g4 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
profits do you intend?” asked the king. On being told—“those 
from fishing,” he replied ironically: ‘‘So God have my soul, ’tis 
an honest trade; ‘twas the apostle’s own calling.” These good 
Puritan folk expected to find miraculous argentiferous draughts 
in the mouths of the fishes. They have ever since ‘ sacrificed to 
their net and burned incense to their drag; because by them their 
portion is fatness and their meat plenteous.” No wonder, then, 
that this godly class broke forth into hymning praise to the 
Creator for the blessings they received from the sea: 
Ye monsters of the bubbling deep, 
Your Maker’s name upraise; 
Up from the sands, ye codlings peep, 
And wag your tails always. 
SACRED ASSOCIATIONS. 
However irrevelant to this discussion the connection between 
piety and angling, it does not detract from the dignity of this 
calling to know that it has high authority, great antiquity, and 
sacred associations. Was it not the Psalmist of Israel who said 
—‘ They that occupy themselves in deep waters see the wonder- 
ful works of God?” Did not our Saviour choose for the great 
work of the Gospel the prudent, peaceable and devout fisher- 
men? ‘Ot the Twelve) were not four of tis simple cram? While 
reproving the scribes and moneyed men for their peculiar em- 
ployment, the Saviour gave to these simple disciples the power 
to speak all tongues, to persuade by their quiet manners and 
sincere eloquence, and to perform wonders unheard of before 
upon the chosen soil of Palestine. Peter, Andrew, James, and 
John, the four fishermen, as the good Izaak Walton has said with 
great felicity, were men of mild and sweet and peaceable spirits, 
as, indeed, most anglers are— 
And it is observable that these our four fishermen should have a 
priority of numeration in the catalogue of the twelve apostles. And 
it is yet more observable that when our Saviour went up into the 
mount, when he left the rest of his disciples and chose only three to 
bear him company at his transfiguration, that these three were all fish- 
ermen. And it is believed that all the other apostles, after they be- 
took themselves to follow Christ, betook themselves to be fishermen, 
too, for it is certain that the greater number of them were found to- 
