all invention, all
literature, all commerce will be the Lord's.

These ships that you see going up and down New York harbor are to be
brought into the service of God. All those ships I saw at Liverpool,
at Southampton, at Glasgow, are to be brought into the service of
Christ. What is that passage, "Ships of Tarshish shall bring
presents"? That is what it means. Oh, what a goodly fleet when the
vessels of the sea come into the service of God! No guns frowning
through the port-holes, no pikes hung in the gangway, nothing from
cut-water to taffrail to suggest atrocity. Those ships will come from
all parts of the seas. Great flocks of ships that never met on the
high sea but in wrath, will cry, "Ship ahoy!" and drop down beside
each other in calmness, the flags of Emmanuel streaming from the
top-gallants. The old slaver, with decks scrubbed and washed and
glistened and burnished--the old slaver will wheel into line; and the
Chinese junk and the Venetian gondola, and the miners' and the
pirates' corvette, will fall into line, equipped, readorned,
beautified, only the small craft of this grand flotilla which shall
float out for the truth--a flotilla mightier than the armada of Xerxes
moving in the pomp and pride of Persian insolence; mightier than the
Carthaginian navy rushing with forty thousand oarsmen upon the Roman
galleys, the life of nations dashed out against the gunwales.

Rise, O sea! and shine, O heavens! to greet this squadron of light and
victory! On the glistening decks are the feet of them that bring good
tidings, and songs of heaven float among the rigging. Crowd on all the
canvas. Line-of-battle ship and merchantmen wheel into the way. It is
noon. Strike eight bells. From all the squadron the sailors' songs
arise. "Surely the isles shall wait for thee, and the ships of
Tarshish to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with
them, to the name of the Lord thy God, and the Holy One of Israel."

A MOMENTOUS QUEST.

"Seek ye the Lord while he may be found."--ISA. lv: 6.

Isaiah stands head and shoulders above the other Old Testament authors
in vivid descriptiveness of Christ. Other prophets give an outline of
our Saviour's features. Some of them present, as it were, the side
face of Christ; others a bust of Christ; but Isaiah gives us the
full-length portrait of Christ. Other Scripture writers excel in some
things. Ezekiel more weird, David more pathetic, Solomon more
epigrammatic,