the American congress- left this
life after embarbing for England on
the steamship President, March IL,
! 1s4l. That ship never arrived in port.
No one ever signaled her, and on both
sides of the ocean it has for fifty
years been questioned what became of
her. But this / know about Goodman,
/ that whether it was iceberg or conha-
grafton mid sea, or collision, he had
more garlands on his ocean tomb than
if, expiring o land, each of his mill
ion friends had put bouquet on his
casket. In the midst of the garden
was his sepulcher.
But that brings me to notice the
misnomer in this Jonahitic expression
of the text. i he prophet not on ~
made mistake by trying to go to
Tarshish when God told him TO 20 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 something you throw out from
the garden. 1t is something that
chokes the wheat 1t is something to
be grubbe1 out from among the cot
ton. 1t is something unsi htly TO the
eve. IL is an invader of the vegetable
or floral world. But this growth that
sprang up from the depth of the MeJ-
/ iterranean or floated on its surface,
was among the most beautiful things
that God ever makes. II was a wafer
plS mt known as the red-colored alga,
and no weed at all. 1t comes from
the loom of infinite beauty. 1t is
planted by heavenly love. 1t is the
star of sunken armament. 1t is a
lamp which the Lord kindled 1t is
n cord by which to bind whole sheaves
of practical suggestion. Is is poem
all whose cantos are rung by divine
goodness. Yet we ali make the mis-
take that Jonah made in regard to it,
and call it a weed The weeds were
wrapped about my head" All! that is
the trouble on the land as on the sea-
We call those weeds that are flowers.
Pitched up on the beach of society are
children without home, without OPP
portunity for any hing but sin, SEEM
ingly without Col. They are washed
up helpless They are called raga-
mullins. They are spoken of as the
rdkings of the world They are waif.
They are street Arabs They are Hot
sam 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 but
weeds. They are up the rickety stairs
of that garnet. They are down in he
cellar of that tenement house They
swelter in summer wnen they see not
one blade of green grass, and
shiver in winters that allow them
not one warm C at or shawl or shoe
Such the city missionary und in one
of our city rookeries, and when the
poor woman WIS asked if she sent her
children to school, she replied: No,
sir, i never diu send EN- to school,
know it, they ought to learn, but
couldn't / try TO Nhame him some
times ct is nv husband, slr,) bat he
drinks nd then beats me. look at
that brulse on my face, and l tell
him TO sc wnat is comm to his chill
dren. The e's Peggy, goes sellin' fruit
every mig hit in those cellars in Water
street, and they re bells, sir. She's
learning all sorts of bad words there,
and don get back till IL o'clock at
night. If it wasn't for her earnin a