Friday, June 5. We have the moon again directly in the zenith; she hangs there like a resplendent orb in the centre of a magnificent dome. The stars gleam out with timid auxiliary light; while soft clouds float with incense from earth’s thousand altars. The dome, beneath which the turbaned representative of the Prophet kneels, and that which bends in grandeur over the supplicating form of the papal hierarch, are poor when compared with this. The walls of St. Sophia will crumble, and the pillars of St. Peter’s give way, but nature’s great dome will still stand, brilliant and undecaying, as when it echoed the song of the morning stars over the birth of our planet; and it will stand the same,
“Till wrapp’d in flames the realms of ether glow,
And heaven’s last thunder shakes the world below.”
Saturday, June 6. We have in the sick-bay a sailor, James Mills, who must die. He may survive a few days longer, and must then go. He is in the prime of life, and a few months ago ranked among the most athletic on our decks. He is now but the shadow of the past, and hovers dimly on the verge of life. The night of that narrow house is not all dark to him; some rays of light reach it from the Cross. These are now all that can cheer him; they are all that can cheer the descending footsteps of the proudest monarch. Into death’s domain the honors and friendships of earth cannot enter; they leave their possessor in the hour of his utmost need. But there is One whose love will remain with the meek, when these depart; One whose smile will kindle up a morn even in the night of the grave.
Sunday, June 7. Commodore Stockton, who has always taken an interest in our religious exercises, having occasion to speak to the crew to-day, I induced him to extend his remarks to topics more sacred than those which lay within his original purpose. He spoke of the Bible as that crowning revelation which God has made of himself to man, of its elevating influences on the human soul, of the priceless counsels which it conveys, and the immortal hopes which it awakens. He contrasted the gloomy condition of those tribes and nations which were without it with that of those where its steady light shone, and found in this contrast a vindication of its divinity, which none could gainsay or resist. He commended its habitual study to the officers and crew as our only infallible rule of duty, as our only safe-guiding light in the mental and moral twilight of our being here. He rebuked the idea that religion was out of its element among sailors, and told them that of all classes of men they were the one that most needed its restraining influences and glorious promises, and denounced as insane a disposition to trifle with its precepts. He commended the good conduct of the crew on the Sabbath, and expressed the earnest hope, that they would continue, in the event of probable separation from them, the same respectful and earnest regard for the duties of religion.
Such remarks as these, coming from the commander of a ship or squadron, will do more to sustain a chaplain in the discharge of his difficult duties than any privileges which can be conferred upon him through the provisions of law. They honor the heart from which they flow, and their influence will be felt in the moral well-being of hundreds, when that heart shall have ceased to beat. The tree you have planted will grow, and its fruit come to maturity, though you see it not.
Monday, June 8. At seven bells of our forenoon watch the call of the boatswain, “All hands to bury the dead!” rolled its hoarse, deep tones through the ship. The remains of the deceased—wrapped in that hammock from which he had often sprung as his night-watch came round—was borne by his messmates up the main-hatch, and around the capstan, to the slow measures of the dead-march, played by the band. In the starboard waist, and on a plank, one end of which rested on the sill of an open port, the relic reposed, till in the funeral service the words were announced, “We commit this body to the deep;”—the inner end of the plank was then lifted, and the hammocked dead, with a hoarse, rumbling sound, glided down to his deep floating grave. Thus passed poor Mills from our midst in the morning of his days, with broken purposes and blighted hopes. Though the wave rolls over his form, and none can point to the place of his rest, his humble virtues still survive in the recollections of those who knew him.
“The departed! the departed!
They visit us in dreams,
And glide above our memories