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_ Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority
ordered the scattered people to condense. "Starboard 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.'"
"Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is
one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.
Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a
pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that
canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously
grand! We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the
kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is
about us! But WHAT is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?
Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful
men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men,
it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin,
hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment,
repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah.
As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in
his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never mind now what
that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard command.
But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to
do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors
to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it
is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God
consists.
"With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men
will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the
Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and
seeks a ship that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a
hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have
been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of
learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as
far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in
those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea.
Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly
coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more
than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the
Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought
to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible
and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking
from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar
hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his
look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere
suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a
deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box,
valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf with
their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps
on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the
moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil
eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and
confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of
the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome
but still serious way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed
a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry
lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or
belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to
read the bill that's stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which
the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the
apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description of his
person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his
sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their
hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his
boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will
not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion.
So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be
the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into
the cabin.
"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee
again. But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish;
how soon sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up
to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he
hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We
sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still
intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest
man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he
swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with
ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.'
For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not
to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere
the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of
meaning.
"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely,
and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at
all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of
Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the
usual sum; and it's assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah
is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that
paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse,
prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to
find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is
put down for his passage. 'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah
now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.' 'Thou lookest like it,' says
the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah enters, and would lock the
door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something
about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked
within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into
his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on
his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that
contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the
whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the
wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and
all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity
with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight
itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it
hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his
tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful
fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that
contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the
ceiling, and the side, are all awry. 'Oh! so my conscience hangs in
me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of
my soul are all in crookedness!'
"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of
the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into
him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in
giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed;
and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over
him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the
wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in
his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning
down to sleep.
"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables;
and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all
careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of
recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he
will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the
ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to
lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard;
when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank
thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this
raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky
and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or
heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open
mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone
down into the sides of the ship--a berth in the cabin as I have taken
it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and
shrieks in his dead ear, 'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!'
Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his
feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon
the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow
leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship,
and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the
mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the
white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the
blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing
high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.
"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The
sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him,
and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter
to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose
cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that
discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions.
'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What
people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The
eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they
not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another
answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is
forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of
Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah?
Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN! Straightway, he now
goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more
and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet
supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness
of his deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him
and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this
great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek
by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale
howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the
other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;
when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea
is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a
masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops
seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to
all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then
Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his
prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does
not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful
punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting
himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will
still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and
faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for
punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is
shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale.
Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin
but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not;
but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."
While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed
the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from
off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all
his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to
them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the
leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with
closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head
lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake
these words:
"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson
that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still
more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly
would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there
where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads
ME that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a
pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or
speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those
unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at
the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to
escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is
everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came
upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of
doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the
seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down,
and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the watery world
of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any
plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon the
ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting
prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the
shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up
towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and
earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of
the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten--his ears,
like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the
ocean--Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that,
shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was
it!
"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms
from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters
when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please
rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than
goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe
to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching
to others is himself a castaway!"
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out
with a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard
hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of
that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the
main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him--a far,
far upward, and inward delight--who against the proud gods and
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of
this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to
him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of
Senators and Judges. Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who
acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a
patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the
billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this
sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be
his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath--O
Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal, here I
die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or
mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what
is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face
with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had
departed, and he was left alone in the place. _
Read next: CHAPTER 10 A Bosom Friend.
Read previous: CHAPTER 8 The Pulpit.
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