But after all is said that can be said on this point, the subject sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the lifeboat’s true work—the saving of human lives.
There is yet another and still higher sense in which the lifeboat is of immense value to the nation. I refer to the moral influence it exercises among us. If many hundreds of lives are annually saved by our lifeboat fleet, does it not follow, as a necessary consequence, that happiness and gratitude must affect thousands of hearts in a way that cannot fail to redound to the glory of God, as well as the good of man? Let facts answer this question.
We cannot of course, intrude on the privacy of human hearts and tell what goes on there, but there are a few outward symptoms that are generally accepted as pretty fair tests of spiritual condition. One of these is parting with money! Looking at the matter in this light, the records of the Institution show that thousands of men, women, and children, are beneficially influenced by the lifeboat cause.
The highest contributor to its funds in the land is our Queen; the lowliest a sailor’s orphan child. Here are a few of the gifts to the Institution, culled almost at random from the Reports. One gentleman leaves it a legacy of 10,000 pounds. Some time ago a sum of 5000 pounds was sent anonymously by “a friend.” A hundred pounds comes in as a second donation from “a sailor’s daughter.” Fifty pounds come from a British admiral, and five shillings from “the savings of a child!” One-and-sixpence is sent by another child in postage-stamps, and 1 pound 5 shillings as the collection of a Sunday school in Manchester; 15 pounds from three fellow-servants; 10 pounds from a shipwrecked pilot, and 10 shillings, 6 pence from an “old salt.” I myself had once the pleasure of receiving twopence for the lifeboat cause from an exceedingly poor but enthusiastic old woman! But my most interesting experience in this way was the receipt of a note written by a blind boy—well and legibly written, too—telling me that he had raised the sum of 100 pounds for the Lifeboat Institution.
And this beneficial influence of our lifeboat service travels far beyond our own shores. Here is evidence of that. Finland sends 50 pounds to our Institution to testify its appreciation of the good done by us to its sailors. President Lincoln, of the United States, when involved in all the anxieties of the great war between North and South, found time to send 100 pounds to the Institution in acknowledgment of services rendered to American ships in distress. Russia and Holland send naval men to inspect—not our armaments and materiel of hateful war, but—our lifeboat management! France, in generous emulation, starts a Lifeboat Institution of its own, and sends over to ask our society to supply it with boats—and, last, but not least, it has been said that foreigners, driven far out of their course and stranded, soon come to know that they have been wrecked on the British coast, by the persevering efforts that are made to save their lives!
And now, good reader, let me urge this subject on your earnest consideration. Surely every one should be ready to lend a hand to rescue the perishing! One would think it almost superfluous to say more. So it would be, if there were none who required the line of duty and privilege to be pointed out to them. But I fear that many, especially dwellers in the interior of our land, are not sufficiently alive to the claims that the lifeboat has upon them.
Let me illustrate this by a case or two—imaginary cases, I admit, but none the less illustrative on that account.
“Mother,” says a little boy, with flashing eyes and curly flaxen hair; “I want to go to sea!”
He has been reading “Cook’s Voyages” and “Robinson Crusoe,” and looks wistfully out upon the small pond in front of his home, which is the biggest “bit of water” his eyes have ever seen, for he dwells among the cornfields and pastures of the interior of the land.
“Don’t think of it, darling Willie. You might get wrecked,—perhaps drowned.”