“THE SHIP IS SINKING, BUT THE FLAG IS STILL FLYING.”

Evening Star, Issue 17637, 16 April 1921, Page 2

“THE SHIP IS SINKING, BUT THE FLAG IS STILL FLYING.”

These words have a pathetic and suggestive interest. They ° were the farewell message of Dr Alex. Connell. He was the successor of Dr John Watson (lan Maclaren) in Sefton Park Church, Liverpool. A year or two ago Dr Connell was struck with a mortal disease. He was a Highlander, and he fought it stage by stage with the grim gallantry of his race. But when Death enters the lists it is always j losing battle for its opponent. Near the close a friend, who was also dying, sent a kindly message asking how Dr Connell was. And the latter’s reply w-as : “ Tell him the ship Ls sinking, but the flag is still flying.” It seems to us a very touching and beautiful farewell. It is far-reaching and full of deep suggestiveness. It is worth considering a little. ******* * Ever since man began to think ho has found the sea and the ship to •be the symbol of human life. The sea—in its mystery, tides, tragedies, calms, storms, restlessness, waves, waters, and fifty other things—is a very fitting symbol of tbe great sea of human life. And so are the ships that go and come across the oceans. In their variety, construction, fortunes, evolution, launching equipments, christening, compass, captains, sailors, anchors, rudders, passing and repassing each other by night and day—in these and over so many other points men in every ago have found tho ship emblematic of the individual afloat upon tho great sea of life. Tho poets are full of it. Longfellow deals with it in his ‘ Building of the Ship ’ : Like unto ships far out at sea., Outward and homeward bound are we. One of the most modern of them —Kipling—sings : Tho liner, she’s a lady, and she never looks nor ’ceds; , Tho man-o’-war’s her husband, and o gives her all she needs; But, oh ! tho little cargo boats, that sail tho wet seas round, They’re just tho same as you and mo, a-plying up and down. 1 And why should it not bo so ? Why should wo not have this double aspect of tho soa and tho ship ? Is not the deeper meaning as likely to be tho truer one? Go down to tho seashore —to adapt some words of a well-known writer —and we find a rock-pool full of pellucid water two or three feet deep, white pebbles at tho bottom, green and crimson and golden seaweeds fringing its sides. Look at it from a particular angle and in the proper light, and yon gazo down into tho deep blue sky and see tho snowy and amber clouds overhead, and over-arching trees like long fringed eyelashes around a laughing eyo mirrored in their depths. The little rock-pool becomes a basin of glory deep and capacious as the heaven itself, and filled with the brightest shapes of aerial beauty. Look at it from another angle and yon sco nothing of all this. But is not the one picture as real as the other? Is not tho vision of beauty as true—may we not say, indeed, truer —than the vision of hard stones and dull sea weeds? And why, then, should wc not discover in the great parent of that little pool a similar vision on a vaster scale, an emblem and allegory of life itself? Dio final ends or uses of anything are never material or physical. After wo have exhausted the scientific, geographical, utilitarian, and commercial purposes of tho sea, there remains like the rock-pool visions, a use of it that is ideal, spiritual, divine. As Emerson says, nothing is exhausted in its first use. When a thing has served an end to the uttermost it is wholly new for an ulterior service. Air is for breathing, but it can be formed into words that arc the revealers of souls as well. One harvest from thy fields Homeward brought thine oxen strong; Another it as surely yields. Which I gather in a song. And who shall say which is tho better? Some time, perhaps, wo may follow out this symbolism of the ship and sea and life into its fuller details. Bat meanwhile we shall content ourselves with the two suggested in Dr Connell’s farewell message: “The ship is sinking, but the flag is still flying.” “The ship is sinking.” That is true literally. Even as we write it is quite likely that a- vessel is going down somewhere. But on the sea of life it is far more true and terrible. Beneath its waves multitudes, like Dr Connell when he wrote, are going down now all over tho world. Disease, sorrow, loss, evil, sin are wrecking their ships, ami the waters are full of spent swimmers conscious that their day is done. When a catastrophe overtakes a ship the sailflrs have to jettison cargo, cut away rigging and masts, and past overboard many costly and precious things. And tho sailors on tho sea of life have often to do the same. In Jewish history there is the story of a ’ certain king, Jehoshaphat by name, who' sent out a fleet of ships to Ophir in search of gold. But they all came to grief. They were wrecked at Ezion Gcber. And we arc always despatching these treasure ships on the soa of life, and many of them meet with a similar fate. They have rich furnishings and the most costly cargoes. How shall we name them? There is, e.g., Hope. How strong and gallantly it carried itself in life’s gay morning. And now, with many, it is thrown overboard—tho voyage of life must go forward without it. And then there is Faith. What a treasure that is for the ship of life. That is what makes youth so brave and strong and indomitable; its trust, its powers of belief in itself and its fellows. Then as the years go on tho critical, tho cynical, tho • sceptical spirit kills it, and it is thrown overboard also. The belie vinoheart is hard to keep, and the higher the belief the more difficult. A poet has a poem in which a pilgrim hand on the white sanded beach detail their losses. One names this and another that-van-ished gold, dead youth, lost comrades, honors in (ho dust, etc. And then there spake one at the last: Sad losses have ye met; But mine is heavier yet,

For a believing heart hath gone from me. And then there is Love. That is the finest cargo on any treasure, ship. Nothing else equals it. Nothing else can take its place if it has to go. And hi many a ease it has. What multitudes are sailing the sea of life, and love lies dead upon the deck or is buried beneath the “ unplumbed salt-estranging sea.” The object on wiiich it was set has failed them, or their tnist was betrayed, or perhaps death has carried off the heart’s treasure, and they feel that life is not worth living now. Grey® rocks and a greyer sea, And surf along the shore, And in my heart a name My lips shall speak no more. . . . Across the sea a sail That tosses and is gone, And in my heart the kiss That longing dreams upon. lint it is the longing hint will never more be satisfied on thus side eternity. And so wo might go on to detail the ships of life that are making heavy weather and have to icttison so muck of their most precious

cargoes. There they lie deep, deep—hopes, faiths, joys, loves; at times only do we catch In doubtful glimpses on some rocky shelf Gleams of the irrecoverable gold!

One might think also of the causes of the ships sinking. Sometimes the causes are quite natural, quite within the bounds of possibilities. Diere are uncharted rocks, dangerous coasts, gales, hurricanes. And all these are on tho sea of life, and account for much of tho wreckage there. But sometimes the ship goes down from some cause witlnn itself—faulty planning, bad construction, rotted timbers, boiler explosions, and such like. And we often detect tbe same thing on the sea of Ufa. Ships there go down quite suddenly sometimes in raid-ocean, and on. a summeris day. We are familiar with the ravages of white ants in houses. They eat away the inside of the solidest log, and the place has to bo pulled down. And that sort of thing goes s on in human life. There is a dry rot that consumes tho faculties within, though outwardly all seems well. It often happenfe that some hidden fault, some secret indulgence frays away tho fibres of will and conscience and truth, the sense of honor and moral strength. All seems well till tho storms start, till trial and loss and sorrow strike the vessel, and then it falls asunder suddenly like the ships that steered near the Magnetic Island in tho old fable. It drew out their clamping irons, and they went to pieces, even on a calm sea and on a summer’s day. But perhaps most pathetic of all are tho derelicts. Kipling sings of them with characteristic verve and vigor;

For life that crammed me full. Gangs of the preying gull That shriek and scrabble on the nven hatches, For rear that dumbe'd the gale, Mv house pipes’ guttering wad, Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted .watches. And when there are human beings on these drifting logs the tragedy is complete. Read about it in Conrad’s * Mirror of tho Sea.’ ‘‘There is no harder trial for a seaman,” writes this master of sea romancists, “ than to feel a dead ship under his feet. I could imagine no wore© eternal punishment for evil seamen who die impenitent than ’ that their souls should be condemned to man tho ghosts of disabled ships drifting for over across a ghostly and tempestuous ocean.” And the sea of life has* these derelicts in bewildering numbers. There are thousands of them in every city of the world. 'They drift hither and thither, battered and rudderless, wrecks of humanity, and an ever-increas-ing peril to tho other ships upon the sea of life- But it is time wo said something about the other part of this farewell message. ******** “ The flag is flying.” It is a bravo thing to keep it there when the ship is going down. Wo applaud tho heroism that can do it. But everything depends on- what the flag stands for. Some flags are not worth hoisting when the end has come. Wc saw a picture once somewhere in which a sailor was afloat upon a piece of wreckage, and he was declaring himself happy because ho had a certain brand of tobacco. Unc can admire the sailor’s pluck, though he mav have doubts about the value of the Hag that he waves. When we speak of Hags they suggest one’s country—patriotism. Statesmen and soldiers have died with lire thought of the honor of thgir nation upon their lips. They kept the flag flying to the last. But Nurse Gavel!, perhaps, was right when she declared, as she was moving to her doom; ” Patriotism is not enough.” It is a very good flag, and has won great victories, though it lias fallen on evil days in these late times of cure, and it is good to keep it flying. It can hardly be doubted, however, that the Hag of which Dr Connell was thinking was none of these. He had been a Christian minister, and had sailed all his life under tho banner of the Cross. There is none better, none more worth hoisting when the ship is sihkihg. A flag gathers up - into itself tho memories and hopes, the traditions and expectations, of a nation. That is what makes tho flag of Britain dear to its people. And this flag of the Cross is also symbolic. It is symbolic of a great deed and a great hope —the greatest, in fact, in human history. It is symbolic of the suprCmcst sacrifice and the Divinost disclosures. Tho noble old sago Socrates, when ho came to face the sinking of his ship, said: “ Would that wo could more securely and less perilously set sail upon a stronger vessel or gome Divine word.” That longing which may bo said to be the sigh of humanity has found its fulfilment in the flag of the Gross for those who can believe it. Wo may recall here an impressive incident which took place in connection with tho church to which Dr Connell ministered, but which occurred in tho days of his distinguished predecessor, Dr John Watson, or, as ho is better known, lan IMaclaren. Matthew Arnold’s brother-in-law was a member of Dr Watson’s congregation. And Arnold had gone with him to church. It happened to be a sacramental service. Dr Watson had preached on the ‘ Shadow of tho Cross,’ after which tho congregation wing the well-known hymn: When I survey tho wondrous Cross On which the Prince of Glory diedArnold left before the communion, and went home. As he came downstairs to lunch a servant who was close to the dining-room door heard him saying softly to himself tho first two lines of that beautiful hymn. It formed tho topic of conversation at lunch time, and Arnold described it as the finest in the English larm-nagc. He spoke, too, in terms of admiration of Dr Watson's sermon, and eaid lie had been greatly impressed by an illustration which the preacher had used from the Riviera earthquake that had taken place a short time before. In. one village the huge Crucifix above the altar of the church remained unshaken among the ruins, and round the Cross the people sheltered. “ Yes,” was Arnold’s comment ” the Cross remaineth, and in the straits of the soul makes its ancient appeal.” A little after lie left tiio room, and a few minutes later he suddenly passed “to where beyond there voices there is peace.” .Multitudes have found no better Hag to fly either in death or life.