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.
