172 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



when he is least expecting them. Under the 

 smiling and deceitful surface, how often are there con- 

 cealed dangerous rocks and quicksands, on which the 

 bark of the mariner is doomed to strike and suffer 

 shipwreck! The sense of man's weakness is never 

 perhaps more forcibly illustrated than when placed in 

 sudden contrast with the forces of an angry sea let 

 loose upon him. What is the proudest ship of war, 

 with all her gallant crew, when placed amidst the fury 

 of the breakers upon a coral reef? What but the mere 

 sport of the watery element, — 



* These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 

 They inelt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 

 Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.' 



In each and in all of these general aspects, the sea has a 

 moral counterpart in the world of the human heart. 

 The experience of so many thousand years has not yet 

 been able fully to unmask its treachery and hypocrisy. 

 Many of the dangers around him the Christian has 

 learnt to avoid, but there are others which take him by 

 surprise and it is no uncommon spectacle to witness 

 those who like Hymenaeus and Alexander of old, 

 having held on the way of faith and a good conscience 

 for a season, have afterwards forsaken it, and suffered 



