Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Preaching Truth to Falsehood

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, God heard the engulfed, repenting prophet when he cried. God spake unto the fish, and the whale came breaching up toward the warm and pleasant sun, vomiting out Jonah upon the dry land. When the word of the Lord came a second time, Jonah, bruised and beaten, his ears still murmuring of the ocean like sea-shells, did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that bidding? Father Mapple concludes: to preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it.

第九章 The Sermon.

The sermoner begins with a fierce litany of woes directed at any pilot of the living God who neglects gospel duty, who would pour oil on waters God has brewed into a gale, who values his good name above true goodness, or who, like the great Pilot Paul, preaches to others while being himself a castaway. Lifting his face with a deep joy, he then cries out that on the starboard hand of every woe there is a sure delight, a far upward and inward gladness reserved for the man who, against the proud gods and commodores of the earth, stands forth his own inexorable self, acknowledges no law or lord but the Lord his God, and can never be shaken from the sure Keel of the Ages by the billows of the boisterous mob. Concluding his prayer, the preacher yields his soul to the Father, preferring to be Thine rather than this world’s or his own, and then slowly waves a benediction, covers his face with his hands, and remains kneeling alone in the empty place long after the congregation has departed.