Part 4
So far as we know, the bottom of the sea is very much like the surface of the land. It has heights and hollows, lines of valleys and ranges of hills. We can not see down to the bottom where the water is very deep, but we can let down a long line with a weight tied to the end of it, and find out both how deep the water is, and what is the nature of the bottom, whether rock or gravel, sand, mud, or shells. This measuring of the depths of the water is called sounding, and the weight at the end of the line goes by the name of the sounding-lead.
Soundings have been made over many parts of the sea, and something is now known about its bottom, though much still remains to be discovered. The Atlantic Ocean is the best known. In sounding it, before laying down the telegraphic cable which stretches across under the sea from this country to America, a depth of 14,500 feet, or two miles and three-quarters, was reached. But between the Azores and the Bermudas a sounding has been obtained of seven miles and a half. If you could lift up the Himalaya mountains, which are the highest on the globe, reaching a height of 29,000 feet above the sea, and set them down in the deepest part of the Atlantic, they would not only sink out of sight, but their tops would actually be about two miles below the surface.
A great part of the wide sea must be one or two miles deep. But it is not all so deep as that, for even in mid-ocean some parts of its bottom rise up to the surface and form islands. As a rule it deepens in tracts furthest from land, and shallows toward the land. Hence those parts of the sea which run in among islands and promontories are, for the most part, comparatively shallow.
You may readily enough understand how it is that soundings are made, though you can see how difficult it must be to work a sounding line several miles long. Yet men are able not only to measure the depth of the water, but by means of the instrument called a dredge, to bring up bucketfuls of whatever may be lying on the sea floor, from even the deepest parts of the ocean. In this way during the last few years a great deal of additional knowledge has been gathered as to the nature of the sea floor, and the kind of plants and animals which live there. We now know that even in some of the deepest places which have yet been dredged there is plenty of animal life, such as shells, corals, star-fishes, and still more humble creatures.
We can not, indeed, examine the sea bottom with anything like the same minuteness as the surface of the land. Yet a great deal may be learnt regarding it.
If you put together some of the facts with which we have been dealing in the foregoing lessons, you may for yourselves make out some of the most important changes which are in progress on the floor of the sea. For example, try to think what must become of all the wasted rock which is every year removed from the surface of the land. It is carried into the sea by streams, as you have now learnt. But what happens to it when it gets there? From the time when it was loosened from the sides of the mountains, hills, or valleys, this decomposed material has been seeking, like water, to reach a lower level. On reaching the hollows of the sea bottom it can not descend any further, but must necessarily accumulate there.
It is evident, then, that between the floor of the sea and the surface of the land, there must be this great difference: that whereas the land is undergoing a continual destruction of its surface, from mountain crest to sea shore, the sea bottom, on the other hand, is constantly receiving fresh materials on its surface. The one is increased in proportion as the other is diminished. So that even without knowing anything regarding what men have found out by means of deep soundings, you could confidently assert that every year there must be vast quantities of gravel, sand and mud laid down upon the floor of the sea, because you know that these materials are worn away from the land.
Again, you have learnt that the restless agitation of the sea is due to movements of the air, and that the destruction which the sea can effect on the land is due chiefly to the action of the waves caused by wind. But this action must be merely a surface one. The influence of the waves can not reach to the bottom of the deep sea. Consequently that bottom lies beyond the reach of the various kinds of destruction which so alter the face of the land. The materials which are derived from the waste of the land can lie on the sea floor without further disturbance than they may suffer from the quiet flow of such ocean currents as touch the bottom.
In what way, then, are the gravel, sand and mud disposed of when they reach the sea?
As these materials are all brought from the land, they accumulate on those parts of the sea floor which border the land, rather than at a distance. We may expect to find banks of sand and gravel in shallow seas and near land, but not in the middle of the ocean.
You may form some notion, on a small scale, as to how the materials are arranged on the sea bottom by examining the channel of a river in a season of drought. At one place, where the current has been strong, there may be a bank of gravel; at another place, where the currents of the river have met, you will find, perhaps, a ridge of sand which they have heaped up; while in those places where the flow of the stream has been more gentle, the channel may be covered with a layer of fine silt or mud. You remember that a muddy river may be made to deposit its mud if it overflows its banks so far as to spread over flat land which checks its flow.
The more powerful a current of water, the larger will be the stones it can move along. Hence coarse gravel is not likely to be found over the bottom of the sea, except near the land, where the waves can sweep it out into the path of strong sea currents. Sand will be carried further out, and laid down in great sheets, or in banks. The finer mud and silt may be borne by currents for hundreds of miles before at last settling down upon the sea bottom.
In this way, according to the nearness of the land, and the strength of the ocean currents, the sand, mud, and gravel worn from the land are spread out in vast sheets and banks over the bottom of the sea.
SUNDAY READINGS.
SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
[_January 6._]
ON SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY.
By ISAAC TAYLOR.
Read the Gospels, simply as historical memoirs; and by such aids as they alone supply, make yourself acquainted with him who is the subject of these narrations. Bring the individual conception as distinctly as possible before the mind; allow the moral sense to confer, in its own manner, and at leisure, with this unusual form of humanity. “Behold the man”—even the Savior of the world, and say whether it be not historic truth that is before the eye. The more peculiar is this form, yet withal symmetrical, the more infallible is the impression of reality we thence receive. What we have to do with in this instance, is not an undefined ideal of wisdom and goodness, conveyed in round affirmations, or in eulogies; but with a self-developed individuality, in conveying which the writers of the narrative do not appear. In this instance, if in any, the medium is transparent: nothing intervenes between the reader and the personage of the history, in whose presence we stand, as if not separated by time and space.
It may be questioned whether the entire range of _ancient_ history presents any one character in colors of reality so fresh as those which distinguish the personage of the evangelic memoirs. The sages and heroes of antiquity—less and less nearly related, as they must be, to any living interests, are fading amid the mists of an obsolete world; but he who “is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” is offered to the view of mankind, in the eyes of immortality, fitting a history, which, instead of losing the intensity of its import, is gathering weight by the lapse of time.
The Evangelists, by the translucency of their style, have given a lesson in biographical composition, showing how perfectly individual character may be expressed in a method which disdains every rule but that of fidelity. It is personal humanity, in the presence of which we stand, while perusing the Gospels, and to each reader apart, if serious and ingenuous, and yet incredulous, the Savior of the world addresses a mild reproof—“It is I. Behold my hands and my feet; reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.” And can we do otherwise than grant all that is now demanded, namely, that the Evangelists record the actions and discourses of a real person?
It is well to consider the extraordinary contrasts that are yet perfectly harmonized in the personal character of Christ. At a first glance, he always appears in his own garb of humility—lowliness of demeanor is his very characteristic. But we must not forget that this lowliness was combined with nothing less than a solemnly proclaimed and peremptory challenge of rightful headship over the human race! Nevertheless, the oneness of the character, the fair perfection of the surface, suffers no rent by this blending of elements so strangely diverse. Let us then bring before the mind, with all the distinctness we can, the conception of the Teacher, more meek than any who has ever assumed to rule the opinions of mankind, and who yet, in the tones proper to tranquil modesty, and as conscious at once of power and right, anticipates that day of wonder, when “the king shall sit on the throne of his glory,” with his angels attendant; and when “all nations shall be gathered before him,” from his lips to receive their doom! The more these elements of personal character are disproportionate, the more convincing is the proof of reality which arises from their harmony.
We may read the Evangelists listlessly, and not perceive this evidence; but we can never read them intelligently without yielding to it our convictions.
If the character of Christ be, as indeed it is, altogether unmatched in the circle of history, it is even less so by the singularity of the intellectual and moral elements which it combines, than by the sweetness and perfection which result from their union. This will appear the more, if we consider those instances in which the combination was altogether of an unprecedented kind.
Nothing has been more constant in the history of the human mind, whenever the religious emotions have gained a supremacy over the sensual and sordid passions, than the breaking out of the ascetic temper in some of its forms; and most often in that which disguises virtue, now as a specter, now as a maniac, now as a mendicant, now as a slave, but never as the bright daughter of heaven. Of the three Jewish sects extant in our Lord’s time, two of them—that is to say, the two that made pretensions to any sort of piety, had assumed the ascetic garb, in its two customary species—the philosophic (the Essenes) and the fanatical (the Pharisees); and so strong and uniform is this crabbed inclination, that Christianity itself, in violent contrariety to its spirit and its precepts, went off into the ascetic temper, within a century after the close of the apostolic age, or even earlier.
Under this aspect, then, let us for a moment consider the absolutely novel phenomenon of the Teacher of a far purer morality than the world had heretofore ever listened to; yet himself affecting no singularities in his modes of living. The superiority of the soul to the body was the very purport of his doctrine; and yet he did not waste the body by any austerities! The duty of self-denial he perpetually enforced; and yet he practiced no factitious mortifications! This Teacher, not of abstinence, but of virtue; this Reprover, not of enjoyment, but of vice, himself went in and out among the social amenities of ordinary life with so unsolicitous a freedom as to give color to the malice of hypocrisy, in pointing the finger at him, saying, “Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber; a friend (companion) of publicans and sinners!” Should we not then note this singular apposition and harmony of qualities, that he who was familiar with the festivities of heaven did not any more disdain the poor solaces of mortality, than disregard its transient pains and woes? Follow this same Jesus from the banquets of the opulent, where he showed no scruples in diet, to the highways and wildernesses of Judea, where, never indifferent to human sufferings, he healed—“as many as came unto him.”
These remarkable features in the personal character of Christ have often, and very properly, been adduced as instances of the unrivaled wisdom and elevation which mark him as preëminent among the wise and good.
It is not, however, for this purpose that we now refer to them, but rather as harmonies, altogether inimitable, and which put beyond doubt the historic reality of the person. Thus considered, they must be admitted by calm minds as carrying the truth of Christianity itself.
[_January 13._]
There are, however, those who will readily grant us what, indeed, they can not with any appearance of candor deny—the historic reality of the person of Christ, and the more than human excellence which his behavior and discourses embody; but at this point they declare that they must stop. Let such persons see to it—they can not stop at this point; for just at this point there is no ground on which foot may stand.
What are the facts?
The inimitable characteristics of nature attach to what we may call the common incidents of the evangelic history, and in which Jesus of Nazareth is seen mingling himself with the ordinary course of social life.
But is it true that these characteristics suddenly, and in each instance, disappear when this same person is presented to us walking on another, and a high path, namely, that of supernatural power? _It is not so_, and, on the contrary, very many of the most peculiar and infallible of those touches of tenderness and pathos which so generally mark the evangelic narrative, belong precisely to the supernatural portions of it, and are inseparably connected with acts of miraculous beneficence. We ask that the Gospels be read with the utmost severity of criticism, and with this especial object in view, namely, to inquire whether those indications of reality which have already been yielded to as irresistible evidences of truth, do not belong as fully to the supernatural, as they do to the ordinary incidents of the Gospel? or in other words, whether, unless we resolve to overrule the question by a previous determination, any ground of simply historic distinction presents itself, marking off the supernatural from the ordinary events of the evangelic narratives?
If we feel ourselves to be conversing with historic truth, as well as with heavenly wisdom, when Jesus is before us, seated on the mountain-brow, and delivering the Beatitudes to his disciples; is it so that the colors become confused, and the contour of the figures unreal, when the same personage, in the midst of thousands, seated by fifties on the grassy slope, supplies the hunger of the multitude by the word of his power? Is it historic truth that is presented when the fearless Teacher of a just morality convicts the rabbis of folly and perversity; and less so when, turning from his envious opponents, he says to the paralytic, “Take up thy bed and walk?” Nature herself is before us when the repentant woman, after washing the Lord’s feet with her tears, and wiping them with her hair, sits contrasted with the obdurate and uncourteous Pharisee; but the very same bright forms of reality mark the scene when Jesus, filled with compassion at the sight of a mother’s woe, stays the bier and renders her son alive to her bosom.
Or, if we turn to those portions of the Gospels in which the incidents are narrated more in detail, and where a greater variety of persons is introduced, and where, therefore, the supposition of fabrication is the more peremptorily excluded, it is found that the supernatural and the ordinary elements are in no way to be distinguished in respect of the simple vivacity with which both present themselves to the eye. The evangelic narrative offers the same bright translucency, the same serenity, and the same precision, in reporting the most astounding as the most familiar occurrences. It is like a smooth-surfaced river, which, in holding its course through a varied country reflects from its bosom at one moment the amenities of a homely border, and at the next the summits of the Alps, and both with the same unruffled fidelity.
As the subject of a rigorous historic criticism, and all hypothetical opinions being excluded, no pretext whatever presents itself for drawing a line around the supernatural portions of the Gospels, as if they were of suspicious aspect, and differed from the context in historic verisimilitude. Without violence done to the rules of criticism, we can not detach the miraculous portions of the history, and then put together the mutilated portions, so as to consist with the undoubted reality or the part which is retained.
Or take the narrative of the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. A brilliant vividness, as when a sunbeam breaks from between clouds, illumines this unmatched history; and it rests with equal intensity upon the stupendous miracle, and upon the beauty and grace of the scene of domestic sorrow. If we follow Martha and Mary from the house to the spot where they meet their friend, and give a half-utterance to their confidence in his power, at what step—let us distinctly determine—at what step, as the group proceeds toward the sepulchre, shall we halt and refuse to accompany it? Where is the break in the story, or the point of transition, and where does history finish, and the spurious portion commence? Is it when we approach the cave’s mouth that the gestures of the persons become unreal, and the language untrue to nature? Where is it that the indications of tenderness and majesty disappear—at the moment when Jesus weeps, or when he invokes his Father, or when, with a voice which echoes in hades, he challenges the dead to come forth; or is it when “he who was dead” obeys this bidding?
We affirm that, on no principles which a sound mind can approve, is it _possible_ either to deny the reality of the natural portions of this narrative, or to sever these from the supernatural. But this is not enough; for it might be in fact more easy to offer some intelligible solution of the difficulty attaching to the supposition that the gospels are not true, in respect of the ordinary, than of the extraordinary portion of their materials. If we were to allow it to be possible (which it is not) that writers showing so little inventive or plastic powers as do Matthew the Publican, and John of Galilee, should, with the harmony of truth, have carried their imaginary Master through the _common_ acts and incidents of his course; never could they, no, nor writers the most accomplished, have brought him, in modest simplicity, through the _miraculous_ acts of that course. Desperate must be the endeavor to show that, while the ordinary events of the gospel must be admitted as true, the extraordinary are incredible. On the contrary, it would be to the former, if to any, that a suspicion might attach; for, as to the latter, they can not but be true: if not true, whence are they?
The skepticism, equally condemned as it is by historical logic and by the moral sense, which allows the natural and disallows the supernatural portion of the history of Christ, is absolutely excluded when we compare, in the four Gospels separately, the narrative of what precedes the resurrection, with the closing portions, which bring the crucified Jesus again among his disciples.
[_January 20._]
If those portions of the evangelic history which reach to the moment of the death of Christ are, in a critical sense, of the same historic quality as those which run on to the moment of his ascension, and if the former absolutely command our assent—if they carry it as by force, then, by a most direct inference, “is Christ risen indeed,” and become the first fruits of immortality to the human race. Then it is true that, “as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” No narrative is anywhere extant comparable to that of the days and hours immediately preceding the crucifixion; and the several accounts of the hurried events of those days present the minute discrepancies which are always found to belong to genuine memoirs, compiled by eye-witnesses.
The last supper and its sublime discourses; the agony in the garden, the behavior of the traitor, the scenes in the hall of the chief priest, and before the judgment-seat of the Roman procurator, and in the palace of Herod, and in the place called the Pavement, and on the way from the city, and in the scene on Calvary, are true—if anything in the compass of history be true.
But now, if our moral perceptions are in this way to be listened to, not less incontestably real are the closing chapters of the four Gospels, in which we find the same sobriety and the same vivacity; the same distinctness and the same freshness; the same pathos and the same wisdom, and the same majesty; and yet all chastened by the recollected sorrows of a terrible conflict just passed, and mellowed with the glow of a triumph at hand.
Let it be imagined that writers such as the Evangelists might have led their Master as far as to Calvary; but could they, unless truth had been before them, have reproduced him from the sepulchre? What abruptness, harshness, extravagance, what want of harmony, would have been presented in the closing chapters of the Gospels, if the same Jesus had not supplied the writers with their materials by going in and out among them after his resurrection.
On the supposition that Christ did not rise from the dead, let any one whose moral tastes are not entirely blunted, read the narrative of his encounter with Mary in the garden, and with his disciples in the inner chamber, and again on the shore of the lake; let him study the perfect simplicity and yet the warmth of the interview with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. The better taste of modern times, and the just sense of what is true in sentiment and pure in composition, give us an advantage in an analysis of this sort. Guided, then, by the instincts of the most severe taste, let us spread before us the final portion of the Gospel of Luke, namely, the twenty-fourth chapter, which reports a selection of the events occurring between the early morning of the first day of the week, and that moment of wonder when, starting from the world he had ransomed, the Savior returned whence he had come. Will any one acquainted with antiquity affirm that any writer, Greek, Roman, or barbarian, has come down to us, whom we can believe capable of conceiving at all of such a style of incident or discourse; or who, had he conceived it, could have conveyed his conception in a style so chaste, natural, calm, lucid, pure? Nothing like this narrative is contained in all the circle of fiction, and nothing equal to it in all the circle of history; and yet nothing is more perfectly consonant with the harmonies of nature. We may listlessly peruse this page, each line of which wakens a sympathy in every bosom which itself responds to truth. But if we ponder it, if we allow the mind to grasp the several objects, we are vanquished by the conviction that all is real. But if real, and if Christ be risen indeed, then is Christianity indeed _a religion of facts_; and then we are fully entitled to a bold affirmation and urgent use of whatever inferences may thence be fairly deduced.