“I have been blamed by men of science, both in this country and in England, for quoting the Bible in confirmation of the doctrines of physical geography. The Bible, they say, was not written for scientific purposes, and is therefore of no authority in matters of science. I beg pardon! The Bible is authority for everything it touches. What would you think of the historian who should refuse to consult the historical records of the Bible, because the Bible was not written for the purposes of history? The Bible is true and science is true. The agents concerned in the physical economy of our planet are ministers of His who made both it and the Bible. The records which He has chosen to make through the agency of these ministers of His upon the crust of the earth are as true as the records which, by the hands of His prophets and servants, He has been pleased to make in the Book of Life. They are both true; and when your men of science, with vain and hasty conceit, announce the discovery of disagreement between them, rely upon it the fault is not with the Witness or His records, but with the ‘worm’ who essays to interpret evidence which he does not understand.
“When I, a pioneer in one department of this beautiful science, discover the truths of revelation and the truths of science reflecting light one upon the other and each sustaining the other, how can I, as a truth-loving, knowledge-seeking man, fail to point out the beauty and to rejoice in its discovery? Reticence on such an occasion would be sin, and were I to suppress the emotion with which such discoveries ought to stir the soul, the waves of the sea would lift up their voice, and the very stones of the earth cry out against me. (Great applause.)
“As a student of physical geography, I regard the earth, sea, air, and water, as parts of a machine, pieces of mechanism not made with hands, but to which nevertheless certain offices have been assigned in the terrestrial economy. It is good and profitable to seek to find out these offices, and point them out to our fellows; and when, after patient research, I am led to the discovery of any one of them, I feel with the astronomer of old as though I had ‘thought one of God’s thoughts’—and tremble. Thus as we progress with our science we are permitted now and then to point out here and there in the physical machinery of the earth a design of the Great Architect when He planned it all.
“Take the little nautili. Where do the fragile creatures go? What directing hand guides them from sea to sea? What breeze fills the violet sails of their frail little craft, and by whose skill is it enabled to brave the sea and defy the fury of the gale? What mysterious compass directs the flotilla of these delicate and graceful argonauts? Coming down from the Indian Ocean, and arriving off the stormy cape, they separate—the one part steering for the Pacific, the other for the Atlantic Ocean. Soon the ephemeral life that animates these tiny navigators will be extinct; but the same power which cared for them in life now guides them in death, for though dead their task in the physical economy of our planet is not finished, nor have they ceased to afford instruction in philosophy. The frail shell is now to be drawn to distant seas by the lower currents. Like the leaf carried through the air by the wind, the lifeless remains descend from depth to depth by an insensible fall even to the appointed burial place on the bottom of the deep; there to be collected into heaps and gathered into beds which at some day are to appear above the surface a storehouse rich with fertilizing ingredients for man’s use. Some day science will sound the depth to which this dead shell has fallen, and the little creature will perhaps afford solution for a problem a long time unsolved; for it may be the means of revealing the existence of the submarine currents that have carried it off, and of enabling the physical geographer to trace out the secret paths of the sea. (Great applause).
“Had I time, I might show how mountains, deserts, winds, and water, when treated by this beautiful science, all join in one universal harmony—for each one has its part to perform in the great concert of nature. (Renewed applause).
“The Church, ere physical geography had yet attained to the dignity of a science in our schools, and even before man had endowed it with a name, saw and appreciated its dignity,—the virtue of its chief agents. What have we heard chanted here in this grove by a thousand voices this morning?—A song of praise, such as these hills have not heard since the morning stars sang together:—the Benedicite of our Mother Church, invoking the very agents whose workings and offices it is the business of the physical geographer to study and point out! In her services she teaches her children in their songs of praise to call upon certain physical agents, principals, in this newly established department of human knowledge,—upon the waters above the firmament; upon showers and dew; wind, fire, and heat; winter and summer; frost and cold; ice and snow; night and day; light and darkness; lightning and clouds; mountains and hills; green things, trees, and plants; whales, and all things that move in the waters; fowls of the air, with beasts and cattle,—to bless, praise, and magnify the Lord. (Tremendous applause.)
“To reveal to man the offices of these agents in making the earth his fit dwelling place is the object of physical geography. Said I not well that of all the sciences physical geography is the most Christianizing in its influences?” (Long continued applause.)
In addition to his occasional speeches, Maury also appeared on the regular lecture platform, where he delivered three different series of lectures. “My lot in life”, he wrote, “is cast among those whose necessities compel them to stop with philosophy now and then and ‘court Dame Fortune’s golden smile’ until she vouchsafe a few extra centimes with which one may propitiate butcher and baker. Yielding to these necessities, I have occasionally to abandon the winds and the sea, and go digging in the hopes of finding a few of the ‘roots of evil’ wherewith to propitiate amiable creditors. These necessities have been pressing upon me, so I had to abandon everything and go out on a lecturing tour”. In this connection, it is of interest to note that in addition to his salary of $3,500 as Superintendent of the Observatory Maury received from Harper’s as royalties on his “Physical Geography of the Sea” from $300 to $400 a year up to the Civil War. He was also paid considerable sums for his contributions to the magazines, such as the Southern Literary Messenger, from which according to his account book he received over $600 from November, 1841 to December, 1842. Maury had, however, a large family of eight children, and their needs increased from year to year.
His first series of regular lectures, six in number, was delivered before the Lowell Institute of Boston in December, 1856, on the general subject of “The Winds and Currents of the Sea”. The Boston Daily Evening Transcript reported the lectures and gave great praise to “Professor” Maury; while one who heard him wrote in a personal letter, “It was a truly interesting lecture and from our citizens there comes forth one response, Excellent, Capital, The Lecture of the Season. It was no common audience, I assure you. Many were present who seldom attend evening lectures. All were enthusiastic in their praise. I was told by men high in office and the estimation of the community that it was the best lecture and the most interesting to them that they had ever heard. It was Lyceum night and the hour of commencement was postponed in order to give that audience a chance to hear, and they came and heard; notwithstanding they had been sitting an hour to another lecture, they sat still one and one-quarter hours more and so still that throughout the whole one might have heard a pin drop”.
For these lectures Maury was paid the sum of $500; and on the same tour he delivered ten other lectures in Massachusetts and New York at $50 a lecture. In New York he spoke at Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo. In the last-mentioned city two lectures were given on November 27 and 28, and the account of the first of these in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser is most interesting. “We listened to Lieutenant Maury”, it reports, “with unalloyed pleasure. His appearance is that of a kind-hearted, benevolent man of fifty; his forehead that of a philosopher, his eyes and lower face indicative of poetic sentiment. His delivery is neither good nor bad, but he found no difficulty in enchaining the attention of his audience, and few, we presume, cared much for the lack of oratorical effect. We had never given Lieutenant Maury credit for the power of poetical description which he manifested in this lecture. Beautifully written, rich in descriptive power and full of a sailor’s love for his ship, and his fondness for strange scenes, we have rarely listened to a better specimen of ‘word painting’ than that which referred to a western passage across the Pacific. But immediately after came a description of the climate of Valparaiso, equally vivid, and in his allusion to the stars of the Southern hemisphere even more eloquent—one saw that night sky, a vault of steel, the brilliant stars which shone upon its surface and the planets brighter still, seemingly swimming in mid air beneath them; and the Magellan clouds, ‘rents in the azure robe of night, through which one looked into the black profound of space beyond’”.