38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CHAPLAIN AND CHAPEL IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
The next day was Sunday; a fact set down in the almanae,
spite of merchant seamen's maxim, that there are no
Sundays off soundings.
No Sundays off soundings, indeed! No Sundays on
shipboard! You may as well say there should be no Sundays
in churches; for is not a ship modeled after a church?
has it not three spires—three steeples? yea, and on the gun-deck,
a bell and a belfry? And does not that bell merrily
peal every Sunday morning, to summon the crew to devotions?
At any rate, there were Sundays on board this particular
frigate of ours, and a clergyman also. He was a slender,
middle-aged man, of an amiable deportment and irreproachable
conversation; but I must say, that his sermons were but
ill calculated to benefit the crew. He had drank at the
mystic fountain of Plato; his head had been turned by the
Germans; and this I will say, that White-Jacket himself
saw him with Coleridge's Biographia Literaria in his hand.
Fancy, now, this transcendental divine standing behind a
gun-carriage on the main-deck, and addressing five hundred
salt-sea sinners upon the psychological phenomena of the
soul, and the ontological necessity of every sailor's saving it
at all hazards. He enlarged upon the follies of the ancient
philosophers; learnedly alluded to the Phædon of Plato; exposed
the follies of Simplicius's Commentary on Aristotle's
“De Cælo,” by arraying against that clever Pagan author
the admired tract of Tertullian—De Præscriptionibus Hæ
reticorum—and concluded by a Sanscrit invocation. He was
particularly hard upon the Gnostics and Marcionites of the
second century of the Christian era; but he never, in the
remotest manner, attacked the every-day vices of the nineteenth
century, as eminently illustrated in our man-of-war
world. Concerning drunkenness, fighting, flogging, and oppression—things
expressly or impliedly prohibited by Christianity—he
never said aught. But the most mighty Commodore
and Captain sat before him; and in general, if, in a
monarchy, the state form the audience of the church, little
evangelical piety will be preached. Hence, the harmless,
non-committal abstrusities of our Chaplain were not to be
wondered at. He was no Massillon, to thunder forth his
ecclesiastical rhetoric, even when a Louis le Grand was enthroned
among his congregation. Nor did the chaplains who
preached on the quarter-deck of Lord Nelson ever allude to
the guilty Felix, nor to Delilah, nor practically reason of
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, when that
renowned Admiral sat, sword-belted, before them.
During these Sunday discourses, the officers always sat in a
circle round the chaplain, and, with a business-like air, steadily
preserved the utmost propriety. In particular, our old
Commodore himself made a point of looking intensely edified;
and not a sailor on board but believed that the Commodore,
being the greatest man present, must alone comprehend the
mystic sentences that fell from our parson's lips.
Of all the noble lords in the ward-room, this lord-spiritual,
with the exception of the Purser, was in the highest favor
with the Commodore, who frequently conversed with him in
a close and confidential manner. Nor, upon reflection, was
this to be marveled at, seeing how efficacious, in all despotic
governments, it is for the throne and altar to go hand-in-hand.
The accommodations of our chapel were very poor. We
had nothing to sit on but the great gun-rammers and capstan-bars,
placed horizontally upon shot-boxes. These seats were
exceedingly uncomfortable, wearing out our trowsers and our
tempers, and, no doubt, impeded the conversion of many valuable
souls.
To say the truth, man-of-war's-men, in general, make but
poor auditors upon these occasions, and adopt every possible
means to elude them. Often the boatswain's-mates were
obliged to drive the men to service, violently swearing upon
these occasions, as upon every other.
“Go to prayers, d—n you! To prayers, you rascals—to
prayers!” In this clerical invitation Captain Claret would
frequently unite.
At this Jack Chase would sometimes make merry. “Come,
boys, don't hang back,” he would say; “come, let us go hear
the parson talk about his Lord High Admiral Plato, and Commodore
Socrates.”
But, in one instance, grave exception was taken to this
summons. A remarkably serious, but bigoted seaman, a sheet-anchor-man—whose
private devotions may hereafter be alluded
to—once touched his hat to the Captain, and respectfully
said, “Sir, I am a Baptist; the chaplain is an Episcopalian;
his form of worship is not mine; I do not believe with him,
and it is against my conscience to be under his ministry.
May I be allowed, sir, not to attend service on the half-deck?”
“You will be allowed, sir!” said the Captain, haughtily,
“to obey the laws of the ship. If you absent yourself from
prayers on Sunday mornings, you know the penalty.”
According to the Articles of War, the Captain was perfectly
right; but if any law requiring an American to attend
divine service against his will be a law respecting the establishment
of religion, then the Articles of War are, in this one
particular, opposed to the American Constitution, which expressly
says, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment
of religion, or the free exercise thereof.” But this is
only one of several things in which the Articles of War are
repugnant to that instrument. They will be glanced at in another
part of the narrative.
The motive which prompts the introduction of chaplains
into the Navy can not but be warmly responded to by every
Christian. But it does not follow, that because chaplains
are to be found in men-of-war, that, under the present system,
they achieve much good, or that, under any other, they
ever will.
How can it be expected that the religion of peace should
flourish in an oaken castle of war? How can it be expected
that the clergyman, whose pulpit is a forty-two-pounder, should
convert sinners to a faith that enjoins them to turn the right
cheek when the left is smitten? How is it to be expected
that when, according to the XLII. of the Articles of War,
as they now stand unrepealed on the Statute Book, “a bounty
shall be paid” (to the officers and crew) “by the United States
government of $20 for each person on board any ship of an
enemy which shall be sunk or destroyed by any United States
ship;” and when, by a subsequent section (vii.), it is provided,
among other apportionings, that the chaplain shall receive
“two twentieths” of this price paid for sinking and destroying
ships full of human beings? How is it to be expected
that a clergyman, thus provided for, should prove efficacious
in enlarging upon the criminality of Judas, who, for thirty
pieces of silver, betrayed his Master?
Although, by the regulations of the Navy, each seaman's
mess on board the Neversink was furnished with a Bible, these
Bibles were seldom or never to be seen, except on Sunday
mornings, when usage demands that they shall be exhibited
by the cooks of the messes, when the master-at-arms goes his
rounds on the berth-deck. At such times, they usually surmounted
a highly polished tin-pot placed on the lid of the
chest.
Yet, for all this, the Christianity of man-of-war's-men, and
their disposition to contribute to pious enterprises, are often
relied upon. Several times subscription papers were circulated
among the crew of the Neversink, while in harbor, under
the direct patronage of the Chaplain. One was for the purpose
of building a seaman's chapel in China; another to pay
the salary of a tract-distributor in Greece; a third to raise
a fund for the benefit of an African Colonization Society.
Where the Captain himself is a moral man, he makes a
far better chaplain for his crew than any clergyman can be.
This is sometimes illustrated in the case of sloops of war and
armed brigs, which are not allowed a regular chaplain. I
have known one crew, who were warmly attached to a naval
commander worthy of their love, who have mustered even
with alacrity to the call to prayer; and when their Captain
would read the Church of England service to them, would
present a congregation not to be surpassed for earnestness and
devotion by any Scottish Kirk. It seemed like family devotions,
where the head of the house is foremost in confessing
himself before his Maker. But our own hearts are our best
prayer-rooms, and the chaplains who can most help us are ourselves.
