VOICES OF THE SEA. 
PUBLISHED BY ROSS WINANS. 
BALTIMORE: 
JOHN P. DES FORGES. 
1871. [Read to the Unitarian Society in Dover, N. H., Sept. 1, 1867.] 
|jk of tip ten. 
“ THE SEA HATH SPOKEN.”—Isaiah, xxiii, 4. 
“To-day, my friends, begins the fourth year 
of my ministry among you. Three times has 
the earth made its annual journey of nearly six 
hundred million miles about the sun, while I 
have stood here Sunday after Sunday to deliver 
my weekly message. Great travelers, surely, 
have we been together in these three years, 
whirling through the vast of space at the rate 
of sixty-eight thousand miles every hour; and 
great truths ought we to have learned together 
in our travels, to shine like flashing diamonds 
in the golden setting of our daily lives. What 
magnificent pages of infinite wisdom have been, 
lying ever open before our eyes ! What glorious 
voices, uttering the secrets of infinite love, have 
been ever pouring their inspiration into our ears! 
Surely we must have been dull of sense and 4 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
sluggish of heart, if these three years, so crowded 
with divine tuitions, have failed to enrich our 
being with spiritual treasures. So, at the thresh- 
old of this new year of my ministry, I have 
paused to interrogate my own experience; I 
have paused to put to myself the searching 
question : “What have I learned of God and of 
life?” For better than he has learned can no 
man teach. 
Revolving in my own mind afresh the reason 
why I venture before }mu so frequently with a 
spoken word, I have been compelled to ask my- 
self what is the burden and tenor of this word, 
what its purpose, what its worth. If I would 
not talk as the fool talks, aimlessly and emptily, 
I must have somewhat to say ; and it is as well 
for the preacher as for the trader now and then 
to “take account of stock.” In beginning thus 
a new year, I would come face to face with my- 
self ; and, as a highwayman stops a passenger 
with a stern “stand and deliver !” so would I 
challenge my own soul, and compel it to confess 
its profoundest faith. If there is any value 
whatever in this church, this pulpit, this min- 
istry, what is the word I have to say to you— 
the message which justifies your gathering to- 
gether and your patient listening ? 
Dear friends, I have long and anxiously pon- THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
5 
dered this question in my heart; and I have 
come to this conclusion, that the justification of 
my preaching and of your listening, lies not so 
much in any particular word that I can utter, 
as in the fact that this weekly assemblage is a 
mutual confession, on your part and on mine, 
that human life, if not utterly shallow, must 
have a religious interpretation. I speak to you 
in the name and authority of no Church, no 
Scripture, no Messiah ; I bring you only my 
own fallible thought and my own limited expe- 
rience ; yet you come and patiently listen, not 
because I am any wiser or any better than other 
men, but because our meeting here once a week 
is a perpetual reminder and recognition of great 
and eternal realities. The preaching, after all, 
is of small account; only one day in the week 
do I preach to you by word of mouth, while (a 
thought that fills me with concern) I cannot help 
preaching seven days in the week by my daily 
life among you. In fact, all of you are preach- 
ing to each other and to me daily sermons that 
are more audible than words ; and even here on 
the Sunday, the pews are ever preaching more 
audibly than the pulpit. I repeat it, the justi- 
fication of our weekly worship; its whole worth 
and influence, consists in its being a common 
and spontaneous expression of our faith in eter- 6 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
nal truths. You may dissent from what I say; 
yet if your consciousness of a Divine Law and 
a Divine Presence in all things becomes stronger 
because you are here, the end of my preaching 
is all accomplished. It is no aim of mine to 
bring you merely to my way of thinking; I am 
quite content if I bring you to think for your- 
selves earnestly and seriously, on the great prob- 
lem of life and its duties. It would be impos- 
sible, therefore, for me to condense into any 
snug formula of words the end and object of mv 
preaching; I seek only to keep before your 
minds and hearts the great truth that your lives 
should be lived, not merely in the world of prac- 
tical pursuits, but also in the world of ideal as- 
pirations and ennobling ideas. 
As varied as life itself, then should my teach- 
ings be. Yet, fragmentary though they must be 
and are, one common spirit should run through 
them all,stimulating to more independent thought, 
sturdier fidelity to conscience, profounder remem- 
brance and love of God. Unless your homes and 
hearts are at once holier and happier for the in- 
fluence of these ministrations, unless you rest 
with a deeper acquiescence in the orderings of 
that Perfect Wisdom which folly only would wish 
to change, unless your whole lives are brought 
into a more perfect harmony with that bound- THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
7 
less Love without which not a sparrow falls to 
the ground, then my words perish on the idle 
air, and it were better that I were dumb. What 
gain is there in your achieving clearer views of 
God’s truth, if it fails to transfigure your char- 
acters with ideal beauty? Why should I seek to 
illuminate your understandings, if your hearts 
are no warmer, your spirits no purer, your lives 
no diviner than before? Believe me, I would 
make your thought freer and larger, that in this 
added freedom the power of eternal truth may 
more deeply penetrate into your souls, and build 
you up more perfectly into the divine life. It 
is nothing to me that you should think my 
thoughts, unless they lead you to a nobler and 
larger faith in the One to whom all thought 
points; and if, after candidly hearing the best 
I have to utter, you find the old truer to you 
than the new, my aim is wholly accomplished, 
provided the old acquires more beneficent influ- 
ence over your lives in consequence of this re- 
affirmation. I seek not to make proselytes to 
my opinion, but to make more fearless disciples 
of infinite truth, more earnest workers for the 
good of mankind, more trustful and pure and 
loving children of the Heavenly Father. And 
my message to you week by week is the best 
utterance, enforcement, and illustration that I 8 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
can compass of this supreme object of all human 
living. To this end am I here in this pulpit; 
and because my heart is in the work, I love it 
daily more and more. 
For two weeks past I have been dwelling 
beside the sea, and the best of preachers have I 
found it. Everlasting truths I have heard re- 
verberating in the ceaseless thunder of its waves; 
and, instead of my poor voice, I would that you 
might even now be listening to that eloquence 
unapproachable. I can only speak to you to-day 
what the sea has been speaking to me. As I 
lay on the white sand of the beach, watched 
the grand advance of the surf as it curled up- 
wards to its final plunge, and listened to its roar 
as it rushed towards me in sheets of foam, what 
cadence of voice could compare with these awful 
tones of God in nature ? Surely, “The Sea hath 
spoken.” More truly than my corporeal ear 
was filled with the noise of its inarticulate roar- 
ing, was my spiritual ear filled with the divine 
burden of its speech. And because, dear friends, 
I wish to give you ever the best and highest 
word that has come to me, and because in this 
grand oratory of the boundless ocean I have 
heard the audible voice of God, I will report 
in desultory fashion the substance of that sub- 
lime discourse. It is the best answer that I THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
9 
can give to the question why I stand in t h 
place before you. 
It is common to speak of “dead matter/’ “in- 
animate Nature.” Such sayings are the igno- 
rant babblings of a child. Nature is alive, and 
the last word of physical science is earnest tes- 
timony to its life. Throughout the boundless 
universe one mysterious Force presides, assum- 
ing countless Protean shapes, but ever remain- 
ing indestructible and the same. Science can 
at last demonstrate by balance and measure 
that all the physical'phenomena of the universe 
manifest a single all-pervading cause. Not an 
atom exists but is moving in harmony with the 
universal life. Nature is alive, and its life is 
the life of God. The same Power that is the 
law of human destiny guides the stars in their 
courses, speeds the sunbeam through the vast 
abysses of space, shoots the lightning round the 
globe, governs the invisible play of chemical 
affinities, rolls the tides in the wake of the full- 
orbed moon, holds alike the atom and the con- 
stellation true to their functions in the sublime 
economy of the whole. All natural laws are 
simply diverse manifestations and modes of a 
a single infinite, omnipresent Force. Yes, that 
divine power which men vaguely conceive as 
somewhere exerted up in the skies, is round 10 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
about us in the solid eafth we tread, in the air 
we breathe, in the green garments of the sum- 
mer and the white vestments of the winter, in 
the very bodies of flesh, blood, and bone that 
obey our conscious wills. The activity of God 
we behold every moment of our lives in the 
changeless uniformities of Nature, to quarrel 
with which is to rebel against the wisdom they 
express. In that blue expanse of water which 
lies unbounded even by imagination before our 
eyes, and is alive all over with innumerable 
billows, we behold a visible manifestation of 
the omnipresent Mind, which invisibly, but no 
less really, reveals itself in the tossing ocean of 
human feeling and thought. 
The Sea is a thing of life. Regular as the 
pulsations of the human heart, constant as the 
inhalations and exhalations of the human lungs, 
are the ceaseless motions of its waters; and, 
floating on its undulating surface, you are lap- 
ped in Eternal Being, and fondled by the Eternal 
Love. “God is not afar off in the invisible depths 
of the empyrean,’’ preaches the solemn Sea; “He 
is here and now—behold and worship!” Amaz- 
ing thought, that the mighty force impelling the 
vast host of breakers to dash upon the curving 
shore is the very same Power that rules the spir- 
itual world, and governs alike the tempests and THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
11 
the calms of human life. Let us quit the search 
for God—we cannot escape him if we would; we 
cannot open our eyes without beholding him ; we 
cannot unseal our ears without hearing: him: 
we cannot stir hand or foot without feeling him. 
In the stately periods of the eloquent Sea we hear 
eternal proclamation of the living God, the God 
that lives as truly in the shining spray that flash- 
es with prismatic splendor, as in the soul of Jesus 
that illumines the page of history with a tender 
glow. Truly, “the Sea, hath spoken.” 
Look out upon the seething surface of the 
great deep; what a maze of shifting lines, what 
bewilderment of forms passing endlessly into 
each other, what confusion worse confounded of 
waves rising and falling and chasing each other 
over the limitless expanse! Can the mind con- 
ceive a better type of absolute disorder than this 
vast labyrinth of billows? Yet this seeming 
type of lawlessness is really an instance, pre- 
eminent and astounding, of absolute harmony in 
apparent discord. Free as the waves may seem, 
they are controlled in every moment by un- 
varying law. Twice every day the waters rise 
and sink; the vast tidal waves, one on each side 
of the globe, follow the moon as faithfully as 
the flock follows the shepherd. 
Uo disorder there ; the laws that rule the 12 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
tides know no exception, and all is perfect har- 
mony. And so the waves obey the winds though 
science cannot, as yet, formulate the law. Ex- 
pect no break in the grand procession of the 
tides and waves; order, which the beholding 
eye cannot, even in its elements comprehend, is 
perfectly maintained from the beginning to the 
end, 
Herein is God made manifest to the ponder- 
ing soul. He is revealed in order, as no disor- 
der could ever reveal him. The steady ongoings 
of nature and of life, disclose an ever-active intel- 
ligence, which the notion of miracle can but fa- 
tally obscure. God is law ; therefore there is 
no luck, or chance, or fortuity in Nature. God 
is love; therefore there is no luck, or chance, 
or fortuity in Life. The changeless order of 
things is only Organized Beneficence ; and to 
inculcate distrust of it by preaching miracle, is 
simply to bring back chaos to men’s minds. 
Let others rest their faith in the interruption of 
law. I rest mine in absolute immutability ; for 
in that alone can I behold such a manifestation 
of Being, as is worthy of my intelligent adora- 
tion, my boundless confidence and worship. If 
the course of this changeless law, the preserva- 
tion of this absolute order ever seems to conflict 
with my individual happiness, let me regard my THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
13 
wild wishes as uninstructed folly, and instead of 
pouring out frantic prayers that the wise law of 
God may bend to my blind wilfulness, let me 
rather strive to discern the real benevolence of 
that law. If, at the core of all things there 
beats an infinite heart, love is the motive of 
law, and itself forbids the interruption of order 
for any fancied good of mine. In all the cares, 
wounds and griefs of life, at last Time shows me 
the outflow of a fathomless benignity, providing 
for me infinitely better than I can comprehend. 
The experience of my life has taught me to feel 
no fear in the very Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
and to cry with David of old, “though Thou slay 
me, yet will I trust in Thee.’’ The mighty sea 
before me, full of an orderly motion which God 
alone can comprehend, is a pledge to me that 
my life also is governed by the same Presiding 
Power, before which I stand untroubled and 
unafraid. 
The bewildering march of the billows, tossing 
and leaping in a wantonness which to man is 
madness, but to God is method, becomes a sym- 
bol of human life, imaging by the ebb and flow 
of its tides, the sorrows and joy that succeed 
each other in every human experience. Oh for 
a profounder confidence that here, too, all is the 
wise method of encompassing Love, the ordain- 14 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
ings of a wisdom that controls our destiny with 
unerring skill and fathomless tenderness ! “The 
Sea hath spoken/' and heeding its tuition my 
conviction grows deep and strong, that we are 
forever embosomed in the omnipresent God. 
One more lesson only from the preaching of 
the Sea. kindred, yet perhaps not precisely the 
same. I have spoken of the tides, how con- 
stantly and regularly they obey their law, and 
how order and harmony characterize their march 
around the globe. 
But I have not dwelt on what I might call 
the motive of this regularity, the mighty at- 
traction of the Moon. Visible or invisible, now 
a full, round sphere of silver, now gibbous, now 
a slender crescent, and now wholly dark—the 
Moon still finds the same faithful following from 
the Sea. Clouds and storms may hide it; the 
earth may eclipse it; the glare of day may swal- 
low it up; yet unforgetfully the Sea yearns for 
it and untiringly pursues it. The beautiful orb 
in the heavens, changeful as it is to our human 
eyes, changes not at all in the power of its at- 
traction, but down to the deepest depths moves 
the faithful Sea that loves it evermore. The 
mighty heart of the ocean throbs without pause 
in constant fealty and onward forever rolls the 
great tidal wave. What profound suggestions THE VOICES OF THE SEA. 
15 
do we find in this unswerving fidelity of the 
Sea ! Whether to our feeble spiritual vision, God 
appears or disappears, whether he hides in the 
stormy night of sorrow or the dazzling day of 
joy, our hearts may yet glow with a love for 
him that shall make our actions true. Unlike 
the Sea, we are not constrained to follow him, 
or to live the god-like life against our wills; there 
is a margin left us for moral dereliction. But 
all the more beautiful becomes our voluntary 
allegiance and fidelity, and if we heed the les- 
son, the Sea will not have preached to us in 
vain. The grand, free virtue of a soul obeying 
because it loves, is the high worship that is wor- 
thy of humanity ; and in this unforced, sponta- 
neous tribute of faithful affection, is found a 
moral spectacle even more magnificent than the 
stately march of ocean tides. 
Such, friends, has been the instruction of the 
Sea, which I have tried to rehearse to you afresh. 
The omnipresence of Infinite Power and Love, 
embracing us close as the air we move in—the 
absolute harmony and order of its working in 
the universe, and the inward repose that springs 
from a perception of this order—the divine 
beauty of a life which freely and comprehend- 
ingly obeys, because it loves, the perfect law of 
God—these great truths, preached to me so elo- 16 
THE VOICES OF THE SEA 
quently by the roar of the surf along the beach, 
what could I do but preach to you again in 
feeble human echoes of its strains ? They are 
the grand burden of all my message from this 
desk ; they can but clothe themselves in new 
forms and illustrations, remaining essentially 
the same; they are the power and the peace of 
God, if taken into our hearts and made the law 
of our lives. “The Sea hath spoken,” and in 
its solemn speech are the audible voicings of 
that Infinite Life of which the entire universe 
we know is but a broken syllable. “Let us hear 
and heed.” 
Selected and Published by 
ROSS WINANS.