The Sea Lions | Page 2

authority, contending for errors of translation, mistakes and
misapprehensions in the ancient texts. Nevertheless, we are inclined to
think that nine-tenths of those who refuse the old and accept the new
opinion, do so for a motive no better than a disinclination to believe
that which they cannot comprehend. This pride of reason is one of the
most insinuating of our foibles, and is to be watched as a most potent
enemy.
How completely and philosophically does the venerable Christian creed
embrace and modify all these workings of the heart! We say
philosophically, for it were not possible for mind to give a juster
analysis of the whole subject than St. Paul's most comprehensive but
brief definition of Faith. It is this Faith which forms the mighty feature
of the church on earth. It equalizes capacities, conditions, means, and
ends, holding out the same encouragement and hope to the least, as to
the most gifted of the race; counting gifts in their ordinary and more
secular points of view.
It is when health, or the usual means of success abandon us, that we are
made to feel how totally we are insufficient for the achievement of
even our own purposes, much less to qualify us to reason on the deep
mysteries that conceal the beginning and the end. It has often been said
that the most successful leaders of their fellow men have had the
clearest views of their own insufficiency to attain their own objects. If
Napoleon ever said, as has been attributed to him, "Je propose et je
dispose," it must have been in one of those fleeting moments in which
success blinded him to the fact of his own insufficiency. No man had a
deeper reliance on fortune, cast the result of great events on the decrees
of fate, or more anxiously watched the rising and setting of what he
called his "star." This was a faith that could lead to no good; but it
clearly denoted how far the boldest designs, the most ample means, and
the most vaulting ambition, fall short of giving that sublime
consciousness of power and its fruits that distinguish the reign of
Omnipotence.

In this book the design has been to pourtray man on a novel field of
action, and to exhibit his dependence on the hand that does not suffer a
sparrow to fall unheeded. The recent attempts of science, which
employed the seamen of the four greatest maritime states of
Christendom, made discoveries that have rendered the polar circles
much more familiar to this age, than to any that has preceded it, so far
as existing records show. We say "existing records;" for there is much
reason for believing that the ancients had a knowledge of our
hemisphere, though less for supposing that they ever braved the
dangers of the high latitudes. Many are, just at this moment, much
disposed to believe that "Ophir" was on this continent; though for a
reason no better than the circumstance of the recent discoveries of
much gold. Such savans should remember that 'peacocks' came from
ancient Ophir. If this be in truth that land, the adventurers of Israel
caused it to be denuded of that bird of beautiful plumage.
Such names as those of Parry, Sabine, Ross, Franklin, Wilkes, Hudson,
Ringgold, &c., &c., with those of divers gallant Frenchmen and
Russians, command our most profound respect; for no battles or
victories can redound more to the credit of seamen than the dangers
they all encountered, and the conquests they have all achieved. One of
those named, a resolute and experienced seaman, it is thought must, at
this moment, be locked in the frosts of the arctic circle, after having
passed half a life in the endeavour to push his discoveries into those
remote and frozen regions. He bears the name of the most distinguished
of the philosophers of this country; and nature has stamped on his
features--by one of those secret laws which just as much baffle our
means of comprehension, as the greatest of all our mysteries, the
incarnation of the Son of God--a resemblance that, of itself, would go
to show that they are of the same race. Any one who has ever seen this
emprisoned navigator, and who is familiar with the countenances of the
men of the same name who are to be found in numbers amongst
ourselves, must be struck with a likeness that lies as much beyond the
grasp of that reason of which we are so proud, as the sublimest facts
taught by induction, science, or revelation. Parties are, at this moment,
out in search of him and his followers; and it is to be hoped that the
Providence which has so singularly attempered the different circles and

zones of our globe, placing this under a burning