Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

But

mode you bring the Gospel to him, the likelihood is the very smallest of his seeking it for himself. we thank God that of late years attempts have been made, so far as the port of this great city is concerned, to provide Christian instruction for sailors. There is now a floating church in our river: a vessel which had been built for the battle, and which walked the waters to pour its thunder on the enemies of our land, has, through the kindness of government, been converted into a place of worship; and a flag waves from it, telling the mariner that on the element which he has made his own he may learn how to cast anchor for eternity; and the minister of this church moves about among the swarming ships as he would move through his parish, endeavouring by the use of all the engines with which God has entrusted his ambassadors, to arrest vice and gain a hold for religion amongst the wild and weatherbeaten crews. And it is in support of this church that we now ask your contributions. His Majesty the king, by the liberal annual subscription of 50%, shows how warm an interest he takes in the cause, and recommends it to the succour of his subjects. The exemplary bishop, moreover, of this diocesewhom may a gracious God soon restore to full health -is deeply interested on behalf of this church. But you cannot need to be told of the great and the noble who support this cause; it asks not the recommendation of titled patronage; you are Englishmen, and the church is for sailors. Yes, the church

is for sailors, men who have bled for us, men who fetch for us all the productions of the earth, men who carry out to every land the Bibles we translate and the missionaries we equip. The church is for sailors; and yet, though the annual expenditure is only between 300l. and 4007., the stated annual income-I am almost ashamed to say it-is only 150%.

I am persuaded that to mention this will suffice to procure a very liberal collection. I cannot bring myself to attempt the working on your feelings. When I plead the cause of sailors, it seems to me as though the hurricane and the battle, the ocean with its crested billows, and war with its magnificently stern retinue, met and mingled to give force to the appeal. It seems as though stranded navies, the thousands who have gone down with the waves for their winding-sheet, and who await in unfathomable caverns the shrill trumpet-peal of the archangel, rose to admonish us of the vast debt we owe those brave fellows who are continually jeoparding their lives in our service. And then there comes also before me, the imagery of a mother who has parted, with many tears and many forebodings, from her sailor-boy; whose thoughts have accompanied him as none but those of a mother can in his long wanderings over the deep, and who would rejoice with all a mother's gladness, to know that where his moral danger was perhaps the greatest, there was a church to receive him and a minister to counsel him.

But we shall not enlarge on such topics. We only throw out hints, believing that this is enough to waken thoughts in your minds which will not allow of your contenting yourselves with such contributions as are the ordinary produce of charity sermons. The great glory of England, and her great defence, have long lain, under the blessing of God, in what we emphatically call her wooden walls. And if we could make vital Christianity general amongst our sailors, we should have done more than can be calculated towards giving permanence to our national greatness, and bringing onward the destruction of heathenism. We say advisedly, the destruction of heathenism. The influence is not to be computed which English sailors now exert for evil all over the globe. They are scattered all over the globe; but too often, though far from always, unhappily, their dissoluteness brings discredit on the Christian religion, and pagans learn to ridicule the faith which seems prolific of nothing but vice. Our grand labour, therefore, should be to teach our sailors to cast anchor within the veil; and then in all their voyages would they serve as missionaries, and not a ship would leave our coasts which was not freighted with preachers of redemption; and wheresoever the British flag flies, and that is wheresoever the sea beats, would the standard of the cross be displayed. Ay, man our wooden walls with men who have taken Christian hope as the anchor of the soul, and these walls shall be as ramparts which no enemies can

overthrow, and as batteries for the demolition of the strongholds of Satan. Then, and may God hasten the time, and may you now prove your desire for its coming-then will the navy of England be every where irresistible, because every where voyaging in the strength and service of the Lord; and the noble words of poetry shall be true in a higher sense than could ever yet be affirmed:

"Britannia needs no bulwark,
No towers along the steep;

Her march is on the mountain-wave,
Her home is on the deep."

SERMON XII.'

BROKEN CISTERNS.

JEREMIAH ii. 13.

"For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

It would ill become me as a minister of the Established and Protestant Church of this kingdom to address you on the present anniversary, without referring to those two great events which have been commemorated in the services of the day. Though not a friend to the keeping up observances which might only be calculated to the keeping up irritated feelings, far less would I be a friend to the ceasing to give thanks for a great national deliverance, or to acknowledge a great religious benefit. And far less

Preached at Camden Chapel, on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »