VII

A GOOD WIFE AND A GALLANT SHIP

I

Why is a good wife like a gallant ship? This is not a riddle; it is a sincere and earnest inquiry. An ancient philosopher in the East and a modern poet in the West have both remarked upon the resemblance between the two. Solomon spent nearly half his life thinking about ships. He was the only Jewish king who felt much enthusiasm for maritime affairs. Solomon reminds me of Peter the Great. Those who have perused Waliszewski’s biography of that monarch are scarcely likely to forget the passage in which the historian describes the finding, by the boy Peter, of the broken boat. It was only an old, half-rotten wooden skiff, thrown to the scrap-heap with some useless lumber in the little village of Ismailof; but, captivating the boy’s fancy, and stirring his imagination, he could not take his eyes from it. It changed the whole current of his life. He is destined to rule over a great continental people who have no access to the sea. Yet, from that day, he dreams of nothing but brave ships and romantic voyages. He comes to England to learn shipbuilding. He returns to Russia and builds useless navies. He claps his hands in delirious ecstasy as he launches his huge toys on his inland lakes. He is like a caged eagle; the passion of the infinite throbs in his veins, yet he is cribbed, cabined, and confined in this cruel way!

   Solomon was in a very similar case. He ruled over a people who regarded the sea with distrust and disdain. Yet he himself heard in his soul the challenging call of the mighty waters. The ships! The ships that bring the food! The merchant ships! The ships that lie becalmed in the oily seas of the tropics; the ships that get caught in the ice-pack at the poles; the ships that fight their way doggedly through howling gales and icy blizzards round the cape! Those stately ships, with their dizzy masts and shapely bows, captivated his imagination; and when he desired to speak of the virtuous and faithful housewife in terms of superlative appreciation, the only image that seemed worthy of her was the gallant ship riding at anchor in the bay. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman?’ he asks, ‘for her price is far above rubies. She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar.’

II

    So much for the Eastern philosopher; now for the Western bard! Longfellow likens a good wife to a gallant ship; and, in order that we may see how much alike the two are, he places them side by side. He describes the old shipbuilder who has resolved to build one more ship, his last and his best. He comes down to the yards, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, carrying the model in his hand. He approaches his assistant, shows him the model, and confides to him his dream. The younger man, a stalwart and fiery youth, has a dream of his own. He aspires to marry his master’s daughter. The two are engrossed in conversation, the elder man depicting to the younger the stately ship that is to be. He will build a vessel that shall laugh at all disaster, and with wave and whirlwind wrestle. And he concludes his eager communication by promising that ‘the day that giveth her to the sea shall give my daughter unto thee.’ The younger man starts at the radiant prospect.

And as he turned his face aside   
    With a look of joy and a thrill of pride,
Standing before her father’s door
    He saw the form of his promised bride.

The sun shone on her golden hair.
    And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair
With the breath of morn and the soft sea air.
    Like a beauteous barge was she——

   And so on. All through the poem, right up to the wedding on the ship’s deck on the day of her launching, Longfellow draws the analogy between the shapely vessel, the bride of the ocean, and the fair maiden, the bride of the proud young builder.

‘She is like the merchant ships!’ says the ancient Eastern sage.
‘Like a beauteous barge was she!’ exclaims the Western poet.
It is difficult to resist the testimony of two such witnesses.

III

   Neither the good wife nor the gallant ship need resent the analogy. If the good wife does not like being compared to a ship, let her sit down for five minutes and think, and it will occur to her that, of all our ingenious inventions and bewildering contrivances, a ship is the only one that has a divine origin and a divine authority. The ark was the first ship; and its plans and specifications were divinely dictated. Moreover, it is obvious that, since the Lord God divided His world into islands and continents, with vast expanses of ocean rolling between, and commanded that all those scattered territories should be peopled and developed, He contemplated the existence of the ships. The ships were part of the original programme. The ships were to be the instruments of those distributive and mediative ministries on which the history of the world was to be based.

Or if, instead of thinking abstract thoughts, the good wife prefers to read, let her reach down Rudyard Kipling’s ballad of the Big Steamers.

‘Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers,
   With England’s own coal, up and down the salt seas?’
We are going to fetch you your bread and your butter.
   Your beef, pork, and mutton, eggs, apples, and cheese.

For the bread that you eat, and the biscuits you nibble,
    The sweets that you suck and the joints that you carve,
They are brought to you daily by all us Big Steamers,
    And if anyone hinders our coming you’ll starve!’

   The ships, then, represent the indispensabilities of life, the things without which we cannot live. I am writing here in Australia. And even here in Australia, with our immense open spaces, spaces in which we can grow almost anything, how dependent we are upon the coming of the ships! We need the ships; ships to bring us our supplies from the great looms and factories of the old world; ships to take the produce of our boundless plains to the congested populations of the other hemisphere; ships to bring the letters for which our hearts are hungry, and to take the letters for which distant friends are waiting. Even here in Australia the ships are the light of our eyes and the breath of our nostrils. Even here in Australia, the good wife, when she spreads her table in the morning, brings her food from afar. For none of these dainties that tempt my appetite and nourish my frame are native foods. They were not here until the ships began to come. The wheat is not indigenous; the meat is not native meat. The corn and the cattle and the coffee came to Australia on the ships. And, but for the ships, we ourselves could never have been here. Let a man register a vow that he will not eat, drink, wear or use anything that has—in a remote or in an immediate sense—been upon a ship; and he will be reduced to abject wretchedness in no time. God has built His world in such a way that the ship is the foundation of everything.

Each climate needs what other climes produce,
    And offers something to the general use;
No land but listens to the common call,
    And, in return, receives supplies from all.

   The Great Weaver stands continually at His loom working out an intricate and beautiful pattern. The nations are the threads that run up and down, up and down, not far apart, yet never meeting. The gallant ship is the shuttle, the busy shuttle, that flies to and fro, to and fro, weaving them all into one compact and wonderful whole. The web depends entirely on the shuttle; the world depends entirely on the ships.

IV

   I never see a great ship come into port at the end of a long voyage without feeling a sense of admiration, amounting almost to awe, at the masterly achievement. To say nothing of the perils to which she has been exposed at sea, it seems an amazing thing that, after having been for months on the trackless waters, she can pick up the heads as easily as though she had been following a well-blazed trail. There is a famous story on record in the Memoirs of Captain Basil Hall. It tells how the erudite commander once brought his vessel round Cape Horn on a voyage from San Blas to Rio de Janeiro. Without any other observations than those of the sun and moon, he laid his vessel, in a thick fog, outside what he believed to be the entrance to the harbour. The fog cleared, and the land slowly loomed up through it—the first that had been seen for more than three months. It was Rio! The sailors were electrified at the accuracy of their commander’s calculations, and, rushing to the bridge, greeted him, by way of congratulation, with three ringing cheers! I suppose no man ever watched a brave ship drop anchor in the bay at the end of her voyage without some such feeling as this. And certainly no man ever looked into the face of his bride on his wedding day without being conscious of some such emotion. ‘She is like the merchant ship; she bringeth her food from afar.’ It seems so wonderful to the bridegroom that she should have reached his side in safety. The chances against her safe arrival were a million to one. She is the daughter of a thousand generations. For countless centuries her ancestors were fighting men. If, in that long chain of warring progenitors, only one had fallen before he mated, she could never have been born. Time after time, in those rude days, the earth was desolated by war, pestilence, and famine; yet the line of genealogy that led to her remained unbroken! More than once whole nations were depopulated by the plague. But still her ancestry was unaffected. The providence that guards the good ship on the seething waters, bringing it safely through storm and tempest to its desired haven, watched over her as she floated down the restless ages to her husband’s side. She was like the ark, upborne by the very waters that destroyed everything beside; or, to return to Solomon’s simile, ‘She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar.’ Her safe arrival seems a miracle, and a golden miracle at that. It seems to her husband that, threatened by such perils as she has braved, only an escort of angels could have brought her safely to his side. And he bows his head in wondering gratitude.

V

   We owe everything to the ships. All our food comes from afar. Yes, all of it, including food for thought. The school, the college, the university; they all resemble the virtuous housewife spreading her table. They bring food from afar. Only this afternoon I was shown over Dennington College. The Principal, Miss Gertrude Milman, B.A., took me into a class-room in which a geography lesson was in progress. The teacher was giving her pupils food from afar. Hardy adventurers and patient explorers sailed across unknown seas, charted unknown lands, and returned with the priceless results of their hazardous investigations. And those results, brought home by the ships, were being dispensed in the class-room at Dennington College. Miss Milman herself teaches philosophy. But she owes it all to the ships. Far away over the sea, Plato and Aristotle and Socrates wrestled with the problems of the universe in the old days; and far away over the sea Kant and Hegel and Bergson pondered those same problems in a later time; and the ships have brought us the wealthy fruitage of their profound cogitations. ‘And here,’ Miss Milman told me, ‘the girls assemble in the morning for the scripture lesson.’ I do not know exactly how that half-hour is spent; but I am certain that, even then, Miss Milman sets before her pupils food from afar. The Bible itself has come to us across the ocean. The world is only rolling into light because the ships, with their white sails, have dotted every sea. ‘The prayers you offer,’ says J. M. Neale, ‘the prayers you offer, the hymns you sing, the books of devotion you use, how far, far hence in time, how far, far hence in distance, do their sources lie? Perhaps from some quaint mediæval German house, with its surrounding fields and lanes and gardens buried deep in snow, you get a prayer which we use at Christmastide. Perhaps from the dog days of an Andalusian Convent, with its orange trees and its pomegranates and its fountains, you get such music as that lovely introit, “Like as the hart desireth after the waterbrooks.” Perhaps from the tomb of a martyr you get such a hymn as “O God, Thy soldiers’ crown and guard.” Prayers, music, hymns; they are all the same. They come from afar, from afar. I left Dennington College feeling that, after all, Miss Milman is very much like Solomon’s housewife; she is entirely dependent on the ships; she bringeth her food from afar.

VI

Now that I come to look a little more closely at the comely features of this virtuous woman—the woman who is like the merchant ships—I fancy that I recognize her. For she is none other than the Bride, the Lamb’s wife. When the Church spreads her white cloth, and sets her wondrous table, she invariably decks it with food from afar. Listen as she invites you to partake of her heavenly fare!

‘The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.’

And listen again:

‘The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee and be thankful.’

Food from afar! Food from afar! She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar! Such viands can have been procured from no earthy source. This Bread was made from wheat that grew in no earthly field; this Wine was pressed from clusters that hung on no earthly vine. The happy guests who sit at the Church’s table find that, as they partake of her sacred hospitalities, there is ministered to them a comfort that wipes all tears from all faces, a hope that transfigures with strange radiance every unborn day, and a peace that passeth all understanding. They know, as they taste this delectable fare, that such fruits grew in no earthly garden. And then, with faces that shine like the faces of the angels, they remember at whose table they are seated, and they say one to another, ‘She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar.’ And that golden testimony is true.

F. W. Boreham