She was the largest ship in the world. In fact, she was the largest movable object man had ever made. Over eleven stories tall and almost a sixth of a mile long, she dwarfed the seaside buildings of Belfast where she first arose like a colossus and where her proud craftsmen took their grandchildren to view her beauty and contemplate her meaning for their lives. Newspapers around the world took note of her and of her maiden voyage on that bright day from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. She was, they said, “the promise and pride of a new age.” And so she was. Her name was Titanic.

Looking back it is as though she was designed and outfitted to embody a century then still fresh and full of hope. She was born in an age still feigning innocence, before the first of two world wars, the economic follies of nations, and the confusing Babel of secular prophets left men cynical and unsure. Truly, she was inspiring. Her staterooms, ballrooms, restaurants and fifty-foot wide promenades were the talk of Europe. The loving attention lavished on her staircases, chandeliers, statuary, and paneled lounges is rivaled in memory only by that offered in the service of God by the builders of Christendom’s great cathedrals. She shone with the best art, books, furniture, and even gold bathroom fixtures. She boasted a gym complete with exercise bikes, a rowing machine, a swimming pool, and a squash court. She even carried a Renault car, the finest hunting dogs available, four cases of opium, and luggage so expensive that one woman’s alone was estimated at more than $177,000.

The Titanic’s passengers were a cross-section of the age. From the largely Scots-Irish third class passengers making their way to new lives in America to the super rich who occupied luxurious berths in first class, those who boarded the liner on that hectic April day in Southampton were a microcosm of the world as it then was. Making their way onto the massive vessel was the richest man in the world, John Jacob Astor, and a Frenchman who traveled with the children he had just kidnapped from the home of his estranged wife. Both the wealthy founder of Macy’s department store, Isidor Straus, and a woman stealing west with her lover found their way onto the Titanic.Among the more than 2,200 passengers were millionaire playboy Ben Guggenheim, President Taft’s military advisor, the music teacher to Theodore Roosevelt’s children, a squash pro, a movie star, a thief, several gamblers, the Titanic’s architect, and hundreds of rather unremarkable, common people distinguished only by the dream that that their glorious vessel would carry them to fortune. The Titanic, despite her name, was the world in miniature.

How significant it is, then, that as one frightened woman boarded the ship and nervously asked a nearby steward about its safety, the steward puffed out his chest and declared in a voice hundreds could hear, “Madam, God himself could not sink this ship.” And how astonishing it is, now, that in that beautifully adorned ship’s library, among the hundreds of books provided for leisure reading, there was one written by Morgan Robertson called Futility. Not significant at first, perhaps, except that it told the fictional story of a ship called Titan, which struck an iceberg and sank at sea with huge loss of life. It was written in 1898—fourteen years before the Titanic’s only voyage. No one had checked out the book; no one heard the warning.

So on the evening of the third day of the voyage, when through the crystal cold night air the lookout’s warning bell sounded, the people of the Titanic—in all their variety and comfort and hope—were behaving in a way that is only notable because it was so incredibly, tragically . . . . . normal. But the deathblow had already occurred.  Seconds before lookout Frederick Fleet—whose position was called “the eyes of the ship”— had reported, “Iceberg right ahead.” The Titanic, whose captain had been ignoring ice warnings from other ships for three days, now attempted an evasive move. The First Mate cut the ship’s speed and called for a turn hard to port. With only thirty-seven seconds between first sighting and impact, the officer’s efforts were futile at best and may have made matters worse. At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, Titanic collided with an iceberg on her starboard side leaving a gash twelve square feet in size. The ship was doomed. Most passengers thought the wind had picked up a bit, nothing more.

But the ship was unsinkable. So there were only lifeboats for 1,178 of the 2,207 passengers. Ships God can’t sink don’t need lifeboats. As the shrill alarms sounded throughout the warm, sleepy ship and women and children began boarding the chilly lifeboats — along with the men grumbling about the inconvenience of this “drill” — the cruel reality settled into the mind first of the captain and then his crew: hundreds of people are about to die. There simply were not enough lifeboats. Probably more than one crewman remembered that the reason there were twenty rather than the needed forty-eight lifeboats was to make space for those fifty-foot wide promenades so loved by the stylishly clad strollers of first class.

Panic soon set in. Half-empty lifeboats were launched into the oil-black sea. Men posed as women and left their friends behind to save their own lives. Crewmen used pistols to enforce order. In the first class lounge, drunken card games continued undisturbed by the general chaos. Passengers in third class were locked below decks until the upper classes had boarded the boats. Husbands lied to their wives and children to get them into the boats against their protests and men silently prepared themselves in semi-shock for their icy end.

At 2:20 a.m. on Sunday, April 15, the ship, which had been slowly sinking nose-down, suddenly groaned and lifted its twenty-three foot propellers high into the air as it slid into its black grave, exploding into halves from the weight of her own steel before plummeting more than two miles to the bottom of the ocean. Some fifteen hundred passengers—half of whom should have found space in the half-filled lifeboats and all of whom should have been saved had the ship not been arrogantly deemed “unsinkable” and denied the right number of boats—plunged into the bitter black chill of the north Atlantic.

Moments later, as shivering survivors balanced upon an upturned, collapsible lifeboat, someone suggested that it might be appropriate to pray. There was discussion. Disagreement. Agreement. Then, together, they prayed the Lord’s prayer. Finally.

News of the sinking and the few survivors, of the agony and loss, sped throughout the world. Preachers immediately seized upon the theme of pride and arrogance, calling for national and even international repentance.The Atlantic Constitution saw another lesson. Its editors claimed that the behavior of gentlemen in Titanic’s first class confirmed that “the Anglo-Saxon may yet boast that his sons are fit to rule the earth.” In reply, black folk-singer Leadbelly offered these lyrics: “Black man oughta shout for joy / Never lost a girl or either a boy.” Lookout Frederick Fleet, ironically the first to see the iceberg and yet one of the survivors, complained loudly that the ship might have been saved if, in the midst of excess and opulence, the “eyes of the ship” had been granted the oft-requested but oft-denied binoculars. The reason for the denial, he explained bitterly to the astonished world press, was that binoculars were deemed a “frivolous expense.” For such audacity, fellow survivors, claiming betrayal, ostracized Frederick Fleet for the rest of his life.

The much-debated prophecy of the Titanic haunts men today more than at any time since the horrors of that Atlantic night. The ship’ tale is the theme of an award-winning Broadway play. Its story will soon be depicted in the most expensive movie ever made. It is the subject of computer games, best-selling books, and thousands of Internet web sites. And the leading book on the Titanic, hauntingly entitled A Night to Remember, has not gone out of print since its first appearance in 1955, selling more last year than ever. The Titanic holds aloft the fear and arrogance and vanity and folly that defines all societies in decline, and clearly we fear, or perhaps we know, that the Titanic story is that of our own age, and now, perhaps, its fate.

But there was another ship.

This second ship left from the same Southampton port, though it departed almost four hundred years before the Titanic. It, too, traversed the frigid north Atlantic. It, too, bore passengers and their dreams. Yet, there the similarities end. This second ship was a far humbler offering. No larger than a volleyball court and but a few stories high — she would have fit completely inside one of Titanic’s ornate ballrooms — she leaked profusely. Moreover, she held only 105 passengers and crew and offered relatively little space for supplies in her hold. The whole idea, in fact, of sailing to “the northern parts of Virginia” at such a time of year with such a crew and in such a ship was a fool’s fancy. Who would dare such a thing?

But this second ship, after sixty-six wintry days on the violent north Atlantic, reached safe harbor. It shouldn’t have. Halfway across the ocean the ship was slammed by such a violent storm that the main beam broke.Surely all 105 aboard would die a cruel, icy death at sea. Then one among them remembered the printing press on board, with its giant screw. Using the screw as a jack, the crew pressed the main beam back into place. A miracle.And there was more. Violent storms forced the passengers below deck with hatches bolted for weeks at a time.There was a death at sea. Many were severely ill. There were pregnant women on board. Perhaps worse, more than one third of the passengers were children. It was a terrifying, vomiting, bone-breaking experience of sixty-six days.They should never have made it.

Yet, when they did finally arrive, they announced to the world both who they were and their reason for sailing. They had voyaged, they wrote, “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.” They wanted to be “but stepping stones of the light of Jesus” that the natives of this land might “embrace the Prince of Peace” and that a new “land of light” might be a resting-place for “the glory of God.” And they called their proclamation the Mayflower Compact—named for their cramped little ship. Themselves they called Pilgrims, “strangers in a strange land,” who in “this howling wilderness of the New World” could be sustained but “by the Spirit of God and his grace.”

This is the tale of two ships. One, proudly named, proudly outfitted, and proudly sailed to the glory of a new age, as testimony of the genius of man. The other, with no natural hope of success, launched to the glory of God by his humble servants for the benefit of generations yet unborn. The first, after three days of ease, sinks. The second, after sixty-six days of hell, arrives safely. The first does not heed the warnings, does not read the signs, does not know it is sinking. The second sails because it knows the signs of the times and seeks to answer its dangers with the power of a different Kingdom. The name of the first is a symbol of decadent destruction. The power of the second launched a nation. This is the age-old distinction, the eternal chasm, between the City of God and the City of Man, between the Prince of Pride and the Suffering Servant made Lord. It is the story of mankind, the ultimate question of destiny. It is the tale of two ships.