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SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A NAVAL OFFICER.

and the future. The sentry had the strictest orders not only not to speak to the culprits himself, but on no account to allow any one to converse with them.

When an offence has been committed which wounds the conscience, and brings upon the offender the contempt of his fellow-creatures, nothing can ease the agony it occasions but a recurrence to some palliative that will sear and harden; the drunkard rushes to his cups, and the licentious to more unlimited indulgence in vice; so that nothing can be more harrowing, and, therefore, more dreadful to a man whose conscience is alarmed, than to have nothing to do but to dwell upon the inward pain which his terrified soul experiences.

In this state of imprisonment these unfortunate criminals remained for several weeks, until orders were received for the ship to return to Plymouth, at which place a court-martial was to be assembled for their trial.

The sighing of these prisoners, as, bound in fetters of iron, they deplored the dreadful and ignominious situation they were placed in, was great. Smith's heart began to relent; he thought upon his home, his relatives, his many lessons from affectionate parents and distant friends, and, broken-hearted, he looked around for some gleam of hope. Above all, he reflected upon the doom which so early awaited him, and the certainty of his soon having to give an account at the tribunal of the great God, as well at the tribunal of an earthly judge.

The chaplain of the ship had received his appointment from persons who knew nothing of his qualification for the solemn office which he was required to fill, and, like too many of the naval chaplains in those days, was himself living without God, and therefore was wholly unfit to aid a poor sinner in his preparation for another world.

There was in that Smith had heardJacobs was a blue

But God is not confined to means devised by human wisdom; he selects his instruments from what class he pleases, and qualifies them himself by divine grace and the gift of his Holy Spirit to carry out his merciful designs. ship a poor disciple of the Lord Jesus, the boatswain's yeoman. for it was matter of common report, and frequent banter-that light, and he knew that he was stigmatised as a psalm-singing Methodist; but he had never spoken to him, and therefore considered that a stranger, and in his degraded situation, even a poor persecuted psalm-singer, would have nothing to say to him.

For days and nights did Smith lie down in agony, his sins rising in awful array against him, and the adversary of souls accusing him, till at last all hope seemed to forsake him, and he yielded to unmitigated despondency. He refused food, spent hours in weeping, and quite disturbed the partners in his crime by his continued distress. At last he begged the sentry to urge his application to the captain, that he might be permitted to see and converse with Jacobs.

The captain, fully aware that nothing could deliver the poor criminal from an early death, desired the chaplain to go to him. Obedient to the command, the chaplain went with his prayer-book, and offered to read some prayers to him, although he felt himself much degraded by the order given by the captain. In vain was the offer made; there were no prayers there that suited him, or they were read in a tone and manner that failed to affect him. He wanted something more to relieve his oppressed mind than could be afforded by formal religion. A golden thread will not do for a man that is drowning; a rough hemp rope is the thing for saving life.

At last permission was given, and the wish of Smith was announced to Jacobs by

the master-at-arms, who, with an oath, desired Jacobs to go and see if he could get the devil out of Smith. Jacobs was a man of prayer, and knew that nothing good could be accomplished without that wisdom which cometh from above being realized; he therefore hastened into the boatswain's store-room, and made known his request unto God. He prayed that he might receive such assistance as would render him a blessing to the agonized creature who sought his spiritual help.

With his Bible in his hand, he hastened to the cock-pit, and rejoiced that God in his abundant mercy had conferred such an honour upon him as to make him a messenger of mercy to the guilty dying wretch before him. But it was an office of great responsibility, and therefore his mind was solemnized by the thought that he might impart a peace not sanctioned by the gospel; lest he might cry peace! peace! where there might be no peace.

With a kindly shake of the hand, and an expression of pity and sympathy did Jacobs enter upon this work of faith and labour of love. There were 600 persons in the vessel to which he belonged, and of these, the whole, excepting this one poor humble Samaritan, poured their curses upon the head of this wretched outcast, whose crime had sealed his fate, and who soon, in the presence of assembled multitudes, would expiate his guilt by the most ignominious death.

What mercy then does the Christian show to those who have offended! Himself a monument of God's forbearance and compassion, he hastens to express his deep concern that others too may receive that mercy he has found.

THE SAILOR'S RETURN.

(From the Journal of a Scottish Minister.)

We were just turning the corner of a lane to regain the high road, when a woman from a cottage in an adjoining field came running to intercept us. There was in her look a wildness bordering on distraction; but it was evidently of no painful kind. She seemed like one not recovered from the first shock of some delightful surprise, too much for the frail fabric of mortality to bear without tottering to its very foundation. The minister checked his horse, whose bridle she grasped convulsively, panting, partly from fatigue and more from emotion, endeavouring, but vainly, to give utterance to the tidings with which her bosom laboured. Twice she looked up, shook her head, and was silent; then, with a strong effort faltered out, "He's come back; the Lord be praised for it." "Who is come back, Jenny ?" said the pastor, in the deepest tone of sympathy: "is it little Andrew ye mean?" "Andrew!" re

echoed the matron, with an expression of contempt which, at any other time, this favourite grandchild would have been very far from calling forth, "Andrew! Andrew's father, I mean-my ain first-born son; I mean Jamie, that I wore mournings for till they would wear nae longer, and thought lying fifty fathoms down in solid ice, in yon wild place, Greenland, or torn to pieces wi' savage bears, like the mocking bears in Scripture. He's yonder !" said she, wildly pointing to the house; "he's yonder living, and living like; and o'gin ye wad come and maybe speak a word in season to us, we might be better able to praise the Lord, as his due."

We turned our horses' heads and followed her, as she ran, or rather flew, towards the cottage, with the instinct of some animal long separated from its offspring. The little boy before mentioned ran out to hold our horses, and whispered, as the minister stopped to stroke his head, “Daddy's come hame frae the sea.”

The scene within the cottage baffles description. The old mother, exhausted with her exertion, had sunk down beside her son on the edge of the bed on which he was sitting, where his blind and bed-ridden father lay, and clasped his withered hands in speechless prayer. His lips continued to move, unconscious of his presence, and ever and anon he stretched out a feeble arm to ascertain the actual vicinity of his longmourned son. On a low stool, before the once gay and handsome, but now frostnipt and hunger-worn mariner, sat his young wife, her hand firmly clasped in his, her fixed eye riveted on his countenance, giving no other sign of life than a convulsive pressure of the former, or a big drop descending wiped from the latter; while her unemployed hand was plucking, quite mechanically, the bandage of widowhood from her duffle cloak, which (having just reached home as her husband knocked at her father's door) was yet lying across her knee.

The poor sailor gazed on all around him with somewhat of a bewildered air, but most of all upon a rosy creature between his knees, of about a year and a half old, born just after his departure, and who had only learned the sad word “daddy,” from the childish prattle of his elder brother, Andrew, and his sisters. Of these, one had been summoned, wild and bare-legged, from the herding; the other, meek and modest from the village school. The former, idle and untractable, half shrunk in the fear of her returned parent's well-remembered strictness; the other, too young not to have forgotten his person, only wondered whether this was the father in heaven of whom she had heard so often. She did not think it could be so, for there was no grief nor trouble there, and this father looked as if he had seen much of both.

Such was the group, to whose emotions, almost too much for human nature, our entrance gave a turn. "Jamie," said the good pastor, gently pressing the stillunited hands of the mariner and his Annie, "you are welcome back from the gates of death and the perils of the deep. Well is it said, that they who go down to the sea in ships see more of the wonders of the Lord than any other men; but it is not from storm and tempest alone that you have been delivered-cold and famine, want and nakedness, wild beasts to devour, and darkness to dismay-these have been around your dreary path, but He that was with you was mightier than all that was against you; and you are returned, a living man, to tell the wondrous tale. Let us praise the Lord, my friends, for his goodness and his wonderful works to the children of men." We all knelt down and joined in the brief but fervent prayer that followed. The stranger's heartfelt sigh of sympathy mingled with the pastor's pious orisons, with the feeble accents of decrepitude, the lips of wondering childhood, the soul-felt piety of rescued manhood, and the deep, unutterable gratitude of a wife and mother's heart.

For such high-wrought emotions, prayer is the only adequate channel. They found vent in it, and were calm and subdued to the level of ordinary utterance. The minister kindly addressed Jamie, and drew forth, by his judicious questions, the leading features of that marvellous history of peril and privations endured by the crew of a Greenland ship detained a winter in the ice, with which all are now familiar, but of which a Parry or a Franklin can alone appreciate the horrors. They were related with a simplicity that did them ample justice.

"I never despaired, sir," said the hardy Scotchman; "we were young and stout. Providence, aye, when at the worst, did us good turn, and this kept up our hearts. We had mostly a' wives and mothers at hame, and kent that prayers wadna be wanting for our safety; and little as men may think o'them on land, or even at sea on a prosperous voyage, a winter at the pole makes prayers precious. We had little to do but sleep; and oh, the nights were lang. I was a great dreamer; and-ye mauna be angry, sir (turning to the minister), the seeing Annie and the bairns amaist ilka time I lay down, and a' braw and buskit, did mair to keep up my hopes than a' the rest; I never could see wee Jonnie though," said he, smiling and kissing the child on his knee; "I saw a cradle well enough, but the face o' the bit creature in't I never could mak' out, and it vexed me; and whiles I thought my babie was dead, and whiles I feared it had never been born; but God be praised he's here, and no unlike myself neither." I shook the weather-beaten sailor warmly by the hand, and, begging leave to come and hear more of his history at a future season, followed the minister to the door. "Andrew," said he, giving the little patient equerry a bright new sixpence, "tell your daddy I gave you this for being a dutiful son to your mother when he was at sea." The child's eye glistened as he ran to execute the welcome command, and we rode off, our hearts too full for much communication.

THE SAILOR AND THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

At a public meeting in London some short time since, the Rev. R. Knill narrated the following facts :

"God never shines upon indolence; but if we put forth the feeblest effort to glorify Him, He will shine upon us, and make us shine. You have two thousand Sunday-school teachers; whom shall we dismiss? Sunday-school teachers are some of the most interesting people in the world. They take hold of infant minds, and direct little children to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. What blessedness has been connected with our Sunday-schools! I was a Sundayschool teacher, and I look back to those days as amongst the finest and the happicst of my life. I was anxious that the children should be converted. I was a young disciple when I began to be a Sunday-school teacher; and it is a fine thing when youthful piety is devoted to teaching. Youthful piety fills the heart with love to and zeal for God. I did not see the fruit of my exertions at the time, but after I had been abroad twenty-three years, I was preaching in London. At the close of the service, a man, dressed as a sailor, came into the vestry and spoke to me. His face was burnt with the beams of the sun, and his cheeks were weather beaten with the storm. Do you not know me?' 'No; I never saw you, to my knowledge.' 'I was one of the boys in your Sunday-school.' 'Oh! you have grown a great deal since that- what was your name?' He told me. I remarked, 'There were two brothers; one was Sammy, and one was Johnny.' 'I am Johnny.' 'I am glad to see you : what is your occupation?' 'I am occupied in the seafaring life. I am captain of a vessel, and captain of my own vessel.'Well, captain, I am glad to see you. How are you going on with regard to your voyage to eternity?' The tears gushed from his eyes, and he said, 'I hope I am going on well. carry a Bethel flag with me, and

when we come to a strange port, I hoist it, to see if there are any praying sailors there; and if so, we have a bit of a prayer-meeting, and sometimes I say a word or two to them.' I inquired, Where did that good work begin?' 'I can trace up my religion to the school.' It was the interrogatory system, and I mean to keep it. 'Do you know of any other boys that were in the class?' 'Yes two; one is a Baptist, and the other a Churchman. We have been comparing log-books, and we find we can trace up all our views of religion to the Sunday-school.'"'

THE LANDSMAN PRAYING FOR THE SAILOR.

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”—JAMES v. 16. ́ The following providential escape from shipwreck was related to a Bethel friend by a sea-captain. He was on a voyage from America to England when it occurred.

A few days previous to his reaching his destined haven he fell in with a severe and destructive storm; and although death and destruction stood before him, yet he felt unmoved, and fearlessly dared the worst, for his heart was hard as the rocks he was fast approaching. The vessel, after receiving considerable damage, was driven upon a reef of rocks on the northern coast of Scotland. Himself and most of the crew reached the shore in a boat; he saved his papers and some clothes: it was in the afternoon of the day; the coast was rocky and desolate, and he had to walk a considerable distance before he came to a dwelling. This was a large farm house; he entered, and related his misfortune and situation; the kind host and his wife made every arrangement for his accommodation, until he could forward a letter, and receive a return from his agent or consignee. Notwithstanding he was much exhausted with fatigue and anxiety, he was induced, by the kind attention of these friends, and their intelligent conversation, to sit and converse during the evening.

After a plain but welcome repast, preparations were made for all hands to retire to rest, when, on a signal given, the domestics entered the room : the worthy farmer, turning to me, said, " Captain, I invariably make it my custom, before retiring to sleep, to call my domestics and family around me, read to them a chapter from the Old or New Testament, and bow our knees in prayer to God; you, in the providence of God, being our inmate, will, I hope, feel no objection to unite with us, particularly now, as you must feel grateful to Him who has preserved your life in the storm.” "As a matter of courtesy," said the captain," I answered that I would wait during the religious duties he engaged in, but I candidly confess I never troubled my head about these matters." He looked at me when saying this, and sighed something within me felt that sigh: the good man read from the Scriptures, and, on closing the book, the whole of the establishment bowed down on their knees. Observing all upon their knees but myself, I had some conflict within me, whether I should kneel or keep my seat: however, I followed the example before me, and knelt down.

The farmer began, in the most fervent and solemn manner, to return thanks to the God of providence for the blessings of the past day; he then implored the pardon of all their sins, &c.; this I considered very well; but he did not stop here: after particularizing his family, he, in the most affectionate language and manner, offered up