The Sea Lions

Sea Lions, The

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Title: The Sea Lions The Lost Sealers
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Release Date: December 30, 2003 [EBook #10545]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Transcriber's note: It appears that the author may have used ' and "
interchangeably throughout this text to mean "minutes" whereas
traditionally, ' is used to mean minutes and " seconds. Not knowing the
author's intent, I have left these characters as they were in the original.]

THE SEA LIONS;
or, The Lost Sealers.
By J. Fenimore Cooper.

Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume The dread unknown, the chaos
of the tomb Melt, and dispel, ye spectre doubts that roll Cimmerian
darkness o'er the parting soul
_Campbell._

_Complete in One Volume._
1860.

Preface.

If any thing connected with the hardness of the human heart could
surprise us, it surely would be the indifference with which men live on,
engrossed by their worldly objects, amid the sublime natural
phenomena that so eloquently and unceasingly speak to their
imaginations, affections, and judgments. So completely is the existence
of the individual concentrated in self, and so regardless does he get to
be of all without that contracted circle, that it does not probably happen
to one man in ten, that his thoughts are drawn aside from this intense
study of his own immediate wants, wishes, and plans, even once in the
twenty-four hours, to contemplate the majesty, mercy, truth, and justice,
of the Divine Being that has set him, as an atom, amid the myriads of
the hosts of heaven and earth.
The physical marvels of the universe produce little more reflection than
the profoundest moral truths. A million of eyes shall pass over the

firmament, on a cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled
with a proper sense of the power of the dread Being that created all that
is there--not a hundred hearts glow with the adoration that such an
appeal to the senses and understanding ought naturally to produce. This
indifference, in a great measure, comes of familiarity; the things that
we so constantly have before us, becoming as a part of the air we
breathe, and as little regarded.
One of the consequences of this disposition to disregard the Almighty
Hand, as it is so plainly visible in all around us, is that of substituting
our own powers in its stead. In this period of the world, in enlightened
countries, and in the absence of direct idolatry, few men are so hardy as
to deny the existence and might of a Supreme Being; but, this fact
admitted, how few really feel that profound reverence for him that the
nature of our relations justly demands! It is the want of a due sense of
humility, and a sad misconception of what we are, and for what we
were created, that misleads us in the due estimate of our own
insignificance, as Compared with the majesty of God.
Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware
how much remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope
to acquire. We hear a great deal of god-like minds, and of the
far-reaching faculties we possess; and it may all be worthy of our
eulogiums, until we compare ourselves in these, as in other particulars,
with Him who produced them. Then, indeed, the utter insignificance of
our means becomes too apparent to admit of a cavil. We know that we
are born, and that we die; science has been able to grapple with all the
phenomena of these two great physical facts, with the exception of the
most material of all--those which should tell us what is life, and what is
death. Something that we cannot comprehend lies at the root of every
distinct division of natural phenomena. Thus far shalt thou go and no
farther, seems to be imprinted on every great fact of creation. There is a
point attained in each and all of our acquisitions, where a mystery that
no human mind can scan takes the place of demonstration and
conjecture. This point may lie more remote with some intellects than
with others; but it exists for all, arrests the inductions of all, conceals
all.

We are aware that the more learned among those who disbelieve in the
divinity of Christ suppose themselves to be sustained by written