CHAPTER 8
The Pulpit
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the
famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a
very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but
for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now
write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that
sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for
among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a
newly developing bloom— the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath
February’s snow. No one having previously heard his history, could for the
first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there
were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that
adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he
carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket
seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed,
and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a
decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it
seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit
without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in
mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had
provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this
ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany
color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was,
seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the
ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-
ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like
but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if
ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood,
so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it
had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the
present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father
Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the
pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was
deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity,
that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the
stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing;
furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by
that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the
time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished
with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I
see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a
perennial well of water within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was
adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a
terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high
above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of
sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s face; and this bright face shed
a distant spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like that
silver plate now inserted into the Victory’s plank where Nelson fell. “Ah,
noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and
bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling
off— serenest azure is at hand.”
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.
