Words & Music: , 1871.

Some ships cross the ocean with clear skies, smooth seas and fair winds, and come into port with stream­ers fly­ing and bands of music mak­ing ju­bi­lee. Others come in storms, with the sky black as night, the wind like a hur­ri­cane, and the sea like mount­ains—and they come in all bat­tered, yards gone, masts splin­tered, hard­ly enough left to hang to­ge­ther. But the dif­fer­ence amounts to no­thing. The on­ly im­port­ant thing from first to last is, not what the log says about storm or calm, but that they all steer close to the com­pass, and do their best to make har­bor. [If] they on­ly get there safe­ly, what hap­pened to them by the way is of no ac­count. So [it is with] God’s child­ren. There may, there will be, vast va­ri­e­ty of ex­per­i­ence: to some pros­per­i­ty, suc­cess, joy—to others, ad­ver­si­ty, de­feat, grief. But what may be your lot or mine, is of no con­se­quence. The one on­ly thing of mo­ment is, that we stick close to our chart and push for port with all our might. [If] we gain that, the plea­sures or per­ils of the way do not mat­ter.

Extract from a ser­mon preached by Dr. E. P. Good­win, First Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, Chi­ca­go.

Philip P. Bliss, The Charm: A Col­lect­ion of Sun­day School Mu­sic (Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois: Root & Ca­dy, 1871)