The Newtown bee., 1894-02-16
THEY HAD CAST OvERBOARD

sistance of all hands
 THEY HAD CAST OVERBOARD the huge mainyard, and with a great re- sounding splash it had fallen into the sea. At last the cargo of wheat had been given to the waves, for what cared they in that ship for food, when they heard their doom shrieked out to them in the bowling of the blast by night, and in the yawning waves they saw their sure graves! A gloomy apathy settled over them like pail, and, as a doomed man whose last petition for mercy has failed sits in his cell and, through the iron barred window, watches the erect ion oe the scafrold upon which he will die, so these desperate men abandoned all hope and waited their last hour.
 An! but this description does not fit all. Amid those black clouds of despair there was
 ONE CLEAN OF HOPE,
 amid the wailings and the groans of an- guish there was one note of peaceful joy. This was the voice and faith and person of the apostle Paul. Oh, how grandly he looms up here! Small of stature, deformed, hunchbacked Jew, he stands head and shoulders above them all. While the vessel losses like cork on the crest of the pillows and the drip ping timbers of the deck above him wet the hoary locks of his head, Paul prays as calmly as trustful child repeating his "NOw I lay me- at his mothers knee; and light streams around him thus praying, not from some friendly lighthouse on some nearby coast, but from the far-away lighthouse of Heav- en. And with the light there came a voice, saying "Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Ceasar; and, To,
 GOD HATH GIVEN THEE
 all them that sail with thee" Is it not always easy to tell the true Christian Can he not always be singled out in a leaking ships to him? What are waves rolling mountains high? What are the caverns of the sea stirred from their lowest deeps? What are tempestuous Euroclydons and typhoons twisting masts and snapping cordage? The Christian can always say in the mid night of supreme peril, "There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose am and whom I serve,'' though the an- gel come in the still whisper of comfort or as the blessed Lamb of God.
 Fourteen days of this tossing and drifting come and gone. At midnight, as the seamen strain their ears,
 SUDDENLY ABOVE THE ROAR
 of the storm is heard a booming sound. At once it is recognized as the beating of the breakers upon some shore which is every moment drawing nearer. "Out with the lead in the darkness, lest we drive upon some Hidden reef of rocks" 'Twenty fathoms," calls out the man with the line. A huge wave rises and bears theshelpless craft nearer. "Sound again! Whats your finding?" 'Oniy fifteen fathoms now" "Quick! men, 3 shouts Julius the centurion, though his command is almost drowned by the breakers roar, "quick! or soon the ship will split in two on a rock" No second word is needed and willing hands soon drop four anchors astern, and they hold firm in the clay.
 WHO CAN PICTURE
 the rest of that awful night? "They wished for the day." How slowly the hours dragged their weary lengths along! How the lleaks gained steadily on them! How each great wave made a new rent or seam in the fast-foundering vessel! How the huge pillows broke completely over them and they were de- luged with the salt spray! How cold and numb their fingers grew, as they clung for dear life to the sole remaining spar! How they stoodaface to face with grim and ghastly Death through all those weary hours till the long night waned awayl And how, as the first faint gleam of that desolate day streaked the eastern sky, they looked upon each others faces, so wan and haggard through long privation and fear that they started back in horror from the sight.
 IS IT ANY WONDER,
 then, my nearer, that that shipwrecked crew eagerly came, 'ssome on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship" into the little inlet, so accurately de- scribed that it's location has been un- doubtedly identified and now it is known as St Paul's Bay on the island of Melita, or Malta? Is it any wonder that they gathered gladly about the blazing fire of fagots and brushwood that the Maltese had built for them, to dry their clothing and warm their shivering forms? And is it, too, any wonder that Luke, the historian, thought this in cident of such importance that he wrote, nAnd the barbarous people showed us
 NO LITTLE KINDNESS ?'
 Hungry, dejected castaways, did they not appreciate that display of kindness? 1? These simple folk, the Maltese, who
 ere called barbarians because they