ich, it is to be earnestly wished, may have been improved, as well by
those who were eventually saved as by those who perished.

It has been observed by the author of the Retrospect, that "in the heat
of battle, it is not only possible but easy to forget death, and cease
to think; but in the cool and protracted hours of a shipwreck, where
there is often nothing to engage the mind but the recollection of tried
and unsuccessful labours, and the sight of unavoidable and increasing
harbingers of destruction, it is not easy or possible to forget
ourselves or a future state."

The general applicability of the latter part of this proposition I am
disposed to doubt; for if I were to judge of the feelings of all on
board by those of the number who were heard to express them, I should
apprehend that a large majority of those men, whose previous attention
has never been fairly and fully directed to the great subject of
religion, approach the gates of death, it may be with solemnity, or with
terror, but without any definable or tangible conviction of the fact
that after death cometh the judgment.

Several there were who vowed in loud and piteous cries, that if the Lord
God would spare their lives, they would thenceforward dedicate all their
powers to His service; and not a few were heard to exclaim, in the
bitterness of remorse, that the judgments of the Most High were justly
poured out upon them for their neglected Sabbaths, and their profligate
or profane lives; but the number of those was extremely small who
appeared to dwell either with lively hope or dread on the view of an
opening eternity. And as a further evidence of the truth of this
observation, I may mention that when I afterwards had occasion to mount
the mizen shrouds, I there met with a young man, who had brought me a
letter of introduction from our excellent friend, Dr. G--n, to whom I
felt it my duty, while we were rocking on the mast, quietly to propose
the great question, "What must we do to be saved?" and this young
gentleman has since informed Mr. P. that though he was at that moment
fully persuaded of the certainty of immediate death, yet the subject of
eternity, in any form, had not once flashed upon his mind previous to my
conversation.

While we thus lay in a state of physical inertion, but with all our
mental faculties in rapid and painful activity--with the waves lashing
furiously against the sides of our devoted ship, as if in anger with the
hostile e