NATURAL THEOLOGY. 209 



that which tempers the soldier to the strife of the field, 

 and the sailor to the yet more terrible conflict on the 

 flood comes, and comes in its power, and the dispo- 

 sition to dash into the thickest of the strife, and die in 

 the death-struggle of nature, is one of the most power- 

 ful feelings of one who can enter into the spirit of the 

 mighty scene. 



We leave those who allocate the feelings of men 

 according to the scale of their artificial systems, to 

 find the place of this singular emotion, and call it a 

 good or an evil one, as they choose. But we have 

 been in the habit of feeling and thinking that it is an 

 impulse of natural theology, one of those unbidden 

 aspirations toward his Maker which man feels when 

 the ties that bind him to nature and the earth appear 

 to be loosening, and there remains no hope, but in the 

 consciousness of his God, and of that eternity, the 

 gate of which is in the shadow of death. Thus, amid the 

 fury of the elements, the unsophisticated hopes of man 

 cling to HIM, who " rideth in the whirlwind and direct- 

 eth the storm." 



But beautiful or sublime as the ocean is, according 

 to situation and circumstances, we should lose its value 

 were we to look upon it only as a spectacle, and were 

 the emotions that it produced to be only the dreams 

 of feeling, however touching or however allied to re- 

 ligion. To admire and to feel are both essential and 

 valuable parts of our nature ; but neither of them is so 

 essential, as to know. That is the antecedent matter ; 

 because by it, and by it only, the admiration and the 

 feeling can be properly directed. The first property of 

 the ocean that strikes our sight, is its vast extent ; and 

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