I said that you ought to thank God that your trade was a dangerous one, and I said that the sea should always keep you in fear and watchfulness, and looking to God to preserve you. Now, do you not see how these two sayings go together, and make each other plain. You seamen and fishermen are in continual danger; your lives are in your hands every moment--the belaying of a sheet, the strength of a bit of canvas, the toughness of a deal board, may settle your fate in a moment, and make all the difference between life and death. If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest labour; and if they fail--if that weak cordage, and these planks, and thinner canvas, on which your lives depend, do but give way, what is left for you the next moment? what but a grave in the deep, deep sea, and your wives widows and your children orphans, and your bodies devoured by ugly creeping things, and your souls gone--gone where? My good men--you who sit around me now so strong and full of life and skill and happiness--where would your souls be if you were drowned at sea to-morrow? What a question! Oh, ask it yourselves honestly! I have been out in gales myself, and I cannot understand how you can go out, in thirty feet of timber, upon that mighty sea, with the wind howling over your heads like a death-bell, and the great hungry waves chasing you for miles, each one able and willing to swallow you up into the deep, and the gulls screaming over you as if they were waiting to feed upon your floating carcases, and you alone, in a tiny boat, upon that waste, howling wilderness of waters!--I cannot understand, I say, how, when a man is in such a case as that, day after day, year after year, he can forget his God, the only friend who can save him from the sea! the only friend who can send him safe out to his work in the evening, and bring him home safe to his wife at morning. One would think that when you went down to the shore in the morning, you would say, "Oh, God! without whose help I am no stronger than a piece of sea-weed floating up and down, take care of me! Take care of my wife and my children; and forgive me my sins, and do not punish me by calling me away this night to answer for them all!" And when you come home at night, you would say, "Oh, God! who hast kept me safe all this day, what can I do to show how thankful I am to Thee!" Ay! what _can_ you do to show how thankful you are to God for His care? What _ought_ you to do to show your thankfulness to Him? What _must_ you do to show your thankfulness to Him? He has told you. "If you love me, He says, keep my commandments. Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God."