Two years ago, he had returned from a long voyage to the East Indies, and landed at New York.  One Sunday evening, when staggering along by the docks and looking at the different ships, trying to meet with some of his old messmates, he noticed what seemed to him a most curious-looking vessel, and called out to a sailor near him,—­“What in the name of sense is that odd-looking craft, without sail or steam, good for?”

“Have you never before seen the floating chapel?” asked the trim-looking tar whom he accosted.  “Come aboard, and you will be never the worse.  It’s a church, man!  Don’t stare your eyes out, but walk inside and hear good plain doctrine.”

“No, no,” replied Jack; “I can’t be pressed into that service.  I am in no rig either for going into such a concern; and, besides, it’s ten long years since I have been inside a church, and I should act so strangely that they would throw me overboard.  There’s never a word in the gabbling one hears at such places that I can understand.”

“But this preaching is meant for sailors,” continued Jack’s new acquaintance, “and there is nobody else there; so you will be rigged as well as any of the congregation.  Come along! let’s board her right off.”

Jack had a great deal of curiosity, and, after a little more parley, consented to go into the floating chapel.  I wish I could repeat to you the sermon which he heard there, with the simple eloquence with which he delivered it to us.  The text was,—­“The sea shall give up its dead.”  The clergyman imagined the millions who should rise, on this momentous occasion, from the recesses of the vast ocean, and as he pictured the probable characters of many who should then come forth to judgment, and their unfitness to stand before that holy tribunal, Jack felt as if he were describing some of his own friends whom he had seen ingulfed by the waters.  When thus summoned, as they must be, before long, to appear, with the same tempers and dispositions which they had displayed in life, would they be found prepared for a heaven of purity?  Then came a vivid picture of the perils of a sailor’s life, and the probability that its termination might be equally sudden.  The sermon closed with an earnest exhortation to each one then present to live every moment in such a state, that, if death should surprise them, they might rise again to life eternal; and Jack, as he listened to the concluding words, felt as if the warning were the last which would ever fall on his ears.  He might have soon banished the seriousness occasioned by this visit to the chapel, among his jovial companions, had he not met with a loss, which he now considers a most providential occurrence.

On returning to his boarding-house, Jack went to his room, and, on going to his chest, found to his dismay that it had been opened during his absence, and all that remained of his wages for the last cruise stolen.  He rushed down to the landlord in great distress, but obtained little satisfaction; and there was something in his manner which made the poor sailor think that he had known of the theft.  Jack left the house in despair, not knowing which way to turn, when he met the same sailor who had induced him to go to church, and who now offered to show him a more comfortable lodging-place.