:

On Monday evening, May 5th, the annual meeting of the society will be held in the same place, when Mr. Sheriff Hunter has kindly engaged to preside. The directors propose that the pulpit should be occupied by ministers of various denominations in the morning and evening of the sabbath, and by the missionaries in the afternoon and on week evenings. To these solemn services the committee look forward with anxiety, and yet with hope. Their ardent desire is to promote, in every possible way, the moral and spiritual improvement of seamen. They believe that the possession of a place of worship, especially devoted to the use of seamen, was essential to the completeness of their arrangements and now that that object has been secured, they trust to the generous support of the Christian public, to aid them in carrying out their plans, and to sustain them in their enlarged operations. Their review of the past is encouraging. At Bell Wharf, many of the sons of the ocean were savingly converted to God; and during the year now closed, the arrangements entered into with the pastors and deacons of Ebenezer chapel fully realized all their expectations; but to the future they look with hopes brighter, and still more cheering. There are few societies which have been the instruments of more direct spiritual good than the British and Foreign Sailors' Society. The pages of our magazine will necessarily convey but a partial view of these results. Nor can they ever be fully known in this world. We must await the disclosures of that day, when the sea shall give up its dead, and when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, to ascertain the full amount of good effected through its instrumentality. But whatever moral influence has been brought to bear upon the sailor through this society, whatever change has been effected in the whole character of our maritime population, only so much has been accomplished as should stimulate and encourage us to more vigorous exertion, and to more entire devotedness to the cause. The motto of the society must henceforth be, "Thank God and take courage."

DEATH AT SEA.

Death is at all times solemn, but never so much as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea, and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event and a difficulty in realizing it, which gives to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore-you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared for the event.-There is always something which helps you to realize

it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you-at your side-you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then too, at sea-to use a homely but expressive phrase-you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like loosing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night. watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit has made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. The oath and the loud laugh are gone.

There are more quietness and seriousness. The officers are more watchful, and the crew

He

go more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude eulogy-" Well, poor George is gone! His cruise is up soon! knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions are unfixed and at loose ends. They say," God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond the common phrase, which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will excuse them hereafter," To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!"Two years before the Mast.

THE SORROWING MOTHER.

MR. EDITOR,-Engaged in a most benevolent enterprise, and anxious to alleviate sorrow, permit me to ask your interference and sympathy, in directing the attention of Christians to the feelings of those persons on the land, whose friends are missing on the ocean. There are usually many such individuals in almost every port on our coast, who but recently bade adieu to their friends, full of hope that at the expiration of a few weeks or months they would return; but though they have gazed long for the expected bark, and have prayed and wept many briny tears, their prayers and tears have mingled with the hum and waves of the beach, and their loved ones have not appeared.

The mourner may be a parent, whose son went to sea as a prodigal from home, or as a darling to gain a needed support; or she may be a wife, surrounded by children, who, with herself, are friendless without the absent. None but those who have felt them can sympathise with the emotions of such mourners. Their feelings seem to alternate between hope and despair, fancy always brightening the one or darkening the other. Hope says to the mother, "Your son will come, he is only delayed by adverse winds;" and fancy adds, "there he is; that is his step upon the floor; that is his voice you hear; he is come; your son lives." But the mother is deceived, the

voice and step were a stranger's; and learning this, hope is blotted out by despair; which tells her bleeding heart, "You have given your son the last kiss ;" and fancy adds, "he died upon the wreck, after he had looked, with cannibal eyes, upon his mate, and gnashed his teeth in phrenzy, naming his mother to the tempest." Thus torn with emotions, the mother may go to her closet; and having poured her prayer into the ear of Him who seeth in secret, she many leave it with calm resignation to the divine will, confident that God will supply a staff for her in declining years, which she had hoped to find in her son, and willing that his lifeless remains should repose amid coral and sea-weed, in the quiet bosom of the great deep, until the union of the blessed in heaven.

But this is not all. The mother may suffer this same transition of feelings, this same agonizing struggle and conflict of intense emotions, every hour of the day, and the long and lonely night, during many months, and perhaps years. She may seem like one who embraces and then yields up to uncertain death a darling offspring, each successive hour of the day through many passing months. Is she not an object of sympathy?

There are hundreds now thus tossed with adverse sorrows; and let me ask, through your paper, while they pray that the sea may be converted, that Christians remember those on the land, whose friends are missing on the ocean.

DELTA.

Domestic & Foreign Entelligence.

ISLINGTON AUXILIARY TO THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SAILORS' SOCIETY.

THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT.

THE Eleventh Anniversary of the above Auxiliary was held in Union Chapel, on Thursday Evening, the 10th of April, 1845, JOHN HOOPER, Esq. in the Chair. Rev. H. ALLEN prayed. The following Report was read :—

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths, their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet, so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men." Thus eloquently do the Holy Scriptures describe the scenes of the ocean, the "perils by the sea, ," and the selfishness of the human heart, which, "in trouble, pours out a prayer," but, "delivered," neglects to “glorify" God.

What a picture of the mariner! What a picture of man! Where is the pious sea-faring writer, though having been tossed in the most tumultuous bay, and having rounded every stormy cape, ploughed every channel, traversed every ocean, and had his "ship broken by the east wind," who could embody his observations in language equally appropriate, equally emphatic? The Hebrew psalmist "spake by the Spirit." Few men see more of “the works of the Lord," or are more manifestly dependant upon his protection than the sailor; and until now, where have there been men more ignorant of his word, or more destitute of his fear? They never prayed but in a storm and then it was "the prayer of the wicked," and "an abomination to the Lord." Nay, inured to hardship, "in deaths oft," and reckless of life, even "the windy storm and tempest" have failed to extort a cry.

But man is fallen, and the works of creation and of providence are not sufficient to teach him "the true God and eternal life;" else we must have found those "that go down to the sea in ships," among the best instructed and most pious of our race; instead of which the name of “sailor" has long been like that of “publican”— synonyme of depravity. The mariner needs the gospel; that word which God has 'magnified above all his name." The most imposing exhibitions of God in nature will leave the heart unsubdued; but "I, if I be lifted up," says the Saviour, “will draw all men unto me." The sea coasts must be visited by the friend of sinners. "Leaving Nazareth," the inland village, he must come and dwell at Capernaum, in the borders of Zabulon and Nepthalim; that it may be fulfilled which is spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, “The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nepthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the gentiles. The people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." Matt. iv. 13—16.

We have reproached the sailor, forgetting his destitution of the means of grace, and the snares which are laid for his feet. What sabbath has the crew of many a merchantman, from the captain to the cabin boy? And "where is the place of their rest?" To what Mount Zion could these tribes repair? Their ascent has only been to the brow of the billow: their best sermon, the "rushing mighty wind;" but that has given no "certain sound:" for prayers they have heard only imprecations of vengeance, and for psalms the song of the drunkard! How much better than the poor wicked sailor should we have been, had no better sabbath, no holier associations, invited us to "search and try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord!" Yet the sailor is often in circumstances more favorable to reflection and piety when "in the midst of the sea" than when in port or on land. There, no 66 long room," no gin palace, no brothel, invites his wayward footsteps: no crimps beset his tracks. He may have no means of grace; but his temptations are less. There, though both exposed to temporal and spiritual perils, he cannot be the victim of those unprincipled beings who, under the guise of friendship, effect the plunder of his property, the destruction of his health, and the ruin of his soul.

And is it not unworthy of us that, instead of an asylum for the British tar, where his person and his property would be secure, instead of a house of prayer to which, all sailor as he is, he may go and hear words whereby he may be saved, there is scarcely an avenue leading from any of our principal sea ports over which might not be written for the warning of the open-hearted and unsuspecting seaman, "This is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." London, the very Jerusalem of modern Palestine, that " 'place of broad rivers and streams which gallant

ships pass by," has never had an appropriate temple for the 50,000 sailors which people her pool and her docks. The income of the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, which, though not the only, is certainly the principal means of supplying the sailors' spiritual wants, did not realise an income last year of more than £1900; whilst its liabilities, at the close of the year, amounted to upwards of £1000. The constitution of the Society is most unsectarian: its object is the welfare of the mariner for time and eternity; its agents humble and devoted men; its expenditure has been investigated with a rigid regard to economy:-why, then, should this Bethlehem be the "least among the thousands of Israel?" Must there not be something defective in that zeal which commiserates the Asiatic as he perishes on the plains of Hindostan, and overlooks him when he is a Lascar famishing upon our own coast? Which can purchase ships for the islands of the distant Pacific, and leave seamen from all nations, and myriads of our own sons, within our reach, uninstructed and unsaved? And these men "perish not alone in their iniquity." To what but the perfidy and profligacy of our seamen can we ascribe the deaths of the beloved Williams and Harris, and the Samoan teachers, in the isle of Pines ? Our ungodly sailors propagate death on the entire coasts of both hemispheres ! We dwell not upon their privations, their perils, their age averaging forty-five years; and for every sixteen who die, eleven die by or in wrecks, "going down quick :" these are affecting facts: we merely advert to the lower considerations of economy and expediency: for we have no resources to squander; and we assert that these considerations alone demand of us that we save and help our missionaries, and promote the great work of our world's evangelisation, by paying more regard to our noble but abandoned tars, now the great stumbling-blocks in the way of the people, but hereafter, when turned to the Lord, the courageous and warm-hearted heralds of the cross, like Peter, Andrew, and John, "making manifest the savour of Christ in every place."

The Committee of the Islington Auxiliary have, however, much pleasure in reporting that, notwithstanding the many appeals made to their constituents for kindred institutions, the sailors' cause continues to receive an undiminished support; the receipts of the past year amounting to £132. 17s. 8d. Sundry local expenses have been incurred, amounting to £3. 2s. 4d., leaving a balance of £129. 15s. 4d., which has been paid in to the Parent Society, making the total contributed by this auxiliary, since its formation in 1834, £1120. 16s. 1d. The Committee are, however, so impressed with the importance of the object, and with the capabilities of this highly privileged vicinity, that they would respectfully urge an addition to their list of annual subscribers; and earnestly submit to the consideration of the pastors of our several churches, whether one annual sermon might not be preached on behalf of the Society. If only the dissenting churches would consent to such an arrangement, the sermon might be preached on the sabbath preceding the public meeting, and would only come to any one chapel once in six or seven years. The Committee have only further to state that, in consequence of advanced age and growing infirmities, WILLIAM BROWNLOW, Esq., who has so kindly discharged the duties of treasurer to this auxiliary from the time of its formation, and has, in other ways, proved a generous friend to the cause, has felt it his duty to resign. With feelings of much respect and gratitude for his past services, the Committee have accepted the resignation. They have to report, with much satisfaction to themselves, and they doubt not to the Auxiliary in general, that THOMAS WONTNER, Esq., of Barnsbury Park, has consented to fill the vacant office.