.. < chapter ix 23  THE SERMON >


     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,

.. <p 40 >

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

.. <p 41 >

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

.. <p 42 >

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

.. <p 43 >

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 look'st 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 bowel's 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

.. <p 44 >

more appals him.  The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.  "Oh!  so

my conscience hangs in me!" he groans, "straight upward, 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

.. <p 45 >

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

.. <p 46 >

awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like the Lord out

of the fish's belly.  But observe his prayer, and so many white bolts, upon

his prison.  Then Jonah prayed unto 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

.. <p 47 >

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 dishonor!  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 drooped 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

.. <p 48 >

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.

.. <p 48 >

