[by:¿É¿ÉÓ¢Óï¡«www.utensil-race.com]
[00:01.17] CHAPTER 9.The Sermon.
[00:04.45] Father Mapple rose,and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense.
[00:11.54] Starboard gangway,there!side away to larboard larboard gangway to starboard!Midships!midships!
[00:16.27] There was a low rumbling of heavy sea boots among the benches,and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes,
[00:26.57] and all was quiet again,and every eye on the preacher.
[00:30.49] He paused a little;then kneeling in the pulpit's bows,folded his large brown hands across his chest,uplifted his closed eyes,
[00:39.59] and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
[00:46.29] This ended,in prolonged solemn tones,like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn;
[00:58.44] but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas,burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy
[01:06.26] The ribs and terrors in the whale,
[01:08.23] Arched over me a dismal gloom,
[01:10.45] While all God's sun lit waves rolled by,
[01:13.34] And lift me deepening down to doom.
[01:16.25] I saw the opening maw of hell,
[01:18.25] With endless pains and sorrows there;
[01:21.00] Which none but they that feel can tell
[01:23.17] Oh,I was plunging to despair.
[01:25.53] In black distress,I called my God,
[01:28.20] When I could scarce believe him mine,
[01:30.49] He bowed his ear to my complaints
[01:32.56] No more the whale did me confine.
[01:35.41] With speed he flew to my relief,
[01:37.56] As on a radiant dolphin borne;
[01:40.33] Awful,yet bright,as lightning shone
[01:42.58] The face of my Deliverer God.
[01:45.43] My song for ever shall record
[01:47.38] That terrible,that joyful hour;
[01:50.16] I give the glory to my God,
[01:52.44] His all the mercy and the power.
[01:57.59] Nearly all joined in singing this hymn,which swelled high above the howling of the storm.A brief pause ensued;the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible,
[02:08.41] and at last,folding his hand down upon the proper page,said:Beloved shipmates,clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah ' And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.'
[02:23.29] Shipmates,this book,containing only four chapters four yarns is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.
[02:32.40] Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound!what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet!What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly!
[02:44.33] How billow like and boisterously grand!We feel the floods surging over us;we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
[02:53.23] sea weed and all the slime of the sea is about us!But WHAT is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?Shipmates,it is a two stranded lesson;
[03:03.38] a lesson to us all as sinful men,and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God.