ALL HOPE GONE; YET LANDED SAFE.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

TEXT-Acts xxvii.

I CAN almost fancy I see the smile coming across your face that I am preventing from coming across my own, at the outward discrepancy between our subject and our surroundings this morning. The darkness and tempest of this 27th chapter, and the summer sunshine and cheeriness of this June Sabbath morning, seem to stand at opposite poles. And yet it has been laid upon me to preach this subject. I have been, during the past evenings, a good deal out about our streets; I see the great tide, especially of young life, that flows along the main thoroughfares of this great city; and this subject has been borne in upon me. I thought that this morning, when we have so much young life present, I would take it up, that it might be the means of causing us, especially those who are young, to take our reckoning, to look to our ways, and ask ourselves how it fares with us as we are voyaging across these seas of time and sin.

Life is a voyage. All the poets say it. But without the poets at all, it is almost no parable; it is almost no poetic figure of speech. Those of us who never wrote a line of Vol. II.-No. 17.

poetry find ourselves speaking of life in somewhat of the phraseology of this 27th chapter. Although perhaps we have never been to sea at all, we find ourselves expressing our experiences in terms of the sea and sea-faring life. And perhaps out of the very opposites that exist, as between our subject here and our bright and fair surroundings this morning, there may come something to help us. "Calm seas have their dangers," says the hymn, "Mariner, beware!"

We may begin at the tenth verse: "Paul said unto them, Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives. Nevertheless the centurion believed the master and the owner of the ship, more than those things which were spoken by Paul." Now, here in these words, I am brought face to face with those among us who are in danger of spoiling life's journey, and of coming to irremediable shipwreck in the end, simply because of the great vice of youth-headiness, hot-headedness, high-mindedness, impatience of advice, impatience of the control of those who know more about stormy days and stormy nights than you do-older mariners who have read the face of the sky longer than you have done, who know more about what life means to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day, than you can possibly do. I am speaking this morning to young men and young women, but while I speak to them, am I not carrying the sad sympathies and the sad memories of older men and women with me? Are there not grey heads who could stand up at this very hour, and almost take the preaching out of the preacher's mouth, and say, "Preacher, let me speak now. Even you are too young to bring home with all the emphasis that I could, what I see is to be the

drift of your teaching for young men and young women out of this subject this morning." My aged friends, those of you who have sad and bitter memories because you would not take advice, but despised instruction and hated reproof in your earlier years, send up to God the silent but earnest prayer that while I speak there may be given to me wit and wisdom beyond even yours or mine-Divine power to arrest the giddy, the thoughtless, and the self-sufficient, and to make them on this calm, quiet June Sabbath morning to give up their own plans, and call Him on board, who is the Great Pilot of this awful main.

There is

Dear young friends, two voices are in your cars. mine. I speak on behalf of Scripture, I speak on behalf of myself, I speak on behalf of all those who are wise with bought wit, as people say with bought wit, which is the best. I speak on behalf of those who have got their experience by bitter shame and sorrow. I speak on behalf of God and of the Word of God, and of wise people, when I so speak. Life, my young friends, is not what it seems to be to you. Life is not a sailing under fair skies and across tranquil seas, until you shall drop your anchor in Fair Havens at the end. Life is not a yachting excursion through the many-islanded Mediterranean, or round the creeks and bays of our lovely shores. Life is not sailing up and down some romantic Clyde, or still more romantic Rhine. Life means being out on the open sea; life means roughing it; life means storm; life means fog; life means unsightly mud banks on which you may run and be stranded. Life means roaring reefs and sunken rocks. Life means (to change the metaphor) snares and traps set with devilish skill for unwary feet, all round about. "Sirs," says the preacher, says Paul, says God Himself,

"I perceive that this voyage is to mean trouble, and distress, and trial, do as we may and go as we may."

This was said, remember, while they were still in the harbour; "In any case, our voyage is to mean trouble, and trial, and hardship." And I say the same. Oh, it is unwelcome; it is irksome doctrine. Time was when I do not think that I believed it myself. Time was when life seemed-well, what could our ideas of life be, my young friend, other than just what we gathered from those books we read, those novels that were continually in our hands. Life was to be an adventure, a glorious adventure. Life was to be romance. Life was to be success, and joy, and gladness. Hear it, although it may seem to be a wet blanket flung over your romancing spirit, your enthusiastic soul: "Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." We shall be barely saved, if we are saved at all-saved by the skin of our teeth, and we shall land on the eternal shore with nothing but what we stand in.

I quite believe, although I do not hear your controverting voice, that there is a feeling of somewhat angry comtemptuous controversy in your heart, even while I speak. So was it on this occasion, on this parabolic voyage. 66 Nevertheless the centurion believed the master and the owner of the ship, more than those things which were spoken by Paul." That is where the other of the two voices comes in. They would prophesy smooth things. Of course, they would be for pushing on. They were business men, "" men of the world." "Let us get forward. We cannot be kept back by this gloomy old grey-beard, this Paul. Let every man stick to his trade. Let every

man keep to his calling. Paul, you are a propagandist of some kind or another. Keep to your propaganda. We know more about trading, and about sailing, than you do. If you were speaking about your own subject, we might listen to you; but upon this subject you know nothing. You are ignorant and inexperienced, and we did not bring you on board to be our sailing-master." Is it not with something of a tone like that that young people are apt to listen to the warnings of wiser heads? Yea, to the secret solemn whisperings and warnings of God's voice speaking by His Word and Spirit in their own consciences. You listen to us, but, alas! alas! the world and the world's maxims lay their hands upon the helm. The world controls you; the world guides you.

You come here, and you listen to these solemn warnings, and I will not say that you laugh at them, I will not say that you scoff at them-but is it not deeply in the heart of some young men and women gathered here to-day ?—“ Ah! well, we shall see, we shall see; but my bottom opinion is that preachers, as a rule, are far too gloomy; preachers, as a rule, rather look at the dull side of things. They have no sympathy with the joyousness and the aspirations and the warm-blooded enthusiasms of four or five-and-twenty, or younger." My dear friend, there never was a greater mistake. We have every sympathy with them, and I am as young as four-and-twenty can be in my own thoughts and feelings this day. I feel as if I grew younger every day. I was lately speaking to an elderly man who said he was disappointed to think that the very youngest generation should suppose that he had grown out of it. We are in full sympathy with all enthusiasm that is legitimate, that is not mere wind and effervescence; but some of us have tried to