God to preserve you. Now, do you not see how these two sayings go together, and make each other plain. You seamen and fishermen are in continual danger; your lives are in your hands every moment—the belaying of a sheet, the strength of a bit of canvas, the toughness of a deal board, may settle your fate in a moment, and make all the difference between life and death. If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest labour; and if they fail—if that weak cordage, and these planks, and thinner canvas, on which your lives depend, do but give way, what is left for you the next moment? what but a grave in the deep, deep sea, and your wives widows and your children orphans, and your bodies devoured by ugly creeping things, and your souls gone—gone where? My good men—you who sit around me now so strong and full of life and skill and happiness—where would your souls be if you were drowned at sea to-morrow?
What a question! Oh, ask it yourselves honestly! I have been out in gales myself, and I cannot understand how you can go out, in thirty feet of timber, upon that mighty sea, with the wind howling over your heads like a death-bell, and the great hungry waves chasing you for miles, each one able and willing to swallow you up into the deep, and the gulls screaming over you as if they were waiting to feed upon your floating carcases, and you alone, in a tiny boat, upon that waste, howling wilderness of waters!—I cannot understand, I say, how, when a man is in such a case as that, day after day, year after year, he can forget his God, the only friend who can save him from the sea! the only friend who can send him safe out to his work in the evening, and bring him
home safe to his wife at morning. One would think that when you went down to the shore in the morning, you would say, “Oh, God! without whose help I am no stronger than a piece of sea-weed floating up and down, take care of me! Take care of my wife and my children; and forgive me my sins, and do not punish me by calling me away this night to answer for them all!” And when you come home at night, you would say, “Oh, God! who hast kept me safe all this day, what can I do to show how thankful I am to Thee!” Ay! what can you do to show how thankful you are to God for His care? What ought you to do to show your thankfulness to Him? What must you do to show your thankfulness to Him? He has told you. “If you love me, He says, keep my commandments. Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”
These, my friends, are the holy and thankful thoughts which ought to be in your hearts every day and hour. This is the thought which God meant to put into your hearts when He made sailors of you, and brought you into the world, by the sea-side, to take up your business in great waters. You might have been born in Bristol or Liverpool or London, and never seen anything but streets and houses, and man’s clumsy work. But God has been very good to you. He has brought you up here, in this happy West country, where you may see His wonderful works day and night; where you ought never to forget that you have a Father in heaven who made the sea, and who keeps you safe at sea by night and day. God has given you a great deal. He has given you two books to read—the book of God’s Word, the Bible, and the book of God’s earth, the sky and sea and land, which is above you and below you and
around you day and night. If you can read and understand them properly, you will find in them everything which you want; you may learn from them to be holy in this world and happy in the next. God has given you, too, fathers, mothers, wives, children, a comfortable home, a holy trade—the same which the apostles followed. God has given you England for your country, and the West country—the best place in England for your home. God has given you a good Queen, and good magistrates and landlords. God has given you health and strength, and seamanship, and clear heads and stout hearts. And God has made you seamen and fishermen, and given you a business in which you can see God’s mighty power and wisdom day and night, and feel Him taking care of you when you cannot take care of yourselves.
Therefore you ought to thank God that yours is a dangerous business, because it teaches you to trust in God alone for safety. And what are you to give Him in return? What does God require of you? You cannot pay Him back again for all His mercies, for they are past counting, but you must pay Him back all you can. And what must you pay Him back? First, you must trust in God; for he who comes to God and wishes to walk with God through life, as a good man should, must believe that there is a God, and that He will reward those who look to Him.
I never heard of a sailor who did not believe in God; for how can a man look at the sea, and not say to himself, God made the sea! But I have seen a great many sailors who did not trust in God. As long as it is fine weather, and everything goes right, they will forget God, and fancy that it is their
own seamanship, and not God alone, which keeps their boats afloat, and their own skill in fishing, and not God alone, which sends the shoals of fish into their nets; and so they are truly fine-weather sailors—men who are only fit for calm seas and light breezes, when they can take care of themselves without God’s help; but when a squall comes their hearts change, by God’s mercy. For when a man has done all he can to save himself, and all he can do is no use, and his nets are adrift, and his boat on her beam ends, and the foaming rocks are on his lee, then he comes to his senses at last, and prays. Why did he not pray before? Why did he not save himself from all that misery and trouble and danger by thanking God for taking care of him, and praying to God to take care of him still. “Foolish men are plagued for their offences, and because of their wickedness. They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business on great waters; these men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep; for at His word the stormy wind ariseth which lifteth up the waves thereof; they are carried up to heaven, and down again into the deep; their soul melteth away because of the trouble; they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.” And justly they are punished for forgetting God. God made the calm as well as the storm. Could they not remember that? But look at God’s mercy; for when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivers them out of all their distress. For He makes the storm to cease, so that the waves are still; then are they glad because they are at rest, and so God brings them to the harbour where they would be.
Is there an old man sitting here who has not had this
happen to him? And what did you do, my friend, when God had saved you out of that danger? It is easy to tell what you ought to have done; you ought to have gone home and fallen on your knees, and prayed to God; you ought to have said, Oh, Lord, I am a miserable, foolish sinner, who can only remember Thee when Thou art angry; an ungrateful son, who only thinks of his father when he beats him! Oh, God, forgive me, I ought to have trusted in Thee before! I deserved all my danger and punishment and more. I did not deserve to be pardoned and saved from it! I deserve to be at the bottom of the sea at this moment. But forgive me, forgive me, loving and merciful Father, for the sake of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, who died on the cross that I might be saved from death!