's
not unmanly. Sin has got countless allies ever ready to come to its
support. By prayer you will obtain one--but that One is all powerful,
all sufficient. It is my firm belief that He, and He alone, is the only
ally in whom you can place implicit reliance. Others may fall away at
the times of greatest need. He, and He alone, will never desert you;
will remain firm and constant till the battle of life is over.

Now some of my readers, perhaps, will exclaim, "Hillo, Mr Midshipman
Marmaduke Merry, have _you_ taken to preaching? You, who have been
describing that extraordinary old fellow Jonathan Johnson, with his
veracious narratives, and wonderful deeds. You've made a mistake.
You've taken it into your head to write some sermons for sailors, and
you've got hold by mistake of the manuscript of your own adventures."

Pardon me, I have made no mistake, I reply. When I was Midshipman
Marmaduke Merry, I did not preach; I did not often give good advice as I
do now. I wish that I had, and I wish that I had taken it oftener than
I did. What I do now is to afford the result of my experience at the
close of a long life; and it is that experience by which I wish you to
benefit. I quote the Scriptures, and I believe in the Scriptures for
many reasons. One of them is--that I have ever seen Scripture promises
fulfilled, and Scripture threats executed. Now let me ask you what
would you say to a man whose father, or some other relative, had been
storing up gold or other articles of value, and which, when offered to
him, he should refuse to accept, on the plea that they cost much
trouble, and occupied so many years to collect, that they must be
useless? You would say that such a man is an idiot. Yet is not
experience, or rather the good advice which results from experience,
treated over and over again by worldly idiots exactly in that way? Do
not you, dear readers, join that throng of idiots. Take an old man's
advice, and ponder over the matters of which I have just now been
speaking. This exhortation has arisen out of our paying-off dinner. I
might have given you a very amusing account of that same feast--though
it was not "a feast of reason," albeit it might have been a "flow of
soul;" but I am not in the vein, the fact being, that paying-off dinners
are melancholy affairs to look back at. How few of those assembled
round the festive board, who have been our companions for the previous
three, or four, or perhaps f