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We know too little about the mysteries of His growth to venture on definite statements of either kind. Our sounding-lines are not long enough to touch bottom in this great word from the lips of a boy of twelve; but this is clear, that as He grew into self-consciousness, there came with it the growing consciousness of His Sonship to His Father in heaven.
M. Letourneur agrees to my proposal, Curtis has promised to let us have the boat and some sounding-lines, and to allow one of the sailors to accompany us; so to-morrow morning, we hope to make our little voyage of investigation. OCTOBER 31st to NOVEMBER 5th. Our first proceeding on the morning of the 31st was to make the proposed tour of the reef, which is about a quarter of a mile long.
With the aid of our sounding-lines we found that the water was deep, right up to the very rocks, and that no shelving shores prevented us coasting along them. There was not a shadow of doubt as to the rock being of purely volcanic origin, up- heaved by some mighty subterranean convulsion.
"Ah, well, you won't, my boy, for there's everything to do first." "Everything to do?" "Of course. It's not like taking a few bottles and pill-boxes and a net or two to go up on the moor. Why, there's our ship to find first, and then to get her fitted with our nets and sounding-lines and dredges and all sorts of odds and ends, with reserves and provisions for all that we lose.
In many parts of the sea, where the water is deep, are hills and even high mountains, whose tops do not reach the surface; and we should not know where they are, were it not that the sailors, in measuring the depth of the sea, sometimes sail right over these mountain-tops, and touch them with their sounding-lines.
Moreover, there is sufficient force in the deep-sea currents to sweep out the line after the lead has reached the bottom so that, with the ordinary sounding-lines in use among navigators, it is impossible to sound great depths. Scientific men have, therefore, taxed their brains to invent instruments for sounding the deep sea for touching the bottom in what sailors call "blue water."
M. Letourneur agrees to my proposal, Curtis has promised to let us have the boat and some sounding-lines, and to allow one of the sailors to accompany us; so to-morrow morning, we hope to make our little voyage of investigation. OCTOBER 31 to November 5. Our first proceeding on the morning of the 31st was to make the proposed tour of the reef, which is about a quarter of a mile long.
For a long time it was supposed that the Coral animals inhabited very deep waters, for they were sometimes brought up on sounding-lines from a depth of many hundreds or even thousands of feet, and it was taken for granted that they must have had their home where they were found; but the facts recently ascertained respecting the subsidence of ocean-bottoms have shown that the foundation of a Coral wall may have sunk far below the place where it was laid, and it is now proved beyond a doubt that no Reef-Building Coral can thrive at a depth of more than fifteen fathoms, though Corals of other kinds occur far lower, and that the dead Reef-Corals sometimes brought to the surface from much greater depths are only broken fragments of some Reef that has subsided with the bottom on which it was growing.
With the aid of our sounding-lines we found that the water was deep, right up to the very rocks, and that no shelving shores prevented us coasting along them. There was not a shadow of doubt as to the rock being of purely volcanic origin, upheaved by some mighty subterranean convulsion.
Our minds are cast in the mould of the finite; our language is fashioned from our dealings with a world of boundaries and limitations and concrete objects and forces. How much can it serve us in dealing with a world of opposite kind with the Whole, the Immeasurable, the Omnipresent, and Omnipotent? Of what use are our sounding-lines in a bottomless sea?