The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-12-10

DAoh VIC NAAiC 1T CfOIk IudL IBe d.
rometer had fallen, but at IL O'Clock at
night we were awakened with the shock
OF the waves. All the lights out. Crash
went all the Iifeboats. Waters rushing
through the skylights down into the cab
in and down on the furnaces until they
Kissed and smoked in the deluge. Seven
hundred people praying. shrieking. Our
great ship poised a moment on the top Of
a mountain Of phosphorescent fire and
then plunged down, down. down, until il
Seemed as il she never would again be
righted. All, you never want to see a cy-
clone at sea!
But / was in Minnesota where there
was one of those cyclones on land that
swept the city of Rochester from its foun-
dations and took dwelling houses, barns,
men, women, children, horses, cattle, and
tossed them into indiscriminate ruin and
lifted a rail train and dashed il down, a
mightier hand than that OF engineer on
the airbrake. Cyclone in Kansas, cyclone
in Missouri, cyclone in Wisconsin, cyclone
in Illinois, cyclone in Iowa! Satan. prince
Of the power Of the air, never made such
c%yclonic disturbances as he has in our
day. And am / not right in saying that
one of the characteristics Of the time in
which we live is disaster cyclonic?
But look at the disasters oceanic. Shall
l call the roll of the dead shipping? Ye
monsters Of the deep, answer when I call
your names. The Vile de Havre, the
Schiller, the City of Boston, the Melville,
the President. the Cimbria, the Oregon,
the Mohegan. But why should 1 go ON
calling the roll when hone of them answers
and the roll is as long as the white scroll
of the Atlantic surf at Cape Hatteras
Ihraolyar9 I@ ,ha oo1a-so ooIIo. could -
port all the scattered life and all the
bleached bones that they rub against in
the ocean, what a message of pathos and
tragedy for both beaches! In one storm
eighty fishermen persisted off the coast Of
Newfoundland and whole fleets of them
off the coast Of England. God help tie
poor fellows at sea and give high seats in
heaven to the Grace Darlings and the Ida
Lewises and the lifeboat men lowering
around Goodwin sands and the Skerries!
The sea, owning three-fourths Of the
earth, proposes to capture the other
fourth and is bombarding the land all
around the earth. The moving of the ho-
tells at Brighton Beach backward 100
yards from where they once stood a type
of what is going ON all around the world
and on every coast. The Dead sea rolls
today where ancient cities stood. Pillars
Of temples that stood on hills biologists
now find three-quarters under the water
or altogether submerged. The sea, having
wrecked so many merchantmen and flotil-
las, wants to wreck the continents, and
hence disasters oceanic. Alas for Calves
ton and other cities almost drowned!
The Work of Epidemics.
Look at the disasters epidemic. 1 speak
not of the plague in the fourth century
that ravaged Europe and in Moscow and
the Neapolitan dominions and Marseilles
wrought such terror in the eighteenth
century, but l look at the yellow fevers
and the choleras and the diphtherias and
the scarlet fevers and the typhoids Of our
time. From Hurdwar, India, where every
twelfth year 100000 devotees congre-
gate, the caravans brought the cholera,
and that one disease slew $4,000 in eight
cen days in Bossorah. Twelve thousand
in one summer slain by it in India and
$4,000 in Egypt. Disasters epidemic.
Some of the finest monuments in Green
wood and Laurel Hill and Mount Auburn
are to doctors who lost their lives battling
with southern epidemic.
But now I turn the leaf in my subject,
and 1 plant the white lilies and the palm
tree amid the magistrates and the myrtle.
AhAS IN liz IL ~ Nou
ders of disaster than by wonders of bless
ing-blessing Of longevity; the average of
human life rapidly increasing. Forty
years now worth 400 years once. Now
can travel from Manitoba to New York in
less than three days. In other times it
would have taken three months. In other
words, three days now are worth three
months of other days. The average of
human life practically greater now than
when Noah lived, with his $50 years, and
Methusaleh lived his 500 years.
Blessings of intelligence: The Salmon
p. Chases and the Abraham Lincolns and
the Henry Wilson's of the coming time
will not be required to learn to read by
pine knot lights or seated on shoemaker's
bench. nor will the Fergusons nave to
study astronomy while watching the cat
tie. knowledge rolls its tides along every
poor mans door. and his children may &C
down and hathe in them. If the philoso
pliers of Il hundred years ago were called
up to recite in n class with our boys anc
girls, those old philosophers would be sem
down to the foot of the class because they
tailed to answer the questions! Free Ii
braries in all the important towns and cit
les Of the land. Historical alcoves ant
~poetical shelves and magazine tables fol
all who desire to walk through them or 81
DOWN at them.
Blessings of Quick Information.
Blessings OF quick information: News
papers falling all around US thick a:
leaves in a September equinoctial. New
three days old rancid and stale. We Sc,
the whole world twice a d~ay-through tn,
newspaper at the breakfast table ant
through the newspaper at the teatable
with m extra" here and there between.
Blessings of gospel proclamation: D,
you not know that nearly all the mission
airy societies have been born within
hundred years and nearly all the Bibl
societies and nearly all the great philan
thropic movements? Christianity is Of
the march. while infdelity is dwindlini
into imbecility. While infdelity is thu
dwindling the wheel Of Christianity j
making about a thousand revolutions in
minute. All the copies Of Shakespear
and Tennyson and Disraeli and of an
ten Of the most popular writers Of the da
less in number than the copies Of the B
bic going out from our printing presse:
A few years ago in six weeks more tina