A passenger on one of our ocean steamers found an old friend in the captain. They talked about one of their old classmates in school. Said the passenger: "I could never understand why Will did not succeed. He left college well educated, full of life and health, well-to-do. He gave up the ministry which he had intended to enter, having fallen in with some free-thinking fellows. He studied law, but gave that up and went to farming. He became a skeptic. He left his wife and farming and became a gold-seeker in California. He left this and went to Idaho. He had lost everything, and supported himself by odd jobs. I knew him there. He was not a drunkard or a gambler, but he had never succeeded. He tried something new several times a year. He was now almost mad in his opposition to the religion of the Bible. Soon he died, bitterly rebelling against God. It is wonderful that such a man should ever have come to such an end." The captain was silent for a while, but at last said: "Old sailors have a superstition that there are phantom ships (that is, ghosts of ships) which cross the sea. I saw a vessel once that showed me how this idea may have sprung up. It was a full-rigged bark, driving under full sail. There was no one on board. Some disease may have broken out, and all the sailors had left. I could not capture her, though I tried. Several months later I passed her again. Her topmast was gone; her sails were in rags; the wind drove her where it would. A year later she came in sight one stormy winter night. She was a shattered hulk and went down at last in the darkness and storm. She was a good ship at first, but," added the captain, "she had lost her rudder." Boys and girls, young men and women, I pray you, on this voyage of life, not to lose the rudder by which, in the storm, you may hold the ship true to the harbor. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE GOD MADE THE WORLD, 33 CHAPTER II. THE GREAT FLOOD; AND A GREAT TOW-ER, 43 CHAPTER III. A-BRA-HAM: THE MAN OF FAITH, 52 CHAPTER IV. JA-COB AND E-SAU, 64 CHAPTER V. JA-COB AND RA-CHEL, 71 CHAPTER VI. JO-SEPH AND HIS BRETH-REN, 76 CHAPTER VII. THROUGH THE RED SEA AND THE WIL-DER-NESS, 91 CHAPTER VIII. HOW JOSH-U-A AND JEPH-THAH FOUGHT FOR THE LORD, 112 CHAPTER IX. SAM-SON, THE STRONG MAN, 118 CHAPTER X. RUTH, 128 CHAPTER XI. JOB, 132 CHAPTER XII. SAM-U-EL, THE CHILD OF GOD, 139 CHAPTER XIII. SAM-U-EL, THE MAN OF GOD, 147 CHAPTER XIV. DA-VID AND SAUL, 157