Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/36

 DIVINE WORSHIP ON THE DEEP.

��OUR first Sabbath at sea was a troubled one. The elements were at variance, and ourselves ill at ease. But the next was as glorious as ocean and sky could make it. Long, swelling surges rose slowly, as if to listen, and then uttered a deep, farewell strain, as they yielded to successive terraces of foam. Methought they said, as if in grand chorus, &quot; &quot;We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.&quot;

Ocean put forth his great hands and touched the sky, as if teaching us where our thoughts should be on the day that the Creator hallowed. Forth also, he stood as a preacher, fearfully eloquent. Beneath him were the dead whom he had ingulfed, sleeping in their unlettered tombs. Of them he spake to us, whom he still bore upon his bosom. Like the high-priest of old, he lifted his censer between the living and the dead.

Yet not to the sermon of the Sea were we restrict ed. Prayers, and sacred instructions were ours, in the tuneful utterance of man. The solemn supplica-

�� �