Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873), scientist and pioneer hydrographer, 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.” - Physical Geography of the Sea. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 310.

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.” - Henry M. Morris, Men of Science - Men of God (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, Creation Life Publishers, Inc., 1990), p. 49.