I well remember that, when deeply affected by the grandeur of this and other aspects assumed by the majestic main, I found the highest flights of man's sublimity too low. They would not express, would not chime in with my conceptions; and I was driven to the inspired pages for a commentary on the glorious scene. It was then that the language of Job, of Isaiah, of Habakkuk, supplied me with a strain suited to the sublime accompaniment of God's magnificent work. Sunrise I could not witness, because at that hour no lady might appear on deck, and my cabin had not a side-window; but sunset, moonlight, starlight, with the various phenomena of ocean's ever-varying appearance, these furnished an endless contemplation with which nothing could accord but the language of Holy writ. I did not bring forth my Bible, well knowing the bantering remarks to which it would have exposed me on the score of affectation, but my memory served me equally well in that as in profane poetry; and many a precious word of warning, exhortation, and promise did I recite, enchanted by the sublimity of what, as to its spiritual meaning, was still an unknown tongue to me. Among these, the thirty-second of Deuteronomy, the fortieth of Isaiah, and other passages full of the gospel, were repeatedly called to mind; and above all, in blowing weather, the forty-sixth Psalm delighted me. You may suppose that I could not wholly forget the fact of being where, in the strictest sense, there was but a step between me and death. The first day of our voyage some one had quoted the expression, "There is but a plank between us and eternity," not with any serious application, but as a fine thought. I do not think that I was ever for a moment unmindful of this; the presence of actual danger was always felt by me: but concerning eternity I had no fears whatever. A general reliance on the boundless mercy of God, a recognition of Christ as having suffered for our sins, and a degree of self-righteousness that easily threw my sins into the shade, while magnifying my supposed merits, these formed the staff whereon I leaned; and when the most imminent and appalling peril overhung us, so that we expected to be ingulfed in the waves without hope of succor, I looked it boldly in the face, confident in my false hope. Although just then revelling in enjoyments best suited to my natural taste, life had in reality no charms for me. From all that had gilded the sonny hours of youth I was completely severed, and the world on which I had launched was a wilderness indeed in comparison with the Eden I had left. I would not have made the slightest effort to escape from death in any form; and though I was not senseless enough to prefer an eternity of untried wretchedness to the fleeting sorrows of mortal life, yet as my conscience was lulled to rest by the self-delusion that I suffered more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine justice, and as I was willing to receive the supposed balance of such