A gale was blowing, and the heavy roar of the sea kept many a landsman, safe in his bed at home, awake during much of the night. In the morning early, that peculiar fascination of resistless strength, wind and waves in combined energy, drew me to the beach. Men and boys were streaming along westward, and in the crowd were many fishermen in their brown clothing and long sea boots. The sight of their serious faces, so different from the eager countenances of the landsmen, was quite sufficient reason for the movements of the crowd. So I asked one of them, what and where the vessel was.
“One of our fishing boats, about a mile to westward,” was the reply.
Yes! there she was, one of the luggers so familiar to all who know the English south coast. She had dragged her anchor, and was drifting towards destruction. Now broadside on to the gale, now half smothered with the seas, she seemed as if swamped she must be, even before she could be broken to pieces on the shore.
But where was her crew? The noise of the gale, which had awaked us on shore, was an accustomed sound to them. Weary with their work, the men had cast out their anchor in what they regarded as good holding ground they knew not their danger, they were sound asleep! Yes! sound asleep, and drifting to destruction. Thank God, poor fellows, the ready wit and calm courage of their brothel fishermen saved the boat and them; but what a voice rose up from the sight of that fishing boat drifting to destruction!
Sleep on poor sinner―sleep on, despite warnings, entreaties, tears. Sleep on, pool sinner, you know it not, but your anchor has lost its hold, your vessel drifts to death, to doom. You are familiar with the sounds of the storm. You have heard too often the testimony of the Christless death, of the sinner cut off in his sins. You have heard, till you tremble not even in your sleep, of judgment, and wrath, and everlasting woe. Sleep on, sleep on, but for how many days longer? Who shall awaken you? Who shall reach you where you are? What voice shall penetrate right into your slumbering soul?
Oh! man, you are familiarized with the sight of death, the uncertainty of life―yea, with the sound of the words of the book of God, which tell of wrath, of the lake of fire, which is the second death, you are familiar. Awake, awake, lest, too late, you awake in hell to the realities of eternity where sleep and rest shall be never known.