“We could not pray together on the deep,
Which, like a floor of sapphire, round us lay,
Soft, solemn, holy!”
Hemans.
’Tis Sunday!—Far to the westward lie the regions of the Amazonians,
and, in the east, the Caffre hunts the ostrich. From the south, the
lonely island of Tristan d’Acunha looms high above the horizon. Although
twenty-three miles of water intervene between us and the base of this
extinct volcano, the spray of the long billows of the southern ocean
rises in misty clouds above the perpendicular and rocky shores, shading
the mountain with a pearly veil, widely different in color from the soft
blue tint of distance.—Even from the mast-head, whither the desire of
solitude has led me, the summits of three or four billows complete the
range of vision; for, around the entire circuit of the earth, the
eternal west winds sweep, with scarce a barrier to their action.
To those who are familiar with the Atlantic only—that comparatively
diminutive expanse, which Humboldt has appropriately called “an arm of
the sea,”—the extent of these mountain swells must appear almost
incredible. It is not their height—for this is fixed within narrow
limits by an immutable law—but their vast, unbroken magnitude, that
awes the observer with the consciousness of infinite power. What are the
proudest monuments of human strength and skill, dotting the surface of
creation, when compared with these majestic waves, which are themselves
but the ripple of a passing breeze?
Reclining in the main-top, above all living things except the wild sea
bird—an antiquated volume on the Scandinavian mysteries in hand—I give
myself up to solitary reflection.—Dark dreams of superstition!—and
must the order and loveliness of this glorious world be terminated in
one wild wreck—one chaos of hopeless ruin!—shall all the labors of
creative goodness sink beneath the power of the unchained demon of
destruction!
We move upon the hardened crust of a volcanic crater!—The solid pillars
of the earth have given way once and again!—The stony relics of a
former world forewarn proud man himself, that he too, with all his
boastful race is hurrying to his doom!—All things have their cycles.
“This huge rotundity we tread grows old!”
What a pitiful guide is the unaided light of human reason, when it
grapples with the mysteries of creation! The good and great have lived
in every land, and all have striven to elevate the soul of man above the
grovelling passions and desires that link him with the brutes—pointing
his attention to the future, and instilling a belief in other powers, by
whose high best our destiny is governed, and whose wise decrees will
prove hereafter the reward of virtue and the scourge of vice.—Yet what
have they accomplished!—Each forms a Deity, whose attributes are the
reflection of the physical objects which surround him, or the echo of
his own ill-regulated feelings!
In the bright regions of the East, where the unremitting ardor of the
sun gives birth to an infinity of life, and the decaying plant or animal
is scarce resolved into its elements, ere other forms start forth from
its remains—_there_, the soul of man must wander from link to link in
the great chain of Nature, till, purified by ages of distress, it merges
into the very essence of the power supreme!—a power divided and engaged
in an eternal contest with itself! a never-ceasing war between the
principles of Good and Evil!
In those distant regions of the North, where winter rules three-quarters
of the year, and the orb of day, with look askance, but half illuminates
man’s dwelling and his labors—where verdure, for a few days, clothes
the hills with transitory grace; but all that seeks support from
vegetable aliment is endowed with fleetness like the reindeer, or
migrates, in the icy season, to more genial climes with the wild duck
and the pigeon;—in that gloomy circle, where the frozen earth scarce
yields a foot in depth to all the warming influence of summer, and men,
curtailed of half the sad resource spared even in the primeval curse,
swept with their robber hordes the provinces of their more fortunate
neighbors until the iron art of war barred up the avenues to these
precious granaries;—in that inhospitable region where dire necessity
inters the living infant with the departed mother, and resigns the aged
and decrepit to starvation!—the Parent of Good is a warrior armed,
compelled to struggle fruitlessly with Fate, until, with Thor’s dread
hammer in his hand, he yields, and breathes his last beneath the arm of
liberated Locke!
All! all contention!—Our very nature refuses credence in annihilation!
Then—
“When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither flies the immortal mind!”
Is there no place of rest?—no truth in the visions which haunt us as
the sun declines, and the rich hues of evening fade away—when the
spirits of those we have loved “sit mournfully upon their clouds,”
gazing, with a chastened melancholy which refines but cannot darken the
calm bliss of Paradise, upon the ceaseless, bootless turmoil of their
once cherished friends? Mythology presents us with no brighter future
than the wild riot of the Hall of Odin, the lethean inanity of Hades, or
the sensual and unmanly luxury of the Moslem Bowers of the Blest.
But hark! A manly voice, speaking of a loftier philosophy, rises upon
the clear air from the very bowels of the vessel.
“And the earth,” it cries, “was without form and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters.”
Slowly and in measured cadence poured forth, from the lips of one who
felt the truths he uttered, the exposition of the order of creation and
the high destinies of the creature. ’Tis a layman’s effort, clothed in
language suited to the rude ideas of simple-minded men:—I am not of his
faith,—and cannot crowd my thoughts within the narrow compass of our
wooden walls:—aloft in air, my temple is the canopy of heaven!—my
hymn—the wild tone of the ocean-wind with the low rushing of the
billows!—the symphony of Nature!—yet, as the words of prayer ascend
upon the gale, my own thoughts follow them.—I know them for the pure
aspiration of the heart,—the breathing of a contrite spirit!—They are
registered above!
All is still!—But, again, the harmony of many voices strikes the ear. A
hymn of praise from the wide bosom of the southern ocean!—No hearer but
the spirit to whose glory these sweet notes are tuned! The distance, and
the deadening influence of the narrow hatches, render words inaudible;
but, such as this, their tenor might have been.
Being of almighty power,
On the wide and stormy sea,
In thy own appointed hour,
Here, we bow our hearts to thee!
What is man, that he should dare
Ask of Thee a passing thought?
Ruling ocean, earth, and air,
Thou art all—and he is naught!
Like a mote upon the earth!
(Earth—a mote in space to Thee!)
What avails his death or birth!
What, his hopes or destiny?
Yet, a spirit Thou hast given
To thy creature of the clay,
Ranging free from Earth to Heaven,
Heir of an eternal day!
In thy image Thou hast made,
Not the body, but the mind!
That shall lie defiled—decayed!
This to loftier fate consigned,
Shall, above the tempest roar,
Viewless, gaze on all below,
And, its mundane warfare o’er,
Calmly watch Time’s ceaseless flow!
Aid us! Father! with thy power!
(Without Thee our strength is naught!)
Thus, in Nature’s dreaded hour,
We may own the peaceful thought,
That, our blinded efforts here,
May not mar Thy great design,
And each humble work appear
Worthy of a child of Thine!
The voices have ceased.—The service, in which all the company except
the helmsman and myself had joined, is ended; and, one by one, the
officers of the vessel, followed by the watch on duty, in their well
blanched trousers and bright blue jackets, appear on deck; their
sobriety of mien, and cheerfulness of countenance speaking volumes in
favor of the benign influence of Christianity, even when acting upon
what are erroneously considered by many, the worst materials.
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