By the Editor
Ebb and Flow
I AM gazing from my window at the Manor House, Shaldon. Before me is the Estuary of the river Teign. It is low tide―the lowest tide I have seen here. The vast mud flats forming the river bed are all exposed in their desolate wastes, and seem to stretch almost from shore to shore. The raucous cries of the gulls come to me, as they hover and pitch on the spongy morass―else silence and deadness pervades all.
A few hours pass, and from over the sandy bar the white foam of the incoming tide is seen―the strength of the mighty sea is advancing in all its exhilarating beauty, and soon the ocean has reclaimed the desolated shores, and glad and sparkling waters, fresh from the fountains of the great deeps, redolent with the breath of God, and charged and purified by the divine alchemy of sun and wind, and ever moving seas fill with their glorious splendor the scene before me.
What a change! The dead has been made to live, and the transforming power of strength and ordered beauty, directed by a power omnipotent and beneficent, has restored everything. And upon those covering floods, with tidal fullness full, the harbor boats pass and re-pass in the busy labors of the day. What lessons we learn from the ebbing and flowing of the sea!
I walked amid the graves in Ringmore Churchyard. All around me was the ebbing tide of human life. There was a row of infant graves, pathetic in their littleness. Such texts upon them as, “Jesus called a little child to Him,” “Suffer little children to come unto Me.” These tiny tombs were near a grave I had gone to see, the grave of a Trinity pilot. On his tomb were the words, “He has crossed the bar” his tide of life had passed out into the sea of eternity. I saw also the grave of a young girl of nine called Adeline. These: words embalm the ebbing of her life: ―
“See the buds so rudely torn,
Blooming in the land of rest;
See the lambs from suffering borne,
Resting in their Saviour’s breast.”
And close by the desolation of a heart and home as the tide went out was recorded over the passing of the life of a dearly-loved wife named “Hannah,” aged twenty-six: ―
Had He asked us well we know
We should cry, ‘Oh, spare this blow!’
Yes, with streaming tears should pray,
‘Lord, we love her; let her stay.’
“But the Lord doth naught amiss,
And since He hath ordered this,
We have naught to do but still
Rest in silence on His will.”
The tide of life passes out into the sea of eternity, leaving lonely homes and desolate wastes of life. Are we ready for our passing? When the call of the sea of eternity comes to us, and we have to cross the bar, what shall we find beyond? Will the Divine Pilot be our guide, and a haven of eternal rest our bourne? or shall we have to meet the mists of doubts and fears, and face the storms that bring destruction in their pathway? Will ours be the shining seas lit with the summer glory of the light of God, or will they be lonely in their dread darkness, and will death and judgment be the messengers He sends to meet us?
God save us from making shipwreck of our lives. I will give you the story of one who went out over the bar to meet the fury of the storm of God’s wrath against his unforgiven sins, and who had to cry as he faced the ocean of death: “Lost! Lost! Forever lost”