light of truth upon it. Observe the little words in God's great Word. We have seen what followed God's command-"But Jonah rose up to flee," -we see now what followed the fleeing prophet-" But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken." What thinks Jonah now? Where is he? Why has the Lord stirred the heavens, and uttered his وو mighty thunders ? No cause appeared. Perhaps, many had left the shore to sail for Tarshish in this ship. Amongst them came a Jew-he paid his fare, and on entering the vessel he cared not to converse with those around him, but went down into the side of the ship, and there fell asleep, unnoticed, unthought of by every soul on board. But there is an eye which seeth not as man seeth. That eye once searched amidst the thick foliage of the trees of the garden, and Adam was there. That eye watched Abel's fall, and "Cain went out from the presence of the Lord." That eye saw David's sin, and the message “thou didst it secretly,' followed, but as to the punishment of it, "I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun." (2 Sam. xii. 12.) And shall Jonah remain asleep, undisturbed and undiscovered? His very hardness and heedlessness attract attention, and draw upon him the reproving observations of the trembling heathen. They called in vain upon their gods, "So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." And now what does Jonah see and hear?-the roaring waves, the heaving ship, the straining boards, the blackened clouds, the howling winds-yes, and what to his guilty conscience must have been the worst of all, his wakening eyes saw the reproving countenance of the heathen shipmaster! Now there must have been a peculiarity in the storm which raged. No doubt these poor sailors had been at sea in many a black night, they had been tossed upon many a yawning wave, and they had laboured together to right the 66 ship, and then patiently waited while it rode out the gale. But now they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us." There is a sense of sin, a presence of sin's punishment, and with this, a desire to search out, and to cast out the evil. "So they cast lots ;" "but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." (Prov.xvi. 33.) What now must have been Jonah's feelings while the lot was going round! How was it that he did not start up and exclaim, I am the man? It is my God who has sent the storm, He has bid it arise, that as I would not listen to his voice of love when He would send a message by me, I might be forced to hear "the voice of the Lord upon the waters," when "the God of glory thundereth." (Psalm xxix. 3.) But no, sin has a hardening effect upon the soul. It would even seem as if Jonah, like the fool, were saying in his heart," there is no God." (Ps. xiv. 1.) As if he thought, may be, I shall not be found out, may be, the lot may fall upon another; and he who cared not for the million of perishing souls in Nineveh, could not be supposed to have a care for the single heathen sailor, on whom, as he thought, the lot might chance to fall. But oh! poor Jonah, be not deceived—your fellow passengers may hold you guiltless-they may almost admire your composure, and envy your repose while undisturbed you sleep in the side of the ship; but "God is not mocked," your sin has found you out, "for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known." (Luke xii. 2.) And now you are detected "The lot fell upon Jonah." Still the conduct of the sailors puts to shame the conduct of the Lord's prophet. They seem unwilling, even when the lot has fallen, to execute the sentence. They would reason and expostulate, yea, even prove their unwillingness to believe that he is the guilty one. We should have expected that with indignant rage, they would have lifted Jonah from the deck, and cast him headlong into the foaming waters-instead of that, they calmly enquire from him, and "said unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us?" As if they had reasoned thus: Is there not some mistake?-has the lot fallen correctly? you are one of the people of Jehovah, yea, more, you are his prophet-you cannot be the guilty one-or, have you deceived us?-tell us the truth, "What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?" Alas! poor Jonah, what sayest thou now? What thrilling, searching, and, to thee, what heart-rending questions "What is thine occupation ?" A disobedient prophet. "Whence comest thou?" From the place where God spoke to me. "What is thy country?" The "land which the Lord careth for," but which I have forsaken. "Of what people art thou?" Of that people whom the Lord hath chosen "to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth." (Deut. vii. 6.) Ah! he now no longer attempts concealment. Here he stands before his God, in the midst of God's enemies and his enemies, justly deserving death, and with the watery grave waiting to receive him. He tells them the truth, he speaks out plainly and unreservedly to his fellow men-there is no prevarication, no keeping back. He tells them more than they asked-till "the men were exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them it." But how possible is it, for us to speak to man, and be silent to our God-yea, to humble ourselves before man, and be proud before God, to confess to man, while the neck is as an iron sinew, and the heart as stubbornness in the sight of the all-seeing eye of God! Such was Jonah's case. Perhaps the enemy of his soul, who had succeeded thus far in turning aside the Lord's messenger, and was now triumphing in having Jonah far from his God, and the Ninevites wallowing in their sins, perhaps while all events seem now concurring to awaken the sleeping soul of the prophet, he is making a last desperate effort to retain his hold دو and ruin his prey, by darting in the fearful weapon of despair. Perhaps Jonah thinks he has sinned away his mercy, that the throne of grace must be closed against him, the ear of pardon far beyond his reach. And in this despairing frame "he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you." And surely on Jonah's account also, was a tempest stirring in the hearts of these poor sailors. They knew not what to do. He bid them for his own destruction. Yet he was Jehovah's servant, and could it be that he must perish? He had but just told them that the God of heaven made the sea, and if the sea is his, why cannot He speak the word only, and its mighty waves obey and be still? "The men rowed hard to bring the ship to the land; but they could not for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.' "Who hath resisted His will"? The sailors now take the wiser part, they learn the lesson God would teach the sinner, they cease from their puny efforts, they unnerve the sinewy arm, they relax the hold upon the oar, they trust no longer in man, but cast themselves as helpless, needy creatures, upon the omnipotent Jehovah. "They cried unto the Lord and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows." If the prophet's heart melted not when he confessed his sin to the men, if he prostrated not his soul before the God of Jacob, and wrestled not in prayer for pardon and acceptance, yet God would have praying souls, believing souls, yea, faithful covenant-keeping souls on board that ship. "Because of unbelief" Jonah was "broken off," and now, as it were in his place, the heathen sailors stand by faith, and call upon the true God to dedicate themselves to him! "O the depth of the riches Oh! How mysterious are the ways of God! He seeth not as man seeth. Had we been asked to describe the individuals who sailed to Tarshish, we should have said, amidst a company of heathens, who worship idols, there is one of God's favoured people, a Hebrew, the prophet of Jehovah. In a few hours this favoured one, silent and prayerless, is cast into the sea, and the rest of the ship's company have "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God." (1 Thess. i. 9.) The voice of prayer is heard, and the sacrifice of a believing Abel is offered up, and the ship's crew have dedicated themselves to the Lord God of Abraham. what a picture have we here of the work of grace. Sin is detected, sin is separated, sin is buried, peace springs up, and righteousness is established. And now we follow Jonah to his burial in the deep. He was cast overboard alive. Like a man walking into his grave—another moment, and he expects his lungs will be filled with water, his breath choked, his heart will cease to beat. It is his eleventh hour, yea his last moment is come. And now does he cry, save, Lord, or I perish-now does he plead for one breathing moment more, that at the last he may breathe out a prayer to the God of his fathers, if perhaps he may yet find mercy! Oh, poor sinner, if one such shall read these lines, you who think you have yet time enough in which you will turn and repent and be saved, that you will have a softened heart, when your bodily powers are weakened, or that you will begin to love God when the world ceases to love you, and live a little while for God when the world rejects you, that when you look back upon your life as a tale that is told, then you will seek and find entrance into an eternity of bliss,—Oh, look at Jonah on the ship's bow, and listen, e'er the fatal plunge meet your ear, if you can hear one sigh, or see one moving of the lip in prayer, while this man leaves all of life behind him, and looks upon an endless eternity before him. Ah, no! as Jonah was in the ship, even so he still is, as he descends into the deep-stubborn, heartless, prayerless. God give us grace to walk with Him while yet it is day, lest when our eyes are dark in death, they shall open in that place where hope can never enter. But God had a work for Jonah to do-and he had not yet done it— and the grave could not hold him beyond its appointed time. He could not die, for his race was not finished, he had yet to learn many an unknown lesson. "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." And what is he doing there? We have seen him fleeing, sleeping, speaking; and we have heard the splash of the waves as they opened and closed upon his descending body. And are we to know more of him, and to hear more from him? Yes, blessed be God-and "these things are written for our admonition ;" and this Scripture is profitable for our "instruction in righteousness"-and here for once is a living prophet speaking "from the dead," that every sinner living may be left without excuse. Jonah is no longer silent. He heard not God in the roar of the tempest, in the distress of the sailors-or he heard of Him only as a God of terror, and if his heart moved at all, it was to depart from the living God. But how is it now? He realizes God's love, God's care, God's mercy, that he, a hell-deserving sinner, is yet out of hell, and his heart melts! "Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God." Reader, can you sympathise with this returning prodigal? Do you seem to breathe afresh, now that your fallen brother is restored? There is joy in heaven over this poor praying soul, for though the prayer be uttered in the fish's belly, it sounds in the highest heavens, and carries such a savour with it, that it excites the angels' voices to a fresh song of praise. But Jonah cannot praise! He can but pray and cry. Yet it is the prayer of faith, the cry of a child. He clings to the hand that holds the rod, and though so justly chastened, so far from the throne, and covered over with the waves and billows of his offended Lord, yet his faith pierces through all obstacles, climbs up the ladder to the opened gate of heaven, and there he says, "Thou heardest my voice." And what an exercise of faith is this! For while he realizes Jehovah's bended ear to the cry of his needy one, he forgets not that his sins have occasioned his distress. How apt are we, when trouble comes, to murmur at this or that thing, as if "affliction came forth of the dust," or trouble did "spring out of the ground." How was it that he said not, "Alas! those cruel sailors, they flung me overboard, and yet I had not injured them"? Or how was it that he blamed not his own imprudence, and said, "I should have watched the clouds, and foreseen the coming storm?" Ah! what would have availed such poor excuses now? "The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it." (Is. xxviii. 17, 18.) Jonah recognized the chastening hand of God. "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee." He learnt that "God can by no means clear the guilty"-"If his children forsake his laws, and walk not in his judgments, if they break his statutes, and keep not his commandments, then will he visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes." But Jonah had learnt more than this-he had learnt to trace the rod to the hand, and the hand to the heart of his God; and there he read that God is love-that he willeth not the death of the sinner, that he invites the backslider to return, that he has a balm to heal every wound which the rebellings of his child force him to inflict, that he will not utterly take his loving kindness from him, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail, that he cannot break his covenant, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his lips. Thus light springs up in darkness, hope takes the place of despair, and he who, but a few hours before, rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord, and then for a little moment realized what it is to be cast out of his light, now lifts up his eye, pierces the thick covering of the living grave which enclosed him, and the depth which covered him, and looks straight up to the place where is the mercy seat and the ark of the covenant, where the sacrifice of propitiation is offered, and where the High Priest enters to make atonement for sin "Trials make the promise sweet, "I will look again toward thy holy temple." Yes, he remembered from afar his Father's house. Many a time had he taken part in the temple service, and perhaps he had seen the smoke of the sacrifice ascending, and the glory of the Lord filling the house of the Lord. Christian reader, are you ready to say, "Oh! that I were, as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, when his candle shined upon my head!" Have you now lost the sweet sense of His presence? Have "your iniquities separated between you and your God, and your sins hid his face from you that he will not hear"? Are your iniquities increased over your head, and have your sins withholden good things from you? Do you say in your haste, "I am cut off from before thine eyes"? Oh! seek for Jonah in the depth of the sea-hark to the voice from the belly of the fish. You cannot be farther off than he was. You cannot deserve eternal banishment from the presence of the Lord more than his rebellious prophet did. Yet he looked again to the holy temple, and his prayer entered into the ears of the Lord. And shall you not be heard? Have you no way of access to the throne of grace? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? hath he shut up his loving kindness in displeasure? Oh say not so, poor erring, backsliding sinner. The temple made of stone may be pulled down, the altar over turned, but you have a temple not made with hands-a living temple beyond the reach of foes-Jesus Christ, the temple, the altar, the sacrifice, the way, the truth, the lifeJesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever-Jesus Christ, the atonement, the propitiation, the intercessor. "Salvation is of the Lord." "Oh! make but trial of His love, Experience will decide How blest are they, and only they, Who in His truth confide." Here, then, is the delivered Jonah: "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God." He can describe that truly which none could imagine more vividly. We might speak of mountains carried into the midst of the sea, and a worm crushed beneath them, but he was that worm, and "the depth closed him round about." Yet he was delivered. Jonah had heard of the Lord causing the sea to go back, and that he made the sea dry land-while again its waves returned and overwhelmed the Lord's enemies. But he had never beard that "the sea gave up the dead that were in it." And how must he have marvelled when he found himself brought up alive out of his prison house! Mercies constrain to selfdedication "I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving." Nor is this all-"I will pay that I have vyowed." And here, for a little moment, we must leave Jonah in his joy, and say, "We would see Jesus!" Truly, a greater than Jonah is to be seen in the story we have been considering. Jonah was Jehovah's prophet. Jesus is the Son of God. Jonah fled from the Lord's command. Jesus said, "I delight to do thy will, yea, thy law is within my heart." Jonah was reckoned innocent, while he was guilty. Jesus was reckoned amongst the transgressors, though he "did no sin," and his judge pronounced him innocent. Jonah was cast into the sea. Jesus yielded up the ghost. Jonah, because of guilt being in him, by his burying in the deep, delivered the men that sailed 66 with him, from death. Jesus, because of holiness being in him, by his sacrifice once offered, "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." Jonah was cast upon the dry land, when by his burying in the deep he had stilled the enraged tempest. Jesus was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, that we who have been planted together in the likeness of his death, may be also in the likeness of his resurrection." "For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." God grant that every meditation in his word may endear to us the remembrance of Him, who is the "chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely." May our life be "hid with Christ in God, that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we also may appear with him in glory." "God hath spoken once ; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God. Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work." (Ps. lxii. 11, 12.) Jonah had been bidden to go to Nineveh, and cry against it. He would not. He fled, he was overtaken, punished, humbled. He refused to hear the voice of his gracious Master, and be honoured as his messenger; but he was forced to "hear the rod and who hath appointed it;" and he who did not like to take the message of Jehovah, and to stand as his honoured ambassador in the streets of Nineveh, is now to go thither as a sign from the God of quick and dead. "Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites." (Luke xi. 30.) Reader, picture to yourself the scene which God's word here brings before you. Twice is Nineveh described as "that great city." (Jonahi. 2. iv. 11.) Thousands of inhabitants thronged its busy streets, and business, gain, pleasure, filled every heart and mind. Many and various were their occupations, yet, in one habit, they were all alike. "Their wickedness is before me." In this they must have agreed, for surely He who would have spared the cities of the plain, had ten righteous been found in Sodom, would not have sent a message of destruction had there been found in Ninevah |