Preface

[Transcriber's note: It appears that the author _may have_ used '
and " interchangeably throughout this text to mean "minutes" whereas
traditionally, ' is used to mean minutes and " seconds. Not knowing
the author's intent, I have left these characters as they were in the
original.]

Preface.

If any thing connected with the hardness of the human heart could surprise
us, it surely would be the indifference with which men live on, engrossed
by their worldly objects, amid the sublime natural phenomena that so
eloquently and unceasingly speak to their imaginations, affections, and
judgments. So completely is the existence of the individual concentrated
in self, and so regardless does he get to be of all without that
contracted circle, that it does not probably happen to one man in ten,
that his thoughts are drawn aside from this intense study of his own
immediate wants, wishes, and plans, even once in the twenty-four hours, to
contemplate the majesty, mercy, truth, and justice, of the Divine Being
that has set him, as an atom, amid the myriads of the hosts of heaven and
earth.

The physical marvels of the universe produce little more reflection than
the profoundest moral truths. A million of eyes shall pass over the
firmament, on a cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled
with a proper sense of the power of the dread Being that created all that
is there--not a hundred hearts glow with the adoration that such an appeal
to the senses and understanding ought naturally to produce. This

indifference, in a great measure, comes of familiarity; the things that we
so constantly have before us, becoming as a part of the air we breathe,
and as little regarded.

One of the consequences of this disposition to disregard the Almighty
Hand, as it is so plainly visible in all around us, is that of
substituting our own powers in its stead. In this period of the world, in
enlightened countries, and in the absence of direct idolatry, few men are
so hardy as to deny the existence and might of a Supreme Being; but, this
fact admitted, how few really feel that profound reverence for him that
the nature of our relations justly demands! It is the want of a due sense
of humility, and a sad misconception of what we are, and for what we were
created, that misleads us in the due estimate of our own insignificance,
as Compared with the majesty of God.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware how much
remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope to acquire.
We hear a great deal of god-like minds, and of the far-reaching faculties
we possess; and it may all be worthy of our eulogiums, until we compare
ourselves in these, as in other particulars, with Him who produced them.
Then, indeed, the utter insignificance of our means becomes too apparent
to admit of a cavil. We know that we are born, and that we die; science
has been able to grapple with all the phenomena of these two great
physical facts, with the exception of the most material of all--those
which should tell us what is life, and what is death. Something that we
cannot comprehend lies at the root of every distinct division of natural
phenomena. Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, seems to be imprinted
on every great fact of creation. There is a point attained in each and all
of our acquisitions, where a mystery that no human mind can scan takes the
place of demonstration and conjecture. This point may lie more remote with
some intellects than with others; but it exists for all, arrests the
inductions of all, conceals all.

We are aware that the more learned among those who disbelieve in the
divinity of Christ suppose themselves to be sustained by written
authority, contending for errors of translation, mistakes and
misapprehensions in the ancient texts. Nevertheless, we are inclined to
think that nine-tenths of those who refuse the old and accept the new
opinion, do so for a motive no better than a disinclination to believe
that which they cannot comprehend. This pride of reason is one of the most
insinuating of our foibles, and is to be watched as a most potent enemy.

How completely and philosophically does the venerable Christian creed
embrace and modify all these workings of the heart! We say
philosophically, for it were not possible for mind to give a juster
analysis of the whole subject than St. Paul's most comprehensive but brief
definition of Faith. It is this Faith which forms the mighty feature of
the church on earth. It equalizes capacities, conditions, means, and ends,
holding out the same encouragement and hope to the least, as to the most
gifted of the race; counting gifts in their ordinary and more secular
points of view.

It is when health, or the usual means of success abandon us, that we are
made to feel how totally we are insufficient for the achievement of even
our own purposes, much less to qualify us to reason on the deep mysteries
that conceal the beginning and the end. It has often been said that the
most successful leaders of their fellow men have had the clearest views of
their own insufficiency to attain their own objects. If Napoleon ever
said, as has been attributed to him, "_Je propose et je dispose_," it must
have been in one of those fleeting moments in which success blinded him to
the fact of his own insufficiency. No man had a deeper reliance on
fortune, cast the result of great events on the decrees of fate, or more
anxiously watched the rising and setting of what he called his "star."
This was a faith that could lead to no good; but it clearly denoted how
far the boldest designs, the most ample means, and the most vaulting
ambition, fall short of giving that sublime consciousness of power and its
fruits that distinguish the reign of Omnipotence.

In this book the design has been to pourtray man on a novel field of
action, and to exhibit his dependence on the hand that does not suffer a
sparrow to fall unheeded. The recent attempts of science, which employed
the seamen of the four greatest maritime states of Christendom, made
discoveries that have rendered the polar circles much more familiar to
this age, than to any that has preceded it, so far as existing records
show. We say "existing records;" for there is much reason for believing
that the ancients had a knowledge of our hemisphere, though less for
supposing that they ever braved the dangers of the high latitudes. Many
are, just at this moment, much disposed to believe that "Ophir" was on
this continent; though for a reason no better than the circumstance of
the recent discoveries of much gold. Such savans should remember that
'peacocks' came from ancient Ophir. If this be in truth that land, the
adventurers of Israel caused it to be denuded of that bird of beautiful
plumage.

Such names as those of Parry, Sabine, Ross, Franklin, Wilkes, Hudson,
Ringgold, &c., &c., with those of divers gallant Frenchmen and Russians,
command our most profound respect; for no battles or victories can redound
more to the credit of seamen than the dangers they all encountered, and
the conquests they have all achieved. One of those named, a resolute and
experienced seaman, it is thought must, at this moment, be locked in the
frosts of the arctic circle, after having passed half a life in the
endeavour to push his discoveries into those remote and frozen regions. He
bears the name of the most distinguished of the philosophers of this
country; and nature has stamped on his features--by one of those secret
laws which just as much baffle our means of comprehension, as the greatest
of all our mysteries, the incarnation of the Son of God--a resemblance
that, of itself, would go to show that they are of the same race. Any one
who has ever seen this emprisoned navigator, and who is familiar with the
countenances of the men of the same name who are to be found in numbers
amongst ourselves, must be struck with a likeness that lies as much beyond
the grasp of that reason of which we are so proud, as the sublimest facts
taught by induction, science, or revelation. Parties are, at this moment,
out in search of him and his followers; and it is to be hoped that the
Providence which has so singularly attempered the different circles and
zones of our globe, placing this under a burning sun, and that beneath
enduring frosts, will have included in its divine forethought a sufficient
care for these bold wanderers to restore them, unharmed, to their friends
and country. In a contrary event, their names must be transmitted to
posterity as the victims to a laudable desire to enlarge the circle of
human knowledge, and with it, we trust, to increase the glory due to God.