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 A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 f^ 
 
 MORAL USES OF THE SEA 
 
 DELIVERED ON BOARD THE 
 
 PACKET-SHIP VICTORIA, CAPT. MORGAN, 
 
 AT SEA, JULY, 1845, 
 
 BY HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 
 
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 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Mi REQUEST OF THE CAPTAIN AND PASSENGERS 
 
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 NEW YORK: ^ 
 
 M. W. DODD, j| 
 
 BRICK CHUCH CHAPEL, CORNER OF PARK ROW AND SPRUCE STREET, > *^ 
 
 Opposite the City Hall. \ W 
 
 1845. 
 
 
A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 MORAL USES OF THE SEA 
 
 DELIVERED ON BOARD THE 
 
 PACKET-SHIP VICTORIA, CAPT. MORGAN, 
 
 AT SEA, JULY, 1845. 
 
 BY HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 REQUEST OF THE CAPTAIN AND PASSENGERS 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 M. W. DODD, 
 
 BRICK CHUCH CHAPEL, CORNER OF PARK ROW AND SPRUCE STREET, 
 Opposite the City Hall. 
 
 1845. 
 
^7f 
 
 Having been requested, in the absence of the 
 Author, to superintend the printing of this Discourse, 
 I venture to promise the reader no ordinary gratifica- 
 tion and delight ; and to express my admiration that 
 a performance so full of thought, and life, and beauty, 
 should have been thrown off, at the moment, on ship- 
 board. 
 
 THOS. H. SKINNER. 
 
 October IZthy 1845. 
 
 
 '*• #••'•' «• 
 
DISCOURSE 
 
 Genesis i. 10. — *' And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering 
 together of the waters called he Seas : And God saw that it was good." 
 
 Not a few have wondered why God, in creating a world 
 for the habitation of man, should have chosen to hide three- 
 fourths of its surface under a waste of waters. Doubtless it 
 had been as easy for him to have made it a good round ball 
 of meadow and plough-land. The field where leviathan 
 plays might as well have been given to the reaper : the 
 fickle domain of waters might as well have been erected into 
 a firm continent of land, and covered with flourishing and 
 populous empires. Why, then, asks the inquisitive thought 
 of man, why so great waste in the works of God ? why has 
 He ordained these great oceans, and set the habitajjle parts of 
 the world thus islanded between them? why spread out 
 these vast regions of waste, to suppress the fruitfulness and 
 stint the populousness of his realm ? 
 
 That He has done it we know. We also know his opinion 
 of the arrangement — God saw that it was good. This should 
 be enough to check all presumptuous judgments and over- 
 
 fUT^r^UCTQQ^ 
 
i- 5 -» ,'♦•>,* 
 
 
 curious questions : God has done it, and in His view it is 
 good. 
 
 Still, if our object be not to judge God, but to instruct our- 
 selves, the whole field is open, and we* may inquire at plea- 
 sure. And now that we are out upon this field of waters, 
 cut off from the society of man, and from all the works of God, 
 save the waters themselves, it cannot be inappropriate to in- 
 quire. What is the meaning and use of the sea ? for what 
 beneficent end or object may we suppose the Almighty 
 Creator to have ordained its existence 1 
 
 Were this question put by the natural philosopher, he 
 would proceed at once to show that the sea tempers the cli- 
 mate of the land, making the heat less intense and the cold 
 less rigorous ; that the sea is a great store-house of provisions 
 in itself, and also of waters for the land, without which even 
 that were unfruitful ; and many other things of a like nature, 
 all of which may be true, and yet it cannot be said, with any 
 confidence, that God could not have tempered the climate of 
 the land as well, and made it as fruitful, without the sea. 
 
 It is only when we look at the moral uses of the world, its 
 uses in the discipline of mind and character, where the free 
 will of man, if it is to be preserved in its freedom, requires 
 that God should condescend to particular means and expedi- 
 ents — it is only here that we seem to grasp those imperative 
 and momentous reasons which can be said, with most confi- 
 dence, to have determined God's arrangement in the matter 
 we are considering. Indeed, there is a kind of impropriety 
 in considering physical ends or causes as being, in any case, 
 the final causes of God's works ; for to God there is, in strict 
 reason, no final cause but virtue or moral good. To this all 
 
things are subordinate ; for this all things are done. "When 
 we say that the world is made for the habitation of man, we 
 do not mean, if we rightly understand ourselves, that it is 
 made to contain as many men as possible, in as much of 
 plenty and ease as possible. In that case, most manifestly, 
 God should have made as many acres of good productive 
 land as possible ; nay, He should have made the earth as large 
 as possible. Having it for his problem to raise the most numer- 
 ous possible herd of men. He has only to enlarge his pasture. 
 For the same reason, too, there should be no rigors of heat 
 or of frost, no deserts, whether of sand or snow, no tempests, 
 no fruitless seasons. Most manifestly the world is made to 
 be the habitation of man, in some other and far different 
 sense. Rather is it built to bless him as a moral creature, so 
 ordered and fitted up that it shall most powerfully conduce to 
 make him truly a man, a creature of intelligence, society, 
 love and duty. Having this for his design. He has rather 
 sought to limit than to extend the number of our race ; for a 
 school of virtue, you will observe, may be too large, as well 
 as too easy, for the benefit of the pupil. Therefore, He gives 
 us a small globe to inhabit, narrows down our field still far- 
 ther by rigors of perpetual frost, and barren mountains, and 
 oceans of water — all that He may bring us into compass and 
 compression, and set us under the holy discipline of danger, 
 toil and hardship ; for these are the best, the only sufiicient 
 instruments of knowledge and character. To such a being 
 as man, virtue can only be a conquest. 
 
 Prepared by views like these, let us go on to ask. What 
 are the moral uses of the sea ? wherein does it appear to have 
 been added for the moral benefit of the world ? 
 
6 
 
 I think it will appear, as we prosecute this inquiry, that 
 the ordinance of the sea is so thoroughly interwoven with all 
 that is of the highest interest to man — the progress of society, 
 art, government, science and religion — in a word, all that is 
 included in moral advancement — that, without the sea, the 
 world could not be considered a fit habitation for man. Nor 
 will it be difiicult for you, I trust, to believe that when the 
 Almighty smiled upon the waters and the land, and pro- 
 nounced them good. He had some especial reference to the 
 moral benefit of that being whose residence He was prepar- 
 ing. 
 
 One great problem of God, in building a school for man, 
 was, how to distribute the school ; for it is manifest that no 
 one government, or society, could fill and occupy the whole 
 domain — certainly not, without producing indefinite confu- 
 sion and oppression, and sacrificing many of the most pow- 
 erful stimulants to energy and advancement of every sort. 
 Neither could it be done, without exalting the throne or gov- 
 erning power to such a pitch of eminence as would proba- 
 bly attract the religious homage of mankind, and set it at 
 the head of a universal Lamaism. But if the world is to be 
 distributed into nations, or kingdoms, which are likely to be 
 always jealous of each other and sometimes hostile, they 
 need to be separated by natural barriers, such as will pre- 
 vent strife by circling them within definite boundaries, and, 
 when they are in actual strife, will fortify them against de- 
 struction one from the other. This is effected, in part, by in- 
 terposing mountains and rivers, but more effectually, and on 
 a larger scale, by spreading seas and oceans between them. 
 These great bodies of water can be passed more easily for 
 
purposes of convenience than for those of destruction. In- 
 deed, it is impossible for whole nations to pour across them 
 for purposes of invasion, as across a mere geographical line. 
 Nature is here the grand distributor and fortifier of nations. 
 She draws her circle of waters, not around some castle or 
 fortified citadel of art, but around whole nations themselves. 
 Then it is within these fortified circles of nature, that nations 
 are to unfold their power and have their advancement. Such 
 was Greece, cut off from all the world by boundaries of rock 
 and water, which no Xerxes with his invading army could 
 effectually pass; having, at the same time, enough of strife 
 and struggle within to keep her on the alert and waken all her 
 powers to vigorous exercise. Such is England now. England, 
 for so many ages past the foremost light of Europe, the bul- 
 wark of law, the great temple of religion, could never have 
 been what it is, or anything but the skirt of some nation 
 comparatively undistinguished, had not the Almighty drawn 
 his circle of waters around it, and girded it with strength, to 
 he the right hand of his power. It is the boundaries of 
 nations, too, that give them locality and settle those historic 
 associations which are the conscious life of society and the 
 source of all great and high emotions ; otherwise they fly to 
 perpetual vagrancy and dissipation — there is no settlement, 
 no sense of place or compassion, and, as nothing takes root, 
 nothing grows. Thus the ancient Scythian, roaming over 
 the vast levels of the north, is succeeded by the modern Tar- 
 tar ; both equally wild and uncultivated — the father of three 
 thousand years ago and the son of to-day. 
 
 Again it will be found that the oceans and seas have some- 
 times contributed, beyond all power of estimation, to the 
 
8 
 
 moral and social advancement of the race, by separating one 
 part of the world even from the knowledge of another, and 
 preserving it for discovery and occupation at an advanced 
 period of history. Had the territory of the United States 
 been conjoined to the eastern shore of Asia, or the western 
 of Europe, or had there been no oceans interposed to break 
 the continuous circle of land, it is obvious that the old and 
 worn-out forms of civilization would have wanted a spur to 
 reform and improvement that is now supplied. When, at 
 length, the New World was discovered, then was man called 
 out, as it were, to begin again. The trammels of ancient 
 society and custom, which no mere human power could 
 burst, were burst by the fiat of Providence, and man went 
 forth to try his fortunes once more, carrying with him all the 
 advantages of a previous experience. I set up for the United 
 States no invidious claim of precedence. We acknow- 
 ledge our rawness and obscurity, in comparison with the 
 splendor and high refinement of more ancient nations. We 
 only claim it as our good fortune that we are a new nation, 
 peopled by men of a new world, who had new principles to 
 be tested, for the common benefit of mankind. As such the 
 eye of the world is upon us, and has been for many years. 
 The great thought of our institutions — the happiness and 
 elevation of the individual man — is gradually and silently 
 working its way into all the old fabrics of legitimacy in 
 Christendom, and compelling the homage of power in all 
 its high places. Whatever motion there has been in Euro- 
 pean affairs for the last half century — all the mitigations of 
 law, the dynasties subverted, the constitutions conceded, the 
 enlarged liberty of conscience and the press, popular educa- 
 
tion — everything that goes to make society beneficent — has 
 been instigated, more or less directly, by the great idea that 
 is embodied and represented in the institutions of the United 
 States. This same great idea, the well-being and character 
 of the individual man, has been brought forth, too, to offer 
 itself to the world, just at the right time. Without it, we 
 may well doubt whether the institutions of Europe had not 
 come to their limit, beyond which they had not, in them- 
 selves, any power of advancement. Had it come earlier, 
 Europe was not ready for it. The immense advantage that 
 is thus to accrue to mankind, as regards the great interests of 
 truth, society and religious virtue, from the fact that our 
 Western Hemisphere was kept hidden for so many ages, be- 
 yond an impassible ocean, to be opened, in due time, for the 
 planting and propagation of new ideas, otherwise destined to 
 perish, no mind can estimate. Nor is this process of plant- 
 ing yet exhausted. There are islands in the Southern Oceans 
 larger than England, that are yet to become seats of power 
 and of empire, and possibly to shine as lights of Antarctic 
 histor)?" eclipsing those of the north ; or, if not eclipsing, 
 giving to all the northern climes, both of the Eastern and 
 Western Worlds, the experiment of new principles, needful 
 to their progress and happiness. 
 
 But it is another and yet more impressive view of the moral 
 utility of seas and oceans, that, while they have a discon- 
 necting power operating in the ways first specified, they have 
 at the same time a connecting power, bringing all regions 
 and climes into correspondence and commercial interchange. 
 Fortified by oceans and seas against injury from each other, 
 they are yet united by the same for purposes of mutual benefit. 
 
10 
 
 Were there no seas, were the globe covered by a continuous 
 sheet of land, how diflferent the history of the past from what it 
 has been ! how different the moral and intellectual state of 
 human society from what it now is ! There being no me- 
 dium of commerce, save that of land travel, no intercourse 
 could exist between nations remote from each other. They 
 would know each other only by a kind of tradition, as now 
 we know the past. Tradition, too, in its long and uncertain 
 transit across the longitude of the world, would clothe itself 
 in fable, and we, instead of being made to feel the common 
 brotherhood of man as now, should probably be fast in the 
 belief that the opposite hemisphere of the world is peopled 
 by giants. Centaurs, Anthropophagi, and such-like fabulous 
 monsters. There would, of course, be no commerce, except 
 between nations that are adjacent; and society, being life 
 without motion or stimulus, would rot itself down into irre- 
 deemable bigotry and decrepitude. God would not have it 
 so. On the ocean, which is the broad public highway of the 
 Almighty, nations pass and repass, visit and revisit each 
 other, and those which are remote as freely as those which 
 are near. And it is this fluid element that gives fluidity and 
 progress to the institutions and opinions of the race. It is only 
 in the great inland regions of the world, as in Central Africa 
 and Asia, that bigotry and inveterate custom have their seat. 
 In these vast regions that never saw the sea, regions remote 
 from the visits of commerce and the moving world, men have 
 lived from age to age without progress, or the idea of progress, 
 crushed under their despotisms, held fast in the chains of indo- 
 mitable superstition, rooted down like their trees, and motion- 
 less as their mountains. In the mean time, the shores and 
 
11 
 
 islands of the world have felt the pulse of human society, and 
 yielded themselves to progress. It is, in a word, this fluid sea, 
 on whose bosom the free winds of heaven are wafting" us to- 
 day, which represents all mobility and progress in the human 
 state. Without this interposed, the rock-based continents 
 themselves were not more fixed than the habits and opinions 
 of mankind. On the other hand, you will observe that the 
 prejudices of men who live upon and by the waters are never 
 invincible. They admit of change, somewhat by habit and 
 association, as their element changes, and they shift their 
 sail to the winds. Hence it was, in part, may we not believe, 
 that our Saviour began his mission on the shores of Gen- 
 nesaret, and among the boatmen there. Out of these, too, 
 he chose his apostles, because they had the ductility requisite 
 to receive new truths and new opinions of duty. Among 
 them he had few prejudices to encounter, while at Jerusa- 
 lem every mind was set against him with obstinacy as firm 
 as the rocks of Zion. So it was never a Babylon, or a Tim- 
 buctoo, or any city of the inland regions, that was forward 
 to change and improvement. But it was a Tyre, queen of 
 the sea ; a Carthage, sending out her ships, beyond the Pil- 
 lars of Hercules, to Britain and the Northern Isles ; an Athens, 
 an Alexandria — these were the seats of art, and thought, and 
 learning, and liberal improvement of every sort. So, too, it 
 was the Italian commercial cities that broke up the dark ages, 
 and gave the modern nations that impulse which set them 
 forward in their career of art and social refinement, and, 
 remotely speaking, of liberty. 
 
 The spirit of commerce, too, is the spirit of peace, its inter- 
 est the interest of peace, and peace is the element of all 
 
12 
 
 moral progress, as war is the element of all barbarism and 
 desolation. Every ship that sails the ocean is a pledge for 
 peace to the extent of its value — every sail a more appropriate 
 symbol of peace than the olive-branch itself. Commerce, too, 
 has at length changed the relative position of nations. Once 
 upon a footing of barbarism, they are now placed on a foot- 
 ing of friendship and civilization. In the most splendid days 
 of Athens, piracy was a trade, not a crime ; for it was the 
 opinion that nations are naturally hostile, and will, of course, 
 prey upon each other. But now, at length, commerce has 
 created for itself a great system of international and commer- 
 cial law, which, to a certain extent, makes one empire of all the 
 nations, maintaining the rights of person and property, when 
 abroad upon the ocean, or in other lands, as carefully and 
 efficiently as if there were but one nation or people on the 
 globe. Search the history of man, from the beginning till 
 now, you will find among all the arts, inventions and institu- 
 tions of the race, no one so beneficent, none that reveals so 
 broad a stride of progress, as this. And it promises yet to go 
 on, extending its sway, till it has given rules to all the con- 
 duct of nations, provided redress for all injuries, and thus 
 lawed out forever all war from the earth. 
 
 The nations engaged in commerce will, of course, be the 
 most forward nations. In perpetual intercourse with each 
 other, they will ever be adopting the inventions, copying the 
 good institutions, and rectifying the opinions, one of another ; 
 forthe man of commerce is never a bigot. He goes to buy, 
 in other nations, commodities that are wanted in his own. 
 He is, therefore, in the habit of valuing what is valuable in 
 other countries, and so, proportionally, are the people or na- 
 
1^ 
 
 tion that consumes the commodities of other countries. And 
 so much is there in this, that the government, the literature, 
 nay, even the religion of every civilized nation must receive 
 a modifying influence from all the nations with whom it 
 maintains an active commerce. In opinions, literature, arts, 
 laws — nay, in everything — they must gradually approximate, 
 till they coalesce, at last, in one and the same catholic stand- 
 ard of value and excellence. Commerce is itself catholic, 
 and it seems to be the sublime purpose of God, in its appoint- 
 ment, to make everything else so, that, as all are of one 
 blood, so, at last, they shall be one conscious brotherhood. 
 
 In the mean time, the nations most forward in art and civ- 
 ilization are approaching, by the almost omnipresent com- 
 merce they maintain, all the rude and barbarous nations of 
 the world, carrying with them, wherever they go, all those 
 signs of precedence by which these nations may be impressed 
 with a sense of their backwardness, and set forward in a 
 career of improvement. They need only be visited by the 
 ships, or especially the steam-vessels, of European commerce, 
 to see that they are in their childhood, and there must remain 
 except as they adopt the science and the institutions of Euro- 
 pean nations. What;, consequently, do we behold? Not 
 the wilds of Northern Russia only, not the islands only of the 
 sea, becoming members of European laws, arts and manners 
 — ^but the throne of Siam inquiring after the methods and 
 truths of the West ; all British India studying English, in a 
 sense more real than the study of words ; Muscat sending 
 over to examine and copy our arts ; both branches of the 
 Mohammedan empire receiving freely, and carefully protect- 
 ing, Christian travelers, and adopting, as fast as they can, 
 
14 
 
 the European modes of war and customs of society ; China 
 beginning to doubt whether she is indeed the Celestial Em- 
 pire, and doomed, ere twenty years are gone by, to be as 
 emulous of w^hat is European as Egypt or Turkey now is. 
 All this by the power of commerce. They feel our shadow 
 cast on their weakness, and their hearts sink within them, as 
 if they had seen a people taller than they. For the same 
 reason, too, the false gods are trembling in their seats the 
 world over, and all the strongholds of spiritual delusion 
 shaking to the fall. The sails of commerce are the wings of 
 truth. Wherever it goes (and where does it not?) the power 
 of science, and of all that belongs to cultivated manhood, is 
 felt. The universal air becomes filled with new ideas, and 
 man looks out from the prison of darkness in which he has 
 been lying, chained and blinded, sees a dawn arising on the 
 hills, and feels the morning-breath of truth and liberty. 
 
 What I have said, thus far, is not so distinctively religious 
 as some might expect in a Christian discourse. But you will 
 observe that all which I have said, in this general way, of 
 human advancement, as connected with the uses of the sea, 
 involves religious advancement, both as regards knowledge 
 and character. All the advancement, too, of which I have 
 spoken, is, in one view, the work of Christianity; for this it 
 is which has given to Christendom its precedence. And it is 
 precisely the office of the Christian faith that it shall thus 
 elevate and bless mankind — ^bless them, not in their devotions 
 only, not in their sacraments, or in passing to other worlds, but 
 in everything that constitutes their mortal life — in society, art, 
 science, wealth, government — all that adorns, elevates, forti- 
 fies, and purifies their being. You will also perceive that the 
 
15 
 
 very tone of Christian piety itself, especially where it is not 
 tempered, as in the United States, by the presence and tole- 
 ration of all varieties of faith and worship, needs to be modu- 
 lated and softened by the influence of a general intercourse 
 with mankind ; for such is the narrowness of man, that even 
 the love of Christ itself is in perpetual danger of dwindling 
 to a mere bigot prejudice in the soul ; mistaking its mere 
 forms for substance ; becoming less generous in its breadth 
 the more intense it is in degree ; and even measuring out the 
 judgment of the world by the thimble in which its own 
 volume and dimensions are cast. The piety of the Church 
 can never attain to its proper power and beauty till it has be- 
 come thoroughly catholic in its spirit ; a result which is to be 
 continually favored and assisted by the influence of a catholic 
 commerce. I do, indeed, anticipate a day for man, when 
 commerce itself shall become religious, and religion commer- 
 cial ; when the holy and the useful shall be blended in a 
 common life of brotherhood and duty, comprising all the 
 human kindred of the globe. 
 
 Such an expectation, too, is the more reasonable, when 
 you consider that commerce is so manifestly showing herself 
 to be the handmaid of religion, by opening, as I just now 
 said, the way for the universal spread of Christianity. It 
 quells the prejudices of the natives, and shames away all 
 confidence in their gods and institutions, and then the Church 
 of God, as the ground is cleared, or being cleared, comes in 
 to fill the chasm that is made, by offering a better faith. 
 What, then, do we see, but that the ocean is becoming the 
 pathway of the Lord 1 He is visiting the nations, and they 
 shake before him ! The islands give up first — the continents 
 
16 
 
 must follow ! One thing is always sure — either commerce 
 must fold up its sails, and the ocean dry up in its bed, (which 
 few will expect,) or else every form of idolatry and barbarous 
 worship must cease from the world. This I say apart from 
 all the Christian effects and instrumentalities supplied by 
 missions ; for these are as yet insignificant, compared with 
 those mighty workings of Providence whose path is in the 
 sea. But if these precede, those must follow. As man is a 
 religious being, God will never undertake to rob him of a 
 false religion without giving him a better. Neither can any 
 Christian mind contemplate the rapid and powerful changes 
 which, in our day, have been wrought in the practical posi- 
 tion of the heathen nations, without believing that some 
 great design of Providence is on foot, that promises the uni- 
 versal spread of the Christian faith and the spiritual redemp- 
 tion of all the races of mankind. '' Lift up thine eyes round 
 about and see, all they gather themselves together they 
 come unto thee ! The abundance of the sea shall be con- 
 verted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto 
 thee !" 
 
 The sea has yet another kind of moral and religious use, 
 which is more direct and immediate. The liquid acres of 
 the deep, tossing themselves evermore to the winds, and roll- 
 ing their mighty anthem round the world, may be even the 
 most valuable and productive acres God has made. Great 
 emotions and devout affections are better fruits than corn, 
 more precious luxuries than wine or oil. And God has built 
 the world with a visible aim to exercise his creature with 
 whatever is lofty in conception, holy in feeling, and filial in 
 purpose towards himself. All the trials and storms of the 
 
17 
 
 land have this same object. To make the soul great, He 
 gives us great dangers to meet, great obstacles to conquer. 
 Deserts, famines, pestilences, walking in darkness, regions of 
 cold and wintry snow, hail and tempest — none of these are, 
 in his view, elements of waste and destruction, because they 
 go to fructify the moral man. As related to the moral king- 
 dom of God, they are engines of truth, purity, strength, and 
 all that is great and holy in character. The sea is a product- 
 ive element of the same class. What man that has ever 
 been upon the deep has not felt his nothingness, and been 
 humbled, for the time at least, of his prided How many 
 have received lessons of patience from the sea 1 How many 
 here have bowed, who never bowed before, to the tremen- 
 dous sovereignty of God? How many prayers, otherwise 
 silent, have gone up, to fill the sky and circle the world, from 
 wives and mothers, imploring his protecting presence with 
 the husbands and sons they have trusted to the deep 1 It is 
 of the greatest consequence, too, that such a being as God 
 should have images prepared to express Him and set Him 
 before the mind of man in all the grandeur of his attributes. 
 These He has provided in the heavens and the sea, which 
 are the two great images of his vastness aryd power ; the one, 
 remote, addressing itself to cultivated reason and science — the 
 other, nigh, to mere sense, and physically efiicient, a liquid 
 symbol of the infinitude of God. We ourselves, upon it rest- 
 ing in peace or quailing with dread, as if wafted by his good- 
 ness, or tossed by the tremendous billows of his will. It is 
 remarkable, too, how many of the best and most powerful 
 images of God in the Scriptures are borrowed from the sea. 
 " Canst thou by searching find out God "? The measure thereof 
 2 
 
18 
 
 is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.'' — '' Thy 
 judgments are a great deep." — " Who shut up the sea with 
 doors ? I made the cloud the garment thereof, and brake up 
 for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, 
 hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy 
 proud waves be stayed." — '' Which alone spreadeth out the 
 heavens and treadeth upon the waves of the sea." — ^' Thy 
 way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters." — " The 
 waters saw thee, Lord, the waters saw thee ; they were 
 afraid, the depths also were troubled !" Every kind of vast- 
 ness — immensity, infinity, eternity, mystery, omnipotence — 
 has its type in the sea, and there is as much more of God in 
 the world, for man to see and feel, as the sea can express, 
 and as much more of worship and piety as there is of God. 
 
 Doubtless we have all been happy in the pleasant society 
 and lively scenes that have thus far distinguished our voyage. 
 Have you seen the Almighty, too, in his path upon the 
 .waters? Have you felt his power, blessed yourself in the 
 grandeur of his mystery, leaned upon the majesty of his pur- 
 poses with a more feeling and filial devotion 1 The heart 
 that finds no God upon the sea, and delights not there to feel 
 the waves of emotion from his presence roll over it, may go 
 where it will in quest of the pitiful and shallow pleasures 
 appropriate to its capacity, but it has no room for God, or, it 
 would seem, for anything great or holy. 
 
 Doubtless it will occur to some of you, that the moral and 
 religious character of the seafaring race does not favor the 
 view I have taken of the benefits accruing to mankind from 
 the sea. This, however, is rather the fault of the land than 
 of the water. It is here, on land, that the vices of the sea 
 
19 
 
 have their cause and sustenance. There is not a more open, 
 
 fine-spirited race of beings on earth than the seafaring race. 
 
 But when they reach the land, they are too much neglected 
 
 by the good, and always surrounded by the wicked, who 
 
 hasten to make them their prey. Latterly, more has been 
 
 attempted for their benefit, and the results accomplished are 
 
 such as cannot but surprise us. Far enough are they from 
 
 hopelessness, if so great a change can be wrought in so 
 
 short a time, by means so limited. Indeed, I might urge 
 
 it as one of the best proofs of the mitigating and softening 
 
 influence of the sea, that no dejected race of landsmen, could 
 
 ever have been made to show the effects of Christian effort 
 
 and kindness so speedily, or by so many and fine examples 
 
 of Christian character. And I fully believe that the time is 
 
 at hand when all that pertains to commerce is to be sanctified 
 
 by virtue and religion, as of right it should be ; when the 
 
 mariners will be blended with all the other worshipers on 
 
 shore, in the exercise of common privileges, and as memr 
 
 bers of a common brotherhood ; when the ships will have 
 
 their Sabbath, and become temples of praise on the deep ; 
 
 when habits of temperance, and banks for saving, will 
 
 secure them in thrift, and assist to give them character; 
 
 when they will no more live an unconnected, isolated, and 
 
 therefore reckless life, but will have their wives and children 
 
 vested here and there, in some neat cottage among the hills, 
 
 to be to them, when abroad, the anchor of their affections 
 
 and the security of their virtue ; when they will go forth, 
 
 also, to distant climes and barbarous shores, with all their 
 
 noble and generous traits sanctified by religion, to represent 
 
 the beauty of Christ to men, and become examples of all that 
 
20 
 
 is good and beneficent in his Gospel. Be it ours to aid a pur- 
 pose so desirable, theirs to realize it in their conduct and cha- 
 racter. 
 
 I cannot better conclude, than by referring to a thought 
 suggested by my text, and illustrated by my whole course of 
 remark, viz. this : That God made the world for salvation. 
 Even in that earliest moment, when our orb was rising ou^ 
 of chaos, and reeking with the moisture of a first morning, God 
 is seen to have been studying the moral benefit and blessing 
 of our race. He did not make the seas too large. He laid 
 them where they should be. He swept their boundaries with 
 his finger, in the right place. The floods lift up their voice, 
 the floods lift up their waves, but they are not too furious or 
 dangerous. The Lord on High is mightier than the noise of 
 many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. God 
 manages 'and guides this army of waters — every wave is in 
 his purposes and rolls at his feet. He is over all as a God 
 of salvation, and the field He covers with his waters He 
 makes productive. When He called the dry land earth, 
 and the gathering together of the waters called he seas, then 
 had He in mind the kingdom of his Son, and the glory and 
 happiness of a race yet uncreated. He looked — He viewed 
 it again — He saw that it was good. And the good that He 
 saw is the good that is coming, and to come, when the 
 sea shall have fulfilled its moral purpose, and all kindred 
 and people that dwell upon its shores shall respond to the 
 ever-living anthem it raises to its Author. Then let the sea 
 roar, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that 
 dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands, and the hills 
 be joyful together before the Lord ! 
 
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