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evils and sins multiply in the heart like fishes in the sea. Do not say, "Am I a sea,
or a sea-monster, that thou settest a watch over me?" for the Lord may answer, "You are
more capacious for evil than a sea, and more wild than a sea-monster."
I shall now go further, and show that, by reason of our evil nature, we have become
like the sea. This is true in several ways; for, first, the sea is restless, and so is
our nature. "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast
up mire and dirt." You need not go far to find hearts always agitated; always seeking
rest, and finding none. They know not Christ; and until they do know him, they cannot rest.
They are always seeking a something
they know not what. They run first in one direction, and then in another, but they never
follow the right thing. When they are thoughtful no good comes of their thoughts. Their waters
cast upÑwhat? Pearls and corals? No; "mire and dirt." I do not need to explain those
words. If any of you have to keep company with these restless beings, you know how foul-mouthed
they can be. They cast up worse things than mire and dirt when they are stirred up. Oh,
say not, "Am I a sea, or a whale?" Think of yourself as being as restless as a whale when
the harpoon is in him; as restless as the sea when a storm is moving its lowest depths.
Let us say, next, that the sea can be furious and terrible, and so can ungodly men. When
a man is in a fury, what a wild beast he can be! A landsman looks on the sea when it has
put on its best behavior, and he says, "I should not mind going a voyage. It must be
splendid to steam over such a sea! I feel I shall make a splendid sailor." Let him look
at that same ocean by-and-by. Where is the sea of glass now? Where are the gentle waves,
which seemed afraid to ripple too far upon the sand? The sea roars and rages and raves.
The Atlantic in a storm is terrible; but have you ever seen a tempest in a man's nature?
It is an awful sight, and one which causes gracious eyes to weep. What a miserable object
is a man with the drink in him! He was as decent a fellow as one could talk with; but
now that the drink has mastered him the devil has come on board, and you will do well to
give him a wide berth. The same is true of passion. Concerning angry men our advice would
be, "Put not to sea in a storm, neither argue with a man in a passion." You do not know
what he will do, and he does not know himself. Such a man will be grieved enough when he
sobers down; but meanwhile, while the storm is on, he cares for nothing. His eyes flash
lightning, his face is black as tempest, his mouth foams, and his tongue rages. In his
case, "The sea roars, and the fullness thereof." When you feel the Lord's restraint, you need
not ask, "Am I a sea, or a whale?" for your own heart may answer, "You can be more furious
than the sea itself." Think, again, how unsatisfied is the sea.
It draws down and swallows up stretches of land and thousands of tons of cliff, but it
is not filled up. "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full." Huge Spanish
galleons went to the bottom, with thousands of gold and silver pieces on board; but the
sea was never the richer. When, on some dreadful night, our coasts are strewn with wrecks,
and hundreds of lives are lost, the devouring deep is never the more satisfied. The sea
is a hungry monster, which could swallow a navy, and then open its mouth for more. Are
not many men made of the same craving sort? If you gave them half a world they would cry
for the other half; and if they had the whole round globe they would weep for the stars.
Man's mind never rests in sweet content till God himself satisfies it with himself. O man,
without true religion it is your fate to go for ever hungering and thirsting; or, like
the sea, yeasting and foaming, after you know not what.
Human nature is like the sea for mischief. How destructive is the ocean, and how unfeeling!
It makes widows and orphans by the thousand, and then smiles as if it had done nothing!
Terrible havoc it can work when once its power is let loose! Do not talk of the destructiveness
of the sea; let the reckless sinner think of the destructiveness of his own life. You
that are living in sin, and in vice, what wrecks you have caused! How many who set out
on the voyage of life, and bade fair to make a splendid passage, have gone upon the rocks
through you! A foul word, a loose song, a filthy act, and a gay craft has become a wreck.
Conscience can fill in the details. Ah me! one cannot say to God, "Am I a sea, or a sea
monster?" or he might well reply, "No shark has devoured so many as the drunkard in his
cups, the swearer in his presumption, and the unclean in his ***!" Ah me! I could weep
to think how much of mischief any one of you who are unconverted may yet do! The Lord deliver
you from being left derelict, to cause wreck to others!
We must not forget that we are less obedient to God than the sea is. Nothing keeps back
the sea from many a shore but a belt of sand; and though it rages in storm and tempest,
the sea goes back in due time and leaves the sand for children to play upon. It knows its
bounds and keeps them. When the time comes for the tide to rise, the obedient waters
march upon the shore in unbroken ranks, and fill up every creek. They do not linger behind
their time. When the moment comes to stay where they are, they rest at flood. Then comes
the instant to begin the ebb, and no matter how boisterous the waves may be, they fall
back at God's bidding. What, after all, is more orderly than the great sea? Would to
God we were like it in this! How readily this great creature yields! A little wind springs
up, and its waves answer at once to the breath of heaven. When the sun crosses the line,
the equinoctial gales know their season; while at all times the great currents cease not
the flow which God has appointed them. The sea is obedient to the Lord, and so was that
great fish of which we read just now: "The Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out
Jonah upon the dry land." As for us, we refuse to obey; and when left to ourselves, what
law can restrain us? Is there anything in heaven or earth which a proud sinner will
not venture to attempt? God blocks up the road to hell with hedge, and ditch, and chain;
but we break over them. He digs a trench across our way, and we leap over it. He piles a mountain
in the road, and as if our feet were like hinds' feet, we leap upon the high places
of presumption. A man will go against wind and tide in his determination to be lost.
O sea! O sea! thou art but a child with thy father, as compared with the wicked and rebellious
heart of man! It is a bad argument, then. We need to be looked after. We need to be
watched. We need to be kept in check, even more than a sea or a whale. We need the restraining
providence and constraining grace of God to keep us from deadly sin.
IV. Last of all, I would remark that ALL THEY COMPLAINED OF WAS SENT IN LOVE. They said,
"Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?" but if they had known the
truth they would have blessed God with all their hearts for having watched over them
as he has done. First, God's restraint of some of us has kept
us from self-ruin. If the Lord had not held us in we might have been in prison; we might
have been in the grave; we might have been in hell! Who knows what would have become
of us? An old Scotchman said to Mr. Rowland Hill, what I am quite sure would have been
as true of me. He looked into Mr. Hill's face so keenly and so often, that at last good
Rowland asked him, "Why are you looking at my face so much?" "I was thinking", said the
Scotchman, "that if you had not been converted by the grace of God, you would have been a
terrible sinner." And, surely, this would have been my case. Nothing half-and-half would
have contented me. I should have gone to the end of my tether. Is not the same true of
some of you? How many times has the Lord laid his own hand on us to stay us from a fatal
step! If we were checked in our youth, and brought there and then to Jesus, it was a
gracious deed on God's part. If we have been hindered during a sinful manhood, and have
at length been made to bow before the will of the Lord, this also is great grace. Left
to ourselves, we should have chosen our own destruction. Do you not think that God's taking
you apart, and giving you a tender conscience, and admonishing you so often, proves his great
love to you. Surely someone has prayed for you. There is a mother here to-night. I hope
she will not mind my telling you what she did last Tuesday when I was sitting in my
vestry. She brought me a little brown paper parcel with £50 in it, and she gave it for
the British and Foreign Sailors' Society. She has a son whom she has not heard of for
years. He went to sea, and she cannot find him, or get any tidings of his whereabouts;
but she hopes that a missionary of this Society may meet him in some strange place, and bring
him to the Savior. She prays that it may be so, and, therefore, she brings her self-sacrificing
offeringÑa great sum, I am sure, for herÑthat she may help to support the good Society which,
she hopes, may be a blessing to her boy. There are other sailors to whom God's love is seen
in their being followed up by a mother's pleadings. Ah, friend! the Lord would not have checked
you so if he had not intended to bless you. That broken leg of yours is to keep you from
running too far into sin. That yellow fever was sent to cool the fever of your sin. Your
missing that ship caused you to miss shipwreck and death. These mishaps were all tokens of
love to you. The Lord would not let you perish. He resolves to save you. You are one of his
chosen. Christ bought you with his blood, and he means to have you for his own. If you
will not come to him with a gentle breeze he will fetch you by a storm. Yield to the
pressure of his love. If you will be as the horse and the mule, which have no understanding,
he will break you in and manage you with bit and bridle; but it would be far better if
you would be ruled by love. I think I see tokens of electing love upon
you in those very things which you have kicked against. The Lord is working to bring you
to himself, and to himself you must come. The prodigal son was driven home by stress
of weather. If his father had had the doing of it, he could not have worked the matter
better. His hungry belly and his pig-feeding fetched him home. The unkindness of the citizens
of the far country helped to hurry him back to his father. Hardship, and want, and pain,
are meant to bring you back, and God has used them to that end; and the day will come when
you will say, "I bless God for the rough wave which washed me on shore. I bless God for
the stormy providence which drowned my comfort, but saved my soul."
Once more, and I have done. God will not always deal roughly with you. Perhaps to-night he
will say his last sharp word. Will you yield to softer means? They say that oil poured
on troubled waters will make them smooth: God the Holy Ghost can send to your troubled
soul a lifelong calm. The winds and waves on the Galilean sea all went to sleep in an
instant. How? Why, when Jesus came walking on the water he said to the warring elements,
"Be still." The waves crouched like whipped dogs at his feet, though they had roared like
lions before. He said to the winds, "Hush!" and they breathed as softly as the lips of
a babe. Jesus is here at this hour. He that died on Calvary looks down on us: believe
on him. He lifts his pierced hands, and cries, "Look unto me, and be ye saved." Will you
not look to him? Oh, that his grace may lead you at once to say, "He is all in all to me!"
Here is a soul-saving text for you: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Accept
the Savior; and though you be as a sea, or as a whale, you shall no longer complain of
the Lord's watching you, but you shall rejoice in perfect liberty. He is free who loves to
serve his God. He makes it his delight that he is watched of the Lord. The Lord bless
sailors! May we all meet in the Fair Havens! May the flag of your Society bless every sea,
because God blesses its missionaries! I wish for it the utmost prosperity, and I judge
it to be worthy of the most generous aid of all Christian men. In all respects it is exactly
to my mind. The Lord send prosperity to it! Amen.