The Young Captives A Narrative of the Shipwreck and Suffering of John and William Doyley
THE YOUNG CAPTIVES. [Illustration] Here is a picture of a fine large English ship, called the _Charles Eaton_, which was wrecked in the Southern Ocean. The crew, you see, have made a raft of some of the spars and planks of the ship, and having all got upon it, are about cutting loose from the wreck, with the hope that they may reach one of the distant islands. Poor men! they did indeed reach the island; but only to meet a more dreadful death than that threatened them by the waves. Overcome with fatigue and anxiety, they no sooner gained the shore, than they all, captain, crew, and passengers, threw themselves on the earth, and soon were fast asleep. In this helpless state, they were attacked by the cruel and blood-thirsty savages who inhabited the island, and all barbarously murdered, except two little boys, John and William Doyley. These children, sons of a gentleman and lady who had been passengers in the ill-fated ship, were kept in captivity by the savages for many years.
of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.
In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
to be His instruments is evidence of the divine approval; and that
approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
must be holy.
So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
THE YOUNG CAPTIVES. [Illustration] Here is a picture of a fine large English ship, called the _Charles Eaton_, which was wrecked in the Southern Ocean. The crew, you see, have made a raft of some of the spars and planks of the ship, and having all got upon it, are about cutting loose from the wreck, with the hope that they may reach one of the distant islands. Poor men! they did indeed reach the island; but only to meet a more dreadful death than that threatened them by the waves. Overcome with fatigue and anxiety, they no sooner gained the shore, than they all, captain, crew, and passengers, threw themselves on the earth, and soon were fast asleep. In this helpless state, they were attacked by the cruel and blood-thirsty savages who inhabited the island, and all barbarously murdered, except two little boys, John and William Doyley. These children, sons of a gentleman and lady who had been passengers in the ill-fated ship, were kept in captivity by the savages for many years.