CHAPTER X.
THE LIGHT BEHIND THE CLOUD.
Was there such a light? It was one of the saddest of calamities, desolating at a stroke many a bright home, and nipping in the bud some of the fondest hopes and purposes. Was there such a light? The disaster swept away two hundred and twenty lives, around which many other lives twined like the gentle tendrils of a vine, and who will, perhaps, wither now that the props to which they sweetly clung have been torn ruthlessly away.
Was there such a light? The aged and the young went down together into the same grave. The infant child of four months old was dashed far away from the sinking mother’s breast, and heroism of the loftiest type received no higher reward than the dullest, basest cowardice.
Was there such a light? The refined scholar, for whom his pupils wait—the tender father, for whom a widow and six children, with only slender means for their support, anxiously look out—the gently strong John Woolley has gone down into the deep, and the sea has taken no more account of his worth and power than it has of the fool.
Was there such a light? Captain Martin has gone; the man who fearlessly traversed the ocean for years, who had often smiled at danger, and had gone between Melbourne and London until the path was as clear to him as the turnpike-road to the waggoner. The gentle, courageous good man will never more be greeted by his relatives, and the wide circle of friends who loved him will see him no more.
Was there such a light? Daniel Draper is lost to the church and to his only son; his brethren in the ministry will no longer be able to depend upon his wise suggestions; and souls unnumbered are still white unto harvest, while the successful reaper suddenly drops his sickle, and will gather in no more sheaves.
Was there such a light? and in what quarter of the heavens did it glow behind the great darkness in which the good ship went down into the whirlpool of destruction with 220 lives on board?
There was such a light, and we have no doubt of its beaming over this dark catastrophe still,—the light which shines through the words,
God is love.