Discipline and Other Sermons | Page 9

all their crews. It was plain that God would not
always deliver poor mariners, even though they cried to him in their distress.
Then, in the sixteenth century, when men's minds were freed from many old superstitions,
by a better understanding both of Holy Scripture and of the laws of nature, the master
mariners of England took a wiser course.
They said, God will not always help poor mariners: but he will always teach them to
deliver themselves. And so they built this House, not in the name of the Virgin Mary or
any saints in heaven, but, with a deep understanding of what was needed, in the most
awful name of God himself. Thereby they went to the root and ground of this matter, and
of all matters. They went to the source of all law and order; to the source of all force and
life; and to the source, likewise, of all love and mercy; when they founded their House in
the name of the Father of Lights, in whom men live and move and have their being; from
whom comes every good and perfect gift, and without whom not a sparrow falls to the
ground; in the name of the Son, who was born on earth a man, and tasted sorrow, and
trial, and death for every man; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who inspires man with the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, and gives him a right judgment in all things, putting
into his heart good desires, and enabling him to bring them to good effect. And so,
believing that the ever-blessed Trinity would teach them to help themselves and their
fellow- mariners, they set to work, like truly God-fearing men, not to hire monks to sing
and say masses for them, but to set up for themselves lights and sea-marks, and to take
order for the safe navigation of these seas, like men who believed indeed that they were
the children of God, and that God would prosper his children in as far as they used that
reason which he himself had bestowed upon them.
It is for these men's sakes, as well as for our own, that we are met together here this day.
We are met to commemorate the noble dead; not in any Popish or superstitious fashion,
as if they needed our prayers, or we needed their miraculous assistance: but in the good
old Protestant scriptural sense--to thank God for all his servants departed this life in his
faith and fear, and to pray that God may give us grace to follow their good examples; and
especially to thank him for the founders of this ancient Trinity House, which stands here
as a token to all generations of Britons, that science and religion are not contrary to each
other, but twin sisters, meant to aid each other and mankind in the battle with the brute
forces of this universe.
We are met together here to thank God for all gallant mariners, and for all who have
helped mariners toward safety and success; for all who have made discoveries in
hydrography or meteorology, in navigation, or in commerce, adding to the safety of
seamen, and to the health and wealth of the human race; for all who have set noble

examples to their crews, facing danger manfully and dying at their posts, as many a man
has died, a martyr to his duty; for all who, living active, and useful, and virtuous lives in
their sea calling, have ended as they lived, God-fearing Christian men.
To thank God for all these we are met together here; and to pray to God likewise that he
would send his Spirit into the hearts of seamen, and of those who deal with seamen; and
specially into the hearts of the Royal the Master and the Worshipful the Elder Brethren of
this Ancient and Honourable House; that they may be true, and loyal, and obedient to that
divine name in which they are met together here this day--the name of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, the ever-blessed Trinity, the giver of all good gifts, in whom we live, and
move, and have our being; always keeping God's commandments and looking for God's
guidance, and setting to those beneath them an example of sound reason, virtue, and
religion; that so there may never be wanting to this land a race of seamen who shall trust
in God to teach them all they need to know, and to dispose of their bodies and souls as
seemeth best to his most holy will; who, fearing God, shall fear nought else, but shall
defy the dangers of the seas, and all the brute forces of climates and of storms; who shall
set in foreign lands an example of justice and