From Moby Dick by Melville, Chapter 8, describing the chapel at New Bedford:
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. 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.
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever the earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
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Actually, it’s the Cross that leads the world–the earth’s foremost part. It’s the difference between (1) a mere human proclaiming the Gospel from a pulpit and (2) the Cross where the Gospel’s existential reality is concentrated and expressed in an infinite expression of mercy and love. I’m not downplaying the proclamation of God’s Word, I’m emphasizing God’s Word lived and living.