Help the Seaman

We read, “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.”

I. Consider the number of the dead who are in the sea. Both the small and the great are there. From remote ages it has been the receptacle of mortal bodies. Keflect on the whole generation which sank like lead in the mighty waters, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floodgates of heaven were opened, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered; and every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground. These millions shall yet be given up. The early navigation of the renewed earth did but fill the devouring chasm of seas and oceans. K the commerce of that day was less adventurous and large, it was more full of peril. “Without our compass or our science, the daring sailors of olden time threw away their lives more lavishly. The Roman poet had reason to exclaim at the temerity of him who first trusted himself to a perishable plank. The ships of Tarshish went down by thousands. The early Phoenician navigators added hosts of corpses to the ocean cemetery.

The Mediterranean, or Great Sea, was the chief field of ancient seamanship, and its waters were an ever-gaping sepulchre. Age after age beheld a large portion of mankind consigned to these depths. Dreadful as it is to be suffocated in the tempestuous waves, no single mode of death has had so many triumphs. To this must be added the vast fleets of warring nations, which were dashed together in battles, and driven asunder by storms; as in the conflict between Xerxes and the Grreeks, in which hundreds of vessels were destroyed. But it is to modern navigation and commerce that the destructive element has looked for its most numerous victims. The seamen of the world of Christian nations are reckoned at more than two millions. The perils of human life are made the subject of accurate calculation; and those who are familiar with life-annuities know that, while ship-masters are allowed to insure at a double rate, common seamen are not allowed to insure at all. This significant fact affords a glimpse of the fatality which is attributed to the calling. Some have believed that the majority of sea-faring men die upon the waters. Scarcely a day passes without its loss; and our shipping-lists are records of disaster. It is not merely by dozens, or by scores, but sometimes by hundreds, that the remains are swallowed up; as when some lordly Indiaman goes down in the mid ocean. Perhaps this moment witnesses, amidst darkness and tumult, the cry of expiring agony. Thus, year after year, and century after century, the ocean has been receiving its tribute of corpses by thousands and by millions, until the great basins of the earth have become the receptacles of a large portion of those who have lived. The consideration of their nmnher then should awaken our interest in those who go down to the sea in ships; for each of the dead has an immortal destiny, and every such soul cries to us to be in earnest, in expectation of that day when the sea shall give up the dead which are in it. It will give them up, in overwhelming magnitude of array, at the inevitable summons.

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11. Consider the manner of death which befalls those who are in the sea.

Those corpses, ancient or recent, floating or at rest, whole or dismembered, and even dissolved to atoms, are now motionless. Bnt they each went down with a separate gasp and struggle. Each wrestled with the gigantic element; each cried out in the impotent shriek for help. It is not to appall the imagination that this harrowing picture is presented. It is to call on you for Christian provision against such a death. Benevolence labors, in Gospel lands, to prepare men for the awfal hour of departure, even though hoping it may take place in the arms of friends, upon beds of ease, perhaps with lingering succession of warnings. And shall we have no kind forecast for the hour when the mariner is summoned, all at once, to his cold death-struggle? For here is death in a form which demands great grace for its support. Against such terrors, there should be the provision of unusual faith and trust. No principles of religion can be too strong for a shock so tremendous. The call is usually sudden. It is alarming. It comes amidst confusion, uproar, hunied exertion, desperate struggles for safety. K a multitude suJBfer together their faces do but reflect blackness on each, other, and society here affords no solace. Who has not read of the frenzy of such an hour, or (horrible to relate) of the rush of dying men, in the mania of hopelessness, to Ijie spirit-room? If on the other hand, the solitary wretch, exhausted and no longer clinging to his plank, clenches his powerless hands and sinks into his dark, cold, lonely depths, he needs not less the inward breathing of hope in Christ, when far from every voice, of mother, sister, or pastor, that ever whispered to him of salvation. Who in such a juncture can hope that the careless and it may be profligate one shall be able to gather his broken thoughts sufficiently to regard the object of faith? It is too late in such a moment of horror to collect the fragments of a neglected or forgotten creed. We speak often of the doubtfulness of such repentance as occurs on a death-led; but what shall we say of a departure in the paroxysms of the strangling tempestuous sea! The fear, the delirium, the pain, of this- crisis may even obliterate every thought of mercy. Let me then, by all the dreadful pangs that hover over the manner of this death, beseech you to lose no time in seeking to prepare for “heaven him who may be thus summoned. For how unspeakably glorious the privilege of him, who, howsoever sudden his last alarm, can serenely, even when all human hope is gone, fold his arms, and raise his dying eyes, and from amidst the very gulf exclaim: “I know whom I have believed — 0 death! where is thy sting? 0 SEA I where is thy victory?” Among converted seamen there have been many such. Their number, we trust, is daily increasing, by means of Christian exertions. Such we doubt not are in our port. Nay, such may be among the readers of this page. And it is to provide against a trial so common, and yet so fearful, that our efforts should be directed. For when the sea shall give up its dead, the difference will be marked, between those who have been driven away in their wickedness, by the storm that wrecked their hopes, and those who have had hope in their death; even though that death was in Jjie surges of seeming destruction. Let the manner of this death, conjoined with its innumerable subjects, call you to new exertions for the soul of the mariner.

m. Consider the CHARACTER of those who become the dead of the sea.

If these were all men of God, neither their number nor their mode of departure would demand our intense sympathy. However the silver cord might be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, they would have emerged in spirit from the waters of death into the joy of their Lord. But we have painful reason to believe that they are, in a vast proportion, unacquainted with these hopes: and “the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” Let us praise God that there are deHghtful exceptions j mariners who have learned the grace of the Gospel; who have praised the Redeemer and prayed to him amidst the storms of every sea; men whose voices have joined in the praises of God’s people; and who have rallied under the most blessed of all flags, on which they have loved to read, in the language common to all saints, BETHEL, “the house of God.” Btt these are the very persons who will most readily acknowledge, in all sadness, that the majority of their brethren are of a different stamp. The character of the seaman is more marked than that of most other classes, because the influences which go to form it are more exclusive, constant, and uninterrupted. The very disposition which leads the youthful mind to seek the adventures of the sea is not unfrequently one of hazardous excitability. And no sooner has he bid adieu to his native land, than he falls under the concentrated influence of causes which, in ninety-nine out a hundred instances, mould the nature. Absence from homej for such long periods, and during the better part of life, is a potent agency. The sea has no firesides; no quiet evenings; no domestic charms; no smile of the sister, the daughter, the mother; none of the humanizing influence of the gentler sex. Man is a foe to man when these kindly agencies are wanting. I do not believe it possible for a great number of our sex to be thrown together for long periods, whether in a convent, a prison, or a ship, without some moral hardening. Seamen may be said to receive all the formative influences from one another; and this at a distance from all the varied methods of instruction which, even unobserved, are perpetually operating at home. And then, who can estimate the power of this single peculiarity in their situation — that they have no Sabbath, “When the ten thousands of Israel are going up, one day in seven, to appear before God, in the beauty of holiness, the mariner on the waste ocean, even though he be a disciple, lacks all memorial of holy time. With the greater part this sacred day has dropped out of the calendar. To measure the operation of this single cause, it would be necessary to consider all the unspeakable blessings of the Lord’s ‘day, the solemn worship, the ministry, and the sacraments. In the absence of that which is good, the human heart without grace preys on itself. Devotion needs these stated props and aids; hence divine wisdom and love has appointed them. Even private intercourse with heaven is apt to be forgotten, in the total absence of public means: which, indeed, is one of the great arguments in favor of the efforts for which I now plead. But seamen are not left in this innocent neutrality. They influence one another, and that sometimes after a fearful sort. The young sailor sometimes finds himself, on his earliest voyage, admitted to a school ef vice, with adepts and veterans for his instructors. And when he sets foot on a foreign shore, after the labors, and perhaps disasters, of a voyage — after the weariness and disgust consequent on his exposure and duress — it is no wonder that he runs riot in his brief liberty, and yields to the extreme seductions of foreign ports. “We have but to open our eyes and ears to know the mode of life adopted by sailors in our port after return

from long voyages. The avails of long labor are sometimes squandered in a night. The wolves that raven for them are on the watch, prowling for the moral prey. Hence drunkenness, gambling, revelling, and debauchery. How often do these outbreaks call for the municipal force! How often does the wronged and deluded wretch cry for justice on his destroyers! How often are our ears rent by the unusual and heaven-daring profaneness of the throng of mariners! In many foreign ports all the influences are disastrous. There is every bait to vice, while there are no aids to virtue. The sharper and the seducer are there, but no preacher of righteousness, no flag of gospelpeace. Hence it is by no means wonderful, that, with the exceptions which we delight to admit, the character of seamen, as a class, is not such as to give us comfort in the expectation of the day when the sea shall give up the dead which are in it. Multitudes have gone down to that death with all their sins upon their heads. Having lived contrary to God, and brutalized themselves hj passionate indulgence, they have sunk without hope. And oh! is there not a reason here why we should be using renewed exertions to cover the dangerous seas with Christian seamen?

lY. Consider the neglect with which the dead that are in the sea have been allowed to go down into its depths. Neglect of individuals or classes is to be measured with some reference to their importance and value. “Were the seamen who are daily perishing in the waters an idle, unprofitable, burdensome generation, we might perhaps let them drop away with less blame. But they sustain the trade of the world. Whatsoever is meant by that pregnant word, Commerce, involves the toils and dangers of thousands of mariners. To neglect them is to cast from us the very instrument by which the gains of merchandise are acquired. The useful products, and the almost necessary luxuries, which are exchanged between continents and islands, are borne on their arms. The sails that fan all climates are guided by their sinews. There is not a delicacy or an ornament of commerce, there is not a wonder of art, there is n’ot a transmarine medicine, there is not a transportation of Christian mercy, nor a visit of holy friendship and affection, which is not in some sort intrusted to the hardy seaman whom we neglect. And when he cfe, far from sight of land, he dies in the hard service of a civilization and refinement which use him, and abandon him. The soldiers of the earth are many; but we can do without them. The day, we trust, is hastening on, which shall render obsolete their trade of blood. But the sailor we can not do without. The more peace, the more commerce. The progress of every science and art tends to bring a greater throng into this highway of nations. And the Gospel itself, as it begins to expand itself more largely over the earth, will claim for itself a Christianized seamanship, to disperse the word and the ministry of God among all nations. Mariners are then indispensable; yet these are they whom we have neglected. The sin lies at the door of Christendom. The son who leaves the maternal threshold to traverse the earth, is the one who should be famished with means of life. But the Church has seen her children going abroad over all waters, and yet has done but little, and even that little but lately, for the spiritual good of the seaman. How long was it before Christian watchmen even missed the sailor from church-assemblies? - How long before means were used to furnish his sea-chest with the Bible? How long before a Bethel-flag was hoisted, or a Bethel-chapel built? While we bless God for what has been done, and for the encouragement we have to proceed, we can not but bewail the absolute destitution of the vast body of mariners. Immense portions of the Christian world take no cognizance of them as immortal beings. Congregations send up prayers, for years, without remembering those whose business is in the great waters. And the consequence is, that, although no field of effort has yielded more fruit in proportion to labor bestowed, yet so vast is the amount to be compassed, that the great mass is not reached. Neglected mortals continue to plunge unprepared into eternity. It would be a consolation to the pallid, shivering seaman, as he spends his few last moments on the parting timbers, before the final plunge, to remember some word of promise — some hour of communion — some message fi’om Christ’s ministers — some precious sacrament — alas! what multitudes have none such to remember! They have come and gone for years to and from Christian ports, but they have found no Christian privilege there; for none has taken them by the hand, or led them to the house of prayer. A poignant sense of this neglect moved the founders of Bethel Societies to begin and prosecute their work. They were willing to snatch, if possible, from the double destruction of soul and body in shipwreck, at least here and there one among the thousands who mount up to the

heaven and go down again to the depths, while their soul is melted because of trouble; all this being but the beginning of sorrows. Neglect of such will appear in its true light when the sea shall give up the dead which are in it.

Y. Consider our meeting in judgment with the dead who are in the sea. That hour is coming, and we should draw from it motives for our daily conduct. There are things which may or may not befall us in the future; but we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. What a day of revelation will that be of all our neglects and transgressions!

and how little, in the retrospect, will many of those things seem, which now occupy all our thoughts and passions! There is One coming who will say to some: ‘’ Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not to me.” The hour hastens. Behold He cometh, and every eye shall see Him! Hear the beloved disciple: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, (the shadowy vagueness of the representation only makes the approaching cloudy tribunal more fearfully sublime,) and Him that sat on it, (no name is needed, for there is one object now for every eye; and one sound reverberates in every ear and through every cavern of earth and sea,) from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.” This judgment-bar is awful, is real, is approaching, is for us — you and I shall be attracted by irresistible fascination to that burning centre, and form part of that countless assemblage. Sinner! sinner! prepare to meet thy God! “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God” — before God! before Him from whose presence heaven and earth just now fled. The dead, in all their races, are there; of all tribes and nations; of every age, a ghastly multitude whom no man can number. All graves and sepulchres release their prisoners, of all times and ranks, from Abel downwards, to stand before God. “And the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which icere in itP Now is the time of revelation frtm the mighty waters. Here are the deposits of solitary disasters, of thousands of shipwrecks, of vast fleets, and this through centuries of years. The faithful sea shall give them up at the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. The voice that awoke Lazarus and the youth of ISTain, and which unseals all sepulchres, shall find obedience in the seas. Ko matter what the variety of life or death, there shall be one rising again, to look upon the face of God. How gladly would some call on rocks and mountains to cover them; or seek a deeper plunge into the concealment of the ocean! but no —

“Seas cast the monsters forth to meet their doom, And rocks but prison up for wrath to come.’-’

Young.

LORD, HEAR THE SEAMAN’S CRY I

Awaked from gentlest midnight sleep,

I hear the howling blast,
The chamber rocks, the murmur deep

Of ocean rises fast.
The lurid flash, the thunder’s roar,

Proclaim the tempest nigh, And wavering hghts are off our shore —

Lord, hear the seaman’s cry!

This hour, perhaps, the sailor thinks Of wife or mother far.

As, drenched and spiritless, he shrinlfp At some portentous bar.

The cresting foam betokens death.
The breaker’s rage is nigh,

He prays — with quick, redoubled breath-Lord, hear the seaman’s cry 1

Ah! many a youth now lost in sin,

And many a hoary sire,
“Who never prayed, this night begin

To dread Almighty ire.
In headlong fury, while the bark

Pierces the billows high, They learn to pray in anguish — Hark!

—Lord, hear the seaman’s cry I

Though sinking in the whelming flood

In sohtary woe.
Saviour, thy ever precious blood

Can reach thy hapless foe.

Catch the faint, smothered voice of him

Whose penitential sigh
Rises amid the terror grim;

Lord, hear the seaman’s cry I

Pray for the sailor, ye who rest

Upon your curtained bed;
Pray to the Power at whose behest

The fearful storm hath sped. And when, released from fear and care,

S weet hours of night ghde by, Be sometimes this your fervent prayer,

Lord, hear the seaman’s cry I

J. W. A.