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DEVOTED TO THE BEST INTERESTS OF SEAMEN AND THEIR FAMILIES.
“Cast thy broad upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.”
Vou. II.
——
vo. 9.)
For the Sea-Bird.
Sarcor, in thine early life
Did'st thou know a mother’s love?
At her knee in child-like faith
Dilst thou lift thine eye above,
And e’er lying down to sleep
“ Pray the Lord thy soul to keep?”
Did that mother's gentle voteo
Bid thee shun the way of sta,
Make the wise and good thy cholce,
And their friendship seek to win?
Did she bid thee love the trath
In the morning of thy youth?
fallor, tell me did'st thou heed
All these kindly warnings given ?
In that “ mother’s Bible,” read
Words which teach the way to heaven?
And in earnest, hoirtfelt prayer
Ask thy God to guide thee there?
Tf thon thus the truth hast sought,
Thus the path to heaven hast trod,
Then the early lessons tanght
Will bring thee to thy mother's God.
Staten Island, Deo, 13th,
_———~-o-_____
For the Sea-Bird.
“SAVED BY GRACE.
“Taere was a Stranger here last night,”
and as be said it the tears glistened in his
eyes, and a smile irradiated his features which
strikingly contrasted with the look of invari-
able dejection which his face had worn for
many weeks before. The strong pressure of
his hand assured me of the fervor of heart out
of which he spoke, and I knew in an instant
what he meant. The speaker was a man of
about 45, who had followed the sea from
boyhood. He had enjoyed the precious in
JANUARY, 1859.
struction of a deeply pious mother, who has
long since passed away.- In all -his life of
peril and adventure, he had never been able
to obliterate the hallowed impressions which
her teaching and example had engraven upon
his hears, and though given to many. of the
vices and follies which characterize the his-
tory of most men of his class, he yet retained
in all his wanderings a lively sense of his
responsibility to God, which, mingling with
his guilty pleasures, gave often a poignancy
to the pangs of remorse, and made him feel
the bitterness of a lifo of alienation from God.
He had followed for many years the whale
fishery, and in this perilous pursuit had often
been exposed to the extreme hazard of losing
both soul and body. Many a time had he
given up all hope of escape, and at last was
rescued, as by soma mysterious Providence,
from the drowning waters in which his com-
rades bad gone down from his sight forever,
He was seldom at ease respecting himself and
his course of life, and when some startling
occurrence, some hair-breadth escape from
impending death, would for the moment
shake him awake to the consciousness of his
peril of soul—he would take down his un-
familiar Bible, and give himself to serious
thought for a little, and then gradually re-
lapse again into his wonted courses of indif-
ferenca and folly. Thus he had .lived—ro-
penting and resolving to change his life—
miserable as the sense of his guilt before God
[FR TERMS, &0,
SEE LAST PAGE,
‘could make him—praying sometimes in par-
oxysms, -but still cliaging with one hand to
the world; tossed hither and thither with
doubts and fears—seeking often to plunge
deaper into the whirl of sensual pleasure, so
that he might get rid of the discomforting
sense of remorse, which, like a good angel at
his side, kept whispering to him of a better
life, and admonishing him to * 4ee the wrath
to come.”
He was a very stout and muscular man,
thick set; and from his honest face, em-
browned by long ‘exposure, beamed an ex-
pression of great strength of will, combined
with one cf almost unvarying sadness, His
was one of those faces in which you can read
very much of the heart, and of the history,
Your impression of it would be somewhat
ike this: “Here isa man who has tried
the world in very many of its different
courses. He has, doubtless, tasted of every
\cup of what the mistaken world calls pleas-
ure. His restless spirit has fretted and chafed
Hike a caged lion, against the ills of a hard
fortune; and all the while he has carried with-
in him an unslumbering, gnawing sense of
wretchedness, which has furrowed his cheeks,
and silvered his locks, and given a subdued
expression to his countenance.” But there
is a heavenly smile playing over his features
now. The Bible, of which he has been acon-
stant reader for several weeks, lies open be-
fore him,
“a, Goal | pte wee Be Sp pan Se eas fh Raia
Sata. agg tea oe