Besides, This State Of Thing Alters The
Whole Current Of Feeling Between The Crew And Their Commander.
His Authority Assumes More Of The Parental Character; And Kinder
Feelings Exist.
Godwin, though an infidel, in one of his novels,
describing the relation in which a tutor stood to his
Pupil, says
that the conviction the tutor was under, that he and his ward were
both alike awaiting a state of eternal happiness or misery, and that
they must appear together before the same judgment-seat, operated so
upon his naturally morose disposition, as to produce a feeling of
kindness and tenderness toward his ward, which nothing else could
have caused. Such must be the effect upon the relation of master
and common seaman.
There are now many vessels sailing under such auspices, in which
great good is done. Yet I never happened to fall in with one of
them. I did not hear a prayer made, a chapter read in public,
nor see anything approaching to a religious service, for two
years and a quarter. There were, in the course of the voyage,
many incidents which made, for the time, serious impressions upon
our minds, and which might have been turned to our good; but there
being no one to use the opportunity, and no services, the regular
return of which might have kept something of the feeling alive
in us, the advantage of them was lost, to some, perhaps, forever.
The good which a single religious captain may do can hardly be
calculated.
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