The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-05-30
The Sea.


The Sea.
1t is q general idea that the sea is
universal object of admiration. The
awful power of its waves, wearing away
the strongest rocks that would confnt
it to its old bed, and dashlng to pieces
the most invincible armada than mar
launches on its waters the smiles of its
gentler scenes the sheen and peace
and quietness of its bosom, when un.
disturbed by wind, have indeed made il
the admiration of thousands. But not
so who study its true nature. The
poets keener and more truthful insight
generally clothes the sea with unlovely
attributes.
"The sea is black as night it roars
From lips afoam with cruel spray,
Like some fierce, many-throated pack
OF wolves who scent and choose prey"
BRYANT mentions sits melancholy
waste ;" Lowell calls it "the gray old
ocean ;" Shelley tells us of
"The abandoned sea,
When the tides change suddenly"
Dana truly calls it the prophet of sor-
row; ;" Tennyson, looking from lofty
height, calls it {" the wrinkled sea ;"
and another poet looks upon it as at
eternal war with man :" and Byron
speaks of
the frown
Of one whose bate is masked but to assal.
The poets are right; with all its adj
mitted beauty there is something hate
full about the sea- Il is the very type
and emblem of hypocrisy. There is
not wave that creeps upon its surface
but would drown the stoutest swimmer,
if it once clutched him in its cruel
grasp. There is not q breeze that
blows over it but will wreck every YES
sci it reaches, if the squall can only as
sail it unexpectedly. Its very mercies,
Byron tells us, are "like the mercies
of human beings during civil war" 1t
never willingly yields up its relentless
hold of the dead, nor lets go the count
less treasures it has once engulfed.
Neither man nor other animal that once
falls into it but is instantly asphyxiated.
There is not shore around the wide
surface of the earth but that is marked
by ruin and desolation. And all the ac-
tion of ocean upon its neighbor, land,
is to grasp and crush and tear away,
thet it may draw the debris into its own
depths.
And these storms that rage upon the
surface of ocean are but types of the
internecine war eternally going on be-
low. The widest deserts of Asia or
Africa, though haunts of the lion and
tiger, are the abodes of peace compared
with the fearful slaughter that ever
prevails in the ocean. The single her
ring averages its fifty thousand eggs
these are the support of innumerable OF
of the smaller inhabitants of the ocean,
while the parent herring feeds and fat
tens whole tribes of cod and whiting.
The cod, fattened upon the multitudin-
Gus herring, produces its millions of
Young, to be eaten by the larger stur-
geon. Size and strength are no saliva
ton. Sucker and seal live on the same
soft-feshed mollusk; the narwhal, the
dolphin, the cachelot, the sword-fish,
prey upon the whale and tear him to
pieces while yet alive. Oceanic life is
made up of devourers and devoured.
War and slaughter are the normal con-
dition of its inhabitants.
But it is mainly in the language of
inspiration that we find the deepest
of the sea. The Old
Testament chiefly uses it as type OF
woe and ruin. Waves of desolation
roll over cities lying under the wrath of
God. GA destroying storm, flood of
mighty waters overflowing, shall cast
down those with whom he is angry.
When "the Lord of hosts took counsel
against Tyre, he stretched out his hand
over the sea-" and that city became I" a
place of spreading of nets. The
CHRISTIANS great heart is typified by the
agony of mind and statement that "the
waters are come in unto his soul ;" and,
when nation sins and Gods wrath is
upon them, "the waters of full cup
are wrung out to them" The Bible
contains no more vivid picture of the
restless condition of the wicked than
when it states that they "are like the
troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose
waters cast up mire and dirt. " But it
is in the apocalyptic revelations OF
Heaven in the New Testament that the
sea is most bitterly condemned. The
power of the last judgment is shown IN
the statement that, at that time, even
&c the sea shall give up its dead" And
the strongest statement that John could
make concerning the conditions of a
new Heaven and a new earth was that
" there was no more sea-" The bright
est, clearest wood-picture of our resi-
dence for eternity contains the blessed
gospel that, in our future home, there
shall be no more sea. "-ApOJetOn'8
Journal