SERMON FOR SEAFARERS. ANNUAL NATIONAL SERVICE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1909, Page 13

SERMON FOR SEAFARERS. ANNUAL NATIONAL SERVICE.

Nearly four thousand sailors were in St. Paul'B Cathedral on the 10th of October for the sixth annual national service for seafarers. And what a fine set of, men- they were to look upon (observes the Chronicle reporter.) There were men of the Naval Reserve and the Naval Volunteers, in uniform, and grizzled old skippers of the merchant service, with boys from training ships and from the seamen's orphanages. There were, too, crowds of London firemen, all ex-sail-ors. There was a delightful touch when the choir marched in. Many of the lads were from training ships, and outside their white surplices they had drawn the broad blue collars of their sailor suits. Surely the "cherub that sits up aloft to look after poor Jack" looks something like .these jolly little fellows, with their round, rosy faces, and the strangely contrived medley of ecclccfastical and nautical uniform. The vast congregation of bronzed men sang "For those in peril on the sea" as it is rarely sung. It roared and thundered down the great cathedral and up to the dome like a tempest, and then came echoing back like a receding wave that drags the shingle with it.