SERMON IV — A Fragment – THE OCEAN OF TIME – William Elbert Munsey

THERE is that home — but here is this world. Between this world and that Heaven-Home is the Ocean of time.

       The world side of this ocean is disfigured by a thousand volcanoes of human corruption in constant outburst, playing into the sickly air a«mid mountains of pitchy smoke, streams of lavic fire, hurtling rock, and howling scoriae, which falling to the earth red-hot and wide wasting, every landscape is scarred, blackened, and blasted, with but here and there an intervening knoll or glen to tell the story of earth’s primeval beauty. Scattered over this world’s superficial crust propped out of a subterranean seething fire by columns of metamor- phic rock too feeble for their burden, are the temples of man’s ambition and man’s philosophy, the monuments of human pride, the pagodas of human folly, the palaces of human iniquity, and the cathedrals of man’s idolatry. Among them may be seen a unique and lonely ruin, gray and old, upon whose crumbling sides hoary Chronos has left its records, and every succeeding year which has made up man’s historic ages has gnawed its name. It is a tower whose mates have long since perished, and without wall stands solitary and melancholy out upon the thistly and briery fields of man’s lost estate. They say, that in the nighttime, ghosts of man’s primeval joys and primeval good, in many a shadowy and changing shape, peep around the corners, creep through the crevices, and climb and flit along the walls of the dismal ruins, whistling to the pestilential winds of Heaven’s curse, and making the night chilly and weird with horror. Upon this tower’s last remaining turret still remains the footprint of the last guardian angel of the world’s pristine times, where standing, he wept his valedictory, then sprung up to God, leaving his track behind him. This tower is the last remaining vestige of man’s Paradise — it marks the gate.

      Along the coasts of this world’s side of the ocean of time are bold and bald promontories and frowning cliffs of jagged rocks, against which the ocean waves and ocean surges have beaten for sixty centuries — with here and there a cove or bay forming the harbor for some world-city, where many a craft of curious kind finds anchorage and moorings. All along these shores are lifeboats stranded and bottomless, and ruined hulls, shivered keels, broken masts and splintered spars — thrown upon the beach, drifted in coves, wedged in fissures plowed by the ceaseless billows and running currents in the solid rock, or hung pendulously upon half-submerged and ragged ledges, and creaking mournfully with every rising wave.

          This is the World side of the ocean of time, typing man’s fallen state — and beneath it is a burning mine consuming its very foundations, and by and by, it, and all the works of man which adorn it, and all that refuse to leave it, and who link their destiny with it, and regardless of the future make it their all in all, shall perish in fiery ruins. But to this Ocean there is a heaven or home side — a country sublimely beauti- ful and imperishably magnificent — a country whose inhabi- tants never die, a country which will exist forever, a country to which we are all invited, and by going we escape the world’s ruin. This country types man’s heavenly future state. But O, there is an intervening Ocean, and that ocean is filled with many a dangerous shoal, and many a perilous rock, around which the waves hiss and roar and splash, and many a bellowing maelstrom which churns its briny foam, and flings its weeping spray high in the air. Also the bil- lowy main is covered with privateers commissioned by per- dition’s infernal king to capture, sink, and damage all vessels freighted with passengers from this world to the other shore. In better words, the sea is covered with merciless and dia- bolical corsairs. Add to this a sky which is seldom calm but easily and often convulsed with terrific tempests, in which hellish passions and demon hates burn and flash with awful roar, disastrous power and ruinous effect, and make it the stormiest and most dangerous of all oceans, and a striking type of human life and time. For we know that ten thou- sand ships, made by earth’s master-builders, have left the ports of this world with passengers for the other shore, but there is no news that they ever arrived with their living freight and unloaded on the farther side. No ship made by human hands which has sailed from this world has ever re- turned. The presumption is that they and all the passengers aboard went down to the bottom, or wrecked, the passengers perished, and the fragments only of their timbers floated to this side. One ship, however, which sailed from this world, whose name was ‘; Riches,” has been heard from : it had landed its passengers in hell — ” the rich man died, and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his ey^s, being in torments.” There never was a time when so many human crafts were upon the waters, endeavoring to outride storms, steer clear of all rocks, and at last cast anchor in the harbor of glory — but founder they must, founder they will ; for no human skill, no human arm can make such a ship, or if making it, can steer it.

       Now cast your eyes athwart the ocean on the world-side of it — for there are none which get over in sight of the other haven — and behold their multitudinous crafts. No two are alike. Here are denominational brigs with many a rotten plank in side and bottom, with familiar names floating from their mastheads, each one claiming to be ” the brig” and each crammed with bigots crying in wildest frenzy ” Come aboard our ship, or you will all perish.” Next we have the ponderous and unwieldly ships of an unimpeachable Orthodoxy, already water-logged and sinking, with the dead fathers for helmsmen, and crowded deck and cabin with slumbering drones, wearing chains upon hands and feet and necks, balls of iron, wrought in the theological forges of holy councils commissioned in the beginning of the centuries to do the world’s thinking, and to keep the world’s conscience, and to mark out with ecclesiastical fiat the boundaries of the world’s thought, and that forever. Next we have the vessels of human philosophy, weighted down to the load water line with philosophers superficial, philosophers profound, philoso- phers gay and philosophers grave — any one of whom can give you a chart of the mighty deep and map heaven to your eye if you desire it, and also can in one moment prove that the old ship of Zion is a leaky craft, badly built, badly manned, and altogether unsafe for such a voyage. Next we have men of war, manned with Isms and Schisms, with heavy guns, intending to fight their way across life’s roaring sea, and take heaven by storm — if indeed they can agree and will not fight each other, till their voyage is over. Besides these we have schooners and sloops and yachts and barges ; — or, if you please, creeds and theories, dogmatas and systems — all claiming to be right, and perilling all upon their crafts, and all putting to sea and all going down to the bottom. Mighty heaven ! this is no figure ; men have embarked their souls upon denominational brigs and ships of orthodoxy, ships of philosophy, ships of learning, ships of reason, and ships of creeds, depending upon everything else but Jesus to save them.

      But there is one Ship, and only one, which can carry us over the stormy and dangerous main ; that is the Gospel Ship, “the Old Ship of Zion” — and her gangboard is faith in Jesus. Orthodox or not orthodox — believe in Jesus and come on board. She is now in the harbor — we are aboard. Examine her : her keel, her spars, her decks, her journal She ships her anchor — love drives. Look up ! Angels hover on her masts. The ocean may be replete with shoals and rocks and maelstroms, but she is a staunch old vessel, and Jesus is her captain, and the Holy Ghost is her helms- man. Hell’s rovers may attack her, but the angels of heaven are charged with her keeping, and the power of God is her defense. Clouds may gather black and ominous, and red- shafted lightnings may pierce the wave, and echoless and de- tonating thunders may shake the world, and dreadful hurri- canes may rage and roar through the waters, and stir them into awful ebullition, sea surges crested with foam bounding into the very chariot of the storm king, and mountain billows scaling heaven, and shrieking Tritons tearing through the folded sails, and sea dragons lashing the quivering keel — ■ but our Captain is on the deck, and our helmsman is at the wheel. Presently the good land is in sight — then the ha; bor — the landing — the greeting — shouts, and then songs.