"Trust in the Lord with all your heart." Proverbs 3:5
Words & Music: Philip Paul Bliss, 1871
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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)