Tv Rev. Dr. SAMUEL H. VIRGIN'S SERMON AT THE SIXTY-SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICAN SEAMEN’S FRIEND SOCIETY, :* li*. -r; <■ THE MASTERSHIP OF THE SEA: A DISCOURSE BEFORE THE fimepican Seamen’s Fpiend Soeieliv', AT ITS SIXTY-SIXTH ANNIVERSARY, Sunday evening, JVIay 7, 1894, Rev. SAMUEL H. VIRGIN, D.D., LL.D., IN THE PILGRIM OHUBOH, MADISON AVE. AND ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST ST., NEW YORK CITY. AMERICAN SEAMEN’S FRIEND SOCIETY, 76 WALL STREET, NEW YORK. 1894. SERMON. We all have an interest in the deep and dark blue ocean, in the ships that sail upon it, in the men whose lives are spent upon its rest- less surface, and in the Society that seeks their temporal and spiritual welfare. The Chamber of Commerce is more suggestive of trans- cendant interests than any other term descriptive of human enter- prise. The weaving together of the nations by many reticulated threads, the reciprocal interchange of natural products and fabrics that reveal the touch of human brain and band, the occult forces that underlie the seaman’s life are the most cosmic and potential in the world to-day. The mightiest cities, the nerve centers of civiliza- tion are thus made, the most eager activities are thus stimulated, the most daring enterprises are thus developed and the most colossal results are thus accomplished. It is by the sea that humanity has reached its highest levels. The mightiest and most opulent nations of both ancient and modern times have had superlative maritime interests. By the deep sea and music of its roar there is still place for devout meditation, as well as for enthusiastic toils. As the iron track that binds a country village to the great metropolis becomes a highway for the passage of its teeming life to quiet retreats, so the ocean pathway that now stretches from every shore with its many signs and signals, its boulevards and avenues, opens into every region the best of all, is peopled by a busy throng who are the happy servants of all ; so that the American Seamen’s Friend Society is the hierophant of the world. If some great phonograph could have gathered into its mystic chambers its vocal ministry on every shore and where only sea and sky are found, and received also the loving response of human hearts and the abundant testimony of human lips to its worth, and the multitudinous voices that make the roar in the sea shell, it would have been a peerless privilege for me simply to have given the won- derful instrument the pulpit this morning. Then the voices of the three million men that sail the seas would reach your ears, the out- cries of the innumerable host that during past ages have pursued this calling would come to your sentient spirits, the awful medleys of sin 4 and the gracious words of Christian discipleship would succeed each other in rapid succession ; the tenderest utterances that ever blessed human lips would sound forth again, and bitterness and blasphemy fit only for the abodes of hell would burden this Sabbath air. From single ships whose sailors outnumber the dwellers in many a village, (so vast and comprehensive, so perfect a microcosm is the ocean steamer of to-day), would rise the tones that mark every condition of character and conduct and age and desire, from the sick and lone- some boy whose runaway impulse has long been regretted, to the hush of prayer and the splash of the wave as the solemn burial at sea is accomplished. The voice of the preacher and the earnest tones of the wayside laborer would be caught, the volume of song from hoarse and manly crowds in worshipping assemblies, and the broken tones of the believing disciple singing to cheer a messmate into the eternal harbor, far from home and kindred, — a world of sounds would inter- pret the life at sea to us. This we can have only in imagination ; the reality is this common assembly for the ordinary address, quite incompetent to the occasion. We welcome most heartily within the hospitable walls of Pilgrim Church the American Seamen’s Friend Society at this Sixty- Sixth Anniversary, both on account of its winsome name, its noble purpose, its present achievements and its superb and shining history. The seal of the Master of Assemblies is conspicuous upon its docu- ments and its efforts. The land and the sea alike are witnesses of its triumphs. The waves of ocean sing them as they break on every shore, and the waves of the bounding chorus of the skies swell the praise of its accomplished work as they roll in rhythmic measure on the shores of eternity. Its flashing lights that gleam in the darkness of a sinful world outrival the fires that consume the darkness of the night and warn the mariner from dangerous coasts ; its sweet, wooing voices that burden every breeze that blows are tenderer than the good- byes of mothers whose sons must brave the dangers of the deep, more potent for good than the countless calls that with siren charm invite tojthe delectable spots of earth. We have here celebrated many of the grandest spiritual enterprises of this world; we have rehearsed the stories of heroic adventure for Christ and lauded the work and the workers ; we have marked the anniversaries of grand societies carrying forward the activities of tlie kingdom of Christ ; we have cried to the eagle-eyed outlook of Zion, “ Watchman, what of the night?” and heard the inspiring reply, “The morning cometh,” and to-day we reverently and enthusiasti- cally enter into the joys of this Society that with influence far-reaching 5 and blessings innumerable hastens to the consummation of its work, flying the divine promise upon its banners, “ The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto Thee.” I should be recreant to my own nature if I were not ready to speak with warm and generous heart for those who sail the seas ; for the blood of seafaring men flows in my veins, and the manly form of him whose name I bear was snatched from sight and buried with the ship he commanded in the angry waves of the ocean. My childish ears were assailed with the story of the cruel storm, the dreadful wreck, the lonely home, the greedy, unsatisfied sea. I have always heard strange sounds in its restless moaning. The busy wharves of Boston, the ships that there discharged their prolific cargoes, the vessels that at evening dropped down the rivers towards the harbor and gave us the privilege of feeling that we were sailor boys for awhile, the hard- fisted, big-hearted tars who were my boyhood friends, the marine and naval hospitals which I constantly visited and where I did some of my first work for Christ, the old Vermont, receiving ship at Charles- town Navy Yard, familiar as my mother’s kitchen, the long sandy beach where I played, now swept by furious waves that came with resistless might, now burned to blistering heat and cooled by the lazy waves that with listless motion splashed their spray in the hot summer sun, — all left upon me their deposit of interest in the affairs of the sea which has never been exhausted. Moreover, the abundant and beautiful and stimulating teaching of Scripture with all its exuberant quickening of fancy and faith concerning the sea is a never failing source of deepening interest; while the admirable publica- tions of this Society, which I have diligently perused for years, have quickened, deepened and enriched that interest. With loyal heart and true I respond to every early inspiration and every later experi- ence as I invite your attention this morning to some thoughts upon The Mastership of the Sea. The text is in the gospel of Mark, 4th chapter, 4lst verse : “ What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him ? ” No wonder the inspired writer preserved the word “ even ” as it fell from these lips. It was not to be expected that wind and sea would heed the human voice though all other things were obedient. Men might come and go as Jesus commanded, crowds like an army might move at His word, angels might recognize their heavenly com- mander and do obeisance and render instant service, devils might fear and tremble and obey their great Superior, material things under the operation of some occult law might yield to His masterful force. 6 but wind and wave would be unsubdued still. Their obedience would lift the human spirit to the climax of adoring wonder. And so these seamen said out of their experience in battling with the storm in days of darkness and nights of peril, “ What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him ?” How much there is to attract us this morning ! We might trace with fascinating speech and ever enticing thought the beneficent influence of the sea, the wholesomeness of its benediction upon the land, the divine economy in its construction and contents, the worth of its part in the marriage contract that the Doge of Venice made not only for his city but for all lands and for all time^, and learn that a mightier voice than his declared, “ What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” We might sit by the sea and interpret its many voices for all the moods of the spirit. If we could catch and separate the cries that have gone up from its uneasy waves through the centuries, we should be well instructed. We might study the evolution of the ocean steamer, splendid and palatial, from the ark of Noah, the corn ship of Alexandria or the trireme of the Eoman ; we might scrutinize the history of navigation, the successive maritime adventures and discov- eries to quicken our sense of obligation to seamen and their families. We might examine men whose bronzed cheeks have felt the ocean breezes, ship owners, ship captains, sailors of every name and every nation. We might rehearse the devotion of the men of the sea, and listen to the prayers that have been offered amid the howling of the tempest, the thundering of the waves and the plunging of the ship for the strengthening of our own faith. We might trace the relation of commerce to national prosperity and find these maritime toils at the basis of our common comforts, as well as of our civic and national strength. But we turn from all these alluring themes redolent of abundant harvests for heart and mind and spirit to this simple but significant lesson on Sea Sovereignty. This is not a new subject. Men have studied it before from a personal and a national standpoint. The pirate and the king have considered it. Battles have been fought to determine it, and the waves have been incarnadined with human blood to establish it. Jesus Christ simply uttered a word of com- mand and illustrated Ilis superior claim. He prefaced it with no declaration of ownership ; He required the use of no flag before which all others should instantly bo lowered. He commanded, and turbu- lent forces quieted to the peace of a healthy sleep. Men saw and wondered and recognized a master. But the Nazareno was a landsman. It does not appear that He ever 7 embarked even upon the Mediterranean; He knew by experience only the Sea of Galilee, that small inland body of water, guarded by fer- tile hills in the midst of a smiling landscape. But wind and water are the same everywhere. It takes but little of the one to drown a man and little of the other to wreck a ship. The laws that control them are the same for the lake and the ocean, the gust and the cyclone. The mastery of a part is the command over all. To secure the obedi- ence of a drop is to direct the ebb and flow of oceans. Apparently, however, the wind and the sea are universal masters and acknowledge no superior authority. They laugh at commands and smite with withering blow every agent that seeks to enthral them. Man is impotent in their presence. He exercises his dominion on the land and works his purposes of destruction as he will, and looks abroad upon the ocean with similar intent but soon discovers that “His control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own. When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan. Without a grave, unknelled, uncofiBned and unknown.” The sea itself is an imperious autocrat. It asks no authority for its mighty storms, consults with no one concerning its cruel ravages. It combines in its spirit a thousand Neros in its merciless slaughter. It employs innumerable forces and tosses the mighty creations of man like tiny bubbles on its surface. It laughs in its boisterous might at all the ingenious efforts of man to subdue it, toys with him till he thinks he is victor and then in passion ruthlessly crushes his majestic work. In the moment of his proudest boast, while he exhibits his skilful appliances for the mastery of wind and wave, it engulphs it all out of sight. It rises to the awful height of mountain ranges and heaves whole Matterhorns as by some submarine explosion upon the helpless ships that venture on its surface. It rolls over fair acres and submerges them forever. It hides the rocks and drives the innocent vessels upon them. It howls and shrieks and mocks and laughs, and then moans and wails as if in inconsolable grief for its sins. It hurls the shining mountains of glittering ice across the steamer’s track, and flings up its spouting torrents to startle and destroy. It shouts defiance to every quarter and welcomes every fierce antagonist that dares accept its challenge to combat. It buries ten thousand fleets in its watery chambers ; it entombs millions in its hidden recesses ; it is the cemetery of the world, and its countless white caps are the 8 headstones of the people of all the nations. It regards neither age nor learning nor station. No country has exemption from its ravages; the pirate and the priest, the convict and the missionary are alike overwhelmed. So too is the wind an independent monarch. It loves to destroy. It toys gently with the curls on an infant’s head and rising in fury levels cities that lie in its path, hurling huge structures from their firm foundations, uprooting trees that have stood the storms of gen- erations, leaving ruin and waste in its track. It moves out upon the shimmering sea and lifts its billows to mountain height, drives its tonnage of water in wild alarm before it and sends fear into the stoutest hearts. It increases in might till nothing can stand before it. On the 11th of April (last month) the ship Coringa was off Mount Desert, a little more than a hundred miles from her port of destination, when a blizzard from the east struck her, and blew almost without cessation till the afternoon of April 16. Waves dashed over the ship continually. Sails were split and blown entirely out of the bolt ropes. Even the metal on the ship’s side was stripped off for forty feet on the starboard bow. She lost six mainsails, four upper and lower topsails, a foresail, three jibs, two staysails, and one fore and one maintopgallantsail. Both port and starboard main and miz- zen chain-plates were broken, and boat chocks and covers washed away. It flings huge clouds up from the horizon, drives them in mad fury before it and gathers them into whirlwinds of frightful power. Its movements are sometimes electric in speed and power. It flies like Parthian arrow from a full strung bow, and leaps like a trained athlete upon its victim. When Her Majesty’s training ship Eurydice was returning from an ocean cruise, and was rounding Dunnose head- land, off the Isle of Wight, with all sails set and flying with palpi- tating heart towards home, in a moment she was struck by a gale that leaped upon her as from an ambush. All orders of the captain were in vain; the noble ship lurched, bent under the blow till her keel was visible, capsized and bore to a watery grave three hundred men with the white cliffs of home shining before them. By whatever name these terrific movements of air are known they are but synonyms of a destructive force for which man has no equal, before which he cannot stand, in the presence of which he is mute with paralysis, and under which his noblest creations lie in pitiful ruins. When wind and wave combine, when the titanic force of one is added to the gigantic energy of the other and together they sport and rave in the wide spaces of the open sea, there is nothing in crea- tion that can parallel the awful grandeur of their displays of power. 9 They are a fit symbol of a world where disorderly spirits have risen in rebellion, Hung aside their loyalty to God, embittered their lives with the gall of sinful transgressions, forgotten their devotion to kindred spirits, yielded to frantic, diabolic control and flung them- selves in desperate encounter upon each other and upon their great foe. There is no picture that can equal the reality of the combina- tion of the wind at its highest velocity and in its eccentric move- ments and the sea when disturbed by its most violent agitation. Language is powerless to describe the scene, the mind is inadequate to conceive it. Yet it is a faint portrayal of the rebellion of this world against God. The snarl and tangle, the greed and passion, the hatred and fury, the cyclonic wrath and virulent hostility against God, the union of demoniac zeal with the inflamed energy of God’s own immortal children made in Ilis own image rising in determined resistance against Him presents the reality of the sin-conflict of this lost world before which the raging of the seas is the quiet of a summer lake. The Son of God in the august horrors of Calvary, dying in atoning sacrifice amid the trembling of the planet alone discloses the measure and extent of this sin-convulsion. The absence of these convulsive forces would declare in emphatic form the retirement of God from the planet. While they are fright- ful, they are encouraging. They declare a strife for mastership ; they reveal competing agents ; they suggest a possible change in final direc- tion ; they invite to a study of original control ; they uncover prom- ises of strange import ; they make certain the presence of rescuing parties ; the high towers of engulphing waves are rainbowed by sig- nals of approaching calm and radiant sunshine ; in the wildest roar of the tempest the listening ear is startled by a prophecy of an ever- lasting calm. The hour for peace has not yet come ; these cataclysms must continue in evidence of a rebuking spirit, an unhappy strife till wilful man forsakes his sin, yields his heart to the beneficent influ- ences of a superb atonement and a spiritual alchemy, under the power of which nature will lose its ferocity, the wind and the sea their boisterousness, and both sink into an unending slumber. I. Over the passionate ocean and the unbridled wind man has attempted to assume control. The first claim for mastership is human. The right to own and rule the watery world has long been the greedy desire of man. He has wished to count it as his domain, make laws for those who sail upon it, use it for his own aggrandize- ment. He has parcelled it out as a great farm for the occupancy of himself and his servants. All others are trespassers under the ban 10 of his displeasure. He has sought to understand its natural laws and wrest its secrets so as to enslave it. He has made its winds sail his vessels, its tides and currents aid his enterprises, its vast treasures enrich his exchequer; he has eliminated distance and separation by his discoveries and overcome dangers by his multiplied inventions; he has pushed his claim to mastership farther and farther till at length he has cried in an ecstasy of delight “0 sea! thou art my conquered slave.” Nations have coveted this control as sign of their supremacy. England’s claim to rule the British seas is of ancient date. Arthur assumed it and Alfred defended it. Many governmental moasnrf's have been adopted to maintain it. Other nations have resisted this claim and naval battles have been fought in consequence of it. Delicate and serious questions have arisen, and not till 1863 was the international rule of the road at sea settled, yet in six years following 13,000 collisions occurred. A policy of armed neutrality existed, Russia, Sweden and Denmark contending that neutral flags protect neutral bottoms, but the British cabinet remonstrated, war followed and the system disappeared in the naval crash. Still important questions arise, and man answers man in his claim of mastership. But the most vigorous answer comes from the sea itself. It disclaims the mastership. It trails the boasted flag in its waters and in an instant overwhelms in remediless ruin the grandest fleets. Armadas sail in vain. Skill, prowess, the highest fruits of genius applied with most perfect constructive art with intent to meet all the exigencies of the seas are as easily met and conquered as when man sailed in a caraval or Viking ship. The floating palace of iron groans in anguish and sinks from sight like the poor product of barbaric days. The sea still is master. The history of wrecks is the sad story of man’s weak claim to mastery. The compilation of the facts of the ravages of the sea are appalling. The catalogue of twenty-seven years gives 61,623 wrecks with 9,566 total wrecks and a loss of 22,782 lives. From 500 to 1,000 lives are thus lost every year, and this is but im- perfect report. There are seaports where every family is a mourner and the name of some towns is synonymous with ocean wreckage. There is no kind of vessel that has not been overcome, there is no kind of seamanship that has not been defeated, there is no amount of watchfulness that has kept from rocks, and collisions, and the rude battering of the sea. The catalogue of wrecks with lives lost makes the story of battles upon the land with lists of the slain seem unworthy of mention. The very air of some places is filled with the 11 moaning of distress. And yet the waves sport and frolic with no thought or sign of loss of power. The sea is a Uerod of Ilerods. “Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free. And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts; not so thou. Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play — Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.” Man’s mastership of the sea is contested and defeated at every point ; he retreats with faltering step and wretched heart from the unequal strife for honors. II. The second claimant for mastership of the sea is made by Satan, the great spiritual enemy of man. He seeks to rule by ruling men. His claim is boastful and defiant. He creates the universal impression that all who follow the sea are his natural subjects. He multiplies every sort of machinery for their capture. He plays upon genial good nature and noble generosity ; he plans to gratify tastes and passions on land that cannot be indulged during a voyage ; he clusters about the wharves and in adjacent neighborhoods where are the sinks of iniquity and the wretched venders of intoxicants; he lays snares for careless feet and has his minions ready with the current lies that sailors are not expected nor wanted in Christian churches nor in cul- tivated homes, that the brothel and the saloon teem with their friends, that they are an outcast community by themselves, and that debauchery and drunkenness on land are to atone for their hardships at sea. The sailor has been made to feel that no one cared for his soul, that recklessness was an essential element in his success, that prayer and piety, good books, clean language and a pure heart were not consistent with his calling. So many thought for too many years. The great enemy secured his booty. He sent Ralph Rovers to cut the bells from Inchcape Rocks, to extinguish the lights on dangerous coasts, to undermine faith in God and His Bible and crowd the reckless class into the business of the sea. He persuaded owners and captains to supply quantities of grog and made the forecastle the place for indoctrination in lewd and blasphemous stories, and set bravado and stoicism for hours of peril and disaster. This noble vocation has thus been honeycombed with vice and crime and the sea made the arena for the display of superlative qualities of life in the service of a wicked master. Hard masters have been encouraged, poor pro- 12 visions have been considered sufficient, slight remuneration has been counted enough, and thus the thraldom of Satan has been strength- ened. Land sharks have emulated the diabolism of their master. But this dominion has been resisted and its authority denied. Good influences have contended for the right of way, good men and women have sought the removal of corrupting customs, the gospel of Christ has driven the swine from many a ship into the sea, prayer has dis- placed profanity and the false ruler been ejected from his throne. The combat has deepened and the black flag of the cruel and despotic monarch of sin been removed and the blood-stained banner of the cross substituted. Even the mad frolics of the sea itself, its enforced sufferings, and accumulated dangers, its terrific contortions and sub- lime displays of grandeur and beauty have softened and regulated the human spirit and wrested it from persistent sin. The sailor is no more the natural child of evil than the landsman. He is often the favorite child of the household, with vivid imagi- nation, and poetic soul and generous instincts and a roving disposition. His first experience of hardship is often on the sea. His knowledge of sin begins there ; his first wicked stories are heard in the forecastle, and his evil training is after and not before he becomes a sailor. Many, however, yield to no such training, but preserve their purity and dignity of character through all the satanic enticements. Nature’s noblemen are found among ship- owners who provide every comfort and every religious influence on board their ships, ship captains who preserve the family life and conduct family prayers and guard the young with parental interest, sailors who pour out their heart’s adoration before Him who bought them with His own precious blood. They are often simple hearted as children, swing in the cradle of influence as easily as in the ocean billows, passionate and impulsive as powder, dancing a hornpipe or singing a psalm according to the mood of the hour. They are as many-hued as the pearl of the shells they gather and bring from afar as affectionate tokens of remem- brance, and become thoroughly cosmopolitan from contact and association with people of every clime. It is significant that sailors were among the earliest disciples and were made apostles. They resent the dominion of Satan and by grace defy his control. Still Satan strives for the mastery. Is there then no one of royal spirit and magisterial power who can meet and equal these tremendous forces ? Is wind only air in motion that cannot be seen nor handled, superior to man with all his boastful intelligence and skill ? Must he acknowledge defeat in its presence ? Can no force be found adequate to curb and hold in galling fetters 13 these natural elements that seem at times so uninfluential ? Is it possible that water, that may be changed into gases that disappear from sight, must be acknowledged as holding the throne against all contestants ? Is Neptune with his trident more a reality than a mythological force ? Cannot merchants and scientists and chemists and captains and sailors combine to subdue this giant of Gath ? Is there no David anywhere ? Cannot science discover the subtle ele. ment that like oil ujion the waters will quiet the restless chafing, and, taken in sufficient quantities, purge the monster of his cruelty ? Can the artist only, of all created things and beings, give us a sea that will not torture, that will obey ? Is there safety only in “a painted ship upon a painted ocean ?” May not the sweet amenities of the sea be brought into such vital contact that there shall exude from them some soporific, that like morphine in the human system shall assuage the riotous and refractory moods of the monarch ? Cannot some one be found in these modern days to hypnotize the ocean ? Must the mastership of the sea ever remain an unsolved problem, the scepter passing from hand to hand till time and sea shall be no more ? Nol It has a master to whom it gives instant and unquestioning obedience. III. The real mastership of the sea is found in Jesus Christ. The untamed fury of its winds and waves is subdued by a word from His peerless lips ; the haughty assumption of man yields to His advancing sway ; the braggart insolence of the usurping Satan is met by the power of the exorcist who drives him from his subject and tramples him under his feet. It was because the early disciples knew the elements involved in this strife for the mastership of the sea that amazement rose within them when they saw its final master and cried, “ What manner of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey him ?” Christ’s claim of mastership of the sea is valid : I. Because He created it and so owns it. “ The sea is His, for He made it,” sang the inspired Psalmist. The vast hollows in the planet were made to hold the liquid mass that was called into its place by the very voice that again commanded it on the Sea of Galilee. The marvellous laws that govern it were the fruit of His mind and were enacted by His decree. It is His “Thus far but no further” that holds it at the border of continents, and steadies the movements of its tidal waves. All its wonders are His creation. Its slime, where arrogant man discovered as he thought the beginning of life, its marvellous noctilucae from whose phosphorescent glow the submarine 14 beauty is revealed, its strength like that of fabled gods, its power to destroy have all originated with Him who trod upon its surface as upon a marble floor and who has used it for manifold purposes of mercy which the thoughtful minds of many ages have been enabled to discern. There is no enigma in His mastership. He made it and owns it and masters it. Its every drop, beautiful with all the colors of the prism, ready to leap into moisture and ride in the aerial chariots to soften and make fruitful the springing glebe, its saline crystals, faith- ful guardians against decay and miasma, its undulation, symbol of the ceaseless activity of its great Creator, all that is involved in its multiform phases existed first in the mind of Him who is its supreme master. It is accomplishing His will in the vast range of its incom- prehensible influence upon the physical, commercial, social, intellec- tual, scientific, religious life of the planet. He has made it to be the theatre of the world for the display of His wonders. Christ’s claim of mastership is valid : II. Because it is a part of the world that He died to redeem. The misery and wretchedness of this world is the fruit of sin. It is man’s work. There was no sigh in any breeze, there was no moan in any ocean wave till man came by sin into a condition to so interpret it. From the infinitesimal insect that floated in the smallest bubble to the monster that needed the ocean for its home, from the gentlest wavelet that lapped a floral shore to the mightiest billow that crashed upon a rocky cliff in the days of human innocence, all was reflective of divine love and bounty. Sin invited Satan to contend for mastery. The thorn in the garden and the jagged reef under the sea betoken transgression. Man on land and on sea has alike fallen. But the Son of God died to save. His ransoming work was com- plete, and touches with freshening and cleansing power all things. By it man rises to pristine purity and beauty and the whole creation is to be renewed. The ferocious instinct shall desert the animal, the destructive element be withdrawn from nature in all her forms, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, and the mighty sea shall retain all its sublimity and grandeur and lose all its destructive agency when the kingdom of God is established and triumphant. Its miles of emerald billows rocking under the sun-lit azure, sparkling as the fit pavement for the feet of its Creator, shall be as harmless as the dimpled lawns that stretch away from summer homes, its mountain ranges with glittering dome and castle and tower and burnished lines of ever-vanishing and ever- renewing guards of honor, shall be as glorious and attractive as the snow-crowned Alps. 15 Wasting and destruction shall not be heard within all her borders. This saving work reaches and changes also the men of the sea. Their hearts will be filled with the love of God under this all conquering mastery of Jesus Christ, their minds will be freighted with the thoughts of God, their lives will be reckoned among the saving forces of the world, their journeys will be the sailing of argosies of spiritual as well as material bounties, and every shore alike will welcome the merchant ship and its men as brothers welcome brothers. All the ripened knowledge of God which one attains will be speedily com- municated to another, the sea will be resplendent with the silken sails of the gospel ships, its winds be laden with the songs of Zion, its abundance will all be converted unto Christ; it will itself become the symbol of the unfathomable grace and glory of God, and at the last it will but suggest and refiect the sea of glass like unto crystal that disappeared in the eternal unity and inseparable fellowship of the heavenly kingdom, wherein was gathered the buried treasure that oceans had engulphed and within whose ample borders there was finally no more sea. The mastership of Christ is complete. He makes. He redeems. He rescues. He abolishes. To seek the accomplishment of His purposes in regard to the sea is indeed a noble endeavor. To toil under such a master in such a field is unspeakable privilege. Such is the work of the American Sea- men's Friend Society. To diminish the dangers to the body, soul and spirit of the men of the sea, to exalt their manhood, ennoble their enthusiasm, make their ships like Christian homes, fill their lips with prayers and praises, make the shores hospitable to them and every man their friend as Jesus was, to disciple them all into the kingdom of Christ, to make every sailor a herald and messenger of salvation, to awaken their expectation for the fulfilment in their own experience of some of the most wonderful and stimulating words of Scripture, — this is work worthy the best of human effort, and this for sixty-six years has been the glorious, entrancing, successful work of this Society. May it continue till the Master of the sea shall have met every worker at the bar, and, having brought each with rejoicing to the heavenly port, dismiss the Society because all Christian work upon the planet is completed. AMERICAN SEAMEN’S FRIEND SOCIETY, 76 Wall Street, New York, N. Y., U. S. A. Organized Mat, 1828. Incorporated April, 1833. PRESIDENT : Mr. CHARLES H. TRASK. VICE-PRESIDENT : Mr. HORACE GRAY. SECRETARY : Rev. W. C. STITT, D. D. TREASURER : Mr. william C. STURGES. FINANCIAL AGENT AND ASSISTANT TREASURER : Mr. LUTHER P. HUBBARD. In the year 1893, the Society sustained Bethels, Sailors’ Homes, etc., Chaplains, Missionaries, Colporteurs, and Bihle Headers, (in all, 35) in thirty-two foreign and domestic seaports. Since the year 1858-9 (to December 1, 1893) it has sent out 9,990 new Loan Libraries (518,395 volumes), accessible by original shipment and re-shipment to more than 379,661 seamen. $20 sends a Library to sea in the name of the Donor. The Sailors’ Magazine (66th volume) is published monthly, at $1.00 per annum. The Life Boat, 50 copies monthly for one year, free, to Sunday Schools giving $20 for a Library. The Society has always aimed to give the gospel of Christ to the seamen of the world’s naval and mercantile marine, and in every way to befriend the sailor. Contributions may be sent to the Treasurer, and a Form of Bequest, for testamentary aid of its work, will be sent to any applicant for the same.