A stage is reached when I cease to look at the sea, and allow the sea to look into me, when I give it habitation in my being, and am thereby proved, by virtue of my soul, something mightier than it.

But in vain do we try to take the sea’s mystery by storm.  In vain do we search for its meaning with love.  It lies beyond our mortal ken, deeper than ever plummet sounded.

“Is not the sea the very peacock of peacocks?” asks Nietzsche.  “Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it unfoldeth its tail and never wearieth of its lace fan of silver and gold.”  But the sea is not moved by slander.  “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!” sings Byron in praise, but the sea is not encouraged.  It hearkeneth not, even unto kings.  It is that which changes but is itself unchanged.  It manifests itself continually in change, and yet it is itself ever the same, ever the same.  It reveals itself to man in the majesty and terror of storm, or in the joyousness of peace; when with leaden eye it glowers upward at the leaden clouds, or when the rain sweeps over it in misery.  But the secret of the sea lies beyond all these, hidden in the depths, profound, sublime.

II

I

HOSPITALITY

I

I imagine that whilst the prodigal son sat at meat with his father and their guests, there may have come to the door a weary tramp begging food and lodging.  The elder brother would probably refuse hospitality, saying, “You are not even my sinning brother, and shall I harbour you?” The father in his wine might cry a welcome—­“Let him come in for the sake of my son found this day; he also was a tramp upon the road.”  The prodigal would say to his steady-going, sober elder, “You say he is not your brother; but he is mine, he is my brother wanderer.”  “Oh, come in then,” the elder brother would retort; “but you must do some work—­we can’t encourage laziness.  You may have shelter and food, but to-morrow you must work with us in the fields till midday.”

This counsel of the elder brother has endured, and is accounted wise.  But this type of hospitality is not of that sort that was rewarded, say, in Eager Heart.  It is scarcely what the writer to the Hebrews intended when he said, “Let brotherly love continue.  Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:  for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”  Of those who wander about the world there are many ordinary men who would be ready to do a morning’s work for their board, but there are also gods in disguise.  There are mysterious spirits who cannot reveal the necessities of their fate; souls whom if we could recognise in their celestial guise we should worship, falling down at their feet with the humility of the cry, “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.”