Melville,
Herman, 1819-1891. Moby-Dick, or, The Whale Electronic
Text Center, University of Virginia Library
Freely
available for non-commercial use provided that this header is
included in its entirety with any copy distributed
1993
Note:
(OTA 1993)This text of Melville's Moby-Dick is based on the Hendricks
House edition. It was prepared by Professor Eugene F. Irey at the
University of Colorado. Any subsequent copies of this data must
include this notice and any publications resulting from analysis of
this data must include reference to Professor Irey's work.
Note:
(UVA 1996) The electronic text does not follow the Hendricks House
edition exactly. The source for a biographical note which has been
added to the front matter is unclear. Pagination is consistent with
the Hendricks House Edition.
Being
a Chaplain, I am quite certain Father Mapple is a Chaplain. A
Chaplain wrote this not Herman
Melville.
I continue to have my Jonah experiences as well as Pauline
experiences. When I read it I cried and could not finish the book. I
can't even watch the movie anymore. I had to put this sermon on my
blog. I couldn't say it better. You know like some songs?
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, 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.
