PREFACE. "I FIND the next best thing to crossing the Atlantic is to read your Chart and Compass!" so said the eloquent preacher and elegant writer, the Rev. J. Fleming Stevenson, D.D., of Dublin. Now this was a very pretty little compliment to those who freight this goodly ship. Nelson, brave as he was, could not have won Trafalgar had it not have been for his hearts of oak. An Editor's success will not be measured by his capacity or culture, but by the power to draw around him a band of men and women whose hearts God has touched. No magazine ship, however graceful or gallant, would ever be welcomed in famishing harbours unless she brought valuable cargo. Some ships bring literary bones, moral guano, or spiritual intoxicants, Chart and Compass, however, though of small tonnage, trades not only in luxuries, but in necessaries. Those who are hungry find food, while those who are well-fed, as the learned doctor, find here a tonic in its breezy, wavey pages. Would that we could bring more of those white-faced readers to our shores and let old Father Nep dip them in the sea of Chart and Compass. Voyage number four is over. Lady Brassey made a voyage round the world in her "Sunbeam," and has naturally filled her fascinating book with sunshine. But ours is in a little tanned-sail coaster. It is not every eye that can see poetry in such a repulsive looking object. So did unsympathetic eyes glance on Columbus' "Saint Marie," the Pilgrim's "Mayflower," and Captain Cook's "Resolution," for they were coasters. But these little coasters launched out into God's great deep, discovered worlds and founded empires. So go forth little voyager, let faith be thy star and the kingdom of man's soul thy priceless cargo. Our object is twofold-first, to bless the sailor, and secondly, to bless others 66 |