英语听书《白鲸记》第30期

  CHAPTER 9.The Sermon. 

 Father Mapple rose,and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered 1 people to condense. 
 Starboard gangway,there!side away to larboard larboard gangway to starboard!Midships!midships! 
 There was a low rumbling 2 of heavy sea boots among the benches,and a still slighter shuffling 3 of women's shoes, 
 and all was quiet again,and every eye on the preacher. 
 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 4 that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. 
 This ended,in prolonged solemn tones,like the continual tolling 5 of a bell in a ship that is foundering 6 at sea in a fog in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; 
 but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas,burst forth 7 with a pealing 8 exultation 9 and joy 
 The ribs 10 and terrors in the whale, 
 Arched over me a dismal 11 gloom, 
 While all God's sun lit waves rolled by, 
 And lift me deepening down to doom 12. 
 I saw the opening maw of hell, 
 With endless pains and sorrows there; 
 Which none but they that feel can tell 
 Oh,I was plunging 13 to despair. 
 In black distress,I called my God, 
 When I could scarce believe him mine, 
 He bowed his ear to my complaints 
 No more the whale did me confine. 
 With speed he flew to my relief, 
 As on a radiant dolphin borne; 
 Awful,yet bright,as lightning shone 
 The face of my Deliverer God. 
 My song for ever shall record 
 That terrible,that joyful 14 hour; 
 I give the glory to my God, 
 His all the mercy and the power. 
 Nearly all joined in singing this hymn,which swelled 15 high above the howling of the storm.A brief pause ensued;the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, 
 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.' 
 Shipmates,this book,containing only four chapters four yarns 16 is one of the smallest strands 17 in the mighty 18 cable of the Scriptures 19. 
 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 20! 
 How billow like and boisterously 21 grand!We feel the floods surging over us;we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; 
 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 22 lesson; 
 a lesson to us all as sinful men,and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God.