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- 14265
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- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z
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- 14233
- text
- whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I
claim him for one of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versâ; certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demi-god then, why not the
prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole
roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like
royal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in
nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental
story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread
Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives
us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first
of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified
the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved
to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave
birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical
books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo
before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these
Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,
rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even
as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a
member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like
that?
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