In proportion to the excitement of such a life, Captain Scoresby describes its religious tendency upon a well disposed mind, and this certainly has been exemplified in his own person. “Perhaps there is no situation in life,” he says, “in which an habitual reliance upon Providence, and a well founded dependance on the Divine protection and support, is of such sensible value as it is found to be by those employed in seafaring occupations, and especially in the fishery for whales. These are exposed to a great variety of dangers, many of which they must voluntarily face; and the success of their exertions depends on a variety of causes, over many of which they have no controul. The anxiety arising from both these causes is greatly repressed, and often altogether subdued, when, convinced of the infallibility and universality of Providence by the internal power of religion, we are enabled to commit all our ways unto God, and to look for his blessing as essential to our safety, and as necessary for our success.” John Newton of Olney has in his narrative of his own remarkable life, a passage that entirely accords with these remarks of Captain Scoresby, and which is in like manner the result of experience. “A sea-faring life,” he says, “is necessarily excluded from the benefit of public ordinances, and christian communion.—In other respects, I know not any calling that seems more favourable, or affords greater advantages to an awakened mind, for promoting the life of God in the soul, especially to a person who has the command of a ship, and thereby has it in his power to restrain gross irregularities in others, and to dispose of his own time.—To be at sea in these circumstances, withdrawn out of the reach of innumerable temptations, with opportunity and a turn of mind disposed to observe the wonders of God, in the great deep, with the two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 only enjoyed upon the shore. And indeed though my knowledge of spiritual things (as knowledge is usually estimated) was at this time very small, yet I sometimes look back with regret upon those scenes. I never knew sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion than in my two last voyages to Guinea, when I was either almost secluded from society on ship-board, or when on shore among the natives.”