Was there such a light? Captain Martin has gone; the man who fearlessly traversed the ocean for years, who had often smiled at danger, and had gone between Melbourne and London until the path was as clear to him as the turnpike-road to the waggoner. The gentle, courageous good man will never more be greeted by his relatives, and the wide circle of friends who loved him will see him no more. Was there such a light? Daniel Draper is lost to the church and to his only son; his brethren in the ministry will no longer be able to depend upon his wise suggestions; and souls unnumbered are still white unto harvest, while the successful reaper suddenly drops his sickle, and will gather in no more sheaves. Was there such a light? and in what quarter of the heavens did it glow behind the great darkness in which the good ship went down into the whirlpool of destruction with 220 lives on board? There was such a light, and we have no doubt of its beaming over this dark catastrophe still,--the light which shines through the words, GOD IS LOVE. That those who now most need the light of this truth to guide them will see even the faintest glimmering of it, we cannot say; but when the blindness occasioned by the smart of tears has cleared away, we are sure, that if they will look up there will be the truth mildly shining behind the calamity, dark though it be. The mystery, appalling though it be, can, in this world, receive no truer solution, but a lifetime may pass away without our even having learnt the letters by which the truth is to be slowly spelt out. But while the mystery remains, the calamity loses much of its horror, if we lay to heart the truth of the over-ruling providence of God. “It is appointed unto man once to die,” and the Omnipotent one has ordained the place, the time, the circumstances. Good and faithful servants were in the ship, and the summons that told them their way unto the Lord’s presence was through the deep, brooked no delay; but the road was not half so strange to them as it seems to us. Before their eyes a light was shining which is hidden from our view, and by it they were conducted to their Father’s house as serenely as if they had breathed their last on downy pillows. Down into the great deep they plunged, and then? In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, they had left their sea-soaked raiment behind them, and they were at rest amid the blessed calm on which no tempest shall ever, ever, ever break. A rich feast was awaiting their arrival; bright and happy faces were around the board to welcome the guests who had come through the flood and tempest; and God Himself wiped away all tears from off all faces, and the voice of eternal love thrilled their hearts as it whispered, “There shall be no _more_ death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”