Crossing the Atlantic, a vessel is often encircled by small
ice-floes, looking like a flock of white sheep on the blue
ocean. When they started on their course southward, those
ice-floes were great frozen masses. But the warm Gulf Stream
played on them beneath, and the sun melted them from above, till
they dwindled as they entered a warm atmosphere. A man’s doubts
at first seem large enough to freeze his faith, but let him go
steadily onward into the warm atmosphere of Christian love, and
gradually his doubts will no more impede his progress than the
ice-floes impede an ocean-liner.
(817)