"That was an extraordinary spectacle we have just witnessed," observed Cousin Silas, as Jerry and I were holding on to the rails near him as the strange brig disappeared, hidden by the dark foam-topped waves which leaped up between her and us.  "Never heard anything like it before, perhaps you will say, lads.  Now, in my opinion, you have heard of many things exactly like it before.  What is the world doing at the present moment?  What has it been doing since the flood?  Men have been quarrelling, and fighting, and knocking each other on the head, while ruin has been encircling them around, from that time to the present.  We were sent into this world to perform certain duties--to help each other in doing them--to love God and to love each other.  If we obey God, we are promised eternal happiness: if we disobey him, eternal punishment. We are told that this world must come to an end, and that all things in it will be destroyed.  What do men do?  They shut their eyes to all these truths.  They live as if they and everything in the world were to last for ever--as if there were no God to obey and love; and, like the madmen we have just seen, they separate into parties, hating each other, and fight, and quarrel, and deface God's image in which he made man, utterly regardless of the terrible doom awaiting them--just as the people aboard that ship were doing."