- end_line
- 12336
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12279
- text
- “Feel! only a finger the lighter. I have seven more left, besides
thumbs; and they did good service, too, in the torn rigging the day
after the fight; for you must know, my hearties, that the hardest work
comes after the guns are run in. Three days I helped work, with one
hand, in the rigging, in the same trowsers that I wore in the action;
the blood had dried and stiffened; they looked like glazed red
morocco.”
Now, this Jack Chase had a heart in him like a mastodon’s. I have seen
him weep when a man has been flogged at the gangway; yet, in relating
the story of the Battle of Navarino, he plainly showed that he held the
God of the blessed Bible to have been the British Commodore in the
Levant, on the bloody 20th of October, A. D. 1827. And thus it would
seem that war almost makes blasphemers of the best of men, and brings
them all down to the Feejee standard of humanity. Some man-of-war’s-men
have confessed to me, that as a battle has raged more and more, their
hearts have hardened in infernal harmony; and, like their own guns,
they have fought without a thought.
Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and
body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton. But war at times is
inevitable. Must the national honour be trampled under foot by an
insolent foe?
Say on, say on; but know you this, and lay it to heart, war-voting
Bench of Bishops, that He on whom we believe _himself_ has enjoined us
to turn the left cheek if the right be smitten. Never mind what
follows. That passage you can not expunge from the Bible; that passage
is as binding upon us as any other; that passage embodies the soul and
substance of the Christian faith; without it, Christianity were like
any other faith. And that passage will yet, by the blessing of God,
turn the world. But in some things we must turn Quakers first.
But though unlike most scenes of carnage, which have proved useless
murders of men, Admiral Codrington’s victory undoubtedly achieved the
emancipation of Greece, and terminated the Turkish atrocities in that
tomahawked state, yet who shall lift his hand and swear that a Divine
Providence led the van of the combined fleets of England, France, and
Russia at the battle of Navarino? For if this be so, then it led the
van against the Church’s own elect—the persecuted Waldenses in
Switzerland—and kindled the Smithfield fires in bloody Mary’s time.
But all events are mixed in a fusion indistinguishable. What we call
Fate is even, heartless, and impartial; not a fiend to kindle bigot
flames, nor a philanthropist to espouse the cause of Greece. We may
fret, fume, and fight; but the thing called Fate everlastingly sustains
an armed neutrality.
Yet though all this be so, nevertheless, in our own hearts, we mould
the whole world’s hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own
gods. Each mortal casts his vote for whom he will to rule the worlds; I
have a voice that helps to shape eternity; and my volitions stir the
orbits of the furthest suns. In two senses, we are precisely what we
worship. Ourselves are Fate.
- title
- Chunk 3