come, as if booming across the deep, or borne on the wings of the wind from a distant vessel, None but Christ! none but Christ! Oh, 'tis a sweet sound! Then I say to myself, I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me." I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.22 Oh, those are precious words, Who loved me, and gave himself for me! Sometimes I say to myself, when Satan would take them away out of my mouth, Why may I myself not have. them, as well as Paul? I am as big a sinner. Satan draws back, and the fear of death itself is conquered, and God seems to have given me the victory. Then PETER. Well, indeed, there is none other victory. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.23 This is the King's victory, in us, over the god of this world, and by this he will bring us off conquerors. Nothing but this can sustain us in life, nothing but this can comfort us in death. We must throw all upon Christ. A man that had been a faithful servant of God, as the King's Ambassador, once lay a-dying, when he was visited by a dear and loving fellow-minister. This man, seeing him so near 3 1 John. v. 4. 21 Phil. iv. 13. 22 Gal. ii. 20. death, put the question to him, And what are you doing now, my brother? Whereupon he answered, 66 I'll tell you what I am doing, dear brother, I am gathering together all my prayers, all my sermons, all my good deeds, all my ill deeds; and I am going to throw them all overboard, and swim to glory on the plank of Free-grace." JOHN.-Well, we've nothing else to swim upon, and even then, 'tis not our swimming, but his grace, that holds us up. We should as often dive down to the bottom, as swim upon the top, if it were not for that. And who is it that makes our weather for us? Who knows what is the best weather? Why, verily, we know not even what to pray for as we ought, unless out of the same Free Grace his Divine Spirit teacheth us. 24 Now the time wore away in such talk with surprising rapidity, and if the days were as days of heaven, the nights that followed were still more lovely. For indeed no language can tell the glory of the starry sky above the ocean, as they now flew upon their voyage, nor the beauty of the sea beneath the waxing and waning moon; for they could follow its increase from the first silver thread of light, to the brilliance of the full orb, and then again as it slowly, gently faded from the sky. And when it was riding 14 Rom. viii. 26. in the heavens in silent majesty, it seemed to look down upon them, in the loneliness of the wide ocean, with a melancholy tenderness, as if appointed of God to watch over them. And those long, long lines of light, streaming from the furrows and liquid undulations of the waves, between them and the horizon, when the moon was an hour or two before setting; and at the horizon the whole ocean shining as if it were nothing but a sea of tremulous, billowy light, rolling into infinitude, so that if they could only b there, where the eye followed the glory, they could have sailed, without death or change, right into the expanse of heaven! So it sometimes seemed to them, and they were almost in an ecstacy of transport with such views. Sometimes the silence of midnight, under such a lovely sky, was broken by the notes of a hymn rising and floating in indescribable sweetness and melody. Beyond, beyond that boundless sea, Above that dome of sky, Farther than thought itself can flee, Thy dwelling is on high: Yet dear the awful thought to me Art nigh, and yet my laboring mind Thee in these works of power to find, Or to thy seat attain. Thy messenger the stormy wind, Thy path the trackless main. These speak of thee with loud acclaim, We hear thy voice, when thunders roll Yet still thou art not there; Who yet is everywhere! Oh not in circling depth or height, But in the conscious breast, Present to faith, though veiled from sight, There does his Spirit rest. Oh come, thou Presence Infinite, And make thy creature blest! CHAPTER XXVII. THE LAST ENEMY. Now all through the day they had seen lovely strange birds flying, and sometimes alighting at the mast-head, and this, with the sight of some flowers of exquisite beauty among the sea-weed that came floating by, made them think that they could not be very far from land. And in the evening, when the sun set, it no longer went down straight into the ocean, but seemed to sink behind a towering cloudridge, which they knew might veil a continent, but whether of the Celestial Country, or of this, they could not tell. They kept watch all night, and compared their course and observations very earnestly and carefully with the chart, where they found it written, at the point near which it was evident they had now come, Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far |