Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1893-10-07

WOIlu! 1He uulDOI OI IHb IcAJ Ielb tl6
pull of the hidden vegetation of the
Mediterranean, whether or not he ap-
preciated its beauty as he cried out,
The weeds we're wrapped about my
head"
Let my subject cheer all those who
had friends who have been buried at sea
or in orr great American lakes. Which
Of US LIGught up on the Atlantic coast
has not had kindred or friend thus sep
| ulchered? We had the useless horror of
thinking that they were denied proper
resting place. We said: ooh, if they had
lived to come ashore and had then eA-
pired! What an alleviation 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.
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 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 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 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-Frerch war, Prince Mentchlkot
commanding the Russian navy, saw thai
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 lO'
vessels sank. When, after the war wa
over, our American engineer, Gowan, de
scended to the depths in diving bell,
was an impressive spectacle.
One hundred buried ships! But 1t
that way nearly all across the Atlantl
ocean. Ships sunk not by command o
admirals, but by the command of cy
clones. But they all had sublim
burial. and the surroundings ami
which they sleep the last sleep are NOR
, imposing than the Tai Mahal, the mat
soleum with walls incrusted with pre-
cious stones and built by the great mt
gul of India over his empress. You
departed ones were buried in the ga
dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges
r coralline.
q The greatest obsequies ever known
Y the land were those of Moses, where l
a one but God was present. The sublln
@ report of that entombment is IN u
book of Deuteronomy, which says tn
p the Lord buried him, and Of those WI
q have gone down to slumber in the de-
t the same may be said, THE Lord burl'
h them" AS Christ was buried in a ga
Y den. SO your shipwrecked friends al
n those who could not survive TILL th'
v reached port were put down amid Il
4 descence-"In the midst of the gard'
# there was a sepulcher," "
It has always been mystery what W
the particular mode by which George
r. Cookman, the pulpit orator of the Met
\ odist church and the chaplain OF t
i, American congress, left this life ait
"a embarking for England on the steamsh
a President, March II, 1Sil. The sh
m never arrived in port. No one eV
a. signaled her, and on both sides OF t
w ocean it has for 80 years been questioh
n what became of her. But this l knc
70 about Cookman-that whether IL "
,d iceberc or confagration midsea or G
Nv lision he had more garlands ON his oce
he tomb than if, expiring ON land, each
am his million friends had put bouqtL
he ON his casket. In the midst OF the saro
he was his sepulcher. a.,
re But that brings me to notice the III
nomer in this Jonahitic expression
re the text. The prophet not only mad'
eo mistake by trying to 90 to Iarsh
re when God told him to go to NlneV.
ds but he made a mistake when he styl
Nm az weeds these growths that enwrapI
,se him on the day he sank. A weed
or something that is useless. 1t Is son
or. thing you throw out from the garu
st- Il is something that chokes the VINE
Ina II is something to be grubbed out n
10 among the cotton. 1t is something
de slightly TO the eye. 1t is an invader
1o0 tbe vegetable or floral world
ter But this growth that sprang up II
'er I the depth of the Mediterranean
Aoated on it's surface was among
most beautiful things that God e
,.v makes. 1t was a water plant known
2 80 tbe red colored alga and no weed at
,es II comes from the loom OF INN
~ heantv. 1t is planted by heavenly l'
est n is the star of a sunken armament
NH is a lamp which the Lord kindled;
90 a cord by which 10 bind whole shea
ast of practical suggestion. 1t is a poem
sre whose cantos are rung by divine g
SIN ness Yet we all make the mistake
Ca Jonah made in regard to it and cali
.he weed. -