Discipline and Other Sermons | Page 6

Lord in their
trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.
These are days in which there is much dispute about religion and science--how far they
agree with each other; whether they contradict or interfere with each other. Especially
there is dispute about Providence. Men say, and truly, that the more we look into the
world, the more we find everything governed by fixed and regular laws; that man is
bound to find out those laws, and save himself from danger by science and experience.

But they go on to say,--'And therefore there is no use in prayer. You cannot expect God
to alter the laws of His universe because you ask Him: the world will go on, and ought to
go on, its own way; and the man who prays against danger, by sea or land, is asking
vainly for that which will not be granted him.'
Now I cannot see why we should not allow,--what is certainly true,-- that the world
moves by fixed and regular laws: and yet allow at the same time,--what I believe is just as
true,--that God's special providence watches over all our actions, and that, to use our
Lord's example, not a sparrow falls to the ground without some special reason why that
particular sparrow should fall at that particular moment and in that particular place. I
cannot see why all things should not move in a divine and wonderful order, and yet why
they should not all work together for good to those who love God. The Psalmist of old
finds no contradiction between the two thoughts. Rather does the one of them seem to
him to explain the other. 'All things,' says he, 'continue this day as at the beginning. For
all things serve Thee.'
Still it is not to be denied, that this question has been a difficult one to men in all ages,
and that it is so to many now.
But be that as it may, this I say, that, of all men, seafaring men are the most likely to
solve this great puzzle about the limits of science and of religion, of law and of
providence; for, of all callings, theirs needs at once most science and most religion; theirs
is most subject to laws, and yet most at the mercy of Providence. And I say that many
seafaring men have solved the puzzle for themselves in a very rational and sound way,
though they may not be able to put thoughts into words; and that they do show, by their
daily conduct, that a man may be at once thoroughly scientific and thoroughly religious.
And I say that this Ancient and Honourable Corporation of the Trinity House is a proof
thereof unto this day; a proof that sound science need not make us neglect sound religion,
nor sound religion make us neglect sound science.
No man ought to say that seamen have neglected science. It is the fashion among some to
talk of sailors as superstitious. They must know very little about sailors, and must be very
blind to broad facts, who speak thus of them as a class. Many sailors, doubtless, are
superstitious. But I appeal to every master mariner here, whether the superstitious men
are generally the religious and godly men; whether it is not generally the most reckless
and profligate men of the crew who are most afraid of sailing on a Friday, and who give
way to other silly fancies which I shall not mention in this sacred place. And I appeal, too,
to public experience, whether many, I may say most, of those to whom seamanship and
sea-science owes most, have not been God-fearing Christian men?
Be sure of this, that if seamen, as a class, had been superstitious, they would never have
done for science what they have done. And what they have done, all the world knows. To
seamen, and to men connected with the sea, what do we not owe, in geography,
hydrography, meteorology, astronomy, natural history? At the present moment, the world
owes them large improvements in dynamics, and in the new uses of steam and iron. It
may be fairly said that the mariner has done more toward the knowledge of Nature than
any other personage in the world, save the physician.
For seamen have been forced, by the nature of their calling, to be scientific men. From
the very earliest ages in which the first canoe put out to sea, the mariner has been
educated by the most practical of all schoolmasters, namely, danger. He has carried his
life in his hand day and night; he has had to battle with the most formidable and the most

seemingly capricious of the brute powers of nature; with storms, with ice, with currents,
with unknown rocks and shoals,