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1Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. "Starboard
2gangway, there! side away to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!" There was a low rumbling of
3heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every
4eye on the preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his
5chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom
6of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at
7sea in a fog--in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding
8stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy-- "The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal
9gloom, While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. "I saw the opening maw of hell, With
10endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell-- Oh, I was plunging to despair. "In black
11distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints-- No more the whale
12did me confine. "With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
13The face of my Deliverer God. "My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my
14God, His all the mercy and the power." Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the howling of
15the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand
16down upon the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah--'And God had
17prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.'" "Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is one of
18the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound!
19what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like
20and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
21sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it
22is 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
23men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift
24punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of
25this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never mind now what that command was, or how
26conveyed--which he found a hard command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember
27that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and
28it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. "With this sin of disobedience in him,
29Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into
30countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks
31a ship that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could
32have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz
33is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic
34was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the
35Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside
36the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh!
37most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the
38shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there
39been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck.
40How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf
41with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo;
42and as he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the
43goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain
44essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but
45still serious way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;"
46or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from
47Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored,
48offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description of his person. He
49reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay
50their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a
51coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when
52the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin. "'Who's
53there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that
54harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in
55this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man now
56stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the
57next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest
58man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. 'I'll
59sail with ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.' For it is particularly written,
60shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did
61sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
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