"
"No, no," replied Jack; "I can't be pressed into that service. I am in
no rig either for going into such a concern; and, besides, it's ten long
years since I have been inside a church, and I should act so strangely
that they would throw me overboard. There's never a word in the gabbling
one hears at such places that I can understand."
"But this preaching is meant for sailors," continued Jack's new
acquaintance, "and there is nobody else there; so you will be rigged as
well as any of the congregation. Come along! let's board her right off."
Jack had a great deal of curiosity, and, after a little more parley,
consented to go into the floating chapel. I wish I could repeat to you
the sermon which he heard there, with the simple eloquence with which he
delivered it to us. The text was,--"The sea shall give up its dead." The
clergyman imagined the millions who should rise, on this momentous
occasion, from the recesses of the vast ocean, and as he pictured the
probable characters of many who should then come forth to judgment, and
their unfitness to stand before that holy tribunal, Jack felt as if he
were describing some of his own friends whom he had seen ingulfed by the
waters. When thus summoned, as they must be, before long, to appear,
with the same tempers and dispositions which they had displayed in life,
would they be found prepared for a heaven of purity? Then came a vivid
picture of the perils of a sailor's life, and the probability that its
termination might be equally sudden.
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