The first verse is addressed to God the Father, the Creater and source of all, who sustains. that which He has created by His Almighty power. He made the sea—"The sea is His and He made it," as we sang a few moments ago in the Venite. The sea defence it is in our blood. Neverthe-is to the British peoples our ally and
less, it is the one power of nature before which man is most helpless and which fills his heart at times with fear and dread. Men pierce and scale the mountains, fill up and use the valleys, bridge and divert the rivers, changing and marring the face of nature, but they have no control over the sea; as the poet says, "Man marks the earth with ruin—his control stops with the shore" We have done much to utilize the tides around our coasts, but where the sea encroaches, un-dermming our embankments and washing away our dwellings; or where it recedes leaving our "har-hours dry and our coasts sand hills, we are helpless to prevent it.
carrying heavy cargoes travel-We build great ships, capable of ling through the waters at great speed. Voyages have been shortened, seas charted, navigation has been simplified by many, marvellous inventions, the ships are in constant touch with land and one another by wireless, and yet even today the strongest and best equipped ship is never perfectly safe. The sea is stronger than any works of man—it has well been called "The cruel, hun-ery, insatiable sea." for it prevails at times to make men feel absolutely holeless. and constrains them, even as it did those seamen of old time of whom we read in the Book of Jonah, to be "afraid and cry out every man to His Good." Thus to pray is instinctive and right—we do well to follow the logic of our hearts and to cry to our Heavenly Father when in danger on the sea, and, similarly, to vray for our loved ones at sea, and for all who sail the seas on our behalf: for surely if the maker of a machine can guide and control it. the Great Creator can guide and control the seas for His children. He who made "the great and wide sen and set a bound that it might not pass, saying, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther." "He who," as Luther says. "can keep back the sea. and keep it back with sand." He car make "the storm a calm. so that t waves thereof are still," and "when His people ery unto Him in their trouble. He can bring them out of their distress."
"Eternal Father! strong to save, Whose arm doth bind the restless wave, Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep: Oh. hear us when we cry to Thee For those in peril on the sea!"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.