University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

If any thing connected with the hardness of the
human heart could surprise us, it surely would be the
indifference with which men live on, engrossed by
their worldly objects, amid the sublime natural phenomena
that so eloquently and unceasingly speak to their
imaginations, affections, and judgments. So completely
is the existence of the individual concentrated
in self, and so regardless does he get to be of all without
that contracted circle, that it does not probably
happen to one man in ten, that his thoughts are drawn
aside from this intense study of his own immediate
wants, wishes, and plans, even once in the twenty-four
hours, to contemplate the majesty, mercy, truth, and
justice, of the Divine Being that has set him, as an
atom, amid the myriads of the hosts of heaven and
earth.

The physical marvels of the universe produce little
more reflection than the profoundest moral truths. A
million of eyes shall pass over the firmament, on a
cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled
with a proper sense of the power of the dread Being
that created all that is there—not a hundred hearts
glow with the adoration that such an appeal to the
senses and understanding ought naturally to produce.
This indifference, in a great measure, comes of familiarity;
the things that we so constantly have before

us, becoming as a part of the air we breathe, and as
little regarded.

One of the consequences of this disposition to disregard
the Almighty Hand, as it is so plainly visible
in all around us, is that of substituting our own powers
in its stead. In this period of the world, in enlightened
countries, and in the absence of direct idolatry,
few men are so hardy as to deny the existence
and might of a Supreme Being; but, this fact admitted,
how few really feel that profound reverence for
him that the nature of our relations justly demands!
It is the want of a due sense of humility, and a sad
misconception of what we are, and for what we were
created, that misleads us in the due estimate of our
own insignificance, as compared with the majesty of
God.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge
to be fully aware how much remains to be learned,
and of that which they never can hope to acquire.
We hear a great deal of god-like minds, and of the
far-reaching faculties we possess; and it may all be
worthy of our eulogiums, until we compare ourselves
in these, as in other particulars, with Him who produced
them. Then, indeed, the utter insignificance of
our means becomes too apparent to admit of a cavil.
We know that we are born, and that we die; science
has been able to grapple with all the phenomena of
these two great physical facts, with the exception of
the most material of all—those which should tell us
what is life, and what is death. Something that we
cannot comprehend lies at the root of every distinct
division of natural phenomena. Thus far shalt thou

go and no farther, seems to be imprinted on every
great fact of creation. There is a point attained in
each and all of our acquisitions, where a mystery that
no human mind can scan takes the place of demonstration
and conjecture. This point may lie more
remote with some intellects than with others; but it
exists for all, arrests the inductions of all, conceals all.

We are aware that the more learned among those
who disbelieve in the divinity of Christ suppose themselves
to be sustained by written 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 arctie 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 sun, and that beneath
enduring frosts, will have included in its divine forethought
a sufficient care for these bold wanderers to
restore them, unharmed, to their friends and country. In a contrary event, their names must be transmitted
to posterity as the victims to a laudable desire to enlarge
the circle of human knowledge, and with it, we
trust, to increase the glory due to God.