A Discourse on the Moral Uses of the Sea: Delivered on Board the Packet-Ship Victoria, Capt. Morgan, at Sea, July, 1845

Excerpt from A Discourse on the Moral Uses of the Sea: Delivered on Board the Packet-Ship Victoria, Capt. Morgan, at Sea, July, 1845 Not a few have wondered why God, in creating a world for the habitation of man, should have chosen to hide three-fourths of its surface under a waste of waters. Doubtless it had been as easy for him to have made it a good round ball of meadow and plough-land. The field where leviathan plays might as well have been given to the reaper: the fickle domain of waters might as well have been erected into a firm continent of land, and covered with flourishing and populous empires. Why, then, asks the inquisitive thought of man, why so great waste in the works of God? why has He ordained these great oceans, and set the habitable parts of the world thus islanded between them? why spread out these vast regions of waste, to suppress the fruitfulness and stint the populousness of his realm?
That He has done it we know. We also know his opinion of the arrangement - God saw that it was good. Not a few have wondered why God, in creating a world for the habitation of man, should have chosen to hide three-fourths of its surface under a waste of waters. Doubtless it had been as easy for him to have made it a good round ball of meadow and plough-land. The field where leviathan plays might as well have been given to the reaper: the fickle domain of waters might as well have been erected into a firm continent of land, and covered with flourishing and populous empires. Why, then, asks the inquisitive thought of man, why so great waste in the works of God? why has He ordained these great oceans, and set the habitable parts of the world thus islanded between them? why spread out these vast regions of waste, to suppress the fruitfulness and stint the populousness of his realm?
That He has done it we know. We also know his opinion of the arrangement - God saw that it was good.