The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1893-11-25

| not he appreciated its beauties AZ he
cries out: "The weeds were wrapped
about my head"
Let my subject cheer all those who
| had friends who have been buried at
sea or in our great American lakes.
Which of us brought up on the Allan
tic coast has not had kindred or friend
thus sepulchered? We had the useless
horror of thinking that they were de-
MED proper restinp-place. We said:
| "Oh, if they had lived to come
ashore, and had then expired! What
| an alienation 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 hurricane! There are no
Greenwoods or Laural 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 bodies of our foundered and
sunken friends are girdled and can
opted and housed with such glories as
attend no other Metropolis.
They were swamped in life-boats 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
gloom about the horrors of ocean en-
mbment
When Sebastopol was besieged in the
Anglo-French war Prince Mentschikof,
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 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 that way near
1y all across the Atlantic ocean. Ships
sunk not by command of admirals, but
by command of cyclones. But they all
had sublime burial, and the surround
ings 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 de-
parted ones were buried in the gar
dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges
of coraline. The greatest obsequies
ever known on the land were those of
Moses. where no one but God was pres
ent. The sublime report of that en-
ointment is the Book of Deuterono-
my, which says that the Lord buried
him, and of those who have gone down
to slumber in the deep the same may
be said: 1.-THE Lord buried them" As
Christ was buried in a garden, so your
shipwrecked friends, and those who
could not survive till they reached port,
I'm the midst of the garden there
was sepulchre." 1t has always
been a mystery what was the particu-
lar mode by which George G. Goodman.
the pulpit orator of the Methodist
churchand the chaplain of the Ameri-
can congress, left this life after en-
barking for England on the steamship
President, March II, 1871. That ship
never arrived in port. No one ever sig
nailed her, and on both sides of the
ocean it has for fifty years been ques-
toned what became of her. But this
know about Goodman, that whether it
was iceberg, or confagration midsea,
or collision. he had more garlands on
his ocean tomb than if, expiring on
land, each of his million friends had
put a bouquet on his caslxet. 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
mistake by trying to go to Tarshish
when God told him to go to Nineveh,
but he made a mistake when he styled
as weeds these growths that enwrapped
him on the day he sank. A weed is
something You throw out from the gar
den. 1t is something that chokes the
wheat. 1t is something to be grubbed
out from among the cotton. 1t is
something unsightly to the eye. 1t is
an invader of the vegetable or
floral world. But this growth
that sprang up from the depths
of the Mediterranean, or fioated
on its 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. 1t is planted by heavenly
love. 1t is the star of sunken firma-
ment. 1t is a lamp which the Lord
kindled. 1t is cord by which to bind
whole sheaves of practical suggestion.
1t is poem all whose contos are rung
by Divine goodness. Yet we all make
the mistake that Jonah made in regard
to it, and call it a weed. 1.-THE
weeds are wrapped about my head"
Ali 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 with
out home, without opportunity for
anything but sin, seemingly without
God Thew are washed I'M HELPLESS.