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JEHOVAH'S WONDERS IN THE DEEP.

is called a heavy swell, after the fury of the wind had abated.

It is indeed marvellous that such sublime agitations of the ocean should be effected by an element which no man ever saw, or possibly can see, the instrument being invisible. Though the wind be both heard and felt, yet it is invisible.

The whole passage in the psalm contains an admirable and inimitably concise description of those on board during the tempest. Innumerable waves are passed over, the people are uneasy, they reel to and fro, both upon and below deck, staggering like drunken men; and during the progress of the storm, every thing having been done to sails, &c., that human skill could devise, yet the vessel sadly labours; they are at their wits end what more to do to ease her; they cannot retire by a back door, and wait till the storm be over; no, whoever they are, they must abide the consequences. Then they are said to cry unto

the Lord in their trouble.

In a tremendous gale of wind off the Cape, we were in the very state so strikingly described by the pen of inspiration. About nine o'clock at night, all was blackness and darkness above and around, except some kind of phosphoric light proceeding from waves dashing across the deck. At this time I proposed to the captain and cabin passengers to hold a meeting for prayer to the Lord of the sea for preservation from the fury of the raging elements, which seemed as if conspiring to effect our destruction; to which proposal all consented, and spent some time in prayer in

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the cabin. Some hours afterwards, God heard our prayer, and brought us out of our distresses, by rebuking the winds and waves, so that they shrunk back, becoming perfectly still, and we were permitted thereby soon to reach our desired haven.

Besides storms, there are many other wonders to be seen by those who go down to the sea in ships. There is the preservation of human beings moving over its surface for thousands of miles, often amidst conflicting elements, in a kind of wooden house, perhaps seldom more than an inch and a half or two inches thick, and finding their way to their destined port with the utmost exactness, through the provisions that Providence has taught men to discover, for facilitating intercourse between nations far distant from each other; also beholding, in some parts of the ocean, the whole surface of the water, in every direction, as far as sight can reach, covered with luminous matter, as if spread over with innumerable millions of sparkling diamonds, or as if the sun had been grinded down to small pieces, and these strewed over the face of the deep; also the innumerable and varied inhabitants of the water, particularly flocks of flying fishes rising out of the water, and moving past with considerable velocity; at other times whales, almost equal in length to the ship in which they sail, diverting themselves, and spouting up streams of water to the height of the ship's main-mast; and multitudes of lovely sea-fowls, who seem quite at home though hundreds of miles from any land, and, though destitute of

60 SALT SPRINGS AND BARREN GROUND.

compass, quadrand, or chronometer, can, at will, find out an island or even a rock on which to deposit their eggs and bring up their young; while a ship, destitute of the foregoing instruments, might search for 20 years even for the island of St Helena without finding it. These and many other wonderful things are to be seen by those who go down to the sea in ships. To him who can survey them as the works of his heavenly Father, the sight must afford a rich repast.

SALT SPRINGS AND BARREN GROUND CURED.

And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.-2 KINGS ii. 19.

After Elijah's translation, his companion and successor, Elisha, repaired to a seminary of the prophets, where young men seem to have studied divinity, and perhaps other branches of knowledge. While tarrying there, the male population waited on him in a body, and through their representative or chairman, stated to him the naughtiness of the water of the spring which supplied the city, and pointed out the barrenness of the ground around.

The water of the spring seems to have been what is now termed brack-water, which is saltish, in consequence of the soil, through which the water from the heavens has to pass before reaching the spring, being mixed with salt or saltpetre. It is this mixture of salt which renders the ground

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barren and the water naught, as stated by the people of Jericho to Elisha.

Elisha went with the people unto the fountainhead, into which he cast a little salt, which some might think calculated to render it worse instead of better. When in the act of throwing it into the spring, he audibly said, "Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land." So the waters were healed, not by the salt, but by the power of the Lord; and the spring continued afterwards to send forth pure, sweet, and healthy

water.

The means of salvation can do no more in healing the souls of men than this salt did in healing the waters of Jericho; the virtue is from God; then is the Gospel the power of God unto salvation.

The following relation may assist in understanding the cause of bad water in many parts of the world. Before setting out on my first journey to Africa, a medical gentleman in London kindly sent me a small volume, written by him for the benefit of our armies abroad, in reference to the best means for preserving health, a portion of which was devoted to bad, or brack-water, and proposing a method for purifying it, which was his chief reason for sending the book. He advised to dig a hole so many inches from the margin of the pool of bad water, which, by passing through the intervening ground to the hole, would be rendered purer and more wholesome. Had I had a portion of good English earth with me, to

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GLADDENING STREAMS.

have placed between the hole and the pool, perhaps the water passing through it might have been somewhat benefited; but it was the African soil that spoiled the water; consequently, on making the experiment, I found the water in the hole salter than that in the pool, because in passing through the soil it carried the saline particles which it contained with it into the hole. It was, indeed, like Elisha, throwing more salt into the water, but it had not a similar effect. Had the water been merely filthy, the passing through a little good soil might have improved it.

Elisha's method with the Jericho spring has sometimes reminded me of our Lord's applying clay to a blind man's eyes, which he designed to open, a thing more likely to injure than recover his eyes; but, as the old Puritans used to say, "God sometimes works by means, without means, and contrary to means."

GLADDENING STREAMS.

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of our God.-PSALM xlvi. 4.

No doubt this passage has a spiritual meaning, alluding to the river of the water of life; but it also has an allusion to what then existed at Jerusalem-perhaps to the waters of Siloam, which ran gently by Jerusalem, from which water might have been led out by pipes, or by little streamlets, or what might be termed cuts, to different parts of the city, which is the allusion. These stream