503. The Sinking Steamer

The Sinking Steamer

2Co_11:25 : ’93A night and a day I have been in the deep.’94

Whether Paul’92s ship had been broken to pieces by a storm, or whether it had collided with another vessel, I know not; but here we find him floating on a plank in the Mediterranean Sea, and for twenty-four hours. ’93A night and a day have I been in the deep.’94

The perils of ancient navigation were very great, among other things because the sea was so solitary. If a ship were disabled, it might move over the waters day after day, and week after week, and month after month, and not sight a sail. But I think that in our day, notwithstanding all our lighthouses and compasses and sextants and ironclads there is just as much danger now, coming not from the solitariness of the sea, but from the multiplicity of crafts. Any one who has noticed the great fleet of ships going in and out the Narrows, or up and down Long Island Sound, has been amazed at the fact that there are so few casualties. The nation is today stunned and staggered with calamity. When those two floating palaces were plowing through the waters of Long Island Sound and nearing each other, only the eye of God saw that they were coming into collision. We are at the season of the year when parts of families make hegira into the country. Many of the schools have come to vacation, and the young people were impatient to be away. There is nothing more beautiful than the disposition of heads of families to send their households to the mountains and the springs and the farms, while the men must stay and toil in the sweltering city and fight out the battle for bread. How glad they are if their families can be in a cooler and better atmosphere. God only saw what was coming. The fog stooped upon the Sound, and the steamers slowed up and the whistles blew and the bells rang, yet nevertheless at a quarter to twelve o’92clock at night, the Stonington crashed into the Narragansett, and perhaps fifty and perhaps a hundred, after struggling first with the flames and then with the waters, surrendered their immortal spirits to God who gave them. I will not rehearse that scene; there was in it a pathos and a tragedy all indescribable, when that aged woman cried out, ’93Never mind me, save the young people!’94 when that mother cried out, ’93Never mind me, save my boy!’94 when those young men, frenzied with the appalling scene, took their own lives.

Alas! alas! While they are searching the waters for the dead, and while the telegraph offices are thronged with the pale-cheeked and the agonized, waiting for intelligence, it is becoming that we bow our hearts before God this morning, in sympathetic prayer for all the bereft, while we mourn for the loss of some of the most valued of society; some who today but for that calamity would have been preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we learn some very practical lessons for our own souls.

In the first place, this calamity of last Friday night on Long Island Sound impresses me with the responsibility of those who hold the lives, the bodies, the property, or the souls of people in their care. I will not at this early point in the history of that disaster pretend to say who was to blame. Some say it was the captain, some say it was the company, some say the blame was on the Stonington, some say the blame was on the Narragansett. I will not attempt to decide. I invoke the law of the land with severe scrutiny to find out who was to blame and bring chastisement upon those who have hurled hundreds of families into awful bereavement. The fact is that this whole country has already been empaneled on the coroner’92s jury and has rendered a verdict saying: ’93There is awful blame somewhere.’94 Captains of steamships, conductors of railroad trains, engineers of locomotives, architects of buildings, pilots of steamboats, have great responsibilities. Yet ministers of the Gospel and Christian workers who have under their care the spiritual interests of the people’97they also are to keep ringing the alarm bells, they are to stand on the outlook, they are to obey the injunction, ’93What I say unto you I say unto all’97watch.’94 I tell you I would rather be captain of a steamship driving a hundred human lives into destruction than a minister of religion or a religious worker with a defective theology driving thousands and tens of thousands of immortal souls into shipwreck. ’93When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.’94

’91Tis not a cause of small import,

The pastor’92s care demands;

But what might fill an angel’92s heart,

It filled the Saviour’92s hands.

Oh! my friends, whatever be your responsibility, if you have under your keeping the bodies, the minds, the property, the souls of men, beware how you discharge that responsibility. Remember the Narragansett.

Again: that disaster Friday night, on Long Island Sound, impresses me with the fact that brilliant surroundings are no security against the last enemy. You and I perhaps have been on that Narragansett. It was a beautiful ship. The furniture exquisite, the pictures, the upholstery, all the appointments, just what you would like to have had them, and yet, notwithstanding the passengers were so brilliantly surrounded, they were called away. The fact is, Death has just as much regard for the Nantucket whaler as he has for the splendid Narragansett. Belshazzar at the banqueting hall; Napoleon III in the mansion at Chiselhurst; Charles Dickens in his beautiful home at Gad’92s Hill; the Prince Consort in Windsor Castle, summoned away. An armed sentinel stands at the gate of every palace, and when some one approaches, the sentinel cries, ’93Halt!’94 and whoever the dignitary may be, he must halt or be pierced through; but Death comes up to the gate of the palace, and he captures both the sentinel and the gate.

On that Narragansett, there were those who could have given their fifty thousand dollars for another day’92s existence; one hundred thousand dollars for another day of existence; two hundred thousand dollars for another day; but Death will not receive a bribe. He comes in with muddy feet from walking amid the upturned earth of the new-made grave, and blunders across the tapestry, and sets his spade against the headboard of the rosewood bedstead. ’93They that possess themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom that he should not see corruption.’94 ’93The wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.’94 Oh! do not let us be deluded with the idea, because we may have brilliant home, brilliant equipage, brilliant companionship, brilliant surroundings, that therefore there is any safety.

The disaster on Long Island Sound further shows me the fact that there are many people who have not yet been persuaded of the nonsense of prayer. I do not suppose there was a person on board that vessel but had heard argument used against Christianity. There was not a person on that vessel but had heard prayer scoffed at and derided, and yet all the reports say that when the disaster came they all prayed. The prayer was heard from the Narragansett to the Stonington. Those who were on the Narragansett and escaped say there were scores and hundreds of people in the water all praying: ’93God, save my wife! God, save my child! God, save me!’94 Hundreds of people, scores of people crying: ’93O God! O God!’94 Yes, they prayed; and if Tyndall had been there, if the skeptics of this day had been there, they would have all prayed. That would have been the prayer-test. Oh! we may scoff at Christianity, and we may deride supplication before God, and we may say the creature cannot affect the Creator, and it is absurd for one to kneel down and pray into nothingness, expecting to get an answer. We may do all that surrounded with pleasant circumstances, but in the day of calamity and darkness we will pray. It is not so much of a farce after all, is it? It is not so absurd after all, is it? They all prayed. Oh, my friends, ye who have sins to be pardoned, ye who have wounds to be healed, ye who have burdens to be lifted, ye who have immortal souls to be saved, why not now in the day of your prosperity learn this art, this holy art?

Restraining prayer we cease to fight,

Prayer makes the Christian’92s armor bright;

And Satan trembles when he sees,

The weakest saint upon his knees.

Were half the breath that’92s vainly spent

To Heaven in supplication sent

Our cheerful song would oftener be,

Hear what the Lord has done for me.

Again: I am impressed by the disaster on Long Island Sound, with the danger there is in a dense fog. There was no cyclone that night. Sometimes the keepers of the lighthouses neglect their duty and a vessel will drive on the rocks; but all the lighthouses on the coast of Long Island Sound were doing their duty that night. A dense fog came down and that was the cause of the disaster. That was what brought the Arctic and the Vesta together in that great calamity that some of you remember. When I was going to Liverpool and our vessel was plowing on near the Newfoundland coast during a fog, I remember I heard the poor fishermen in their fishing smacks blowing their foghorns. They were afraid of being run down by some steamer, and many of the poor fellows perish every year in the fog. No one knows where they perish. They simply do not come home. So also comes the ruin of the soul. No man would drive directly on the rocks if he could see them. It is because men are cheated, because they are mystified, because they are befogged. Here is the Herbert Spencer fog, which says that life is a combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondences with external coexistences and sequences. Yes, that is what life is! And here is the Huxley fog about protoplasm. And here is the Darwinian fog about the origin of the species, and our dear grandfathers, the gorillas and the chimpanzees! And there is the fog of Pantheism and the fog of Rationalism and the fog of Materialism and the fog which Strauss and Schenckel and Renan have thrown around about the head of Christ. Anything but believe that God made the worlds, and that the Bible is inspired, and that Christ, the Son of God, came to save sinners. Anything but that.

Why, there are wiseacres abroad who would be glad to be pallbearers and grave-diggers at the same time at one decease, and that at the decease and the burial of the Lord God Almighty. They think there is not room enough for God and them in the same world. They want to push him off the edges of the universe, and they fill the world with their fog, and the scores of people who went down in Long Island Sound during the fog are very few as compared with the thousands and millions who in this vaporing of skepticism have crashed into shipwreck.

Sometimes a strong breeze will very suddenly clear away a fog. So I wish a gale from heaven might sweep away all this fog of skepticism. When I see so many people around me drenched and soaked, and floundering in the dense fog of unbelief, I fall deeper in love with the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ. Oh! if these wiseacres would only come and believe the Gospel, how much perturbation they would escape. How happy they would be if they could only just learn the first three questions and the first three answers of the shorter catechism:

Who made you? God.

Who redeemed you? Christ.

Who sanctifies you? The Holy Ghost.

Oh! Sun of Righteousness, scatter the fog. Let us remember the Narragansett!

Once more, this disaster impresses me with the importance of being ready for sudden transition. Some of the papers say that there were only twenty minutes between the collision and the time when the vessel sank. Some say that in ten minutes many of them had perished. I suppose that in five minutes many had gone down. Just think of it. Twenty minutes! What a short time, if any of them were not ready for the eternal world! Twenty minutes! Fifteen of them would be passed in the effort to get ashore. Fifteen of them in the expectation that the life-boat might come. Fifteen in the hope that some strong swimmer might take them ashore. Fifteen gone’97only five left, and the five minutes split into two parts, the one-half to look back upon life, the other half to look forward to a great eternity. Twenty minutes! Fifteen minutes! Five minutes! Oh, does not that show every common-sense man that he ought to be ready for sudden transition? Some say, ’93I won’92t go on shipboard. If I go to Boston, I’92ll take the rail-train; I’92ll never risk my life on the Sound, nor on any steamer.’94 You cannot escape in that way. When you leave this world in all probability you will leave suddenly. Has not that been the history of most of your friends? It has certainly been the truth in regard to most of my own friends who have gone. They may have been sick for months or for years, but when they went, they went suddenly. It was a surprise to all of us; so it was to you with your friends. When the Avondale Mine exploded, how long did those poor miners have to prepare for the next world? Not half a second. When the ’93draw’94 was off at Norwalk, when the bridge broke at Ashtabula, how long did the passengers have to prepare for eternity? Five minutes? No. Three minutes? No. Two minutes? No. One minute? No. The twinkling of an eye. ’93In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.’94 Oh! ought we not to be ready for sudden transition?

Can you imagine that beautiful steamer gone? The furnaces are out. The pulsating of that great machinery has all ceased. It is a dead steamer, and it is buried. It is buried in the cemetery of dead ships, that great cemetery of dead ships, the Arctic, the Cambria, the North Fleet, the Atalanta, the City of

Boston; but the time will come when all the dead of Long Island Sound and all the dead of the Atlantic will rise. The trumpet will sound through all the caverns of the deep as well as through all the valleys and the mountains. Day of light. Day of darkness. Day of joy. Day of sorrow. Day of victory. Day of defeat. Day of resurrection.

A voice comes from that dead steamer this morning, saying: ’93What thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, for there is neither wisdom nor device in the grave whither we are all hastening.’94 A man is stupid beyond all reclamation who cannot learn that lesson from this awful calamity. Oh, we want to be housed in God, we want this morning to be so encased by divine mercy that nothing can harm us. Do you suppose that calamity did any harm to God’92s children on board that steamer? No harm. Sudden death was to them sudden glory. The angels of God hovered over the burning Narragansett and those who died in Christ went straight to the bosom of Jesus. Do you not want that refuge? Do you not want to fly to that fortress this morning?

I believe there were three or four Eddystone Lighthouses. Henry Winstanley built a lighthouse. It was of very fantastic shape’97Eddystone Lighthouse on the coast of England’97and the people said, ’93That lighthouse will not stand the storm.’94 ’93It will,’94 said Henry Winstanley, ’93and I hope I may be in it when the first and worst storm comes down.’94 The lighthouse was completed and there was a heavy storm gathering. Perhaps it was time for the equinoctial, and Henry Winstanley, with some of his workmen, went into the lighthouse to spend the night. Oh, it was an awful storm that swept down the coast of England. Next morning the people went down to find the lighthouse. It was gone. Not so much as a fragment of a wall left. Only two twisted iron bolts. So men get themselves up into the lighthouse of their skepticism; so men get themselves up into the fortress of their egotism; so men get themselves up into a state of defiance against God, and they say, ’93We are secure; we are not afraid; let all the storms of death come, let the cyclone of the Judgment come; we dare all danger, we despise all threat.’94 Suddenly God breathes on them and they are gone. Only two things left: a grave and a lost soul. Remember the Narragansett!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage