Be then industrious in religion; we can tolerate indolence anywhere rather than here, here where Eternity is at stake, here where an hour's sluggishness may be fatal. We have no respect, indeed, for the indolent man, let his indolence show itself in what form it may. One of your idlers, who sleeps away life, doing listlessly what he is compelled to do, and only pleased when he can be left undisturbed, hardly deserves the name of man,-man's characteristic is restlessness; restlessness foretells his immortality; and the sluggard, by his apathy, seems to destroy the mark, and silence the prophecy. But, if contemptible in other things, indolence may not be actually fatal: the indolent man may have wealth which secures him against want; and by the occasional exercise of rare talents, he may even in spite of habitual sluggishness, attain to some measure of distinction. But an indolent Christian,-it is a sort of contradiction; Christianity is industry spiritualized: the sluggard in religion would be a sluggard in escaping from the burning house, or the sinking ship,-but who ever loitered when death was at his heels? to-day;' "the night cometh when no man can work." The sentence of our text has gone forth, and all must submit, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." There is no exemption for greatness, none for goodness. The path of glory, the path of science, the path of usefulness, all alike terminate in the grave. The time is at hand when all of us, though widely separated in earthly circumstances, must lie down together in the dust. But if dust we are, and unto dust we must return, immortal also we are, and over us death hath no abiding power. We will not, then, repine that sin hath brought death into the world; we will rejoice that Christ hath brought "life and immortality to light by his Gospel." Shipwrecked we must be; life is but a voyage, and every barque sinks at last, a broken and dislocated thing. But we have but to steer by the chart of the Gospel, and take as our pole-star the Redeemer, which is Christ, and the shattered vessels shall yet be found floating in the haven where we would be: body and soul are reserved alike for glorious destiny; the corruptible shall put on incorruption, the morta. Let us work, then, "while it is called immortality. SERMON V. THE SHIPWRECK. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep."-JONAH 1. 4, 5. You will probably all remember how it came to pass that Jonah was brought into these perilous circumstances. In his character of a prophet, he had received directions from God to hasten to Nineveh, and to announce the near ruin of that mighty and idolatrous capital. But Jonah probably thought that he should be treated with insult, if not put to death, by the Ninevites: he, therefore, resolved to disobey, and, embarking in a ship bound for Tarshish, directed his course to the opposite quarter from that enjoined him by God. But God had his eye on his rebellious servant, and would not suffer him to proceed undisturbed in transgression. Lord as He is of the elements, so that He "bringeth the wind out of his treasures," He could raise a sudden and mighty tempest, and thus effectually intercept the disobedient Prophet. And this, we read, He did; the storm which overtook the vessel being evidently of no ordinary kind, but such as forced the mariners to a conviction, that, from some cause or another, the anger of an incensed Deity pursued them. Now if it were in the power of circumstances to make men religious, there is no class of persons with whom we might expect to find more of piety than with mariners, those who " go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters." Well might the Psalmist say, and the hearts of many in this assembly can respond to the words, These men see the works of the Lord, * Preached before the Corporation of Trinity House, on Trinity Monday, 1846. and his wonders in the deep." There is no portion of the globe so wonderful in its manifestation of divinity as the ocean. Whether it sleep beautifully in the tranquilities of an unbroken calm, or be wrought by the hurricane into madness, it is a more stupendous object, wakening sublimer thoughts, and prompting to loftier musings, than the most glorious combination of valley and mountain. If, then, any part of this creation is to bring men into acquaintance with the Creator, to teach them his greatness and awfulness, and to prevail with them to inquire how his favor may be gained, it must, we should think, be the sea: to that page may natural theology best point, when it would show characters which publish God's might; to that mirror may it best look, when it would catch the reflection of an invisible Ruler. But it is comparatively little that the waters of the great deep thus preach of a Divinity; it is not difficult for the human mind to close itself against the strongest notices which creation can give of a Creator. Consider, then, for a moment, the dangers. of the sea, the perils which encompass those who live upon its surges-dangers and perils not always to be escaped, even where the noble Corporation be fore which I speak, has lighted its beacons, and fastened its buoys. Well, again, hath the Psalmist said, "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 wits's end." The life of a sailor is a life of constant risk. He | be menaced by them in their fury, and, cannot reckon for an hour on the secu- nevertheless, remain in utter ignorance rity of the frail vessel in which he is of God, or open defiance of his laws. embarked; the sky, now serene, may be overcast with clouds; the tempest may be upon him, as a giant in his fury; and in spite of his courage and seamanship, he may be thrown as a plaything to the waves, his ship rent into a thousand shreds, and himself and all his comrades struggling vainly with death. But though it be thus certain that the ocean is wondrously adapted, both by its magnificence and dangers, to lead those conversant with it to a knowledge and fear of their Creator, is it not the fact that there is, at least, as little of seriousness of thought, and of preparation for death, in men whose business is on the waters, as in others who have no such marvels to behold, and no such perils to encounter? Without designing to charge a special want of religion on any one class of men, we may say of sailors generally, that they are striking illustrations of the powerlessness of circumstances to make men religious; for conversant as they are with what is grandest in the workmanship of God, and almost momentarily in evident jeopardy of their lives, they are not, perhaps, as a body, more mindful of their Maker, nor more provident for eternity, than if there were nothing in their condition to induce devotional habits. If there were any scene on which natural religion might be expected to win a triumph, any individual whom it might be expected to subdue, that scene, undoubtedly, is the ocean, when tossing its billows to the sky, and that individual is the mariner whom it threatens to overwhelm. But the general habits of a seafaring population prove the inefficiency of natural religion, of that religion which has nothing but the volume of creation for its Bible, and nothing but conscience for its preacher. The ocean itself does not practically reveal a God to those best acquainted with its wonders, and conscience itself does not work true repentance in those most scared by its terrors. In vain doth Deity glass, as it were, his eternity in the vast mirror of the waters: in vain doth He come riding, magnificently but terribly, on the whirlwind; the mariner can look on the waves in their gloriousness, and But The crew of the ship in which Jonah sailed, may be referred to in evidence of this. They were a crew of idolaters, every man, apparently, having a differ ent deity; for you observe that it is said in our text, "The mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god." They were not deficient in courage or seamanship: they took vigorous measures for their safety, forgetting, when life was in danger, what was, perhaps, only second to it in their esteem, and casting away their cargo that the vessel might be lightened. But in their applications to an invisible power, they betrayed all the absurdities of the very worst idolatry; for every man had his own god to address, so that there was nothing less than a Babel of worship. It was not, of course, in this moment of fear and perplexity that the several individuals imagined or selected a deity. They had, probably, been idolaters from their youth; and now that they seemed given over to death, each had nothing better to do than cry to that fabulous being, which, from some cause or another, he had chosen as his own. if ever the ocean was to have given back to those who sailed upon its bosom the image of the one true God, might it not have been expected to have done so to men who each worshipped a different divinity for what could be a greater practical demonstration to them that their religion was false, than that they all disagreed as to who God was? and if their religion was false, if their deities were deceits, what more to have been looked for than that they should have sought afresh for the invisible, but Omnipotent Being, who "holdeth the waters in the hollow of his hand," and "hath his way in the whirlwind and the storm?" But no-they voyaged together over the mighty expanse; they had evidence of the falseness of their religion forced on them by its diversity; the waters continually preached to them of God, preached to them in the calm and in the tempest; but so practically powerless is natural religion, even under the most favorable circumstances, that, when they came into danger, and had to ap peal to Deity to shield them from death they were still found to be idolaters, | from his sleep, and urge upon him the idolaters who stood self-convicted of the folly of idolatry. And if all this be true, if, notwithstanding the magnificent imagery of God which is continually around him, and the perils by which he is encompassed, the sailor is apt to think little of the duties of religion, how important, how unspeakably important, the office of that Corporation in whose presence I speak! It is not merely property of which you are the guardians-though commerce may be said to commit its treasures to your care; nay it is not merely life-though your lighthouses, your charts, and your pilots, preserve, under God, the thousands who navigate our intricate channels; it is immortality itself, over which you keep watch. It is the soul for which burns that lonely spark, in the darkest night and amid the fiercest storm. You guard the seaman in his years of carelessness, and perhaps even profligacy, that opportunity may be granted him (O God, grant that it be not given in vain!) of yet avoiding that last shipwreck, when the sensual, and the careless, and the proud, shall be broken by the breath of the Almighty's displeasure. But it is time that we pass from considering what relates to the conduct of the crew, to the examining what is told us of Jonah, in this hour of imminent peril. Jonah had, perhaps, more cause than any other in the vessel to be disturbed, and filled with apprehension by the storm; and we might have expected to find him the most earnest in crying for deliverance. Yet strange to say, he was gone down into the sides of the ship, and was fast asleep," so that the shipmaster had roughly to awaken him, in order to make him sensible of the danger. A singular contrast-he, a worshipper of the true God, though actually endeavoring to flee from his presence, manifested utter insensibility in perilous circumstances; whilst even idolaters, who were not, perhaps, at the time chargeable with extraordinary sin, did all that a false religion could teach them, and sought help from invisible powers. And was it not the severest rebuke which could have been administered to a servant of Jehovah, that a heathen, an idolater, should rouse him duty of making supplications to his god? If another of the servants of the true God had come to him, and addressed him in the startling terms, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God," the rebuke would have been comparatively nothing, though even then full of just bitterness. But that one who knew no religion but a false should summon to duty, and reprove for its neglect, a man instructed in truth, and professedly dedicated to the service of the one living God,-this indeed was severe and stern upbraiding; if any thing could make Jonah feel, it must have been, we think, the being thus addressed by a Pagan. And are we to draw no lesson from this part of the narrative? Is there nothing uttered in the present day, analogous to the remonstrance of the shipmaster, by the heathen to Christians? We never question (who can justly question?) that the zeal with which Pagans serve their idols, and the readiness with which they often submit to the austerities prescribed by superstition, will rise up hereafter in judgment against multitudes in a Christian land, who neglect the true God, though clearly revealed, and shrink from his service, though that service is freedom. The very heathen put us to shame, for they will manifest a most devoted earnestness in what they count religious duties, and will be actually unwearied in their endeavors to propitiate the unknown powers whom they suppose the arbiters of their fate; whilst we, blessed with ample discoveries of the Ruler of the universe, and taught the only method of gaining his favor, are apt to count the least sacrifice excessive, and to display no result of the being emancipated from superstition, but the being indifferent to religion. selves, they would have far exceeded us in obedience, in the performance of those duties which Revelation makes obligatory on those blessed with its beams. Assuredly, then, there will be no need of other witnesses against us, in order to ensure an aggravated condemnation, if from the islands and continents of the earth, on which there has not shined the light of the Gospel, there is to issue a throng, whose actions will be evidence, that more had been done where only little had been given, than where God had been largest in discovery and assistance. Will it not suffice to make the Christian, who has failed to improve his superior advantages, shrink away in the consciousness that he must have to bear a sentence of unusual severity, if there be arrayed against him the eminent of the heathen, men who sought painfully and incessantly for truth, amid the mysterious shadows with which they were encompassed, and who were willing to endure any hardship, or attempt any duty, which they thought prescribed by the deities in whose existence they believed? above? On the contrary, are not thou- But if it be true, that, as the vast vessel rises and falls on the boisterous surges, there are found amongst its crew the heathen, who are praying and struggling for deliverance, and the Christians, who are supine and insensible to danger, what, we ask of you, are the one but the idolatrous shipmaster, what the other but the Prophet of God? the shipmaster doing all that his seamanship, and his knowledge of a Supreme It is in this way, and without any Being, could suggest; the prophet buriforced attempt at instituting a parallel, ed in deep slumber, and without care that we may regard the heathen as act- for the peril. As there are borne to ing towards Christians the very part of the Christian, in his sluggishness and the shipmaster towards Jonah. Why neglect of many privileges, tidings how may we not liken the whole globe to a the heathen will lacerate the limbs, and vessel tossing on a stormy sea? for is dare bravely long penance, in hopes of there a solitary one, amongst all its inhab- shunning the danger of which he seems itants, who is not in danger of shipwreck; to make no account, what is to be said, embarked on dark waters, and carried if not that the shipmaster is again upon on by a resistless current, towards an un- Jonah, fast asleep in the side of the vesknown shore, where, but too probably, sel, and crying to him in a voice whose he may be a castaway for eternity? echoes will be heard amid all the stir And may we not say of the crew of of final judgment, "What meanest this mighty ship, that every man has thou, O sleeper? arise and call upon his god, there being as St. Paul hath thy God?" Need we do what the said, "gods many, and lords many," mariners did, have recourse to the lot, though there be, in reality, but one in order to determine the guilty party? Creator and Ruler, and "one Mediator We suspect not. The character is of between God and man?" But who, such common occurrence, that perhaps of all the mariners, are most assiduous many in the present assembly may be in their endeavors to get safe to land? conscious of the likeness. After all Are the worshippers of the true God their entreaty, and all their remonconspicuous above the worshippers of strance, the ministers of Christ are idols, by their fervency in prayer, by still forced to believe, that if they go their strenuousness of effort? May down to the sides of the ship, they shall they be distinguished by the greater find many fast locked in sleep, requiring sense which they manifest of exposure to be addressed in the rough words of to danger, and by their greater diligence the shipmaster, though, alas! by no in using all such means of deliverance means sure to be roused by the sumas have been furnished them from mons. We must search them out: for VOL II. |