“the sea is his and he made IT;” 
 
 A DISCOURSE BEFORE THE 
 
 Amepisan SeameFi’s PpiGnd S©Giet\j, 
 
 AT ITS 
 
 SIXTY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY, 
 Sunday, May 9, 1897, 
 
 Rev. william T. SABINE, D. D., 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FIRST REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY- 
 
 AMERICAN SEAMEN’S FRIEND SOCIETY, 
 
 76 WALL STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
 1897. 
 
1828 . 
 
 m^ncait 
 
 eamen s 
 
 1897 
 
 OFFICERS : 
 
 JAMES W. ELWELL, President. 
 
 C. A. STODDARD, D.D., Vice-President. 
 
 W. C. STITT, D.D., Secretary. 
 
 Rev. Edward B. Coe, D.D , LL.D., 
 “ A. G. Vermilte, D.D., 
 
 “ Chas. Cdthbert Hall, D.D., 
 “ Norman Fox, D.D., 
 
 WM. C. STURGES, Treasurer. 
 
 Trustees : 
 
 D., Enos N. Taft, 
 
 Chas, K. Wallace, 
 
 A. G. Agnew, 
 Daniel Barnes, 
 Samit:l Rowland, 
 Geo. Bell, 
 
 W. Hall Ropes, 
 Edgar L. Marston. 
 
 John Dwight, 
 W. I. Comes, 
 
 Capt. David Gillespie, 
 Wm. E. Stiger, 
 
 Elbert A. Brinckerhoff, 
 Frederick Sturges, 
 
 There are about three million seamen afloat. The American 
 Seamen’s Friend Society aims to do them good. 
 
 It gives annual aid to chaplains laboring in their behalf, in 16 for- 
 eign and 19 domestic ports. 
 
 It places loan libraries for seamen’s use on American vessels leaving 
 the port of New York. Up to April 1, 1897, 10,379 libraries have 
 been sent to sea; counting reshipments, about two libraries for every 
 working day for thirty-nine years. 
 
 It provides a Sailors’ Home at 190 Cherry Street, New York, where 
 seamen can board and be comparatively protected from vicious sur- 
 roundings, and where shipwrecked and destitute sailors are cared for. 
 
 It publishes the Sailors’ Magazine for the friends of seamen, 
 the Life Boat for Sunday Schools, and the Seamen’s Friend for 
 seamen. 
 
 It distributes on vessels the publications of the American Bible 
 Society and the American Tract Society. 
 
 Through its agents and efforts sailors are befriended, helped and 
 blessed. The record of its work in all the years of its existence has 
 cheered both the philanthropist and Christian. 
 
 Sample copies of the Sailors’ Magazine (one dollar per annum) 
 and copies of the Annual Report sent free to any address. 
 
 Churches are requested to take an annual collection for this work, 
 and to send it to the Treasurer, at No. 76 Wall Street, New York. 
 Publications containing facts for sermons will be sent to pastors on 
 application. Annual contributions from individuals are solicited. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 V'olceless, yet voicefiil, amid the roar and din of an endless traffic, 
 the inspired and golden legend inscribed across the facade of the Royal 
 Exchange in the very heart of busy London proclaims “ The earth is 
 the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Our text claims the sea also for 
 God. Our gathering together here to-day, under the auspices of the 
 Amekicak Seamex’s Friexd Society, is in recognition, assertion 
 and furtherance of this claim. 
 
 “ The ocean old, 
 
 Centuries old, 
 
 Strong as youth and as uncontrolled,” 
 
 is an object of interest to us all. Some of us love it, some of us dread 
 it, many of us wonder at it ; who of us can claim to be quite indiff- 
 erent to its dangers and its charms ? Its shores, its waves, its storms, 
 its calms, its skies, its depths, its tales, have they not a marvellous 
 fascination for multitudes of men ? With what joy have we trodden 
 its beaches ! With what delight watched its crested and inrolling 
 surf as it breaks in foam and thunder on the sands, or sweeps over 
 them in curves of graceful beauty ! What consciousness of littleness, 
 awe and loneliness has not stolen over our spirits as we have looked 
 out over its wild wastes of waters, nor shore nor sail in sight, only 
 around us the old gray sea, only above us the cold gray sky ! What 
 sense of health and invigoration have we not drawn from its salt-laden 
 breezes on some bright day, every breath an elixir of life ! And what 
 strange bewitchment have we found in its quaint and thrilling stories 
 of danger and adventure, like Longfellow’s trembling maiden holding 
 her breath 
 
 “ At the tales of that awful pitiless sea 
 With all its terror and mystery, 
 
 The dim dark sea so like unto Death 
 That divides and yet unites mankind ! ” 
 
 To all sorts and conditions of men the sea appeals : the Statesman, 
 who has learned the meaning of the phrase “ Sea- Power,” who covets 
 for his country a great place among the nations, who knows that Eng- 
 
4 
 
 land’s boast, “ Brittania rules the waves,” has many a time proved no 
 idle word, and that the dominion of the sea carries with it, how often, 
 the dominion of the land; will never be indifferent to the sea, or the 
 power and influence his country wields upon it through its navy and 
 merchant marine. 
 
 To the Merchant and Importer, the success of whose ventures and 
 enterprise so largely depends upon the moods of the ocean, and the 
 movements and safety of the ships speeding over its bosom, the world 
 of waters cannot be other than an object of constant interest and 
 solicitude. 
 
 The man of Science flnds in the sea, with its bottoms, shores and 
 depths, with its aquatic birds and fish, algae, shells and currents, with 
 its ever varying conditions, with its living creatures, many of them 
 strange and beautiful, some of them hideous, repulsive and terrible, 
 all of them marvellous in adaptation and construction, and every one 
 of them, whether he take note of it or not, witnessing to the power 
 and the wisdom of God, an endless field for the exercise of his 
 acutest faculties in study and research. 
 
 And our Artists — do they not love the ocean? many of them giving 
 a lifetime to the study and depicting of the beauties of its shores and 
 surf and ever fitful moods. 
 
 And the Sailor! with all the hardships, dangers and privations of 
 his roving life — he libels him who says he does not love the sea! 
 
 And the Fisherman, gaining his livelihood with line and seine along 
 the shores, or drawing it from deeper waters, absent for days or 
 weeks together from the humble cottage on the beach — will you assert 
 that Ae has no concern about the sea? 
 
 And the wives and the mothers and the sisters and the little child- 
 ren who stand looking seaward, watching earnestly with straining 
 eyes for the first signs in the oflBug of the returning fleet, and whose 
 hearts sink within them as the autumn blast howls over the deep and 
 rattles on the window pane; sink within them at the thought of hus- 
 band, father, brother, son not yet returned and struggling with the 
 fierceness of the storm — can we think that such as these have no in- 
 terest in the old gray sea, so beautiful and yet many a time so treacher- 
 ous? 
 
 Yes, and the thousands upon thousands to whom the thought will 
 come, as they look out upon the wide expanse of waters, that some- 
 where they hold in their dark bosom uncoflined forms; forms and 
 faces dear to them; forms and faces on which they will never look 
 
5 
 
 again until the sea, obedient to the word of its Creator, shall give up 
 its dead, — is it thinkable of such as these that they have no concern 
 whatever in nor ever have a thought about the great, wide sea whose 
 depths enshrine their precious dead? 
 
 True, there are millions, many of them living in the heart of great 
 continents, who never saw, will never see, who never read nor perhaps 
 ever heard of the existence, to say nothing of the ministry and won- 
 ders, of the sea; and others, who, having seen and heard, have scarcely 
 spared for it a thought, who are yet indebted beyond telling to the 
 sea; into whose homes and life and to whose tables the ships, speed- 
 ing over its bosom, have brought many a thing of use and beauty, 
 comfort, healing, luxury, refreshment and adorning, which, being 
 absent, might be sorely missed. 
 
 There are savage interior tribes who owe the beauties of their forests 
 and the fertility of wide-stretching plains to rain- laden clouds which 
 come sailing up over the inland landscape charged with blessings of 
 moisture by distant oceans which they never saw and of whose exist- 
 ence they never even dreamed. 
 
 And there are great internal areas, sometimes famine -stricken, whose 
 perishing millions may little realize that their burnt-out and sun- 
 scorched soil, in which no green thing grows, is to be traced to the 
 failure of the gracious ministry of some far-off sea! So true it is that 
 “ all sorts and conditions of men ” are somehow concerned with the sea; 
 for where are they who have not in it somewhere investment of inter- 
 est, anxiety, wealth, affection, support, comfort, adventure, sorrowful 
 or joyous memories? This being so, a Society like that at whose call 
 we are assembled, should have a great and interested constituency. 
 
 And if the sea may say to all these myriads of men, “Ye are con- 
 cerned with me and my ministry of wind and wave, vapor and tide, 
 and cloud and storm, your health, your life, your business prosperity, 
 comforts, joys and griefs, not least may it claim the thought and in- 
 terest of “all those who profess and call themselves Christians,” ser- 
 vants and followers and heirs of Him of whom the Psalmist wrote, 
 “ The sea is His and He made it,” of Him who walked the shores and 
 sailed the waters of Galilee. 
 
 For such — and such those of us who assemble here to day at the 
 call of this Society may be assumed to be — the Psalmist’s word must 
 ever have its own appropriate significance, implying, as it does, both 
 a disclosure of God and a call to special service in His name. 
 
 In the sea God makes a revelation of Himself which His servants 
 
6 
 
 will be quick to discern — and how should it be otherwise, seeing that 
 “He MADE it!” The thing made proclaims its maker; the work 
 done declares not merely a doer, but the doer who did it. The intel- 
 ligent and interested worker builds himself into his work, puts into it 
 by virtue of his distinctive personality a subtle something which dif- 
 ferentiates it from the work of every other hand, which labels it as his 
 and not another’s. 
 
 You are an adept in art. You do not hesitate to attribute these 
 canvasses, though they treat of similar subjects, the first to Eaphael, 
 the second to Correggio, and the third to Murillo. Your are a musi- 
 cian, and as the organ peals forth its splendid swell of harmonies, you 
 recognize in the compositions presented, the touch of Beethoven, the 
 strains of Mozart, or the melodies of Haydn. You are something of 
 a reader, and when unnamed passages of Milton, Wordsworth, Long- 
 fellow, Shakespeare, Bacon, Addison, or Motley are put into your 
 hand, and you are asked to distinguish their authorship, you do not 
 hesitate ; familiarity with their respective styles at once discloses it ; 
 so truly is the artist’s, the musician’s, the writer’s, yes, every true 
 workman’s way his own and not another’s. 
 
 It is truth most familiar that nature speaks everywhere of God, for 
 God. Eecall that wonderfully beautiful apostrophe of Coleridge to 
 the glaciers of Mont Blanc : 
 
 “ Ye ice falls 1 Ye that from the mountain’s brow 
 Adown enormous ravines slope amain. 
 
 Torrents methinks that heard a mighty voice 
 And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge. 
 
 Motionless torrents I Silent cataracts I 
 Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
 Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun 
 Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers 
 Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet? 
 
 God! Let the torrents like a shout of nations 
 Answer! and let the ice plains echo, God! 
 
 God! Sing, ye meadow springs, with gladsome voice. 
 
 Ye pine groves with your soft and soul-like sounds; 
 
 And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow. 
 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder Ood 1 
 Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frosts. 
 
 Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest! 
 
 Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm! 
 
 Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! 
 
 Ye signs and wonders of the elements! 
 
 Utter forth Qodl and All the hills with praise! ” 
 
7 
 
 Thus God’s works, like man’s, are evermore a disclosure of Him- 
 self. So Milton : 
 
 “ Unspeakable! Who sittest above these heavens, 
 
 To us invisible or dimly seen 
 
 In these thy lowest works — yet these declare 
 
 Thy goodness beyond thought! and power divine! ” 
 
 So Paul : “ For the invisible things of Him from the creation of 
 the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
 made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” 
 
 And the sea ! Who made it ? The Psalmist answers out of the far 
 past. He made it ! Its boundless reaches tell of Him who is the un- 
 confined, the illimitable One ; its heaving tides and ceaseless currents 
 and waters never still, of Him who is the ever-living and life-giving 
 One ; its mighty depths of Him whose “ judgments are a great deep ; ” 
 its endless coast-lines and boundary-shores, — placed “for the bound of 
 the sea by a perpetual decree that it cannot pass it : and though the 
 waves thereof toss themselves yet can they not prevail, though they 
 roar, yet can they not pass over it,” — of Him who is at once the great 
 law-giver and law-keeper of the universe ; its wonderful beauties, 
 cleansing tides and marvellous helpfulness to men, of Him who is the 
 infinitely good and gracious One ; its punctual, ceaseless flowings, 
 never in excess and never in defect, never a moment early and never 
 a moment late, of Him who is the God of truth and order, whose word 
 and promise cannot fail ; its majestic expanses, its maelstroms and 
 waterspouts and terrific storms, before whose fury man is helpless, of 
 Him whose might is irresistible. So Byron sang : 
 
 “ Thou glorious mirror where the Almighty’s form 
 Glasses itself iu tempests: in all time, 
 
 Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm; 
 
 Icing the pole or in the torrid clime ; 
 
 Dark heaving; boundless, endless and sublime. 
 
 The image of eternity; the throne 
 Of the Invisible: even from out thy slime 
 The monsters of the deep are made; 
 
 Each zone obeys thee ; 
 
 Thou goest forth dread, fathomless, alone ! ” 
 
 Pity the man who treads the shore, who sails the ocean, who, in the 
 name of science, studies the sea, its fish, its shells, its tides, its flora, 
 yet hears not God’s name in the music of the waves or the awful roar 
 of the tempest, nor ever spells it out among the stars that look 
 
8 
 
 down so quietly and silently upon the waste of tossing waters ; nor 
 seems to see it written in flaming, gleaming light across the eastern 
 and the western sky as the sun rises slowly out of, or sinks majesti- 
 cally below the sea ; nor ever worships Him ! 
 
 Ours is the high and holy privilege of reverent adoration as we find 
 ourselves surrounded by these impressive evidences of the divine pres- 
 ence and power, and realize that “ He made it,” this overarching 
 heaven, this broad expanse of sea. And some of us, as we recall some 
 hour of peril on the deep, when we were face to face with shipwreck, 
 and understood as never before that only a few inches of plank were 
 between us and a watery grave, and that all of help and hope we had 
 was in the power and grace of Him who rules the waves, are ready to 
 say with Joseph Addison : 
 
 “ Think, 0 my soul, devoutly think 
 How with affrighted eyes 
 Thou saw’st the wide-extended deep 
 In all its horrors rise! 
 
 “ Confusion dwelt on every face 
 And fear in every heart 
 When waves on waves and gulfs on gulfs 
 O’ereame the pilot’s art. 
 
 “ Yet then from all my griefs, 0 Lord, 
 Thy mercy set me free. 
 
 Whilst in the confidence of prayer 
 My soul took hold on Thee. 
 
 “ The storm was laid, the winds retired 
 Obedient to Thy will. 
 
 The sea that roared at Thy command. 
 At Thy command was still. 
 
 “ In midst of dangers, fears and death 
 Thy goodness I’ll adore — 
 
 And praise Thee for Thy mercies past. 
 And humbly hope for more.” 
 
 The Psalmist affirms that God is the maker of the sea — “He made 
 it” — an affirmation which carries with it the inference that the sea is 
 in some sort a revelation of God. He also asserts a divine ownership 
 of the sea. He broadly claims the ocean for God — “the sea is His! ” 
 It is all His, all in it His, all on it IlisI From pole to pole, from 
 continent to continent, from island to island, it is His! Every shore 
 of it His, every fish in it His, every drop of it His, every rock and 
 shoal and bottom in it His, and not least the millions of our fellow- 
 men and women who for gain or pleasure sail and steam over its broad 
 bosom in ships of every fiag; His, and that in virtue of a double claim, 
 the right of creation and the right of redemption. 
 
 The existence of this Society and the gracious and beneficent work it 
 has been permitted to accomplish in the years gone by are at once a 
 recognition and an assertion of that claim. It builds upon the truth, 
 “the sea is His.” The labors of every missionary in its employ rest 
 
0 
 
 upon it. Every tract that it offers, every visit that its agents pay, 
 every library that it puts on shipboard, every appeal for money to 
 carry on its work proceeds on this high ground. 
 
 Its noble and holy function is “ to testify the gospel of the grace of 
 God,” and this to the men of the sea; not to the ocean currents, for 
 what ocean current ever deviated from the path marked out for it by 
 he hnger of God? Not to the fishes of the sea, for when did they 
 ever violate the great laws of their being? Not to the petrel, or the 
 swift winged gull or the wild fowl, gaining a living in the salty marsh 
 and along the shore, or loving to rest on the restless wave, for these 
 need it not; but to men, intelligent, immortal men, gifted in noblest 
 capacities of service and enjoyment and undying life; for these, alas, 
 men of the sea as well as men of the land, are they who have lapsed 
 into disharmony with God, and so fallen out of righteousness and 
 peace, and into weakness, wickedness, loss, and suffering; and these 
 are they who need to be redeemed and won back to God and righteous- 
 ness and peace. 
 
 Christ’s parting word to His disciples was “ Go ye into all the world 
 and preach the gospel to every creature.” He claimed all men as the 
 objects of His mercy; none were too great, none too insignificant to 
 be the subjects of His grace. His religion was imperial, it knew no 
 rival. It is exclusive, it is intolerant of every other faith. Its clarion 
 cry is “ There is none other name under heaven given among men 
 whereby we must be saved.” It is the blessed function of this Society 
 to offer His distinctive gospel to the sailors of all seas, as men and 
 means are at its call. It is not merely the American Seamen’s 
 Friend Society, the friend of American seamen — no indeed — but far 
 more than that — the friend of seamen of every nationality; the Amer- 
 ican friend of seamen. It is on the basis of this great command, “ Go ye 
 into all the world,” that we build up great mission enterprises, vindicate 
 the sacrifice of precious lives, and justify the expenditure of millions of 
 money on all the continents. And is then the soul of the man afloat any 
 less precious than the soul of the man ashore? No, my friends, it is not! 
 And this Society stands to-day with finger pointing seaward to say. 
 Behold! One of the broadest, grandest, neediest, and most hopeful 
 of all the world’s mission-fields, magnificent in its expanses, for the 
 waters of the lakes and oceans cover three- fourths of the surface of the 
 globe; mighty in its populations, for what with the men whose busi- 
 ness is occupied in these great waters, in the navies, in the fisheries, 
 in the merchant service, in the coasting trades, in the passenger traffic 
 
10 
 
 of the world, the citizenship of the sea runs up into the millions, and, 
 though sparsely peopled when compared with the thickly settled states 
 and kingdoms of the earth, probably outnumbering the populations 
 of the cities of New York and Philadelphia, and surpassing that of 
 the city of London. 
 
 If the capital of Great Britain had never heard the message of God’s 
 grace in the gospel, what heart that beats true to Christ and has not 
 yet learned amid flooding unbeliefs to tamper with the essential veri- 
 ties of His faith, but would be for hurrying forward with all speed 
 the tidings of divine love and mercy to the millions thus “ sitting in 
 darkness and the shadow of death?” 
 
 And again we ask, is the soul of the man afloat any less precious 
 than the soul of the man ashore? Where did we learn that? To what 
 verse in this Book can we point to prove that? With what word of 
 the Lord will you verify that? Do we believe that He who is no 
 respecter of persons, who turned a boat into a pulpit, who loved the 
 shores of the sea of Galilee and chose His apostles from among its 
 fishermen, cared more for the men of the land that He cares for the 
 men of the sea? Do we think that when he said “ Go ye into all the 
 world,” He meant Gaul and Britain and Rome and Persia, but had 
 never a thought for the sea? Is the sin of the sailor any less heinous, 
 any less ruinous and fatal to the soul, than your sins and mine? Is 
 “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son that cleanseth away all sin” 
 any less essential and availing for him than it is essential and availing 
 for you and for me? Are the temptations of the sailor any less Gerce 
 and seductive than those of other men as he steps ashore at some 
 strange seaport to find himself surrounded by a swarm of land-sharks, 
 more cruel and greedy than the sharks of the sea, agents of the saloon, 
 the brothel and the gambling hell, emissaries of the devil, awaiting 
 him at every turn, and hungry to devour not alone his hard-earned 
 money, but worse, his manly vigor, his bodily health, the peace of 
 his conscience and his immortal soul! 
 
 Of a generous, confiding, unsuspicious nature, such a nature as too 
 often falls an easy prey; unguarded and alone, or surrounded by evil 
 companionships; mother and wife and children, if he has any, and the 
 blessed restraints of a decent social life far, far away; has the sailor 
 less need than others of the curb of a holy religion, of the tremendous 
 warnings and sweet encouragements of the Word of God, of the hopes 
 and alarms which might inspire him to the right and deter him from 
 the wrong, while the syren voices of hell, with every fascination, seek 
 
11 
 
 to lure him from the paths of righteousness and peace? Has this 
 sailor-brother of ours, thus tempted, thus beset, any less need of the 
 gracious and wholesome restraint of a Christian conscience, enlight- 
 ened by the Spirit of God, than the rest of us? 
 
 Remember, the sailor is our representative. He stands for our 
 civilization, he represents our Christianity, as many a time no other 
 can or does in foreign ports. You demand, by what right, on whose 
 commission? We answer, by no formal appointment of anybody, but 
 simply by virtue of circumstances and as an actual fact. A French- 
 man, an Englishman, an Italian, an American he enters some foreign 
 port. Hailing from a nominally Christian land, the people of the for- 
 eign port accept him naturally enough as a specimen product of the 
 land from which he hails, and accredit him as representing its faith 
 and social life. But what if he be a profane sailor, a drunken sailor, 
 a libertine sailor? Missionaries in the East have testified that many 
 a time the vices and debaucheries of Europeans and Americans, seem- 
 ing to the natives to stand for western civilization and Christian faith, 
 have proved unspeakable hindrances to their holy and beneficent work. 
 Poor tempted Jack is by no means the only transgressor in this respect 
 — very far from it! But too often he has been such a transgressor, 
 and as far as he is so are we willing that he should stand for our coun- 
 try, our institutions, our religion and social life? The Lord forbid it! 
 No, a thousand times no! Then let us, through noble agencies like 
 that in whose behalf we speak to-day, seek by the grace of God to 
 Christianize “Jack!” 
 
 It is the glory of our Lord that He is “ Christus Consolator ” and 
 that His faith is the best, the only really effective panacea for 
 all human ills; that it stanches the wounds and dries the tears of 
 humanity as no other religion, no science, no philosophy ever can 
 or ever will. Now, if there is a class of men on the globe who 
 need the consolations and comforts of our holy faith, it is the sailor 
 whose home is the restless, boundless sea; the sailor who is cut off 
 from a thousand resources of information, recreation, improvement 
 and endeavor which are open to the man ashore; the sailor on whose 
 ear the prattle of children seldom falls and whose life is rarely bright- 
 ened by their sunny smiles; the sailor deprived for months and years 
 at a time of the blessed ministries of wife, mother, sister, daughter; 
 the sailor who must comfront disease in foreign hospitals, danger and 
 death in appalling forms on the stormy sea, and who realizes his perils 
 as keenly as you and I do ours; the sailor who many a time must 
 
12 
 
 think how his may be an unmarked and nameless grave upon some 
 lonely coast, or an unknown resting on some deep, dark sea-bottom, 
 whither no dear one will ever come, and where no gentle hand will 
 ever lay the tribute of its love. 
 
 And as there is no man who more needs, so there is no man who is 
 more open to the ministry of faith, and having once received, better 
 appreciates and improves it. The generousness and freedom of his 
 nature, the exigencies of his condition, its privations, dangers, isola- 
 tions, open his ear and heart, and make him peculiarly susceptible to 
 its appeal. It is easy to preach to the sailor, for beyond most men he is 
 unsophisticated, candid and ready to receive the truth. And our 
 Christian sailor is wont to be a Christian of the up-and-down, out- 
 and-out sort, who never mumbles his confession and is never ashamed 
 of his creed, the flag under which he sails, the banner of the cross. 
 Christ wants the sailor, and the sailor needs Christ, and the sailor is 
 a man worth the saving. 
 
 What do we owe the sailor? Owe him for our civilization, owe 
 own him for a thousand of the comforts and adornments that enrich 
 our homes, owe him for our pleasures, owe him for many things 
 that have come to be almost necessities of our existence, owe him 
 for commercial prosperity, owe him for our intercourse with other 
 peoples, owe him for the stimulus which his daring and endurance 
 impart to the manifold activities of great populations, owe him for 
 his venture, his patience, his bravery, his skill in the navigation of 
 the seas? What do we owe the sailor? Who can tell? For one, I. 
 cannot, nor will I try. It is a great debt! — a debt we can only pay 
 by securing to him as much as in us lies, the best thing in all the 
 world, the gospel of the grace of God, with its pardon for sin, its 
 restraint in temptation, its joys, its consolations, its incentives to 
 duty, its strength in life, its peace in death, and the assurance of an 
 abiding place in that dear, dear country where, having for the last 
 time stepped ashore, the wanderer of the trackless deep shall find a 
 home forever, for of that land it is written “and there was no more 
 sea! ” 
 
 Paul wrote to the lioinans: “ I am a debtor both to the Greeks and 
 to the barbarians, both to the wise an to the unwise, so as much as in 
 me is I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.” 
 Let us also say to these men of the ship and the mast, the compass, 
 the engine, the net and the oar, “ Your debtors we are, and so much 
 as in us lies we are ready to preach the gospel to you that are on the 
 seas also.”