Matthew Fontaine Maury (January 14, 1806-February 1, 1873) was a scientist and pioneer hydrographer. He was known as the "Pathfinder of the Seas" for having charted the sea and wind currents while serving in the U.S. Navy.
Considered the founder of modern hydrography and oceanography, he was Professor of Meteorology at Virginia Military Institute.
In his book Physical Geography of the Sea, 1855, Matthew Maury wrote:
<I have always found in my scientific studies, that, when I could get the Bible to say anything on the subject it afforded me a firm platform to stand upon, and a round in the ladder by which I could safely ascend.
As our knowledge of nature and her laws has increased, so has our knowledge of many passages of the Bible improved.
The Bible called the earth "the round world," yet for ages it was the
most damnable heresy for Christian men to say that the world is round; and, finally, sailors circumnavigated the globe, and proved the Bible to be right, and saved Christian men of science from the stake.
And as for the general system of circulation which I have been so long endeavoring to describe, the Bible tells it all in a single sentence: "The wind goeth toward the South and returneth again to his circuits."> 1806MM001
Engraved on his tombstone at the U.S. Naval Academy is the verse from Psalm 8 which had inspired him all his life:
<Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.> 1806MM002 Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval
Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), in which he wrote:
<Maury's father, having observed that his own father had been too stern with his children, treated his large family with considerable indulgence; yet he was strict as to their religious training in the home and gathered the children together morning and night each day to read the Psalter antiphonally. In this way Matthew became so familiar with the Psalms of David that years afterward he could give a quotation and cite chapter and verse as though he had the Bible before him. This early religious influence later colored all Maury's thinking and writing to a very marked degree. His mother, who was known as a woman of great decision of character, endowed her son with this same quality which is so essential to greatness; while her husband passed on to Matthew much of his amiability and ingenuousness for which he was greatly liked throughout the neighborhood.> 1806MM003
<Among the numerous addresses which he delivered during the decade preceding the Civil War, the most eloquent and significant was the one given on October 10, 1860, at the laying of the corner stone of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.
For this occasion there were assembled eight bishops, two hundred presbyters, and five thousand people. In introducing Maury, Bishop Otey, his old teacher and friend, referred to him as a distinguished fellow-citizen, whose labors in the cause of science have crowned his name with honor throughout the world and made him, in a manner, the property of all the nations, for the winds of Heaven and the waves of the sea had been made tributary by him to increasing the facilities of trade to every land and on every sea where commerce spreads her sails.
Maury's address, which is quoted in its entirety as an example of his oratorical power, was as follows:
"Ladies and Gentlemen: This greeting and the terms in which my old preceptor and early friend has brought me into this presence fill me with
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emotions difficult to utter. I thank you for your goodness.
Physical geography makes the whole world kin. Of all the departments in the domains of physical science, it is the most Christianizing. Astronomy is grand and sublime; but astronomy overpowers with its infinities, overwhelms with its immensities. Physical geography charms with its wonders, and delights with the benignity of its economy. Astronomy ignores the existence of man; physical geography confesses that existence, and is based on the Biblical doctrine that the earth was made for man. Upon no other theory can it be studied; upon no other theory can its phenomena be reconciled.
The astronomer computes an ephemeris for his comets; predicts their return; tells the masses of the planets, and measures by figures the distance of the stars. But whether stars, planets, or comets be peopled or not is in his arguments, theories, and calculations of no consequence whatever. He regards the light and heat of the sun as emanations — forces to guide the planets in their orbits, and light comets in their flight —nothing more. But the physical geographer, when he warms himself by the coal fire in winter, or studies by the light of the gas burner at night, recognizes in the light and heat which he then enjoys the identical light and heat which ages ago came from the sun, and which with provident care and hands benignant have been bottled away in the shape of a mineral and stored in the bowels of the earth for man's use, thence to be taken at his convenience, and liberated at will for his manifold purposes.
Here, in the schools which are soon to be opened, within the walls of this institution which we are preparing to establish in this wood, and the corner stone of which has just been laid, the masters of this newly ordained science will teach our sons to regard some of the commonest things as the most important agents in the physical economy of our planet. They are also mighty ministers of the Creator. Take this water" (holding up a glassful) and ask the student of physical geography to explain a portion only of its multitudinous offices in helping to make the earth fit for man's habitation. He may recognize in it a drop of the very same which watered the Garden of Eden when Adam was there.
Escaping thence through the veins of the earth into the rivers, it reached the sea; passing along its channels of circulation, it was conveyed far away by its currents to those springs in the ocean which feed the winds with vapor for rains among these mountains; taking up the heat in these southern climes, where otherwise it would become excessive, it bottles it away in its own little vesicles.
These are invisible; but rendering the heat latent and innocuous, they pass like sightless couriers of the air through their appointed channels, and arrive here in the upper sky. This mountain draws the heat from them; they are formed into clouds and condensed into rain, which, coming to the earth, make it 'soft with showers', causing the trees of the field to clap their hands, the valleys to shout, and the mountains to sing. Thus the earth is made to yield her increase, and the heart of man is glad.
Nor does the office of this cup of water in the physical economy end here. It has brought heat from the sea in the southern hemisphere to be set free here for the regulation of our climates; it has ministered to the green plants, and
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given meat and drink to man and beast. It has now to cater among the rocks for the fish and insects of the sea. Eating away your mountains, it fills up the valleys, and then, loaded with lime and salts of various minerals, it goes singing and dancing and leaping back to the sea, owning man by the way as a taskmaster
— turning mills, driving machinery, transporting merchandise for him - and finally reaching the ocean. It there joins the currents to be conveyed to its appointed place, which it never fails to reach in due time, with food in due quantities for the inhabitants of the deep, and with materials of the right kind to be elaborated in the workshops of the sea into pearls, corals, and islands — all for man's use.
Thus the right-minded student of this science is brought to recognize in the dewdrop the materials of which He who 'walketh upon the wings of the wind' maketh His chariot. He also discovers in the raindrop a clue by which the Christian philosopher may be conducted into the very chambers from which the hills are watered.
I have been blamed by men of science, both in this country and in England, for quoting the Bible in confirmation of the doctrines of physical geography. The Bible, they say, was not written for scientific purposes, and is therefore of no authority in matters of science. I beg pardon! The Bible is authority for everything it touches. What would you think of the historian who should refuse to consult the historical records of the Bible, because the Bible was not written for the purposes of history? The Bible is true and science is true. The agents concerned in the physical economy of our planet are ministers of His who made both it and the Bible. The records which He has chosen to make through the agency of these ministers of His upon the crust of the earth are as true as the records which, by the hands of His prophets and servants. He has been pleased to make in the Book of Life. They are both true; and when your men of science, with vain and hasty conceit, announce the discovery of disagreement between them, rely upon it the fault is not with the Witness or His records, but with the 'worm' who essays to interpret evidence which he does not understand.
When I, a pioneer in one department of this beautiful science, discover the truths of revelation and the truths of science reflecting light one upon the other and each sustaining the other, how can I, as a truth-loving, knowledge- seeking man, fail to point out the beauty and to rejoice in its discovery?
Reticence on such an occasion would be sin, and were I to suppress the emotion with which such discoveries ought to stir the soul, the waves of the sea would lift up their voice, and the very stones of the earth cry out against me.
As a student of physical geography, I regard the earth, sea, air, and water, as parts of a machine, pieces of mechanism not made with hands, but to which nevertheless certain offices have been assigned in the terrestrial economy. It is good and profitable to seek to find out these offices, and point them out to our fellows; and when, after patient research, I am led to the discovery of any one of them, I feel with the astronomer of old as though I had 'thought one of God's thoughts' — and tremble. Thus as we progress with our science we are
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permitted now and then to point out here and there in the physical machinery of the earth a design of the Great Architect when He planned it all.
Take the little nautili. Where do the fragile creatures go? What directing hand guides them from sea to sea? What breeze fills the violet sails of their frail little craft, and by whose skill is it enabled to brave the sea and defy the fury of the gale? What mysterious compass directs the flotilla of these delicate and graceful argonauts? Coming down from the Indian Ocean, and arriving off the stormy cape, they separate — the one part steering for the Pacific, the other for the Atlantic Ocean.
Soon the ephemeral life that animates these tiny navigators will be extinct; but the same power which cared for them in life now guides them in death, for though dead their task in the physical economy of our planet is not finished, nor have they ceased to afford instruction in philosophy. The frail shell is now to be drawn to distant seas by the lower currents. Like the leaf carried through the air by the wind, the lifeless remains descend from depth to depth by an insensible fall even to the appointed burial place on the bottom of the deep; there to be collected into heaps and gathered into beds which at some day are to appear above the surface a storehouse rich with fertilizing ingredients for man's use. Some day science will sound the depth to which this dead shell has fallen, and the little creature will perhaps afford solution for a problem a long time unsolved; for it may be the means of revealing the existence of the submarine currents that have carried it off, and of enabling the physical geographer to trace out the secret paths of the sea.
Had I time, I might show how mountains, deserts, winds, and water, when treated by this beautiful science, all join in one universal harmony — for each one has its part to perform in the great concert of nature.
The Church, ere physical geography had yet attained to the dignity of a science in our schools, and even before man had endowed it with a name, saw and appreciated its dignity, — the virtue of its chief agents. What have we heard chanted here in this grove by a thousand voices this morning? — A song of praise, such as these hills have not heard since the morning stars sang together:
— the Benedicite of our Mother Church, invoking the very agents whose workings and offices it is the business of the physical geographer to study and point out! In her services she teaches her children in their songs of praise to call upon certain physical agents, principals, in this newly established department of human knowledge, — upon the waters above the firmament; upon showers and dew; wind, fire, and heat; winter and summer; frost and cold; ice and snow; night and day; light and darkness; lightning and clouds; mountains and hills; green things, trees, and plants; whales, and all things that move in the waters; fowls of the air, with beasts and cattle, — to bless, praise, and magnify the Lord.
To reveal to man the offices of these agents in making the earth his fit dwelling place is the object of physical geography. Said I not well that of all the sciences physical geography is the most Christianizing in its influences?> 1806MM004
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<He delivered ten other lectures in Massachusetts and New York...at Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo...On his next lecture tour, during November and December, 1858, Maury...traveled some five thousand miles and delivered twenty-five lectures, at the following places: Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Indianapolis, Laporte, Cincinnati, Springfield, and St. Louis...The following autumn, however, he was lecturing again, this time in Alabama and Tennessee.> 1806MM005
<During his long illness, the strength of his Christian faith displayed itself, and he became wholly resigned to the inevitable. Job had always been his favorite book in the Bible; and the 130th Psalm, which he called "De Profundis" and which was sung at Luther's funeral amid the tears of the people, was read to him, at his request, many times during his last days. He was greatly comforted by a week's visit which his brother-in-law. Dr. Brodie S. Herndon of Savannah, made him in the December preceding his death. And towards the end he sent sincere farewell messages to Commodore Jansen in Holland, whom he had loved for many years as a brother, and also to Dr. Tremlett who had brightened with his friendship the desolate years of his exile in England and had influenced him to enter the communion of the Church. A few days before his death he dismissed his physicians, saying,
"Don't come to see me any more; leave me to the great Physician."
He derived his greatest consolation and satisfaction from having his family about him, for whom he had always shown throughout his life the tenderest affections of a devoted father and husband. As he talked to them, there would come flashes of his quaint playful humor that had always been so characteristic of him; and he requested that there be no weeping in his presence. He rejoiced in being able to recognize all his family to the end.
"You see", said he, "how God has answered my prayers, for I know you every one. ... I shall retain my senses to the last. God has granted me that as a
token of my acceptance. I have set my house in order, my prayers have all been answered, my children are gathered round my bed — and now Lord, what wait I for?"
Then he would repeat the prayer which he had composed thirty years before when his leg was broken, and which he had repeated in his daily devotions ever since:
"Lord Jesus, thou Son of God and Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon me! Pardon my offenses, and teach me the error of my ways; give me a new heart and a right mind. Teach me and all mine to do Thy will, and in all things to keep Thy law. Teach me also to ask those things necessary for eternal life. Lord, pardon me for all my sins, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."
On the evening before his death, the family sang for him verses from his favorite hymn, "Christ Is Risen", which he called "Pass over Jordan", and also from "How Firm a Foundation". After the singing he said so that all could hear, "The peace of God which passeth all understanding be with you all — all!"
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Toward the end he inquired of his son Richard, "Are my feet growing cold? Do I drag my anchors?" Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he said, "All's well."
About fifteen minutes before he died, his wife and daughters were requested by him to leave the room, and he was left with his two sons and two sons-in-law. At 12.40 P.M., on Saturday, February 1, 1873, his life came to a close.
The body lay in state in the hall of the Library of Virginia Military Institute from four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday until Wednesday. The gallery round the hall was festooned with black, a large anchor and a cross of evergreens being placed at alternate angles; while the columns were draped spirally. The wall was covered with maps constructed under Maury's supervision, and on opposite sides of the gallery were placed two heavily draped flags, the one being that of his native state Virginia, and the other that of his adopted state Tennessee. In the center of the hall rested the bier, bearing his body, with his breast covered with the foreign orders that had been conferred upon him, and with a gentle smile on his face. Near the bier stood a large globe bearing this appropriate inscription: "The whole world is mourning for Maury". A funeral service was held in the hall on Wednesday about noon, by the Reverend William Pendleton, D. D. of Grace Church, after which the coffin, attended by the cadet battalion and the faculty of Virginia Military Institute and the professors and students of Washington and Lee University^ and the citizens of Lexington, was 'This was the name given to Washington College in 1871 after the death of General Lee on October 12, 1870.> 1806MM006
The opening stanzas of "Through the Pass" by Margaret J. Preston:
<”Home, bear me home, at last", he said, "And lay me where your dead are lying; But not while skies are overspread,
And mournful wintry winds are sighing !
Wait till the royal march of spring Carpets the mountain fastness over — Till chattering birds are on the wing,
And buzzing bees are in the clover. Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, And creeping ivy flings its graces
About the lichened rocks — and floods Of sunshine fill the shady places.
Then, when the sky, the air, the grass, Sweet nature all, is glad and tender —
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Then bear me through the Goshen Pass,
Amid the hush of May-day splendor."> 1806MM007
The following is a portion of Miss Virginia Lee Cox's description of the Maury Monument in Richmond, Virginia (From "Library of Southern Literature", VIII, 3440):
<It is a marvelous conception of the man who was admired as the 'Pathfinder of the Seas,' and beloved for his humanity. Just how wonderful it is, is proved in the words of Commodore Maury's own daughter, Mrs. James R. Werth, who, when she saw the finished figure of Mr. Sievers' skill, said: 'I feel as if I am sitting in the presence of my father in flesh, blood, and spirit; I feel as if I could put my arms around his neck as I did when I was a little girl.'
The sculptor has portrayed Maury in a reminiscent attitude, listening to the voice of the storm. It has been said of him that the voice of the wind and waves was music to his ears and Mr. Sievers, with fine sympathy and originality, built on much study of the man, has succeeded in showing this.
Above the figure of Maury, which is seated in a great chair, there is a group of figures which supports the globe. The figures represent a storm on land and sea. At one corner of the monument is an ox around which cluster the windswept figures of the farmer and his household, driven before the fury of the storm.
At the other corner is an overturned boat and figures of women and sailors, drenched in the thundering waves of the sea. The group embraces a symbolization of the world and its natural elements. Through the allegorization three of Maury's outstanding achievements are brought well to the foreground
— meteorology, hydrography, and geography.
The storm is a meteorological disturbance, and the capsized lifeboat with its occupants amid the rolling waves is symbolic of ocean meteorology, a branch of hydrography, symbolized also in the "paths of the sea" on the globe, that naturally represent geography.
On the plinth of the monument in the flattest relief are figures of fish, representing Maury's interest in the paths of the sea. The story goes that once when Maury was ill he had his son read the Bible to him each night. One night he read the eighth Psalm, and when he came to the passage — 'The fishes of the sea and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the sea' — Maury had him read it over several times. Finally he said, 'If God says there are paths in the sea I am going to find them if I get out of this bed.' Thus the Psalm was the direct inspiration for his discoveries.'
Mr. Sievers has shown Maury in a reminiscent mood, representing him at that period of his life when he had achieved his greatest discoveries. In his right hand are the pencil and the compass, and in his left hand a chart. Against his chair is the Bible, from which he drew inspiration for his explorations. The sculptor has caught amazingly the spirit of the man.-From The Richmond Times, Virginia.> 1806MM008
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1806MM001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury, Physical Geography of the Sea. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 310.
1806MM002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Henry M. Morris, Men of Science-men of God (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, Creation Life Publishers, Inc., 1990), p. 49.
1806MM003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), p. 4.
1806MM004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), p. 96. In Memoriam, Matthew Fontaine Maury, LL.D. 1873. Proceedings of the Academic Board of the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va., on the occasion of the Death of Commodore M.F. Maury, LL.D., Professor of Physics, in the Virginia Military Institute, pp.21-22. Matthew Fontaine Maury, Physical Geography of the Sea, p.403. Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Psalm 8:8. Matthew Fontaine Maury, Physical Geography of the Sea, pp.295-296. Matthew Fontaine Maury address at the laying of the corner-stone of the University of the South, on Swanee Mountain in East Tennessee. Cited in Corbin, Diane Fontaine Maury, 1888, A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN & CSN, compiled by his daughter. Sampson & Low & Co.
1806MM005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927).
1806MM006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), p. 237-241.
1806MM007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), p. 237-241.
1806MM008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Matthew Fontaine Maury. Miss Virgiaia Lee Cox's description of the Maury Monument in Richmond, Virginia, from "Library of Southern Literature", VIII, 3440. Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy, wrote Matthew Fontaine Maury-The Pathfinder of the Seas (published by the United States Naval Institute, 1927), p. 251.