O’er golden sands, and die upon the shore in music.”
THE ANCHOR OF HOPE
[From a sermon preached at the Second Parish church, Portland, Maine, on Sunday, August 5, 1900, “Old Home Week.”]
Hebrews vi. 19. “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.”
The apostle declares that the relation of a hope in Christ to the soul is the same as that of the anchor to the ship.
The value of an anchor in emergencies is well known. A large ship filled with passengers is making her passage in midwinter across the western ocean. As she strikes soundings the weather thickens. The wind is easterly; the gale increases; the sea makes; snow begins to fall; and no pilot is to be found. But confident, too confident, of his ability, the master, unwilling to lie off, runs into the narrow channel of Boston Bay. The gale increases; the snow thickens. Sail after sail is taken in until the ship under short canvas can no longer hold her own, but makes leeway continually. Suddenly arises the cry, “Breakers to leeward! Breakers to leeward!” and the seamen behold the long, black line of ragged rocks and the white surf that breaks upon them, where the strongest ship becomes in a few moments like the chips and bark that fell from her timbers in framing.
There is now but one resource. Canvas can do no more. The navigator’s expedients are exhausted. There is but one hope left to cling to. The anchor may bring her up. With the skill and energy of men working for their own lives and the lives of those dependent upon their exertions, the ship is brought to and the anchors are let go. The ship trembles as fathom after fathom of massive chain is jerked through the hawse-holes. The fire flies from the iron folds that encircle the windlass, and, as she comes up to that terrific sea breaking mountains high, taking it over both shoulders and filling her whole waist with water, pitching and wallowing till every stick seems about ready to go out of her, and the windlass itself to be carried into the bows, anxious eyes look ahead at the seas and astern at the breakers. A cry is heard: “She drags! She drags! The surf is bringing the anchors home! They won’t hold!” Every cheek grows pale and strong men tremble.
Presently there is another cry: “Now she holds! She holds! The anchors have got her!” And men who have not spoken together during the voyage embrace each other for joy. The last link of scope is given; the chains are weather-bitted; the slatting canvas is furled; the yards are sharpened to the wind, and then she lies in that tremendous surf, whose pitiless diapason drowns every other sound—two hundred souls depending for life upon the links of those chains and the strength and clutch of those anchors.