Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt.

 

[Old Thunder]

From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.

 

[Old Thunder]

Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; the pulpit is its prow.

I knew this story would come back eventually.

Did you really?

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; the pulpit is its prow.


Did you really?

Yes really.

 

[Old Thunder]

CHAPTER IX.
The Sermon.
​

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense.

 

[Old Thunder]

"Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard -- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.