Sea god

“ The little fleet will soon appear yonder betwixt the ocean and God’s sky with its white or brown sails. To-day the sky is unclouded, the sea calm; the flood tide floats the fishers gently to the shore. But the Ocean is a capricious old fellow, who takes all shapes and sings in many voices. ”

“ In its sleep it is till the thunders of the winds are awakened by the coming of God's Sunday from heaven, and by the music of the angels. Along with those there are many kinds of seas around the earth on every side; a red sea having many precious stones, bright as Flood, well coloured, golden, between the lands of Egypt and the lands of India. A sea bright, many-sanded, of the colour of snow, in the north around the islands of Sabarn. So great is the strength of its waves that they break and scatter to the height of the clouds. ”

“ No less wonderful is the vast multitude of creatures that inhabit the sea; for some affirm that there is as great abundance and variety of them in the sea, as on the land. Who can behold without astonishment, prodigious shoals of fish rising from the depths of the sea, like a flock of sheep, and offering themselves to the use and necessities of mankind? So that the sea is a great storehouse of God, out of which he feeds the greatest part of mankind, and out of which, too, he produces many other excellent works, such as pearls, amber, and coral. ”

“ I have just come back from the seaside, and as I looked at the sea I thought more than once of 'the ocean of Thy love.' The waves of the sea beat against a stubborn rock and seem to make no impression. But in a few years' time the rock begins to yield. The constant wash of the waves wears it away. So with our hard, stubborn wills. The ocean of His love will reduce them slowly but surely, and likewise the stubborn wills of men around us, thank God! ”

“ My boy, in the sea of Divinity God, the sea of immortality. there is no fear of that kind. Do you not know that it is the sea of Immortality? Whosoever dives into this sea does not die but obtains everlasting life. ”

“ The clouds presented the most beautiful appearance, and the rippling of the sea, together with the flying fish, scudding along the surface of the water, afforded the mariner a great field of thought. At so grand a display of the great and wonderful works of God, what mortal can be unmoved, or deny the existence of a being which nature herself proclaims! ”

“ As you gaze upon the mighty world of waters over which you are about to sail, think of the great power of God who created the sea, and fixed its bounds; remember that you are sailing across the ocean of life, and that you will soon land on the shores of eternity ”

“ And when some mariner of God seizes them with loving mighty arms, and bears them in his bark beyond sight of their wonted shores, what wonder that they perceive not the identity of this sky-circled sea with their accustomed handful? ”

“ But all the while the light on the mountain grows, and none may say what work the god that shall be born of the silvern light shall work on the Sea of Souls, when the gods of Old are dead and the Sea is living still. ”

“ To be at sea in these circumstances, withdrawn out of the reach of innumerable temptations, with opportunity and turn of mind disposed to observe the wonders of God in the great deep, with the two noblest objects of sight, the expanded heavens and the expanded ocean, continually in view; and where evident interpositions of Divine Providence, in answer to prayer, occur almost every day; these are helps to quicken and confirm the life of faith, which, in a good measure, supply to a religious sailor the want of those advantages which can be enjoyed only upon the shore. ”

“ ¶ It is not to be wondered that men have worshiped the ocean, for in his depths they have seen mirrored the image of Eternity—of Infinity ❦ Here they have seen the symbol of God’s great plan of oneness with His creatures, for the sea is the union of all infinite particles, and it takes the whole to make the one. ”

“ Seeing her distress, and pitying the poor persecuted goddess, Neptune sent her a dolphin, who took her on his back and swam with her to the floating island of Delos, which the kindly sea-god had caused to appear out of the depth of the ocean. ”

“ Neptune, represented as a god of the sea, makes a considerable figure: he is described with black or dark hair, his garment of an azure or sea-green color, seated in a large shell drawn by whales, or sea-horses, with his trident in his hand, attended by the sea-gods Palæmon, Glaucus, and Phorcys; the sea-goddesses Thetis, Melita, and Panopēa, and a long train of Tritons and sea-nymphs. ”

“ As down in the sunless retreats of the Ocean,
Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see,
So, deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion,
Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee,
My God! silent to Thee—
Pure, warm, silent, to Thee,
As still to the star of its worship, tho' clouded,
The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea,
So, dark as I roam, in this wintry world shrouded,
The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee,
My GOD! ”

“ The importance of the god of the sea, however, is subordinate to that of the rulers of the celestial and the nether worlds, so that those over whom he holds sway never develop into clearly defined personalities, but always retain more of a demoniacal character. ”

“ A huge, globed surge of oceanic power and mass rises at her feet, and on it are afloat the sea-gods and goddesses, Tritons and monsters of the deep who bring the gifts of the sea to the feet of the Sea-Queen. ”

“ How justly it is expected that all those who have had a safe passage over the sea, and especially who have been delivered from remarkable perils at sea, should acknowledge it with thankfulness, to the glory of God. ”

“ In the Old Testament I have seen and heard God talking with men, which I have felt more at sea than on land. Whenever they prayed, there was sure to be an answer, excepting to the ungrateful, godless Saul. It has deeply moved me to think of God as always at hand when one prays. This has comforted me on the ocean. When I have heard the gale at night, or have seen the ocean lashed to fury, I could150 not resist the feeling: It is God, not nature; God is doing something. ”

“ The first beast came up out of "the sea" (ver. 1) ; the second beast comes up out of the earth: and the contrast, so strongly marked, between these two sources, makes it necessary to draw a clear and definite line of distinction between the origin of the one beast and that of the other. The "sea," however, both in the Old Testament and in the New, is the symbol of the mass of the Gentile nations, of the heathen world in its condition of alienation from God and true religious life. ”

“ all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky. ”

“ As long as men will travel on the water, the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping, or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces. It seems to me that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to unending vigilance are no match for them. ”

“ Finally the sea is good in the eyes of God, because it girdles the isles, of which it forms at the same time the rampart and the beauty, because it brings together the most distant parts of the earth, and facilitates the inter-communication of mariners. ”

“ We cannot hurry God, nor retard him. Old schools and new schools seem as men that stand on the shore of some Atlantic bay, and shout, to frighten back the tide, or urge it on. What boots their cry? Gently the sea swells under the moon, and, in the hour of God's appointment, the tranquil tide rolls in, to inlet and river, to lave the rocks, to bear on its bosom the ship of the merchant, the weeds of the sea. We complain, as our fathers ”

“ Neptune, the god of the seas, was represented in an immense shell drawn by impossible sea-horses, and surrounded by equally impossible Tritons, half man and half dolphin, and Nereids, half woman and half fish. ”

“ "And what is the sea?" asked Will.
"The sea!" cried the miller. "Lord help us all, it is the greatest thing God made! ”

“ The wind blew the breath out of a man’s nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. ”

“ On a lovely summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that gasped for the ocean: at last, at last, the cool, washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness, and she knew that she lived. ”

“ Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. ”

“ And the sun went down, and the twilight came, and the night followed, and the world of sea and land and wind and vapour was around them, and the universe of stars and spaces over and under them, and eternity within them, and the heart of each for a chamber to the other, and God filling all—nay, nay—God’s heart containing, infolding, cherishing all—saving all, from height to height of intensest being, by the bliss of that love whose absolute devotion could utter itself only in death. ”

“ Under this latter phase—the impersonation of Venus—the fish portion of the body was discarded, and the cast-off form was allotted in popular credence to the Tritons—minor deities, who acknowledged the supremacy of the goddess, and were ready to render her homage and service by bearing her in their arms, drawing her chariot, etc., but who still possessed considerable power as sea-gods, and could calm the waves and rule the storm, at pleasure. ”

“ A look around on the vast expanse, and the ship which at the pier seemed so huge, so strong, so unyielding, becomes an atom in comparison,—is tossed, like a mere feather, upon old Ocean's bosom; and one realizes how little is between him and eternity. There seem to be no places that to my mind bring man so sensibly into the presence of Almighty God as in the midst of the ocean during a storm, or amid the grand and lofty peaks of the Alps; all other feelings are swallowed up in the mute acknowledgment of God's majesty and man's insignificance. ”

“ They were flying in the wake of the ship, skimming along its surface, apparently happy and contented. As we sat watching them and the noble albatross, as he went wheeling and circling in the air, we could not but think of that great Creator who endowed them with the instinct which they possess—an instinct that guides them over the trackless waste of waters hundreds and thousands of miles from land, and then to land again, day after day, and week after week. No place in the world presents so many evidences of a great and a good God as the vast and mighty ocean. ”

“ And so we see how the ocean stands before us as a grand illustration of the lesson of liberality which our Saviour taught when he said, "Give, and it shall be given unto you." The ocean gives away its water continually, and, in return for this, God gives it freshness and purity, and makes it a blessing to the world. And so the ocean illustrates the truth of the lesson we are now studying, that "giving is God's rule for getting."
And yonder is the great sun, shining up in the sky. We do not know as much about the sun as we do about the ocean, because it is so far away from us. ”

“ The fire kingdom heaves up dry land for men to dwell on—the thunder brings mellow rains—the winds sweep the air clean, and freshen all our breath—and feed the plants with rich air drawn from far forests in America, and from the wild raging seas—the sea sends up its continual treasures of rain—everywhere are harmony and fitness, beauty and use in all God’s works. ”

“ In its serene moonlit moods the ocean possesses an incomparable and amazing magic of spiritualising. The veriest commonplace glows into poetic beauty under the mysterious, vitalising, enriching influence. I have seen a girl whom no exaggerated courtesy could have pronounced comely by daylight, show like an angel on the deck of a yacht on a hushed and radiant night when the air has been brimming to the stars with the soft haze of moonlight, and when the sea has resembled a carpet of black silk softly waving. The moon is a witch, and her pencils of light are charged with magic qualities. ”

“ We know also that the bed of ocean, for at least four hundred years, has served as a repository, a burial-place, not only for earth's choicest productions and myriads of human beings, gone to the bottom in sunken ships, but for disappointed hopes, false calculations, and sanguine schemes for the realization of fortune and honor.
The immensity, the majesty, and the wonders of the sea are manifest, and acknowledged by all. ”