from his brow? beloved one? If you could, would you call back the O ye who weep and ye who have wept, ye who are far from God and ye who are brought nigh, come and learn from him the sweet supports of his truth and grace in the hour of trial, and the precious lessons which his Spirit inculcates in the school of affliction. Sorrow is the sad heritage of sin. Let it soften your heart and render it more susceptible to the influences of heavenly grace. Bow under these strokes of the rod, and then lift your eyes to the hills whence cometh your help. Mourning friends, though "you walk in the midst of trouble, God will revive you. Though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies." These exhausting days and wearisome nights will soon be over. The aching head, the throbbing heart will ere long be at rest. God's voice to you is, "For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee; in a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer." "The path of sorrow, and that path alone, A SAILOR'S EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE. IN the spring of the year 1679, an English merchantvessel, called the "Thomas and Ann," sailed from a French port for the island of Newfoundland. A fair wind carried her to within a hundred miles of her destination, when she met with a good deal of loose ice floating about; but as this offered very little resistance to the ship's progress, she stood on till she approached the banks. Here the ice became more abundant, and was in large compact masses. The weather, however, was clear, and as a steady breeze was blowing from the north-northwest, the vessel stood to the westward, hoping to sight the land before night. As they proceeded they found that they were beset with thousands of floating islands of ice. In this dangerous position of the ship, the wind died away until at sunset it was nearly a calm, and the sea tossed the ship and ice about in alarming proximity. The wind seemed as if it had wafted the ship into the midst of danger and there left her, for the calm so clipped her wings that she was as helpless as a log upon the heaving sea. About ten o'clock at night, a fog began to envelop them, which increased to such a degree that they could not see the ship's length ahead. At the same time the wind freshened to a brisk gale, driving the ship rapidly through the water, at the hazard of being dashed against the ice, which could no longer be seen through the fog. All that could be done was to shorten sail, and to keep a good look out; and, indeed, the danger was so imminent that a sense of it made every man do his utmost to save the ship upon which his life depended. What follows shall be told in the words of the original narrator, one of the few survivors, all the rest having perished. The narrative will be found in the writings of the devout Flavel, who quotes the incident to prove the reality of a superintending providence. way. In this state of painful anxiety, we made our dubious For about an hour all was still, for the expectation of a fatal collision kept every tongue silent, but suddenly a loud, startling cry of ice on the weather-bow' was heard from the look-out forward. 'Back the mainyard!' roared the captain, as he sprang aft to let fly the lee braces; but it was too late; a shock that threw the men flat on the deck struck the ship on the bow just as she fell to the sea, and the mountain of ice ground along her side fore and aft. "So soon as we had recovered our feet, the carpenter and some others hurried below to ascertain what damage we had received. In a few minutes the men from below rushed upon deck, with the sentence of death written upon their pale faces, and distractedly crying that the water was gaining fast upon us. It is impossible to describe the consternation caused by this announcement; and as we felt the ship settling down under our feet, despair seized many a heart; but the voice of the captain acted like a charm upon the twenty men, who were all more or less at their wit's end: 'We are sinking, lads,' he said, 'and if we wish to see our wives and little ones again, we must work with a will; danger is the time to show what stuff a man's made of: out with the yawl, my brave men, and clear the long boat, and hoist her out in a brace of strokes. Courage, men! remember we are Englishmen!' The night was dark, and the rough sea covered with masses of ice, and it naturally crossed my mind, what expectation could be entertained for the safety of fragile boats when one blow had crushed the stout ship that was foundering under us? In a few minutes the Norway yawl was alongside, and two men jumped into her to veer her under the quarter, whilst the rest were straining every nerve in hoisting out the long boat. This boat was our great hope, and in her were thrown, hastily, provisions, and such things as were useful and near at hand; but no sooner was she clear of the tackles, and the men got into her, which was easy to do, for the ship had sunk so fast that her deck was almost even with the boat's gunwale, than she began to fill with water, and we who were in her found ourselves going down as fast as the ship. The mate, in the meantime, fearing that the ship would sink before the long boat was clear of her, got into the yawl, which was still under the ship's quarter with the two men in her, and shoved off from the sinking ship lest he should be sucked down with her. The captain and four men, seeing the long boat sinking, and the yawl a good cable's length from the ship, determined to remain and share the fate of the ship, rather than attempt to prolong life by trying to reach the yawl. Possibly the calm contemplation of death, which he had all along evinced, became a settled resolve to die at his post on the ship's deck, now that he had done all he could to save his crew, and saw further struggle useless; at all events, there he stood, with four of his best men near him, awaiting the final lurch of the old ship, as calmly and quietly as if death were to him a messenger of peace. "There were thirteen of us in the long boat, and as the water was already over the thwarts, we passionately called to the three men in the yawl to hasten and save us. They had two oars with them, and when they heard our cries they made all haste to come to us, although they could not but know how much they increased their own danger by mingling with our extremity. It pleased God our long boat kept afloat till the bow of the yawl touched her stern, when the whole thirteen of us rushed at once to get into her, and our combined weight pressing the stern of the long boat under water, she immediately went down from under us, carrying three of our number with her; of the remaining ten, four leapt into the yawl, and the other six, of whom I was one, hung on to her until the friendly hands of our compassionate shipmates hauled us on board one after the other. "Let us pause for a moment to trace the providence of God in these events so far: in the first place, the disasters were brought upon us solely by following the devices of our own hearts, without reference to God; had we sought the Lord for guidance when we first met the loose ice, he might have given us wisdom to understand that our quick run out had brought us into the latitude of ice too early in the season, and then we might have hauled off for a few days till the ice had dispersed: but the covetous desire to be first in the market urged us forward into these perils. "Then, surely, it was the Lord who inclined the hearts of those three men in the yawl to hazard their own lives by coming to our rescue; if they had only thought of that first law of nature, 'Self-preservation,' they would never have come near us, but the mercy of God towards us moved their hearts, and they could not leave us to perish. Again, it was the providence of God that so small a boat did not capsize with six men hanging on the upper stroke; and certain it is, had our number been increased instead of diminished, by the three poor fellows who went down with the long boat, the yawl must have been swamped, for with thirteen of us she was as deep as she could swim; and when we consider the darkness of the night and the excitement of men struggling in a heavy sea for their lives, it seems little less than a miracle that the boat was steadied to receive so many persons. I have always felt, when looking back upon the scenes of that fearful night, that God glorified his mercy in a wonderful manner when he suffered our ship and long boat to be destroyed, and made use of so improbable a means as the little yawl to rescue us. "To return to my story. There we were, thirteen men huddled close together in a small boat that could just barely contain us, without a compass to guide us, a mast or sail to propel us, or food to sustain us, and many of us wet through and in extremity of cold. In this miserable state we got the boat head to wind, to meet the seas, and kept her as steady as we could with the two oars; but the wind increased, and the surging sea threatened to swamp us every minute; all we could hope for was a little respite to enable us to pray for mercy before we followed our eight shipmates to a watery grave. None but those who have been in similar positions, where the very jaws of death seem ready to close upon them, can comprehend the almost impossibility of gathering the thoughts for vital prayer. The mind is so absorbed by the expectation of immediate violent death, that if the voice finds utterance at all, it merely echoes the terrors of the soul in short, ejaculatory, and often incoherent words, In our case, every sea that struck us seemed to bear our death-warrant; and, though by God's mercy, no one sea broke fully into us, yet we shipped so much water as to keep us fully employed baling it out with our shoes and hats; and therefore, judging from my own feelings, I may fear that not one of us was looking death in the face with a calm and holy faith, which enabled Paul to exclaim, To me to die is gain.' That night's experience taught me that we must be prepared for death when we are in perfect health and safety, or we shall not be able to welcome him when his actual presence shall proclaim, Thy soul is required of thee.' "Hour after hour passed away, and at length the morning dawned upon our misery. How anxiously we cast our eyes around, and gazed hopelessly at each other when no sign of land met our view. It was still blowing hard, with an ugly sea, so we strove to get under the lee of a mountain of ice; but we shipped more water than before, whilst the cold was intense, so we pulled out to the open sea, and what with half-frozen limbs and chattering teeth, we were as pitiable a crew as ever the dawn of day beheld. Now it was that we began to examine our store, and all we could muster was five pints of brandy, and six biscuits soaked with salt water. These amongst thirteen hungry men were like the poor widow's handful of meal and cruse of oil, which she and her son were about to make a last meal upon before they died.* Every one received one morsel of the wet bread, and then we began to discuss how to portion out the brandy. We had no measure or vessel to drink from, and we dare not trust the firkin to any man's mouth. At length, in searching his pockets, one man found the bowl of a tobacco-pipe, which, though it was small and not very cleanly, we gladly used to divide the spirit equally, and it was wonderful what comfort that drop of brandy imparted. About noon the wind lulled, and towards night it was nearly calm; but as we had seen neither sun nor stars, we could form no notion in which direction to proceed, and merely pulled about for exercise. And thus we passed another night, thankful that the cutting wind had ceased and the sea had abated." (To be concluded in our next.) |