Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same
sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture.
Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s
bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting
piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s
fiddle-headed beak.
What could be more full of meaning?—for
the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part;
all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the
world. From thence it is the storm of God’s
quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear
the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God
of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable
winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage
out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is
its prow.
The Sermon
Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming
authority ordered the scattered people to condense.
“Star board gangway, there! side away to larboard—larboard
gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!”
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among
the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women’s
shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the
preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s
bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest,
uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so
deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying
at the bottom of the sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual
tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea
in a fog— in such tones he commenced reading
the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing
exultation and joy—
The ribs and terrors in the
whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled
by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.
I saw the opening maw of
hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
In black distress, I called
my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
No more the whale did me confine.
With speed he flew to my
relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.
Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled
high above the howling of the storm. A brief
pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the
leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand
down upon the proper page, said: “Beloved
shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter
of Jonah—’And God had prepared a great
fish to swallow up Jonah.’”
