on the sea.

In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in 1604, he fell in
with a crew of Japanese, whose ship had been burnt, drifting at sea,
without provisions, in a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but
he did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them on
board; and in a few hours, watching their opportunity, they murdered
him.

As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no difference; it was
the chance of the sea, and the ill reward of a humane action--a
melancholy end for such a man--like the end of a warrior, not dying
Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawl
or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the
flower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchres
of their fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and they
did not ask the wages for which they had not laboured. Life with them
was no summer holiday, but a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and
what their Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautiful is
the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich, glorious summer. In the old
man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with her blessings;
she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by
his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a
grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not
call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is
another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and
aching brow; the life of which the cross is the symbol; a battle which
no peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish,
before the victory is won; and--strange that it should be so--this is
the highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history;
there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has
been given to do the really highest work in this earth--whoever they
are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators,
philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves--one and all, their fate has
been the same--the same bitter cup has been given them to drink. And so
it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth century. Their
life was a long battle, either with the elements or with men; and it was
enough for them to fulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour when
God had nothing more to bid them do.

F