Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Jonah 1:5

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 5. Cried every man unto his god — The ship's crew were all heathens; and, it is probable, heathens who had each a different object of religious worship.

Cast forth the wares — Threw the lading overboard to lighten the ship, hoping the better to ride out the storm.

Jonah was gone down — Most probably into the hold or cabin under the deck; or where they had berths for passengers in the sides of the ship; something in the manner of our packets.

Was fast asleep. — Probably quite exhausted and overcome with distress, which in many cases terminates in a deep sleep. So the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

1:1-17 JONAH’S DISOBEDIENCE AND ITS RESULTS

When God commanded Jonah to go and warn the sinful people of Nineveh of coming judgment, Jonah not only refused but fled in the opposite direction. He boarded a ship and headed for the distant Mediterranean port of Tarshish, somewhere in the region of Spain (1:1-3). But God determined to bring Jonah back. His first action was to send a fierce storm that threatened to sink the ship. The seamen, who were not Hebrews, prayed to their gods to save them, and tried to persuade Jonah to pray to his (4-6).
On seeing that their prayers brought no results, the seamen concluded that the storm must have been a supernatural punishment upon someone in the ship. When they drew lots to identify the guilty person, the lot indicated Jonah (7). Jonah confessed his sin, acknowledging that this was God’s judgment upon him. He suggested that the only way the seamen would save their lives would be to throw him overboard (8-12).
Although they were pagans, the seamen pitied Jonah and respected Jonah’s God (which was in sharp contrast to Jonah’s lack of pity for the pagan Ninevites and lack of respect for God). Only when they were convinced that nothing else would save them did they throw Jonah overboard (13-16). Jonah apparently lost consciousness and was drowning, when God saved his life by sending a great fish to swallow him (17).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

"Then the mariners were afraid and cried every man unto his god; and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep."

(See under Jonah 1:3, above, for comments concerning the word for ship as used in this verse.)

The word for "mariners" here means "salts," that is sailors of the salt seas; they are usually thought to have been Phoenicians engaged in the corn trade with western Mediterranean ports, or the iron trade with Sardinia. The variety of "gods" mentioned indicates that they were, not all of a single nationality, but of mixed heathen origin, some worshipping one god, some another. Their concern for the safety of the vessel, their diligent efforts to lighten its burden, and their frantic prayers "every man unto his god" contrasts vividly with the amazing indifference of the prophet Jonah fast asleep in the hold of the vessel.

We think Butler is right in rejecting the usual comments about Jonah's conscience being seared, blaming his deep sleep upon his spiritual condition.

"It is hardly justifiable to attribute his deep sleep through the storm to a perverse, stupefied, seared conscience. He was probably so exhausted from the long trip from Gath-hepher to Joppa (60-70 miles) and from the psychological wrestling with his soul (which causes physical exhaustion) that he fell into a deep sleep."Paul T. Butler, op. cit., p. 225.

One should contrast this account of Jonah's being asleep on a ship at sea in a storm with the New Testament account of Jesus in a similar situation, as recorded in Mark 4:38.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

And cried, every man unto his God - They did what they could. “Not knowing the truth, they yet know of a Providence, and, amid religious error, know that there is an Object of reverence.” In ignorance they had received one who offended God. And now God, “whom they ignorantly worshiped” Acts 17:23, while they cried to the gods, who, they thought, disposed of them, heard them. They escaped with the loss of their wares, but God saved their lives and revealed Himself to them. God hears ignorant prayer, when ignorance is not willful and sin.

To lighten it of them - , literally “to lighten from against them, to lighten” what was so much “against them,” what so oppressed them. “They thought that the ship was weighed down by its wonted lading, and they knew not that the whole weight was that of the fugitive prophet.” “The sailors cast forth their wares,” but the ship was not lightened. For the whole weight still remained, the body of the prophet, that heavy burden, not from the nature of the body, but from the burden of sin. For nothing is so onerous and heavy as sin and disobedience. Whence also Zechariah Zechariah 5:7 represented it under the image of lead. And David, describing its nature, said Psalms 38:4, “my wickednesses are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.” And Christ cried aloud to those who lived in many sins, Matthew 11:28. “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you.”

Jonah was gone down - , probably before the beginning of the storm, not simply before the lightening of the vessel. He could hardly have fallen asleep “then.” A pagan ship was a strange place for a prophet of God, not as a prophet, but as a fugitive; and so, probably, ashamed of what he had completed, he had withdrawn from sight and notice. He did not embolden himself in his sin, but shrank into himself. The conscience most commonly awakes, when the sin is done. It stands aghast as itself; but Satan, if he can, cuts off its retreat. Jonah had no retreat now, unless God had made one.

And was fast asleep - The journey to Joppa had been long and hurried; he had “fled.” Sorrow and remorse completed what fatigue began. Perhaps he had given himself up to sleep, to dull his conscience. For it is said, “he lay down and was fast asleep.” Grief produces sleep; from where it is said of the apostles in the night before the Lord’s Passion, when Jesus “rose up from prayer and was come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow” Luke 22:45 . “Jonah slept heavily. Deep was the sleep, but it was not of pleasure but of grief; not of heartlessness, but of heavy-heartedness. For well-disposed servants soon feel their sins, as did he. For when the sin has been done, then he knows its frightfulness. For such is sin. When born, it awakens pangs in the soul which bare it, contrary to the law of our nature. For so soon as we are born, we end the travail-pangs; but sin, so soon as born, rends with pangs the thoughts which conceived it.” Jonah was in a deep sleep, a sleep by which he was fast held and bound; a sleep as deep as that from which Sisera never woke. Had God allowed the ship to sink, the memory of Jonah would have been that of the fugitive prophet. As it is, his deep sleep stands as an image of the lethargy of sin . “This most deep sleep of Jonah signifies a man torpid and slumbering in error, to whom it sufficed not to flee from the face of God, but his mind, drowned in a stupor and not knowing the displeasure of God, lies asleep, steeped in security.”

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

This narrative, in which Jonah relates in order so many circumstances, is not without its use; for, as we shall presently see, he intended to set forth his own insensibility, and to lay it before us as painted before our eyes: and the comparison, which is implied in the circumstances, greatly illustrates the supine and almost brutal security of Jonah.

He says first that the mariners ⁽¹⁵⁾ were afraid, and then, that each cried, that is, to his god and that they cast out into the sea the lading of the ship. As then they were all so concerned, was it not marvelous that Jonah, on whose account the sea was stormy, was asleep? Others were busy, they ran here and there in the ship, and spoiled themselves of their goods, that they might reach the shore in safety: they indeed chose to strip themselves of all they had rather than to perish; they also cried to their gods. Jonah cared for nothing, nay, he lay asleep: but whence came such a carelessness as this, except that he was not only become torpid, but that he seemed also to have been deprived of all reason and common feeling? There is no doubt then but that Jonah, in order to show this to have been the case, has here enumerated so many circumstances.

He says that the mariners were afraid. We indeed know that sailors are not usually frightened by small or common storms; for they are a hardy race of men, and they are the less afraid, because they daily see various commotions in the air. When, therefore, he says that the sailors were afraid, we hence gather that it was not a moderate tempest, for such does not thus terrify men accustomed by long expert once to all sorts of storms: they, then, who had been previously hardened, were disquieted with fear. He afterwards adds, that they cried, each of them to his god. Jonah certainly ought not to have slept so soundly, but that he might rouse himself at almost any moment, for he carried in his heart his own executioner, as he knew that he was a fugitive: for we have said before, that it was not a slight offense for Jonah to withdraw himself from the presence of God; he despised his call, and, as far as he could, cast off the yoke, so as not to obey God. Seeing, then, that Jonah was ill at ease with himself, ought he not to have trembled, even while asleep? But while others cried to their false gods, he either despised, or at least neglected the true God, to whom he knew he was disobedient, and against whom he rebelled. This is the point of the comparison, or of the antithesis. But we at the same time see, how in dangers men are constrained to call on God. Though, indeed, there is a certain impression by nature on the hearts of men as to God, so that every one, willing or unwilling, is conscious that there is some Supreme Being; we yet by our wickedness smother this light, which ought to shine within us. We indeed gladly cast away all cares and anxieties; for we wish to live at ease, and tranquillity is the chief good of men. Hence it comes, that all desire to live without fear and without care; and hence we all naturally seek quietness. Yet this quietness generates contempt. Hence then it is, that hardly any religion appears in the world, when God leaves us in an undisturbed condition. Fear constrains us, however unwilling, to come to God. False indeed is what is said, that fear is the cause of religion, and that it was the first reason why men thought that there were gods: this notion is indeed wholly inconsistent with common sense and experience. But religion, which has become nearly extinct, or at least covered over in the hearts of men, is stirred up by dangers. Of this Jonah gives a remarkable instance, when he says that the sailors cried, each of them to his god We know how barbarous is this race of men; they are disposed to shake off every sense of religion; they indeed drive away every fear, and deride God himself as long as they may. Hence that they cried to God, it was no doubt what necessity forced them to do. And here we may learn, how useful it is for us to be disquieted by fear; for while we are safe, torpidity, as it is well known, soon creeps over us. Since, then, hardly any one of himself comes to God, we have need of goads; and God sharply pricks us, when he brings any danger, so as to constrain us to tremble. But in this way, as I have already said, he stimulates us; for we see that all would go astray, and even perish in their thoughtlessness, were he not to draw them back, even against their own will.

But Jonah does not simply say, that each cried to God, but he adds, to his own god. As, then, this passage teaches, that men are constrained by necessity to seek God, we also, on the other hand, it shows, that men go astray in seeking God, except they are directed by celestial truth, and also by the Spirit of God. There is then some right desire in men, but it goes astray; for none will keep the right way except the Lord directs them, as it has been said, both by his word and his Spirit. Both these particulars we learn from the words of the Prophet: The sailors feared; men hardy and almost iron-hearted, who, like the Cyclops, despised God, — these, he says, were afraid; and they also cried to God; but they did not cry by the guidance of faith; hence it was, that every one cried to his own god.

When we read this, let it first come to our minds that there is no hope until God constrains us, as it were, by force; but we ought to anticipate extreme necessity by seeking him willingly. For what did it avail the sailors and other passengers, to call once on God? It is indeed probable that, shortly after, they relapsed into their former ungodly indifference; after having been freed from their danger, they probably despised God, and all religion was regarded by them with contempt. And so it commonly happens as to ungodly men, who never obey God except when they are constrained. Let therefore every one of us offer himself willingly to God, even now when we are in no danger, and enjoy full quietness. For if we think, that any pretext for thoughtlessness, or for error, or for ignorance, will serve as an excuse, we are greatly deceived; for no excuse can be admitted, since experience teaches us, that there is naturally implanted in all some knowledge of God, and that these truths are engraven on our hearts, that God governs our life, — that he alone can remove us by death, — that it is his peculiar office to aid and help us. For how was it that these sailors cried? Had they any new teacher who preached to them about religion, and who regularly taught them that God was the deliverer of mankind? By no means: but these truths, as I have said, had been by nature impressed on their hearts. While the sea was tranquil, none of them called on their god; but danger roused them from their drowsiness. But it is hence sufficiently evident, that whatever excuses they may pretend, who ascribe not to God his glory, they are all frivolous; for there is no need of any law, there is no need of any Scripture, in short, there is no need of any teaching, to enable men to know, that this life is in the hand of God, that deliverance is to be sought from him alone, and that nothing, as we have said, ought to be looked for from any other quarter: for invocation proves that men have this conviction respecting God; and invocation comes from nothing else but from some hidden instinct, and indeed from the guidance and teaching of nature, (duce ac magistra natura ) This is one thing.

But let us also learn from this passage, that when God is sought by us, we ought not to trust to our own understanding; for we shall in that case immediately go astray. God then must be supplicated to guide us by his word, otherwise every one will fall off into his own superstitions; as we here see, that each cried to his own god. The Prophet also reminds us that multiplicity of gods is no modern invention; for mankind, since the fall of Adam, have ever been prone to falsehood and vanity. We know how much corruption must occupy our minds, when every one invents for himself hideous and monstrous things. Since it is so, there is no wonder that superstitions have ever prevailed in the world; for the wit of man is the workshop of all errors. (quia ingenium hominis officina est omnium errorum ) And hence also we may learn what I have lately touched upon, — that nothing is worse for us than to follow the impulses of our flesh; for every one of himself advances in the way of error, even without being pushed on by another; and at the same time, as is commonly the case, men draw on one another.

He now adds, that the wares were cast out, that is, the lading of the ship; and we know that this is the last resource in shipwrecks; for men, to save their lives, will deprive themselves willingly of all their goods. We hence see how precious is life to man; for he will not hesitate to strip himself of all he has, that he may not lose his life. We indeed shun want, and many seek death because extreme poverty is intolerable to them; but when they come to some great danger, men ever prefer their life to all their possessions; for what are the good things of this world, but certain additions to our life? But Jonah tells us for another purpose that the ship was lightened, even for this, — that we may know that the tempest was no ordinary commotion, but that the sailors, apprehensive of approaching death, adopted this as the last resource.

Another clause follows: Jonah had gone down into the sides ⁽¹⁶⁾ , or the side, of the ship. Jonah no doubt sought a retreat before the storm arose. As soon then as they sailed from the harbor, Jonah withdrew to some remote corner, that he might sleep there. But this was no excusable insensibility on his part, as he knew that he was a fugitive from the presence of God: he ought then to have been agitated by unceasing terrors; nay, he ought to have been to himself the taxer (exactor ) of anxiety. But it often so happens, that when any one has sought hiding-places, he brings on himself a stupor almost brutal; he thinks of nothing, he cares for nothing, he is anxious for nothing. Such then was the insensibility which possessed the soul of Jonah, when he went down to some recess in the ship, that he might there indulge himself in sleep. Since it thus happened to the holy Prophet, who of us ought not to fear for himself? Let us hence learn to remind ourselves often of God’s tribunal; and when our minds are seized with torpor, let us learn to stimulate and examine ourselves, lest God’s judgment overwhelm us while asleep. For what prevented ruin from wholly swallowing up Jonah, except the mercy of God, who pitied his servant, and watched for his safety even while he was asleep? Had not the Lord then exercised such care over Jonah, he must have perished. ⁽¹⁷⁾

We hence see that the Lord often cares for his people when they care not for themselves, and that he watches while they are asleep: but this ought not to serve to nourish our self-indulgence; for every one of us is already more indulgent to himself than he ought to be: but, on the contrary, this example of Jonah, whom we see to have been so near destruction, ought to excite and urge us, that when any of us has gone astray from his calling he may not lie secure in that state, but, on the contrary, run back immediately to God. And if God be not able to draw us back to himself without some violent means, let us at least follow in this respect the example of Jonah, which we shall in its own place notice. It follows —

(15) מלחים, from מלה, salt, “salt-men;” so “mariners,” in our language, from mare , are literally sea-men; and sailors are sail-men. Nautae, in Latin, and ναυται in Greek, being from navis and ναυς, are properly, ship-men. — Ed.

(16) “Sides,” ירכתי, mean no doubt the lower parts. Jerome renders it, ad interiora navis ; the Septuagint, εις την κοίλην του πλοίου — to the belly cavity of the ship. — Ed.

(17) “We see in this instance the great danger in which unconscious sinners are often involved, that the solace sought by them departs from them, that a dead sleep remains, and even increases under God’s judgment, and that in the performance of duty the godly are sometimes more slothful than the ungodly.” — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Jonah

Now we come to that interesting prophet Jonah.

Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me ( Jonah 1:1-2 ).

Nineveh, a great city; in fact, the historians say was the largest city in the ancient world. There is a reference later on in Jonah to Nineveh being three-days' journey. What is meant by that is that it took three days to walk through Nineveh. So going from one end of Nineveh to the other walking was a three-day journey. So it was indeed a great city. In fact, the population of Nineveh, no doubt, was quite large, because there were sixty thousand babies in Nineveh, so young as to not know their right hand from their left hand. Now, that is something children will usually learn about four or five years old. So having a population of sixty thousand, say under five, you can come to a rough estimate of what the total population of Nineveh might have been.

A great city, but the problem was, it was a wicked city. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians historically were extremely cruel people. History tells us how that the Assyrians would maim their enemies in war. How that they would desecrate the bodies of the victims of war, impelling them, maiming them, cutting off the ears of their prisoners, or cutting off the noses of the prisoners, or pulling out the tongues of the prisoners. They were horribly cruel inflicting grotesque type of maiming processes upon the prisoners of war that they would take. So that history tells us that there were cities that when surrounded by the Assyrian army and doomed to fall that the inhabitants of the cities would all commit suicide.

The Assyrian Empire was the empire that finally conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and they moved against the Southern Kingdom and surrounded Jerusalem. And had cut Jerusalem off and had Jerusalem under siege.

Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent the Rabshakeh to Hezekiah with threatening letters, blasphemous letters against God. And Hezekiah would take these letters in and would spread them out before the Lord and he'd say, "Look, Lord, what the guy is saying he is going to do." And the guy was promising how he was going to maim them and torture them and what he was going to do when they fell. And Hezekiah just spread the letters out before the Lord and said, "Look at these things that they are saying they are going to do. And Lord, they are able to do them." But all the while the prophet Isaiah was saying to Hezekiah, "Look Hezekiah, don't worry. God is going to take care of you. God is going to deliver you out of the hands of the Assyrians. They are going to be turned back by the hand of the Lord and the king of Assyria is going to be assassinated in his own land. So you don't have to worry, Hezekiah. Just trust in God; God will take care of it." But it was hard to trust in God, because here was this huge Assyrian army, over 185,000 men surrounding the city of Jerusalem. They were cut off from their supplies. And here they were coming up to the wall and they were yelling to the people, "Don't let Hezekiah deceive you saying, 'Trust in the Lord.' Where are the gods of the Israelites? Where are the gods of Syria? Where are the gods of these other nations that we have conquered? They weren't able to deliver them from our hand, and neither will your God deliver out of our hand. Don't believe the words of Hezekiah saying, 'Just trust in the Lord.'" And the men were there on the wall listening and trembling as these threats were being made. And they heard the blasphemes how they were going to cut off every man in Israel; torturing, maiming them. And inside Isaiah is saying, "Hey, keep cool. Hezekiah, don't worry. God is going to take care of it. God is going to deliver them into your hand. Don't worry, Hezekiah."

One morning when the children of Israel arose and went to the wall to look at the encampment of the Assyrians, behold, to their amazement the Assyrian forces were all dead corpses. One hundred and eighty-five thousand of them lay slain on the ground. That night the angel of the Lord had gone through the camp of the Assyrians and had destroyed them. King Sennacherib escaped back to Assyria, and as he went in the house of his god Rimmon, his two sons assassinated him and they fled to Armenia. And another son of Sennacherib began to reign in his stead. But the back of Assyria was broken.

Now at the point that God said to Jonah go to Nineveh, that great city, that wicked city and prophesy, was when Assyria was ascending in power. Assyria had not yet become the world-dominating power. There was a vying at this point between Egypt and Syria and Assyria, but gradually Assyria was gaining ascendancy and power, and they were becoming a real threat to Israel and to Judah at the time the Lord said to Jonah, "Go to Nineveh that great city and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me."

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and he went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD ( Jonah 1:3 ).

Nineveh was east and north from Israel. Jonah went down and caught a ship going west. He is going to run from the call of God. Now God is calling him to go and preach to the Gentiles, something he did not want to do. Felt this nationalistic spirit--salvation is of the Jews; it is not for the Gentiles. He did not want to go to the Gentiles. And so he went to Joppa to escape the call of God to go to the Gentiles.

It is interesting that several years later in this very same port city of Joppa, as Peter was on the rooftop of the house of Simon the tanner, that he saw this sheet in a vision let down from heaven; tied at the corners with all manner of beast and creeping things on it. And the Lord said to Peter, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." And when Peter objected saying, "Lord, I've never eaten anything that was unclean or common." God said, "Don't call that common which I have cleansed." After this thing happened three times, Peter wondered, "What in the world does this mean?" And the Lord spoke to him and said, "There are some men now down at the gate inquiring for you. Go with them and don't ask any questions. I'll tell you what to say." And there in Joppa is where Peter was called to take the gospel to the Gentiles. Interesting how things always seem to come back.

It was to Joppa that Jonah ran to catch a ship to escape preaching to the Gentiles. It was at Joppa that the Lord called Peter and said go to the Gentiles. And the door of the gospel was open to the Gentiles as God dealt with Peter there in Joppa.

Jonah was arising and seeking to flee from the presence of the Lord, heading for Tarshish. Biblical scholars are divided as to the location of Tarshish. Some say it is a part of Spain; others say it is England. The preponderance of scholars seem to favor England. Wherever Tarshish was, it was the furthest outpost of the known world at that time. It was the jumping off. You can't go any farther than Tarshish from the civilized world. It was the end. It was as far as you could go. Beyond Tarshish lay that wild, boisterous Atlantic, and out there somewhere that precipice, that chasm, that just the ships dropped off into oblivion. No ships ever came back from their voyages on the Atlantic. They surely must have gone over the edge of the world someplace and disappeared. So Tarshish was as far as you dared to go, and that is where Jonah was heading. "I'm going to get as far away from God as I can. I'll head for Tarshish. I'll hide from the call of God, from the presence of the Lord."

Now there are many people that do make the mistake of attempting to localize God, as though God dwells in one place as over against another place. As though God dwells here in the sanctuary more so than in your home. "Oh, I wanted to come to the church to pray so I could be close to God. I like to go up to the mountains to pray because I'm so much closer to God; five thousand feet." As though God were somewhere off in the vast universe. Of course, better yet if you could get into a balloon or into a U-2 or something, you get closer to God. Not so! God fills every place in this vast universe or in any other universe that exists.

The astrophysicists are talking about some interesting things in our universe. One of the interesting things that the astrophysicists speaks of is the black hole. Now, there are some interesting theories about these black holes. You see, all matter is made up of expanded atoms, or expanded atoms which are made up of electrons rotating around the protons in the nucleus of an atom. But there is much more space than solid material in atoms, so that if the proton of the hydrogen atom was the size of a basketball, the electron that revolves around it would be some three thousand miles away, to give you an idea of the amount of space that is in the atom of hydrogen. There is the proton, the electron revolving around it, but quite a vast space in between in comparison to the size of the proton and the electron. So that, they tell us, that there is more space in solid matter or in material than in solid matter. In fact, they say if all of the atoms in your body would collapse so that there was no space, just the solid material of the protons and electrons, you would be the size of a microscopic speck of dust. So suddenly, all of the atoms in your body would collapse, you'd say, "Hey, where'd they go?" and we'd have to get an electron microscope to find you. But the interesting thing is that this little microscopic speck of dust would weigh the same as you weigh. So you go to blow that dust off the table and it doesn't move.

Now they say if they started to compress the atoms in the earth...of course, we know Einstein's theory of relativity and then also of gravity, E= MC 2 . Now they say that if you would start compressing the earth, (you know we're eight thousand miles in diameter), so that you are four thousand miles from the center of the mass of the earth. Therefore, four thousand miles away from the center of the mass you weigh whatever the scales tell you you weigh. So let's say you ladies weigh 130 or 125 or whatever, and us fellows, (I'm not going to tell you what I weigh), but we weigh around two hundred, plus or minus, because we are four thousand miles away from the center of the earth, the center of the mass of the earth, and there is this pull towards the center of the mass. I'm being pulled towards the center of the earth, and that pull upon the mass of my body equals what I weigh.

Now, if we would start compressing the earth so that it was only four thousand miles in diameter instead of the eight thousand miles in diameter, as you are now only two thousand miles away from the center of the mass, the earth would still weigh the same as it weighs now. But your weight would go up tremendously, because you are closer now to the center of the mass. And being closer to the center of the mass your weight would now increase to where you would weigh several tons.

Now, if you continued to compress the earth until, say, it was the size of a baseball, then you would be so close to the center of the mass that you would weigh over one hundred million tons. Now, if you continue to compress the earth, you finally can press it so much that you create a black hole and the whole thing disappears, because now the center of gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape it. So all of the light now is going inward because it is being drawn by this powerful gravity and so now you have a black hole. And you pass this point in the compression to where the center of gravity becomes so great, or the power of gravity is so great that not even light can escape it. And that is the theory for the black holes that we have in the universe.

Now, if you would step into this black hole, according to some of the astrophysicists, you would enter into a whole new universe within this small black hole. You come out into a vast new universe in which, if you would take the object in that universe and begin to compress them, you could make other black holes in that universe. And when you have created the black hole, step into it and you'd enter out into another vast universe. Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? But that is what the astrophysicists are telling us about these black holes.

Now, you see, in order for us to see things we have to have light, and what we see is reflected light off of the object. We don't see the object, but the light that is reflected by that object is what we behold. But if the gravity is so powerful that light doesn't reflect but it is drawn inward, the light can't escape then this creates the black hole. And it is created by the compression of atoms to the point that the center of gravity is so powerful within them that even light can't escape.

So Jonah is talking about escaping from the presence of God, but you can't. If you would enter into one of these black holes and enter into another whole new universe, you'd find God was there and He fills that whole universe.

Jesus said, "In My Father's house there are many mansions," in My Father's house. How vast is the Father's house? Vast enough that there are many mansions in it. Those mansions could even be universes within the black holes of the black holes of the black holes. Paul the apostle, when talking with the Epicurean philosophers there in the Areopagus, said unto them, "I perceive that you are very religious, for as I have been walking through your streets I have observed all of the altars that you have made to the gods. And on one corner I saw an altar and the inscription was to the unknown god. This is the God that I'd like to talk to you about, because He is the one who has created the heaven and the earth and everything that is in them and in Him we live, we move, we have our being." I'm surrounded by God. I can't escape God. Wherever I am I'm surrounded by God.

David the psalmist said, "If I ascend into heaven thou art there: if I descend into hell thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and flee to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there You lead me" ( Psalms 139:8-10 ). I can't get away from God. I'm surrounded by God, and thus, it is wrong for you to think of God in a local situation.

Now when I was in Sunday school, the Sunday school teacher taught us that it was evil to go to shows. And they told us the story of the little boy who went by the theatre and saw on the marquis the show that was playing and oh he wanted to go in and see it. And he was tempted to go in and see it, but he knew that the Lord wouldn't want him in there, and if the rapture would come, if he were in there would surely not be taken. And I had that boogieman over my head when I was a child. And so he said, "Lord, if you wouldn't mind waiting outside, I'll be with You in an hour and a half," as though we can leave the presence of the Lord, or as though we do leave the presence of the Lord when we turn our backs upon God. Not so, I'm always surrounded by God no matter where I am. And I think that this is an important concept that we need to be aware of. I don't escape God.

When Ben-Hadad was questioning his generals because of the apparent security leak... He had the same problems that Reagan had only of a different sort, because his generals said to him, "Listen, we're true to you. We're not leaking out this security information. The problem is there is a prophet over there in Israel and you can't even talk to your wife in bed but what he doesn't know what you are saying to her." Now how did the prophet know? Because God was revealing it to him. You see, you don't escape God. I don't care where you are. You cannot escape God.

Now, it was a deceptive lie for Jonah to think that he could escape God. It was a deceptive lie to think that he would be better off running from God and running from the call of God. That was a deception and that was a lie. Many people live under that same delusion. "I would be better off if I could just escape the will of God for my life. I can determine what is best for me better than God can determine. I know what is better for the people of God than God does. If I go to Nineveh and preach the gospel to those Gentiles, if they believe and repent, then God being the softy that He is, being merciful as He is, will probably forgive them and not destroy them. And if they are not destroyed then they are apt to destroy our people. I'm not going. I'm heading for Tarshish. I'm going to get as far away from Nineveh as is humanly possible."

So he went down to Joppa to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he got a ship and paid the fare; went down in the hull to flee from the presence of the Lord.

But the LORD sent out a great wind in the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was being broken. Then the mariners [the sailors] were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and they cast forth the cargo that was in the ship on into the sea, in order to lighten it. But Jonah was gone down in the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep ( Jonah 1:4-5 ).

Now people are troubled because of the miraculous aspects of the book of Jonah. But usually the part that troubles them most is the fact that he was swallowed by the great fish. But in reality, here are the evidences of God's hand even before we ever get to the fish. The storm that came up was sent from God. A miraculous kind of a storm in that God sent it. But then Jonah able to sleep through the storm has to be some kind of a miracle also. Have you ever been out in a boat in a storm being tossed? And down in the ship fast asleep.

So that the shipmaster came to him, and said, What do you mean by this, O sleeper? arise, and call on your God, if so be that God will think upon us, and we perish not. And they said every one to his fellow, Come on, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and [another miracle] the lot fell on Jonah. So they said unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, why has this evil come upon us; What is your occupation? Where do you come from? what is your country? from what people are you? And Jonah said unto them, I am a Hebrew; and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, which has made the sea and the dry land ( Jonah 1:6-9 ).

I fear the great God, Yahweh, the Creator of the universe.

Francis Schaeffer says that the term god is being so commonly used by people today without definition, that as we speak of God we need to become more definitive. And we probably should say, "The living God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth," so that we define to people the God that we are talking about, because there are so many gods. And people use the term God so freely, and so liberally to express almost anything.

So here he defines Yahweh who made the sea and the land.

Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and they said unto him, Why have you done this? For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them ( Jonah 1:10 ).

He told them that he was trying to flee from the presence of God, from the call of God to go to the Gentiles and preach to them.

Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto you, that the sea may be calm? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Just throw me overboard; and the sea will be calm: for I know that it is for my sake that this great tempest is come upon you. Nevertheless ( Jonah 1:11-13 )

Because he had paid his fare and it wasn't polite to throw over fare-paying passengers.

the men rowed hard to bring the ship to land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto Yahweh, and said, We beseech thee, O Yahweh, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and don't lay upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Yahweh, has done as has pleased thee ( Jonah 1:13-14 ).

God don't blame us. We're going to throw this guy over. We don't want to perish for him, but God, don't blame us for throwing him over, because You're the one that has brought all of this because of him. So God, have mercy on us when we throw him overboard.

So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and [the next miracle] the sea ceased her raging ( Jonah 1:15 ).

You see the miraculous is interwoven all the way through the book of Jonah.

Then the men when they saw this they reverenced the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and they made vows ( Jonah 1:16 ).

I imagine there was quite a scene on that ship when they saw all of this.

Now the LORD prepared [more accurately, appointed] a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights ( Jonah 1:17 ).

The Lord appointed a great fish. What kind of fish was it? The Bible doesn't tell us. Whether or not it was one of the sperm whales or whether or not it was a great shark, or whatever, it doesn't matter. I believe it did happen, because it is here in the Word of God.

Now here is where, of course, the biblical critics have a field day and you can read in so many Bible commentaries and in Bible dictionaries of the legend of Jonah or of the myth of Jonah. Or you can read men's endeavors to give some kind of a plausible, natural explanation of how really it wasn't a fish, but some other ship came along and the captain pulled Jonah out of the water. And it so happened he was going back towards Joppa and so he gave him a ride back, and he got back safely. And you can read a lot of natural explanations of man who are endeavoring to remove the supernatural from the story.

The real problem with the book of Jonah is that Jesus believed it. That is the problem for the critics of the book of Jonah. And I will personally cast my lot with Jesus than with all of the critics that I have ever read. I believe that Jesus knew better than these supposed wise scholars who write with the earthly wisdom of man in their endeavors to discount the miraculous aspects of God.

Jesus made a couple of references to Jonah. The one refers to Jonah's experience in this fish. "And as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" ( Matthew 12:40 ). Jesus gave that to the scribes and Pharisees who were asking Him for a sign. After He had been doing all of the miracles, they said, "Show us a sign that You're the Messiah." Jesus said, "A wicked and an adulterous generation seeks after a sign but no sign will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah" ( Matthew 16:4 ), "for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." And so Jesus refers to Jonah's experience as a real, literal experience, and thus I accept it as a real, literal experience. And I have no problem accepting it as a real, literal experience.

For I believe that God has created creatures of which we know nothing about that are surely capable of swallowing a man and retaining him for a period of time. I have no problem with God's ability to create. As I look at the vast creation of God, really I have no problem with creation. They talk of a whale's throat being too small to swallow a man. Well, that's some species of whales, but there is the sperm whale in which they have found the arms of squid that are five feet in diameter in their stomachs, so evidently they swallowed that portion of the squid. There must be gigantic squid in the oceans that we have never seen. In fact, they have found on whales the imprints of the suction cups of squid that are one foot in diameter, giant squid down there in the depths of the ocean. I would personally love to see a whale and a squid going at it. Boy, if you could get that on film how exciting that would be. One of these giant squid with suction cups a foot in diameter and a five foot in diameter on their tentacles. God has created some interesting creatures that we have not yet seen dwelling, no doubt, in the depths of the seas.

God said to Job, He said, "Hey, Job, you think you know so much, tell Me, have you seen this and that and the other?" And God rings off some of these things. Hey, it's beyond my dimensions. It is beyond my realm.

So Jonah was three days and three nights here in the belly of this great fish.

"

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

B. Jonah’s lack of compassion 1:4-6

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

The sailors were of mixed religious convictions. Some of them were probably Phoenicians, since Phoenicians were commonly seafaring traders. Phoenicia was a center of Baal worship then. The sailors’ willingness to throw their cargo into the sea illustrates the extreme danger they faced (cf. Acts 27:18-20).

Jonah’s ability to sleep under such conditions seems very unusual. The same Hebrew word (radam) describes Sisera’s deep sleep that his exhaustion produced (Judges 4:21) and the deep sleep that God put Adam and Abram under (Genesis 2:21; Genesis 15:12). Perhaps Jonah was both exhausted and divinely assisted in sleeping. His condition does not seem to have a major bearing on the story; it is probably a detail. The events that follow could have happened if he had been wide-awake just as well. What does seem unusual is his attitude of "careless self-security." [Note: Keil, 1:393.] He seems to have preferred death to facing God alive. Not only did he flee to Tarshish, but he also fled to the innermost part of the ship (cf. Amos 6:10).

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Then the mariners were afraid,.... Perceiving that the storm was not an ordinary, but a supernatural one; and that the ship and all in it were in extreme danger, and no probability of being saved. This shows that the storm must be very violent, to frighten such men who were used to the sea, and to storms, and were naturally bold and intrepid. The word used signifies "salters", so called from the salt sea they used, as they are by us "mariners", from "mare", the "sea"; though R. Japhet in Aben Ezra thinks the commodity they carried in their vessel was salt:

and cried every man to his god: to help them, and save them out of their distress. In the ship it seems were men of different nations, and who worshipped different gods. It was a notion of the Jews, and which Jarchi mentions as his own, that there were men of the seventy nations of the earth in it; and as each of them had a different god, they separately called upon them. The polytheism of the Pagans is to be condemned, and shows the great uncertainty of their religion; yet this appears to be agreeable to the light of nature that there is a God, and that God is to be prayed unto, and called upon, especially in time of trouble:

and cast forth the wares that [were] in the ship into the sea, to lighten [it] of them; or, "the vessels" c, a word the Hebrews use for all sorts of goods, utensils, c. it includes, with others, their military weapons they had to defend themselves, their provisions, the ship's stores or goods it was freighted with finding their prayers to their gods were ineffectual, they betook themselves to this prudential method to lighten the ship, that they might be able to keep its head above water. So the Targum,

"when they saw there was no profit in them;''

that is in the gods they called upon, then they did this; the other was a matter of religion this a point of prudence; such a step the mariners took that belonged to the ship in which the Apostle Paul was,

Acts 27:18;

but Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; into one of its sides, into a cabin there; the lowest side, as the Targum:

and he lay, and was fast asleep; even snored, as some versions have it: it may seem strange he should when the wind was so strong and boisterous; the sea roaring; the waves beating; the ship rolling about; the mariners hurrying from place to place, and calling to each other to do their duty; and the passengers crying; and, above all, that he should fall into so sound a sleep, and continue in it, when he had such a guilty conscience. This shows that he was asleep in a spiritual as well as in a corporeal sense.

c את הכלים "vasa", V. L. Vatablus, Grotius.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      4 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.   5 Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.   6 So the ship-master 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.   7 And 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. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.   8 Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?   9 And he said unto them, I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.   10 Then were the men 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.

      When Jonah was set on ship-board, and under sail for Tarshish, he thought himself safe enough; but here we find him pursued and overtaken, discovered and convicted as a deserter from God, as one that had run his colours.

      I. God sends a pursuer after him, a mighty tempest in the sea,Jonah 1:4; Jonah 1:4. God has the winds in his treasure (Psalms 135:7), and out of these treasures God sent forth, he cast forth (so the word is), with force and violence, a great wind into the sea; even stormy winds fulfil his word, and are often the messengers of his wrath; he gathers the winds in his fist (Proverbs 30:4), where he holds them, and whence he squeezes them when he pleases; for though, as to us, the wind blows where it listeth, yet not as to God, but where he directs. The effect of this wind as a mighty tempest; for when the winds rise the waves rise. Note, Sin brings storms and tempests into the soul, into the family, into churches and nations; it is a disquieting disturbing thing. The tempest prevailed to such a degree that the ship was likely to be broken; the mariners expected no other; that ship (so some read it), that and no other. Other ships were upon the same sea at the same time, yet, it should seem, that ship in which Jonah was was tossed more than any other and was more in danger. This wind was sent after Jonah, to fetch him back again to God and to his duty; and it is a great mercy to be reclaimed and called home when we go astray, though it be by a tempest.

      II. The ship's crew were alarmed by this mighty tempest, but Jonah only, the person concerned, was unconcerned, Jonah 1:5; Jonah 1:5. The mariners were affected with their danger, though it was not with them that God has this controversy. 1. They were afraid; though, their business leading them to be very much conversant with dangers of this kind, they used to make light of them, yet now the oldest and stoutest of them began to tremble, being apprehensive that there was something more than ordinary in this tempest, so suddenly did it rise, so strongly did it rage. Note, God can strike a terror upon the most daring, and make even great men and chief captains call for shelter from rocks and mountains. 2. They cried every man unto his god; this was the effect of their fear. Many will not be brought to prayer till they are frightened to it; he that would learn to pray, let him go to sea. Lord, in trouble they have visited thee. Every man of them prayed; they were not some praying and others reviling, but every man engaged; as the danger was general, so was the address to heaven; there was not one praying for them all, but every one for himself. They cried every man to his god, the god of his country or city, or his own tutelar deity; it is a testimony against atheism that every man had a god, and had the belief of a God; but it is an instance of the folly of paganism that they had gods many, every man the god he had a fancy for, whereas there can be but one God, there needs to be no more. But, though they had lost that dictate of the light of nature that there is but one God, they still were governed by that direction of the law of nature that God is to be prayed to (Should not a people seek under their God?Isaiah 8:19), and that he is especially to be prayed to when we are in distress and danger. Call upon me in the time of trouble. Is any afflicted? Is any frightened? Let him pray. 3. Their prayers for deliverance were seconded with endeavours, and, having called upon their gods to help them, they did what they could to help themselves; for that is the rule, Help thyself and God will help thee. They cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them, as Paul's mariners in a like case cast forth even the tackling of the ship, and the wheat,Acts 27:18; Acts 27:19; Acts 27:38. They were making a trading voyage, as it should seem, and were laden with many goods and much merchandise, by which they hoped to get gain; but now they are content to suffer loss by throwing them overboard. to save their lives. See how powerful the natural love of life is. Skin for skin, and all that a man has, will he give for it. And shall we not put a like value upon the spiritual life, the life of the soul, reckoning that the gain of all the world cannot countervail the loss of the soul? See the vanity of worldly wealth, and the uncertainty of its continuance with us. Riches make themselves wings and fly away; nay, and the case may be such that we may be under a necessity of making wings for them, and driving them away, as here, when they could not be kept for the owners thereof but to their hurt, so that they themselves are glad to be rid of them, and sink that which otherwise would sink them, though they have no prospect of ever recovering it. Oh that men would be thus wise for their souls, and would be willing to part with that wealth, pleasure, and honour which they cannot keep without making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience and ruining their souls for ever! Those that thus quit their temporal interests for the securing of their spiritual welfare will be unspeakable gainers at last; for what they lose upon those terms they shall find again to life eternal. But where is Jonah all this while? One would have expected gone down into his cabin, nay, into the hold, between the sides of the ship, and there he lies, and is fast asleep; neither the noise without, for the sense of guilt within, awoke him. Perhaps for some time before he had avoiding sleeping, for fear of God's speaking to him again in a dream; and now that he imagined himself out of the reach of that danger, he slept so much the more soundly. Note, Sin is of a stupifying nature, and we are concerned to take heed lest at any time our hearts be hardened by the deceitfulness of it. It is the policy of Satan, when by his temptations he has drawn men from God and their duty, to rock them asleep in carnal security, that they may not be sensible of their misery and danger. It concerns us all to watch therefore.

      III. The master of the ship called Jonah up to his prayers, Jonah 1:6; Jonah 1:6. The ship-master came to him, and bade him for shame get up, both to pray for life and to prepare for death; he gave him, 1. A just and necessary chiding: What meanest thou, O sleeper? Here we commend the ship-master, who gave him this reproof; for, though he was a stranger to him, he was, for the present, as one of his family; and whoever has a precious soul we must help, as we can, to save it from death. We pity Jonah, who needed this reproof; as a prophet of the Lord, if he had been in his place, he might have been reproving the king of Nineveh, but, being out of the way of his duty, he does himself lie open to the reproofs of a sorry ship-master. See how men by their sin and folly diminish themselves and make themselves mean. Yet we must admire God's goodness in sending him this seasonable reproof, for it was the first step towards his recovery, as the crowing of the cock was to Peter. Note, Those that sleep in a storm may well be asked what they mean. 2. A pertinent word of advice: "Arise, call upon thy God; we are here crying every man to his god, why dost not thou get up and cry to thine? Art not thou equally concerned with the rest both in the danger dreaded and in the deliverance desired?" Note, The devotions of others should quicken ours; and those who hope to share in a common mercy ought in all reason to contribute their quota towards the prayers and supplications that are made for it. In times of public distress, if we have any interest at the throne of grace, we ought to improve it for the public good. And the servants of God themselves have sometimes need to be called and stirred up to this part of their duty. 3. A good reason for this advice: If so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. It should seem, the many gods they called upon were considered by them only as mediators between them and the supreme God, and intercessors for them with him; for the ship-master speaks of one God still, from whom he expected relief. To engage prayer, he suggested that the danger was very great and imminent: "We are all likely to perish; there is but a step between us and death, and that just ready to be stepped." Yet he suggested that there was some hope remaining that their destruction might be prevented and they might not perish. While there is still life there is hope, and while there is hope there is room for prayer. He suggested also that it was God only that could effect their deliverance, and it must come from his power and his pity. "If he think upon us, and act for us, we may yet be saved." And therefore to him we must look, and in him we must put our trust, when the danger is ever so imminent.

      IV. Jonah is found out to be the cause of the storm.

      1. The mariners observed so much peculiar and uncommon either in the storm itself or in their own distress by it that they concluded it was a messenger of divine justice sent to arrest some one of those that were in that ship, as having been guilty of some enormous crime, judging as the barbarous people (Acts 28:4), "no doubt one of us is a murderer, or guilty of sacrilege, or perjury, or the like, who is thus pursued by the vengeance of the sea, and it is for his sake that we all suffer." Even the light of nature teaches that in extraordinary judgments the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against some extraordinary sins and sinners. Whatever evil is upon us at any time we must conclude there is a cause for it; there is evil done by us, or else this evil would not be upon us; there is a ground for God's controversy.

      2. They determined to refer it to the lot which of them was the criminal that had occasioned this storm: Let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause the evil is upon us. None of them suspected himself, or said, Is it I, Lord; is it I? But they suspected one another, and would find out the man. Note, It is a desirable thing, when any evil is upon us, to know for what cause it is upon us, that what is amiss may be amended, and, the grievance being redressed, the grief may be removed. In order to this we must look up to heaven, and pray, Lord, show me wherefore thou contendest with me; that which I see not teach thou me. These mariners desired to know the person that was the dead weight in their ship, the accursed thing, that that one man might die for the people and that the whole ship might not be lost; this was not only expedient, but highly just. In order to this they cast lots, by which they appealed to the judgment of God, to whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secret is hid, agreeing to acquiesce in his discovery and determination, and to take that for true which the lot spoke; for they knew by the light of nature, what the scripture tells us, that the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposal thereof is of the Lord. Even the heathen looked upon the casting of lots to be a sacred thing, to be done with seriousness and solemnity, and not to be made a sport of. It is a shame for Christians if they have not a like reverence for an appeal to Providence.

      3. The lot fell upon Jonah, who could have saved them this trouble if he would but have told them what his own conscience told him, Thou are the man; but as is usual with criminals, he never confesses till he finds he cannot help it, till the lot falls upon him. We may suppose there were those in the ship who, upon other accounts, were greater sinners than Jonah, and yet he is the man that the tempest pursues and that the lot pitches upon; for it is his own child, his own servant, that the parent, that the master, corrects, if they do amiss; others that offend he leaves to the law. The storm is sent after Jonah, because God has work for him to do, and it is sent to fetch him back to it. Note, God has many ways of bringing to light concealed sins and sinners, and making manifest that folly which was thought to be hidden from the eyes of all living. God's right hand will find out all his servants that desert him, as well as all his enemies that have designs against him; yea, though they flee to the uttermost parts of the sea, or go down to the sides of the ship.

      4. Jonah is hereupon brought under examination before the master and mariners. He was a stranger; none of them could say that they knew the prisoner, or had any thing to lay to his charge, and therefore they must extort a confession from him and judge him out of his own mouth; and for this there needed no rack, the shipwreck they were in danger of was sufficient to frighten him, so as to make him tell the truth. Though it was discovered by the lot that he was the person for whose sake they were thus damaged and exposed, yet they did not fly outrageously upon him, as one would fear they might have done, but calmly and mildly enquired into his case. There is a compassion due to offenders when they are discovered and convicted. They give him no hard words, but, "Tell us, we pray thee, what is the matter?" Two things they enquire of him:-- (1.) Whether he would himself own that he was the person for whose sake the storm was sent, as the lot had intimated: "Tell us for whose cause this evil is upon us; is it indeed for thy cause, and, if so, for what cause? What is this offence for which thou art thus prosecuted?" Perhaps the gravity and decency of Jonah's aspect and behaviour made them suspect that the lot had missed its man, had missed its mark, and therefore they would not trust it, unless he would himself own his guilt; they therefore begged of him that he would satisfy them in this matter. Note, Those that would find out the cause of their troubles must not only begin, but pursue the enquiry, must descend to particulars and accomplish a diligent search. (2.) What his character was, both as to his calling and as to his country. [1.] They enquire concerning his calling: What is thy occupation? This was a proper question to be put to a vagrant. Perhaps they suspected his calling to be such as might bring this trouble upon them: "Art thou a diviner, a sorcerer, a student in the black art? Hast thou been conjuring for this wind? Or what business are thou now going on? It is like Balaam's, to curse any of God's people, and is this wind send to stop thee?" [2.] They enquire concerning his country. One asked, Whence comest thou? Another, not having patience to stay for an answer to that, asked, What is thy country? A third to the same purport, "Of what people art thou? Art thou of the Chaldeans," that were noted for divination, "or of the Arabians," that were noted for stealing? They wished to know of what country he was, that, knowing who was the god of his country, they might guess whether he was one that could do them any kindness in this storm.

      5. In answer to these interrogatories Jonah makes a full discovery. (1.) Did they enquire concerning his country? He tells them he is a Hebrew (Jonah 1:9; Jonah 1:9), not only of the nation of Israel, but of their religion, which they received from their fathers. He is a Hebrew, and therefore is the more ashamed to own that he is a criminal; for the sins of Hebrews, that make such a profession of religion and enjoy such privileges, are greater than the sins of others, and more exceedingly sinful. (2.) Did they enquire concerning his calling--What is thy occupation? In answer to that he gives an account of his religion, for that was his calling, that was his occupation, that was it that he made a business of: "I fear the Lord Jehovah; that is the God I worship, the God I pray to, even the God of heaven, the sovereign Lord of all, that has made the sea and the dry land and has command of both." Not the god of one particular country, which they enquired after, and such as the gods were that they had been every man calling upon, but the God of the whole earth, who, having made both the sea and the dry land, makes what work he pleases in both and makes what use he pleases of both. This he mentions, not only as condemning himself for his folly, in fleeing from the presence of this God, but as designing to bring these mariners from the worship and service of their many gods to the knowledge and obedience of the one only living and true God. When we are among those that are strangers to us we should do what we can to bring them acquainted with God, by being ready upon all occasions to own our relation to him and our reverence for him. (3.) Did they enquire concerning his crime, for which he is now persecuted? He owns that he fled from the presence of the Lord, that he was here running away from his duty, and the storm was sent to fetch him back. We have reason to think that he told them this with sorrow and shame, justifying God and condemning himself and intimating to the mariners what a great God Jehovah is, who could send such a messenger as this tempest was after a runagate servant.

      6. We are told what impression this made upon the mariners: The men were exceedingly afraid, and justly, for they perceived, (1.) That God was angry, even that God that made the sea and the dry land. This tempest comes from the hand of an offended justice, and therefore they have reason to fear it will go hard with them. Judgments inflicted for some particular sin have a peculiar weight and terror in them. (2.) That God was angry with one that feared and worshipped him, only for once running from his work in particular instance; this made them afraid for themselves. "If a prophet of the Lord be thus severely punished for one offence, what will become of us that have been guilty of so many, and great, and heinous offences?" If the righteous be thus scarcely saved, and for a single act of disobedience thus closely pursued, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?1 Peter 4:17; 1 Peter 4:18. They said to him, "Why hast thou done this? If thou fearest the God that made the sea and the dry land, why wast thou such a fool as to think thou couldst flee from his presence? What an absurd unaccountable thing is it!" Thus he was reproved, as Abraham by Abimelech (Genesis 20:16); for if the professors of religion do a wrong thing they must expect to hear of it from those that make no such profession. "Why hast thou done this to us?" (so it may be taken) "Why has thou involved us in the prosecution?" Note, Those that commit a willful sin know not how far the mischievous consequences of it may reach, nor what mischief may be done by it.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

What Meanest Thou, O Sleeper?

September 14th, 1862 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892)

"But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. 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." Jonah 1:5-6 .

Of all the men in the ship, Jonah was the person who ought most to have been awake; but nevertheless, he was not only asleep, but fast asleep; all the creaking of the cordage, the dashing of the waves, the howling of the winds, the straining of the timbers, and the shouting of the mariners, did not arouse him; he was fast locked in the arms of sleep. See here, in Jonah's heavy slumber, the effect of sin. No noxious drug can give such deadly sleep as sin. The body never knows so dread a sleep when under the influence of opiates, as the soul does when sin hath cast it into a slumber. If men could be awake to the evils, to the danger, to the desperate punishment of sin, sin were not half so deadly as it is; but when it puts its sweet cup of nightshade to the lip, that cup soon blinds the eye and "steeps the senses in forgetfulness," and man knoweth not what or where he is. Nor is sin the only cradle in which evil rocks the soul, the world too, casteth men into slumber. I do not know that Jonah ever slept so soundly anywhere as when he had gotten into the midst of busy mariners who were going to Tarshish. Ah, it is comparatively easy for us to keep awake in the midst of God's Church; 'tis easy for us to maintain our stedfastness and integrity when we meet with those who rejoice in His name; but the world is an enchanted ground, and happy is that Christian who is able to survive the deadening influence of business, the soporific influence which creeps over the minds of men whose merchandise increaseth, whose houses are filled with the riches of nations. What downy pillows doth the world sew to all armholes! What beds of ease she spreads for those whom she entraps. See also, the slumbering effects of the flesh. It was to spare himself a little toil, it was to avoid personal dishonor that Jonah fled. Ah, flesh! when thou art yielded to, into what follies wilt thou not drive us, into what prostration of strength dost thou not hurl us? Pleasures and comforts, if sought as ends, are desperate drains upon the vigor of the spirit. When body is indulged, then the soul lies cleaving to the dust. It is not possible for us to pamper the flesh without, at the same time starving the soul. If we sacrifice unto our own lusts, we are quite certain to get the sacrifices by robbing God's altar. The body shall not have pleasure in sin, except the soul shall soon be in a state of misery and decay. See also, in our text, one of the devices of Satan. He seeks to lull God's prophets into slumber, for he knows that dumb dogs that are given to sleep will never do any very great injury to his cause. The wakeful watchman he always fears, for then he cannot take the city by surprise; but if he can cast God's watchman into slumber, then he is well content, and thinketh it almost as well to have a Christian asleep as to have him dead: he would certainly sooner see him in hell, but next to that, he is most glad to see him rocked in the cradle of presumption, fast asleep. May we be delivered from Jonah's condition; but since like Jonah, we are infested by sin, incumbered by the flesh, surrounded by the world, and tempted by the devil, we have good cause occasionally that the shipmaster should come round and shake us by the shoulders, or even roughly strike us with the rope, lest we should sleep as do others, and so fall into spiritual decays. I shall this morning act the shipmaster's part, and, as captain of this vessel, I will cry both to slumbering saints and to sleepy sinners, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God." I. First of all, we will deal with the SLEEPING SAINTS, those poor Jonahs who are God's true servants, but are yet asleep. To break their bands of sleep asunder, let me remind them, first, that the ship is in danger. It was ill for Jonah to sleep when all hands were at the pumps. When every other man was doing his best to lighten the ship, and save her if possible from the terrific tempest, it was a shame that he should be asleep. The peril of human life demanded of every generous spirit prompt and earnest action. Every groaning timber would upraid the lazy, sleepy prophet. Member of this Church, professed Christian, is it not a shame, think you, to be slumbering, to be dilatory in your Master's service when the souls of men are in danger? It is marvellous to me how men can be so careless about the ruin of men's souls. Let us hear the cry of "Fire! fire!" in the streets, and our heart is all in trepidation lest some poor creature should be burned alive; but we read of hell, and of the wrath to come, and seldom do our hearts palpitate with any compassionate trembling and fear. If we are on board a vessel, and the shrill cry is heard, "A man overboard!" whoever hears of a passenger wrapping his plaid around him, and lying down upon a seat to contemplate the exertions of others? But in the Church, when we hear of thousands of sinners sinking in the floods of ruin, we behold professed Christians wrapping themselves up in their own security, and calmly looking on upon the labors of others, wishing them no doubt all success, but not even lifting a finger to do any part of the work themselves. If we heard to-morrow in our streets the awful cry more terrible than fire the cry of "Bread! bread! bread!" and saw starving women lifting up their perishing children, or hungry men imprecating curses upon those who should keep back their necessary food from them, would we not empty out our stores? Who among us would not spend our substance to let the poor ravenous creatures satisfy the pangs of hunger? And yet, here is the world perishing for lack of knowledge. Here we have them at our doors crying for the bread of heaven, and how many there are that hoard their substance for avarice, give their time to vanity, devote their talents to self-aggrandisement, and center their thoughts only on the world or the flesh! Oh! could ye once see with your eyes a soul sinking into hell, it were such a spectacle that ye would work night and day, and count your life too short and your hours too few for the plucking of brands from the burning. I suppose if we had once seen a drop drowning man, or a wretch borne over the rapids of Niagara, or if we had seen a person stabbed in the street, we should scarce ever forget it. Death's doings are painted in very red colors upon the memory. O that God would give some of you the sight of a lost soul! O that you could see it in its naked condition when it steps behind the curtain into the world unknown. O that you could behold its first horrors, when it discovers itself exposed to the anger of Almighty God. Would that you could see that soul when the awful hell-sweat shall stand upon its brow as God proclaims "Depart, thou cursed one!" that the vision of hell were sometimes before our eyes, that some few of the sighs of a damned soul were ringing in our ears! Would God we had a vision of the judgment, the tremendous crowd, the flaming heavens and the rocking earth, the open book, the eyes that flash with lightning and the voice that speaks with thunder! Would that we could see the crowds as they descend into the pit that hath no bottom, for then, starting up like men that have long been given to a foolish slumber, we should gird up our loins, and using both our hands we should seek to pluck men from the burning, and deliver them from going down into the pit. Men are dying! Men are perishing! Hell is filling! Satan is triumphing! Poor souls are howling in their agonies, and do ye sleep? I, as the shipmaster, shake ye yet again. O that the Holy Spirit may quicken and arouse you, perhaps he may do it through my voice, while again I adjure you. "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God," that the multitudes perish not! A second time I would arouse you, by reminding you that in the halcyon times in which we live, men are earnestly craving for our prayers men are longing for deliverance. In Jonah's ship every man was a pleader; every person was praying; and though I cannot say this of the world that lieth in the wicked one, yet, to a very great extent, it is true that the masses are longing to hear the words of this life. There was never an age like this for hearing sermons. I marvel, every Sabbath day, as I see the crowd willing to stand outside waiting by the hour, and then rustling in like a mountain torrent, even treading upon one another to hear the Word. Is not this an encouragement to labor? See the theater on a Sunday; no actors could attract greater multitudes! How they throne the doors, to listen to some simple-minded man, who is going to tell the story of the cross! I have seen this thirst for the Word all over England; but this present week I have seen in a village, thinly populated, some ten thousand people crowding the cliffs, drinking in every word from the preacher's lips earnest to listen to the message of mercy. We have not now to stir up the people to attend the means, for there is all around us a desire to hear. This is a hearing age; this is a time when men are willing to listen when they are only too glad to hear the Word faithfully preached. I say not that it is so in every place, but certainly it is in London; and a man with but very moderate gifts, if his tongue be but on fire, will soon command an audience. If there be an empty place of worship in London, it is generally the preacher's fault; and, in nine cases out of ten, you will find that empty benches are evidences that the man does not preach the gospel; for, if he preached the gospel, the people would soon throng to listen to him. What, shall we sleep now? What, shall we be idle now? Ministers of Christ, shall we relax our efforts, or shall we be dull and cold about immortal souls when every omen urges us to zealous labor? My fellow workers deacons and elders, honored Church officers will you draw back in this day of hopefulness, and refrain to sow the seed, when the field is ploughed and ready for the grain? Church members ye young men that can speak in public, ye women that can in your households talk of Christ will any of you be dull and lethargic now? Now is the moment when we may carry the fortress by storm, and if armed and carrying bows we turn our backs in the moment of victory, when triumph trembles in the scales, how shall we throughout life regret our wicked folly and idleness. What meanest thou, O sleeper, to sleep now? Arise, for 'tis a happy and auspicious hour "Arise, and call upon thy God." Yet further, let us remember that as Jonah was the only man in the ship whose prayer could be of any avail, so the children of God are the only men who can do any real spiritual service to the perishing world. All the cries of the shipmaster and his crew were addressed to the gods of their various countries, who had ears which could not ear, and hands which could afford no aid. Jonah was the only man who worshipped the Lord that made the sea and the dry land; hence, his prayers alone could save the ship. Now, the salvation of the world under God lies with the Church. Christ has finished the atonement; it is for the Church to finish the ingathering. Christ hath paid the purchase-price, and completed redemption by blood; it is for the Church to seek the Holy Spirit, and fully to redeem the world by power. Suppose, then, that you who fear God say, "This is no case of mine; I am not my brother's keeper;" suppose that you waste opportunities, and throw precious time to the dogs, then the world must go down to its awful doom; but, mark you, its blood shall be upon your skirts. This generation, under God, must have salvation given to it through our ministry, through our evangelists, through our Sunday-schools, through our missionaries, through our preachings and teachings; and if we do it not, the world will not stay from perishing while we are staying from laboring. Men will not live on until another generation worthier than we are shall have taken our places, but this generation must go down to the tomb, muttering curses between its lips against the faithless, wicked, unbelieving, inactive Church; and we must go down too, to meet the doom of those who had no real faith in Christ, or else they would have had a love for the souls of men; who had not the spirit of Jesus, or else they would with wooing entreaties, and with earnest efforts have brought men to the cross of Christ. Ah, beloved! I know that we have some in the Church who are but a drag to it. There are some in all Churches who are of this kind, but let me solemnly remind you we must address the Church as a body let me again remind the Church that it is with her and with no one else that the world has to deal as to its conversion. We must never think of leaving Christ's work to societies. They have had their day, and have supplied a great lack created by the loss of the apostolic spirit, but it is now time that the aroused and revived Church should assume her true position and do her own work. Fifty years or more, missionary societies have been trying to convert the world, and albeit that many souls have been saved, and therefore the effort has been far from useless, yet, compared with apostolic success, they have been a miserable failure. All these years we have spent ten times the money, with not a tenth of the success, of early evangelistic effort. In my inmost soul, I believe that the Lord is not with the most of our foreign missions. And why? Because God never called the missionary societies to the work. He never bade the missionary society become the spouse of Christ, and bring forth sons unto him. His offspring, his seed which shall reward him for his soul's travail, must spring from his own well-beloved bride. Much as I value all good societies, I cannot hesitate to declare that the Church is the ordained agent, and that all beside is human, and derives authority only from man. Hence I say of a society for the conversion of the heathen, it is a man-constituted body, and not of God. The Lord will work, not by committees, but by his Churches. The Church must do her own work, and when all our Churches are thoroughly aroused to this fact, and every congregation shall send out its own men, pray for their own men, and support their own men, we shall see greater things than we have ever dreamed of, and "the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ." But it lies with the Church. O ye that are in the Church and sleep, what mean ye? Arise, and call upon your God. Further, and here I more especially address such members of this Church as may have been hitherto careless about the good work. Remember, sleeper, that you are in the ship yourself, that you enjoy its privileges, and therefore, you ought to take your quota of the work. It is said of Lepidus, a Roman officer, that one day, when all the soldiers were at drill he laid down out of the sunshine, and said, he wished it were all the duty of a soldier to lay under a tree for ever. We have some such soldiers. The breed is not extinct. The enlisting officer, however exact he may be, cannot help it, there will lie some such introduced into all our little armies, who like to lie in the shade, and take matters easy, and wish this were all that ever a Christian soldier had to do. Oh, rise, man! for if the battle is to be won, it must not be fought by soldiers lying in the shade, but by men who can bear the heat of the sun, wear their heavy armor without weariness, and rush to battle against the foe for God and for the truth, fearless and dauntless, in the face of leaguered hosts. There is an old story told of Philip, last king of Macedon. Before the last disastrous battle by which his monarchy was destroyed, it is said that he stood up to harangue his soldiers upon a sepulcher, and it was interpreted by the augurs to be a sign of sure defeat, because he stood upon a tomb to speak. And I, your minister, if it should ever be my unhappy lot to stand upon a dead Church to preach the Word, cannot expect anything but the most disastrous defeat. Let but the minister of God be supported by a living Church, let him be borne up in the arms of a loving and a praying people, and who can stand against his word? Nothing but victory must follow. But let us have dead, careless deacons and elders, let us have idle Church-members, and the omens are against us, and the result of our battle must be a terrible calamity. There is more than we think for of mischief done by the presence of one unconverted person in a Church. We are told by anatomists, that there is no part of the body which is dead. Even the teeth and bones are alive. Life abhors alliance with death; and if a dead substance once gets into the body, all the enfolds of nature are directed to the one point where the foreign body is found, to drive it out; and often ulcers and running sores, and such like things, are but the effects of nature seeking to expel the dead substance from the body. Now, there is nothing in Christ's real Church that is dead; and if ever dead substances get into the Church, they will not lie there still and quiet, but the Church shall be aware of it in her every nerve and pore, and she shall soon begin to exert her strength and vitality to expel the foreign substance from her living body would that this energy could be spared for other works, for the saving of souls for Jesus. Now, I address some pretended Christians here who are not alive to God. Let me beg of them to relinquish their profession, or if not, to make it real. Either be what you profess to be, or drop your profession. Lie not unto God, for in so doing you injure the Church of which you are a part, and, which since you are a part of it, it is your duty to serve. I should not expect if I were a member of a commercial firm, to take half the profits, and to do nothing. It is mean to the very last degree to share the benefits without uniting in the toil. And yet some professors are guilty of this miserable conduct. As it was in the days of Job, so it is even until now "the oxen were ploughing, and the asses were feeding beside them;" there is always a large proportion of the latter class in the Churches, too glad to feed, but quite unwilling to work. To every Jonah, then, I say, "either arise and pray with us or get out of the ship, for sooner or later we shall be compelled to throw you out if you do not." Furthermore, and here let me conclude this point, the honor of our God is mightily concerned in every Jonah being aroused. How could Jehovah be glorified, if the only worshipper of Jehovah in the vessel should sleep? If he did not cry to God, how could the mariners know whether Jehovah did hear prayer or not? Now, mark you, the honor of Christ of his doctrines, of his blood, of his person, the dignity of everything that we hold sacred rests, in the eyes of the sons of men, in the keeping of the Church. When a Church grows proud, worldly, and idle, what does the world say? "That's your religion! says the world; and then, "Aha! aha! aha!" it says, "what a lie religion is!" But let the world see a really earnest Church, it grows very angry, it finds all the fault it can; but down, deep in its heart, it reverences those it hates, and it secretly confesses, "There is a power here." They gaze and admire, even though they hate the might with which God surrounds such a Church as this. The Christian religion was at one time looked up to by the heathens with awe and reverence, for they saw its martyrs dying without a tear; its poor content in their poverty, without murmuring: its great men humble, not giving way either to lust or covetousness; they saw the purity and chastity of Christian matrons; they beheld the diligent industry of Christian bishops; they saw as though they beheld the face of an angel, when they looked upon Christ's fair Church on earth. But she became degenerate she committed fornication by being allied with the State; she lost her dignity, and turned aside from her high position as queen of the Lord, and a spiritual body quickened by a spirit from above. What then did the world do? It mocked and jeered; and while it paid an outward homage to a bejewelled Church glittering with gold and silver, yet in its soul it loathed and despised her. Men no longer needed to dread the omnipotence of Christian zeal. An excellent historian thus speaks of believers in the martyr age hear it, and judge whether men have such reasons to fear us now. He describes the common opinion of the Roman pagans concerning the followers of Jesus: "They were intensely propagandist. While ever unseen they were at work. Every member was a missionary of the sect, and lived mainly to propagate a doctrine for which they were ever ready to die. Thus the infection spread by a thousand unsuspected channels. Like a contagion propagated in the air, it could penetrate, as it seemed, anywhere, everywhere. The meek and gentle slave that tends your children, or attends you at table, may be a Christian; the favourite daughter of your house, who has endeared herself to you by a tenderness and grace peculiarly her own, and which seems to you as strange as it is captivating, turns out to be a Christian; the captain of the guards, the legislator in the senate-house, may be a Christian! In these circumstances who or what is safe? What power can defend the laws and majesty of Rome, and the peace of domestic life, against an enemy like this? Then it was often as hateful for its absence as for its presence. With sullen moroseness this strange people studiously absented themselves from all places and scenes of public entertainment and festivity. Games, shows, gladiatorial contests, public fetes of every kind, military or civil, they eschewed as they would have done the plague. Such scenes, forsooth, were so mixed up with idolatry, and so steeped in licentiousness and sin, that though consecrated by the presence and express sanction of their country's gods, they were not good enough for them!" O my brethren, how I wish that we could be thus happily reviled. If we cannot reach so high, at least, let us keep our garments spotless. Would you make this Church, my fellow members, to become a stink in the nostrils of the wicked? We have, brethren, a power among men. When they have followed us with their hootings and their jeers, we have borne patiently, and have been too glad to bear every slander if we might arouse lazy generation from their lethargy. We have seen success follow our efforts. We have beheld the opening of places for the preaching of the gospel which had been closed for centuries. We have seen the theater devoted to God on the Sabbath-day and now, now, shall we stay in our course? God forbid! for, if we do, what shall the enemy say, but, "Lo! God hath forsaken them, the gospel can but create a temporary excitement, truth is evanescent in its influence." Instead thereof, let us hold hard to God and to his Word, for the glory of the truth, and for the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, I hear some self-satisfied people say, "We do not want this sermon this morning; we are not asleep. The members of this Church are not a slothful people." Well, dear friends, I cheerfully admit that, as a body, we are not given to slumber, but I am not so sure that this is true of you all. At any rate, those who are awake will find it a good thing to have a jog, lest they should unawares fall like Eutychus into a sleep; but I am sure that some of you are asleep, and I shall not hesitate to treat you as such. But you will reply to me, Why, sir, we talk about religion." Many people talk in their sleep. I have heard of a man who preached an excellent sermon when he was asleep. "Well, but is not our walk consistent?" Yes, but when I was a small boy, I used to walk in my sleep, and then I could venture in my sleep where I should not have wandered when I was awake, and I should not wonder but this may be your case. "Yes, but do we not feel religious influences? Do we not weep under a sermon?" Yes, and I have heard people cry in their sleep. Such things are quite possible. "But do we not rejoice very much when we hear the gospel?" Yes, and some folks will laugh in their sleep. John Bunyan tells of Mercy, who did laugh because of the beauty of her dream; and your dreams may be so pleasant that they make you laugh. "Ah, well," says one, "but I do not see that we are so very sound asleep, for we think a great deal about religion." Yes, and people think when they are asleep; for what are their dreams but unconnected thoughts? and so you may have some straying thoughts of God and of right, and yet after all you may be fast asleep. "Then, what do you mean by a man's being really awake?" I mean two or three things. I mean, first, his having a thorough consciousness of the reality of spiritual things. When I speak of a wakeful man, I mean one who does not take the soul to be a fancy, nor heaven to be a fiction, nor hell to be a tale, but who acts among the sons of men as though these were the only substances, and all other things the shadows. I want men of stern resolution, for no Christian is awake unless he stedfastly determines to serve his God, come fair, come foul. I would have you, young Christians, dedicated to God's service. Just as Hamilcar led his two children to the altar, and made them swear by the gods that they would never cease their enmity to Rome while they lived, I want you to feel that the vows of God are upon you, so that you cannot cease from attacking sin and winning souls as long as you live. And I do not think you are awake, moreover, unless you are moved by a passionate earnestness to win souls for Christ. A man who labors, and sees no success attending his efforts, may be awake if he mourns, and groans, and sighs before God; but an idle preacher, a preacher without converts a Sunday school teacher in whose class there is no conversion a man who never saw a sinner brought to Christ by his means, and yet is happy and content such a man is asleep; let him take heed that he sleep not the sleep of death. I had sooner the Lord would send claps of thunder to this Church, in the form of heavy trials and troubles the removal of your pastor, the taking away of our best men, the riot of mobs, or the slander of the press than that we should continue to multiply and increase, and should make this place a huge dormitory wherein we snored out God's praises in our sleep, instead of an armoury where we sharpen our swords on the Sabbath to go out the whole week long, contending for God and for the good of men. Never may these benches be beds, nor these seats couches for sluggards to recline upon. "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God." I have now said enough, I hope, to the slumbering Christians, only that there are some who are asleep who will not hear what say. I do not mean that there are any in the congregation asleep with their eyes shut; but if they are asleep with their hearts, it is probable that what I say may do good to those who are awake; but those who are asleep and given to slumber, will say, "A little more rest and a little more folding of arms; we are saved ourselves, let us sleep on." May the Lord vouch safe you a better mind, and constrain you to act as holy gratitude and love demand of you. II. Very solemnly and earnestly would I now address myself to SLUMBERING SINNERS. What crowds are there, this morning, of these careless ones, who are at ease on the brink of ruin. Unconverted and yet unconcerned; exposed to the wrath of God, but fearless, as though all were peace; on the edge of perdition, but merry as a marriage bell; condemned already, but mirthful as revellers at a feast. Let me attempt to disturb your quiet, by remarking, first, that your sleep is utterly incomprehensible to those who are awake. Convinced souls, who feel the danger of their own state, cannot understand how you can be so careless. We were as foolish as you are once, but when we first began to perceive things in their true light, it was the wonder of wonders to us how we could have been so much at ease in so perilous a position. The man who sports upon the gallows, or laughs when consuming in the fire, or jests with his head upon the block, is not more a marvel than you. You are a sinner a sinner! You can hear that title applied to you without any sort of fear, whereas a sinner is a thing abhorred of God. The God that made thee loathes thee. The sinner is one whom God must smite. He bears with thee long, but he must smite thee soon. The sword may sleep in its scabbard, but it must leap forth to smite thee even to the death. A sinner! Why, thou art one whose life is a continued miracle, for the heavens would fall upon thee, if long-suffering, did not restrain them; the very stones of the field would smite thee, if God did not bind them over to keep the peace; and the beasts of the field are in league against thee, and would devour thee if he did not hold them in from thee. Why, thou art one that has no friend anywhere; thou art a blot upon nature; thou art a dishonor to creation; thou aft loathsome in thyself; thou art contagious to others; thou art grievous to the best of men; thou art harmful even to the bad; thou art a weed ripening for the burning, a pool of foul waters breeding miasma, a monster to be hunted out of the universe of God. A felon, a criminal, a traitor, a sinner, which is all these things in one, and yet, under such an accusation, thou art at ease! Man, remember again, thou art a mortal. Time eats away thy life and hurries thee to thy grave. The sun doth not stand still for thee; speeding on his everlasting course, day after day, bears thee to the tomb. Every tick of yonder clock, sounds as the footfall of approaching Death. The rider upon the pale horse is pursuing thee, his charger is foaming with speed. Perhaps thou mayest never see another day; the light of 1863 may never shine into thine eyes; or, if thou shouldst not yet expire, how short is the longest life! how certain is thy death! A mortal man, and yet thou steepest! Bethink thee, man, of that upper chamber where thou shalt play the leading part, pale and languid, stretched out upon the bed. The curtains shall be drawn about thee, and every voice shall be hushed in sad anxiety; weeping relatives shall gaze upon thy brow, clammy with the death-sweat, and life shall be a thing of seconds with thee. Heavily heave the lungs, languidly beats the pulse; the awful moment is at hand. It is yourself, you strong man, grappling with a stronger than you are. Those are your eyes which shall be glazed in the darkness of death, and those are your limbs which shall be gathered up in the last mortal agony. And do you, knowing, feeling that you must die, and having the sentence of death in your members already do you sleep still? Alas! alas! how dire the stupor which death cannot startle. But, man, remember you are an immortal, and this makes it the more grievous that you should sleep. You shall not die when you die, but you shall live again for ever! for ever! for ever! Oh, eternity! eternity! a deep without a bottom and with out a shore! My hearer, thou must sail over it for ever and for ever never reaching a port; and that eternity must be to thee, if unsaved, a sea of fire, lashed to eternal storm. Eternity, eternity, thou mountain without a summit! Up its sides thou must climb, O sinner, and find it an ever-burning volcano. On, on, on, must thou ascend, for summit there is none for ever! for ever! for ever! for ever! And yet dost thou sleep on, sinner? What madness do I see in you? It is madness without method, insanity exaggerated, to despise the warnings of eternity. Remember, man, as thou art immortal, there is a heaven, and dying as thou are living, thou wilt lose it. For thee no harps of angels, no songs of saints, no melodies of joy, for thee no face of Christ to be seen with rapture, no embraces of the ever-loving husband; for thee no sunshines of the father's face, no bliss ineffable, no rivers of pleasure at his right hand. Thou art losing all these! Eternal and exceeding weights of glory thou art spurning, and yet thou steepest! O sleeper, what meanest thou? If this bestir thee not, I would have thee remember, man, as surely as thou losest heaven, so certainly thou are gaining hell. For thee the flames that never can be quenched, the thirst without a drop of water; for thee an angry God, a fiery law, a flaming Tophet; for thee the company of blaspheming fiends and despairing spirits; for thee unutterable agony, "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." "What meanest thou, O sleeper," when this must be thy doom if thou sleep on. Were it not that we know that man is dead in trespasses and sins, this sleeping would be utterly incomprehensible to those who have once been awakened. I marvel that I can preach about these awful themes without an agony of earnestness. These are no trifles, no themes for an orator's idle hour, or a hearer's curious ear. These matters may well make both the ears of him that heareth thereof to tingle. O that they might make your hearts tremble before the Lord, that with contrition you might seek his face. Further would I press this matter home. I am sure that you frivolous, thoughtless men and women, can give no justifiable cause for carelessness. Sinner, wherefore sleepest thou? Perhaps you tell me you do not believe there is this danger; I reply to you, you do believe it, you know you do. I reason not with you if you pretend to be infidels; there is that in you which makes you know that there is a God, and that he must punish sin; you may boast that you have no fears of the hereafter, but when you are alone, or sick, or in your sober senses, you tremble at the judgment to come. You know it man, and at the bayonet point, I charge home upon you. O that I could carry your heart as readily as your conscience. You know that these things are not fictions nor falsehoods. If you should have some honest doubts, you have but to open your eyes to see, and use your common sense to be convinced. Do but listen to the utterances of your fellow sinners, as they have passed from time into eternity, and have felt the foretaste of eternal wrath, and surely you must confess that there is a God that visiteth transgression and sin upon the ungodly. But you will tell me perhaps, there is time enough, and therefore you may sleep; but there is no time, man, there is no time to spare. If I were in a fever I would not say, "There is time enough to be healed," but I would say "Let me be delivered from this consuming heat." If I stood just now upon the edge of a burning mountain and felt the lava giving way beneath my feet, I would not say "There is time enough yet," but I would long now to make my escape. Sinner, thou standest to day over the mouth of hell upon a single plank, and that plank is rotten; you are swinging over the jaws of perdition by a solitary rope, and the strands of that rope are snapping now. Now! now! thou art in danger! Thou mayest die this morning. Many places of worship have been made places of death. God save thee, that this may not happen to thee, but still this is thy time of danger, and there is no time to spare. Do you say, "Well, we may as well sleep, for there's no hope for us?" No! sinner, no! Blessed be God, you cannot say that! You that sit under my ministry constantly know I never taught you that, I never said of any one of you that you could not be saved. I have preached to you no impossible gospel; I have not shut the gates of mercy on mankind in proclaiming Christ; have I not rather told you that "He is willing to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by him?" I have set the door open before you and I have entreated you to come in; nay, I have labored to compel you to come in that his house may be filled. Ever now again I utter the same message, "Whosoever will let him come and take the water of life freely." Trust in Jesus; trust in Jesus, and thou shalt be saved. Thy despair is wicked, for it gives God the lie; thy despondency is sinful, for it doubts the truth of him who cannot be false to himself or to thee. Sinner, trust him and thou shalt be saved this morning. God help thee to throw thyself flat to-day upon the covenanted promises of God in Christ, and trusting his precious blood he will save thee now and save thee for ever. O wherefore, wherefore steepest thou? If you can cite no good cause, if you can offer no cogent reason, what meanest thou then, O sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God. But soul, soul, we remind thee yet again, as we cannot understand thy sleep, and thou canst not justify it, we would solemnly beg thee to consider that thy sleep will soon end in ruin. Ah, there are some of you whose hearts I shall never reach. Let me live as long as I may, I shall never see you saved. There are some of you I have often made you weep, but the Lord has not made you hate your sins. Some of you love drunkenness, and though you leave it for a little season, yet all the entreaties of: the minister and all the pleadings of your conscience cannot keep you from returning like a dog to your vomit, and like a cow that is washed to her wallowing in the mire. Oh, my hearers, there are some of you I have not quite despaired of you, but I tell you solemnly it has almost come to that. O that ye would know even now in this your day the things which make for your peace. Oh, how I fear, and think I have just cause to fear, that there are some of you who will sit in this Tabernacle till you die, and you will go from this place to hell with my voice of entreaty ringing in your ears. I have prayed for you, and you are not saved; I have levelled sermons at you, and you have not been moved; I have preached plainly to your face against your iniquity, and laid your sin before your eyes, and ye have not repented; I have held up my Master's bleeding body and ye have not been wooed to love. Ye have been convicted for a season, and ye have hushed the voice of conscience; ye have vowed, and ye have broken your vows; ye have turned again to your folly, and ye are still what you were, senseless, stolid, hardened, dead in sin. I shall not for ever hammer at this granite; not always shall the horses run upon the rock, nor shall we plough there with oxen, for God shall lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet, and where are ye then? Oh! if we knew by express revelations, concerning any man here present that he would be one day in hell, if looking into his eyes we could read there, "That man will dwell for ever in torments," should we not weep over him? Yet I fear me there are such here. I fear me may God remove the fear by his grace I fear me there are such. "Lord, is it I?" let each one say "Lord, is it I?" Well, sinner, thou shalt go sleeping on. Thou wilt go home to thy house to-day and forget all that I have said; thou wilt come again to-night, but the result will be the same; like the door on its hinges thou wilt turn in and out without a change all thy days. See man, thou wilt listen to my voice, it will be to thee as a pleasing song but nothing more; thou wilt be all thy life as the deaf adder which cannot be charmed. Thou wilt now and then murmur in thy sleep, "The preacher is too earnest, and makes too much noise about these melancholy matters, or he is too prone to dwell on these hard threatenings." You will return to a deeper sleep, and so continue year by year. How do you approve of the prospect? But stay, let me finish the story. One day there will run a rumor among us, "So-and-so who sat in that pew is dead." "Did he die in the Lord?" will be our solemn question. And the answer will be, "We fear not; he showed no signs of repentance or of faith in Christ." Ah then, what must our conclusion be. Well sinner, well, do me this one favor. If thou wilt be damned, let me be clear of thy blood. Do me but this one service if thou wilt perish let it not be laid to the door of my unfaithfulness. If there be anyone here present, stranger or regular attendant, who will choose his own perdition, I charge thee pay some regard to my earnest protest, for I enter it now before the Lord. Be damned if thou wilt, but do let me first of all stand before you and tell you what damnation means, and tell you that there is a way of salvation. Let me stretch out these hands again and plead with you that ye would come to Christ, that ye might live. "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God," for it may soon be too late for thee to arise. None will be able to warn thee soon, none will weep for thee soon, none will entreat thee soon. When once the iron gates are shut, and the brazen bolts are drawn; all the friendship of earth or the fury of hell cannot unlock them; the awful gratings of those bolts that shut in souls for ever in fell despair, shall be ever in thine ears, covering thee with hopeless dismay. Now I pray you while yet there is hope. "Awake! arise, or be for ever fallen!" Lastly, I think I may call upon those present here, who know what it is to be fully awakened, to do their best to awaken others. We read in ancient history of the Sybarites, who were a people so given to slumber that they killed their dogs lest their barking should arouse them, and would have no crowing of the cock to awake them at morn; there are some sinners who would desire to banish every warning friend and faithful monitor far away from them. But I pray you, even though it should be unpleasant, do your best to keep your friends from ruin. We know that when persons are likely to perish through laudanum, and they are falling to sleep, the physician does not hesitate to thrust pins into the flesh, or walk them up and down even though they cry and long to go to sleep. So with you, be not too careful about wounding the feelings or shocking the nerves if you may but win the soul. Better that you should get into discredit for being impertinent with your friends than let their souls perish through your politeness. Be ye not like Agag, who cometh delicately, with "surely the bitterness of death is past." Like the old Puritans, who availed themselves of every opportunity to rebuke sin and uphold righteousness, so be you instant in season and out of season. If you should save a soul through being too zealous, neither your Master nor the saved one will blame you for it, and at least in heaven it will never be a source of regret to you that you were too active and too diligent. You may have an opportunity to-day. Who can tell whether God may not bless you in it, if you use it? But I pray you use it, whether he bless you or not, lest the neglect of that opportunity should leave blood upon your skirts. By him that bought you with his blood, live to his service by him that called you unto a holy calling, give yourselves wholly to the winning of souls by him who from the beginning hath chosen you unto salvation, live as the elect of God, having bowels of compassion. By your life, for which you are responsible by your death, which may be so near by Jesus, whose face you hope to see by hell, into which lost souls are sinking by heaven, to which the penitent shall rise, which is your hope and your joy proclaim the word everywhere to men. Tell it, tell it till the skies shall echo it. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." "Cast thy bread upon the waters" labor, toil, seek, strive, agonize and God give you his own blessing, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

Lectures on the Minor Prophets.

W. Kelly.

The most cursory reader can hardly avoid seeing that Jonah has a peculiar place among the prophets. There is none more intensely Jewish; yet his prophecy was addressed to the Gentiles, to the men of Nineveh in his day. Indeed here we learn nothing at all of his service in Israel. He is severed by God's call to this then most extraordinary mission and testimony. Thus, as it has been well observed, Jonah seems outwardly as singular in the Old Testament among the prophets as James is apt to sound strange to many ears among the New Testament apostles. Perhaps every one has felt the difficulty: certainly we know that in some eminent servants of the Lord the difficulties have been allowed to interfere with the reverential confidence due to an inspired writing, as I am assured most mistakenly. Nevertheless such remains the notorious fact. Even a man known for the wonderful work God gave him to do like Luther put a signal slight on the Epistle of James. No argument is needed to prove that he had not one good reason, that his unbelief was quite unjustifiable, and that the error wrought exceeding evil in proportion to the eminence of the man. For the influence of a leader's words, if he go seriously astray, is so much the more dangerous. Hence the Lutheran party in Germany have always shown the strongest tendency towards what some have called "a free handling" of the word of God, but it is to be feared in anything but a becoming spirit. Who can wonder that this has at length developed into the various forms of decided rationalism in the present day, though indeed more or less ever since the Reformation? They may ever so little reflect or sympathize with what was of faith and of divine excellence; but they are none the less disposed to cite Luther as giving an anticipative sanction to their own sceptical spirit towards the word of God.

The truth is that the value of the books of both James and Jonah is chiefly owing to, and seen in, their peculiarity. God is not narrow, though man is; and our wisdom lies in being lifted out of our own pettiness into the vast mind of God. Hence it will be found that, so far from James being one who slighted grace, his epistle is unintelligible unless a man really understands and holds fast the grace of God. He is the only apostle who uses the remarkable term "the perfect law of liberty." This supposes not law but grace. Therefore it was really the feebleness with which grace was apprehended which made people fancy and shrink back from the bugbear of legalism in the Epistle of James. Had they read it in the liberty of grace, they would have seen the real power of the Spirit of God in giving the Christian to realise his liberty.

Just so it appears to me that Jonah in the same way, although personally he might be eminently Jewish in his feeling, nevertheless was used of God for a final Old Testament testimony to the Gentiles. Nineveh, the capital of the then Assyrian kingdom, was at that time the great power of the world. It was before the days when Babylon aspired to supreme empire, and was permitted to acquire it; for Babylon was of itself a most ancient city probably before Nineveh; but it was not allowed to rise up into supremacy until the complete trial of Israel, and the proved failure even of Judah and David's house. Jonah was an early prophet. He lived in or before the days of Jeroboam II. I believe that modern speculation has put him a hundred years perhaps too late. However, this is a small matter. The grand point is the bearing of his prophecy. There is another difference too that is worthy of note in Jonah, and that is, that the book differs from others of the minor prophets by being for the most part prophecy in fact and not so much in word. The whole history of Jonah is a sign. It is not simply what he said but what he did, and the ways of God with him; and this it will be my business to endeavour to expound.

The New Testament points us out some of the most prominent parts of this prophecy, and will be found, I think, to give us the key to the bearing of it in a distinct and material way. Our Lord Himself refers to it, particularly also, it may be added, to that which has drawn out the incredulity of many divines. Now it is well known to those who are acquainted with the working of mind in the religious world, that they have found enormous difficulties in the facts of the book of Jonah. The truth is that, as elsewhere, they stumble over the claims of prophecy; it is here the difficulty of a miracle. But to my mind a miracle, although no doubt it is the exertion of divine power, and entirely outside the ordinary experience of man, is the worthy intervention of God in a fallen world. It is a seal given to the truth in the pitiful mercy of God, who does not leave a fallen race and lost world to its own remediless ruin. So far therefore, from miracles being the slightest real difficulty, any one who knows what God is might well expect Him to work them in such a world as this. I do not mean arbitrarily, or at such a time as ours; for although there be answer to prayer now and the most distinct working of God according to it, it is all to my mind a simple thing. We must never confound an answer to prayer, precious as it may be, with a miracle. For an answer to prayer is no more unintelligible than that your own earnest request to man should bring out a special intervention to your mind. What greater difficulty is there for God to hear the cry of His children? Have baptized men and women sunk into degrading epicureanism? It is then truly monstrous to shut out such a gracious interference of God every day, and there cannot be a stronger proof of where and what man has come to in Christendom than the notion that special answers to prayer are irreconcilable with the general laws God has established to govern the world as well as mankind. Now there is no doubt that there are general principles, if you will, as to everything, as to the universe, as to the moral ways of God with men, and also as to His dealing with His own children. But then we must never shut out that He is a really personal God, who, even when a miracle may not be, knows how to make His care a living and a known reality for the souls of all that confide in Him.

In the present case then we have one authority weighing infinitely more than all the difficulties which have been mustered by unbelief. For it is plain that our Lord Jesus singles out the particular point of greatest difficulty and affixes to it His own almighty stamp of truth. Can you not receive the words of the Lord Jesus against all men that ever were? What believer would hesitate between the Second man and the first? The Lord Jesus has referred to the fact that Jonah was swallowed up by the great fish, call it what you will: I am not going to enter into a contest with naturalists whether it was a shark, a spermaceti whale or another. This is a matter of very small account. We will leave these men of science to settle the kind; but the fact itself, the only one of importance for us to affirm, is that it was a great fish which swallowed and afterwards yielded up the prophet alive. This is all one need stand to the literal truth of the fact alleged. There is no need to imagine that a fish was created for the purpose. There are many fishes quite capable of swallowing a man whole: at any rate such have been. If there was one then, it is enough. But the fact is not only affirmed in the Old Testament, but reaffirmed and applied in the New by our Lord Himself. Any man who disputes this must give an account of his conduct before the judgment seat of Christ ere long.

Turning then to our prophecy, we read, "Now the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah." But in Jonah is seen the stiff-neckedness of man. Jehovah told him to go east, and he at once hurries west; that is, he flies exactly in the teeth of the divine command. To some this seems unaccountable in a prophet; to the rationalist it is incredible, and casts a doubt on the historical character of the entire book. But we have to learn that flesh is no better in a prophet than in ourselves. For the real difference between men is not that the flesh of some is better than that of others, but that some have learned to distrust themselves altogether, and to live another life which is by faith, not by flesh. Therefore it is that the believer only in fact lives to God so long as he goes on in dependence on Him. The moment he ceases to do so, wonder not at anything he says or does. Here we have a flagrant witness of it in Jonah. He was told to go to Nineveh; but "he rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa," that is, to the neighbouring port of Palestine on the great sea, the Mediterranean, in order to go west.

"And he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah. But Jehovah 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. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep." Now it cannot be doubted that there must have been some strong (however unjustifiable) impulse which gave a contrary bias to this godly man, as undoubtedly the prophet was. What was the motive? To our minds singular enough, but none the less influential over him for all that. Jonah was afraid that God would be too good! If Nineveh repented, he suspected that He would show it mercy. He feared therefore that his own character as a prophet would suffer. He did not choose them to hear the threat that God was giving to destroy the Ninevites for their wickedness, lest they might humble themselves under his preaching, and the threatened judgment might not be put into execution, and Jonah would thus lose his honour. What a miserably selfish thing is the heart even of a prophet, unless just so far as he walks by faith! Jonah did not so walk, but allowed self to gain a transient mastery. I do not speak of what Jonah felt as a man, but of his jealousy as he thought for his office. He could not bear that his ministry should be jeoparded for a moment. How much better to trust the Master!

Now I need not say at any length that we have the exact and blessed contrast to this in a greater than Jonah, who deigns to compare in a certain respect His own ministry with that of His servant. A greater proof of divine humility there could scarcely be. But in all things Jesus was perfect, and in nothing more than this that He, knowing all things, the end from the beginning, came down into a scene where He tasted rejection at every step rejection not merely as a babe when He was carried away into Egypt, but rejection all through a life of the most blameless yet divinely ordered obscurity; then through a ministry which excited growing hatred on man's part. There is nothing a man more dreads than to be nothing at all. Even to be spoken against is not so dreadful to the poor proud spirit of man as to be absolutely unnoticed; and yet the very much greater part of the life of Jesus was spent in this entire obscurity. We have but a single incident recorded of Jesus from His earliest years until He emerges for the ministry of the word of God and the gospel of the kingdom. But then He lived in Nazareth, proverbially the lowest of poor despised Galilee so much so that even a godly Galilean slighted and wondered if any good thing could come out of Nazareth. Such was Jesus; but more than this; when He did enter on the publicity of divine testimony, there too He meets opposition, though at first there was a welcome which would have gratified most men, yea servants of God. But He the Son, the divine person who was pleased to serve in this world, saw through that which would have been sweet to others when they, astonished and attracted, hung on the gracious words that fell from His lips. And how soon a dark cloud passed over it! For even that self-same day in which men heard such words as had never fallen on the ears of man, miserable and infatuated they could not endure the grace of God, and, had they been left to themselves, would have cast Him down headlong from the precipice outside their city. Such man was and is. How truly all that was fair was but as the morning cloud and early dew. But Jesus, we see, accepts a ministry of which He knew from the first the character, course, and results, perfectly aware that the more divine grace and truth were brought out by Him, the sterner rejection He should meet with among men.

God deals very tenderly with us in this respect. He does not fail to send somewhat to cheer and lift up the heart of the workman in praise to Himself; and only just so far as there is faith to bear it does He put on him a heavier burden. But as to the Lord Jesus there was no burden that He was spared; and if none in His life, what shall we say of His death? There indeed a deeper question was raised, on which we need not enter now, only referring to the first great principle as the contrast to the conduct of Jonah in going directly in the teeth of the Lord's distinct commission.

Another trait we find marked in Jonah his Jewish feeling. He was intensely national. He could not bear that there should be the slightest apparent failure of his word as a prophet in the midst of the Gentiles. He would rather that every Gentile had been swallowed up in destruction than that one word of Jonah should fall to the ground. It was precisely here where he had to learn himself short of the mind and heart of God. The wonders that were wrought were not too great for teaching the needed lesson. We have already referred to Jesus, but we need not even go so high as to the Lord of glory. In some respects the working of the Spirit of God in the apostle Paul may aptly serve for us, because he was a man not only of flesh and blood, but of like passions as we. Who ever suffered like him the afflictions of the gospel? Who with burning love to Israel so spent himself in untiring labours among the Gentiles labours too so unrequited then, that among the Gentiles themselves who believed he so often knew what it is to be less loved the more abundantly he loved?

On the other hand Jesus had no sin. Although perfectly man, every thought, feeling, and inward motion was holy in Jesus: not only not a flaw in His ways was ever seen, but not a stain in His nature. Whatever men reason or dream, He was as pure humanly as divinely; and this may serve to show us the all-importance of holding fast what men call orthodoxy as to His person. I shall yield to none in jealousy for it, and loyally maintain that it is of the substance and essence of the faith of God's elect that we should confess the immaculate purity of His humanity, just as much as the reality of His assumption of our nature. Assuredly He did take the proper manhood of His mother, but He never took manhood in the state of His mother, but as the body prepared for Him by the Holy Ghost, who expelled every taint of otherwise transmitted evil. In His mother that nature was under the taint of sin: she was fallen, as were all others naturally begotten and born in Adam's line. In Him it was not so; and, in order that it should not be so, we learn in God's word that He was not begotten in a merely natural generation, which would have perpetuated the corruption of the nature and have linked Jesus with the fall; but by the power of the Holy Ghost He and He alone was born of woman without a human father. Consequently, as the Son was necessarily pure, as pure as the Father, in His own proper divine nature, so also in the human nature which He thus received from His mother: both the divine and the human were found for ever afterwards joined in that one and the same person the Word made flesh.

Thus, we may here take occasion to observe, Jesus is the true pattern of the union of man with God, God and man in one person. It is a common mistake to speak of union with God in the case of us His children. Scripture never uses language of the kind; it is the error of theology. The Christian never has union with God, which would really be, and only is in, the Incarnation. We are said to be one with Christ, "one spirit with the Lord," "one body," one again as the Father and the Son; but these are evidently and totally different truths. Oneness would suppose identification of relationship, which is true of us as the members and body of our exalted Head. But we could not be said to be one with God as such without confounding the Creator and the creature and insinuating a kind of Buddhistic absorption into deity, which is contrary to all truth or even sense. The phrase therefore is a great blunder, which not only has got nothing whatever to warrant it from the Spirit, but there is the most careful exclusion of the thought in every part of the divine word.

And here it may be of interest to say a few words of explanation as to our partaking of the divine nature, of which Peter speaks at the beginning of his second Epistle (2 Peter 1:4). It does not seem to be the same as oneness with Christ, which in scripture is always founded on the Spirit of God making us one spirit with the Lord after He rose from the dead. Christ when He was here below compared Himself to a corn of wheat that was alone: if it died, it would bring forth much fruit. Though the Son of God was always the life of believers from the beginning, He promises more, and thus indicates that union is a different thing. They must never be confounded. They are both true of the Christian; but union in the full sense of the word was that which could not be till Christ had died to put away before God our sins, yea to give us our very nature judged, so that we might stand in an entirely new position and relationship, made one by the Spirit with Christ glorified on high. This I believe to be the doctrine of scripture. Along with this observe that the only one who brings out the body of Christ asserted dogmatically in the New Testament is the apostle Paul. Our spiritual oneness is referred to frequently in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John; but this is not exactly the same thing as being one with Christ according to the figure of the head and the body, which is the proper type of oneness in scripture. Now it is by the apostle Paul alone that the Spirit sets before us the body with its head; and this it is which figures the true notion according to God of our oneness with Christ.

To be one with or have life in Him is not the same thing. This may be clearly illustrated by the well-known instance of Abel and Cain. They had the same life as Adam; but they were not one with Adam as Eve was. She only was one with Adam. They had his life no less than their mother. Thus the two things are never the same and need not be in the same persons. Oneness is the nearest possible relationship, which may or may not be conjoined with the possession of life. Both are in the Christian. The pattern of oneness or its proper scriptural model is found under that of the head and the body, which is the more admirably expressive as the head clearly and of right directs all the movements of the body. In a man of sound mind and body there is not a single thing done by the extremity of the foot which is not directed by the head. Such exactly is the pattern spiritually. The Spirit of God animates the assembly, the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the true bond of oneness between the members on earth and Christ in heaven. By and by, when we go on high, it will be- represented by another figure equally apt, though also anticipatively applied while we are on earth. We never hear of the head and the body in the day of glory? but of the Bridegroom and the bride. So we read inRevelation 19:1-21; Revelation 19:1-21 that the marriage of the Lamb is then come. This takes place in heaven after the translation of the saints and before the day of Christ's appearing. Scripture: avoids speaking of the marriage until the whole work of God is complete in His assembly, so that those who are baptized of the Spirit into that one body may be caught up to Christ together. These between the two advents of the Lord are all in one common position. But those before Christ came were surely quickened of Him; sons of God, they were partakers of the divine nature. So are Christians now; so will be the saints when the millennial kingdom is set up under the reign of Christ manifest to every eye. But to be one with Christ, members of His body, is only true now that He is in heaven as the glorified man, and that the Spirit is sent down to baptize us into this new body on the earth. That one body is now being formed and perpetuated as long as the church remains on earth. The marriage of the Lamb (of course a figure of consummated union and joy) will only take place when the whole church is complete, not before, whatever may be the language inspired by hope ere then.

As to the difficulty of some minds, whether Christ partook of our nature as it is here, or we partake of Him as He is in heaven, the answer seems to me that both are true; but they are not the same truth. Christ partook of human nature, but not in the condition in which we have it. This has been already explained, as it is essential not only to the gospel but to the Christ of God. The man who denies this denies Christ's person; he wholly overlooks the meaning of the supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost. Such was the fatal blot of Irvingism a far deeper mischief than the folly about tongues or the pretensions to prophesying, or the presumption of restoring the church and its ministries, or even its gross Judaising. It made null and void the Holy Ghost's operation, which is acknowledged in the commonest creeds of both Catholics and Protestants. These all so far confess the truth; for I hold that as to this Catholics and Protestants are sound but the Irvingites are not, although in other matters they may say a great deal that is true enough. Certainly the late Mr. Irving saw and taught not a little neglected truth. Notwithstanding they were, and I believe still are, fundamentally unsound in holding the human nature of Christ to be fallen and peccable through the taint of the fall, thus setting aside the object and fruit of the miraculous conception by the power of the Highest.

Hence then our being partakers of the divine nature is one thing, the gift of the Holy Ghost quite another. Both we have now. The first is the new nature that pertains to us as believers, and this in a substantial sense has been true of all believers from the beginning. But besides this there is the peculiar privilege of oneness with Christ through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Clearly this could not be until the Holy Ghost was given to baptize the disciples of Christ into one body; as again the Holy Ghost could not be given to produce this oneness till Jesus by His blood had put away our sins and been glorified at God's right hand. (Hebrews 1:1-14; John 1:1-51; John 7:1-53) Those who should be saved had been in every kind of impurity, and they must be washed from their sins before they could be righteously set in that position of nearness and relationship as "one new man." Esther was chosen and called to a high position; still, according to the habits due to the great king, there must needs be a great preparation before the actual consummation. I grant you this was but a natural place; still it is the type of a spiritual relationship; so that we may use it to illustrate God's mind. It is not consistent with His ways or His holiness that any should be taken out of the old things and put into the wonderful position of oneness with Christ until the work of redemption completely abolished our old state before God and brought us into a new one in Christ. Such is the order of scripture.

But there is more to come. For although we have already the Holy Ghost as well as the new nature, there is a third requisite which the glory of Christ demands for us: we shall be changed. That is, we Christians, who have now not only humanity but this fallen, are destined at Christ's coming again for us to be changed. Christ had human nature but not fallen. In His case alone was humanity holy, free from every blemish and taint, and pure according to God. It was not only not fallen, but fit without blood to be the temple of God. This is far more than could be said about Adam in his pristine innocency. When Adam came from the hand of God, good as he was, it could not be said that he was holy. There was absolute absence of all evil. God made the man upright before he sought inventions. There was untainted innocence. But holiness and righteousness are more than creation goodness and innocency. Holiness implies the intrinsic power that rejects evil in separation to God: and righteousness means consistency with the relationship in which one is set. Both these qualities we see not in Adam but in Jesus even as to His humanity. "That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." He was the Holy One of God, "Jesus Christ the righteous." Indeed He was the only one of whom it was or could be said of His human nature that it was holy; as it clearly is of humanity in His person that the expression "that holy thing" is used. The divine nature was not born of the virgin; and it was little needed to call that holy. There was the highest interest and moment in knowing the character of His humanity. Scripture as to this is most explicit. His humanity was holy from the very first, spite of being born of a fallen race.

And this agrees with all other truth. Thus had the human nature of Christ been tainted by the fall, how could He have been the "most holy" sin-offering for sinners? There was no instance about which there was so much scrupulosity of care as the meat-offering and the sin-offering. These two. are remarkable and remarkably opposed types of Christ: the one of His life, the other of His death.

But we shall have much more in the way of power and glory by and by. When Christ comes, human nature in us will participate in the victory of the Second Man, the last Adam, as it now shares in the weakness and ruin of the first man. Then indeed is the time when human nature will be promoted to a good degree; that is to say, it will be raised out of all the consequences of the fall of the first man, and will be placed in all the power and incorruption and glory of the Second Man as He is now in the presence of God. Never shall we be made God: this could not be, and ought not to be. It is impossible that the creature can overpass the bounds that separate the Creator from it. And more than that, the renewed creature is the very one which would most abhor the thought. No matter what the church's blessedness and glory may be, it never forgets its creature obligations to God and the reverence due to Him. For this very reason he that knows God would never desire that He should be less God than He is, and could not indulge or tolerate the self-exalting folly which the miserable illusion of Buddhism cherishes, along with many kinds of philosophy which are afloat now as of old in the west as well as the east the dream of a final absorption into deity. This is altogether false and irreverent. All approach to such thoughts we see excluded in the word of God. In heaven the lowliness of those whom the sovereign grace of God made partakers of the divine nature will be even more perfect than now while we are on the earth. Human nature under sin is as selfish as proud. Fallen humanity always seeks its own things and glory; but the new nature, the perfection of which is seen in Christ, (that is to say, the life given to the believer, what we receive in Christ even now, and by and by when everything is conformed to it) will only make perfect without a single flaw or hindrance that which we now are in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Returning from our long digression, I would now direct attention to the plain fact that Jonah too faithfully represents the Jews in his unwillingness that God should show mercy to the Gentiles. The effect of this uncomely narrowness and indeed failure in bearing a real witness to the true God is, that far from being the channel of blessings to the Gentiles, he brings a curse upon them. So with the Jew now, and it will be yet more verified at the end of the age. The ringleaders of the actual rationalism in the world have derived a vast deal of their cavils from Jewish sources. The miserable Spinoza of Amsterdam, the theological pantheist of the seventeenth century, is really the patriarch of a great deal of the philosophy that is overrunning the world now and ever since. And this will grow far worse. It is granted that this did not begin with him, but with heathen unbelievers, yet made more and more daring by Jewish and then Christian apostacy. I have no doubt that there is yet to be, from the dragons' teeth which they are sowing over Christendom, an abundant crop of men given up to lawlessness.

Here however it is a very different state: we see a godly man spite of all faults. Nevertheless the result of his unfaithfulness is that he brings a tempest from Jehovah on the ship; and his error brought no small danger on unconscious Gentile mariners, who little thought of the question between God and His servant, or of the deep reason that lay underneath so singular a controversy. But Jonah knew what the matter was, though he had never dared to look it fairly to the bottom: as men never do whose conscience is bad. And this he showed when the shipmaster came and waked him up from his sleep with the cry, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." Even then he does not reveal the secret. "And 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." When men are ashamed and will is still active and unjudged, it takes no small discipline to set them right again. So Jonah held his tongue as long as he could, though he knew right well who was the culprit. "They did cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah." As it was not possible to hide his secret any longer, "Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us? What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceeding afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of Jehovah, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous."

The prophet then directs them like a genuine soul, as he was at bottom: all of which we have spoken freely and plainly, as the word of God warrants us to do, seems quite consistent with it. For all his short comings, his narrowness, and his official self-importance, he did not fear to trust himself in God's hands, as we shall see. For "he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea." Is it not evident and sad the mixture one sees even in a real believer? It is plain that he has not the slightest doubt of his own relationship to God; he entertains no question that all will be well somehow with Jonah. Yet had he really been, as he was often in danger of being, impatient, self-willed, and presumptuous. Jonah knew God well enough to dread that He would be better than his own message and warning to the Gentiles. He did not mind that God should be ever so good to the Jews, but he could not bear that his threat should seem vain through divine mercy to repentant Gentiles.

Jonah, I say, tells them to take him up and cast him 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." The shipmen, not having the heart to do it, "rowed hard to bring the ship to land; but they could not: for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them." And they too cried unto Jehovah. A remarkable change, as we may here discern, takes place in them; for up to this time they simply owned God, but only after a natural sort, because they called on their gods withal. This was inconsistent enough. They did not see the grievous incongruity of worshipping false gods and at the same time owning the true God. Such however was exactly their state; but now they cried to the true God. They had heard His name was Jehovah, and they were struck by the reality of His government in the case of Jonah before their eyes. "And they cried unto Jehovah, and said, We beseech thee, O Jehovah, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Jehovah, hast done as it pleased thee."

A remark may be made by the way in proof of the excess of the folly rationalism displays in judging of these names of God. In these days most people who read are aware that freethinkers have tried to build up the theory that each of the early books at least of the Bible must have been written by different authors at different times, because among other phenomena there occur two or more accounts sometimes of the same or of kindred features, in one of which the name God or "Elohim" is more prominent, in another the name "Jehovah." Their hypothesis is that the difference of these terms, backed up by other differences of thought and language, can only arise from distinct authorship. Superficial and transparent folly! As if even human writers do not vary their style with their subject and object: how much more when God gives according to His fulness and depth! There is not the slightest sense in the theory. And here is a proof before our eyes in the prophecy of Jonah. There is no question of early documents in this case. As compared with the books of Moses, Jonah after all is rather too late in the day. They contrived to eke out the case that in the dim and hoary age of Mosaic antiquity various documents had somehow been muddled together, and out of the later manipulation of these different records at length emerged the books of Moses as we have them: pretty much, one might suppose, as Jehovah plagued the people because they made the calf, which Aaron made, when he "cast the gold into the fire, and there came out this calf."

But, however this may be, the prophecy of Jonah rises up to refute this pretentious folly. Bear with me if I cannot but use strong and plain terms in speaking of that which is so irreverent and revolting. One should never find fault with a man for ignorance;* still less can one justly lay blame on any man for not being wiser than God has been pleased to make him. It is our business to make the best use of the little which God may have vouchsafed; but that man should allow his mind or acquirements, whatever be his measure, to rise up in judgment of the precious and perfect word of God, to unsettle and destroy as far as his influence extends the absolute divine authority of everything that God has written, this I cannot but condemn with all my soul, and believe that it is the truest love even to the wrong- doers. We cannot exaggerate the heinousness of the sin. May the Lord forgive every one guilty of it! But we ought not to forgive the thing itself. Can one conceive that God would have the believer forgive the sin of speaking against His own word? Grace can forgive the worst of sinners; but never let us allow any thought about the sin except that it is most hateful to God. To have the strongest sense of sin is in no way incompatible with the utmost pity for and interest in him who is deceived and guilty and condemned. On the contrary it is as much a Christian's duty to abhor that which is evil as to love that which is good. So true is this, that the man who does not abhor evil can never be justly thought to have real love in his heart for what is good; because it is always in proportion to moral power that one hates the false and evil, and loves the true and good. As for the shilly-shallying that calls itself charity but really is indifference to either good or evil, it is at bottom either intense self-seeking or mere love of ease without a single quality which becomes a man, because there is no thought nor care for what is due to God. Against such heartlessness may all God's children watch diligently; for the air now-a-days is full of it. Depend on it, there is no grace in such laxity. It is as far as possible from Him who is our only unfailing test.

*The last words of the famous Laplace were, "Ce que nous connaissons est peu de choses; ce que nous ignorons est immense." Alas! he died without the knowledge of God, without eternal life in Christ. But he is no bad witness of the unsatisfying nature of the knowledge of one who knew much in comparison of most men, though he knew nothing of what man most needs to know.

In his distress then we find Jonah turns to the true God. Even for the heathen sailors it was no time for thinking of their false gods. They felt themselves evidently in the hand of Jehovah. Accordingly they cry to Him, and as we are told, "They took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging." What a sight! What solemnity must have filled these poor Gentiles! Thereon, we are told, they "feared Jehovah." They had cried to Him before; they feared Him now. If they cried to Him in their danger, they feared Him yet more when the danger was over. That is right, and shows reality. However common, it is a fearful mockery when a man fears the Lord less when he professes to have his sins forgiven by His grace. It is truly awful and perilous when the goodness of God weakens in the smallest degree our reverence for Himself and jealousy for His will. "Our God is a consuming fire, but this need not hinder our perfect confidence in His love. So here the mariners offered a sacrifice unto Jehovah, and made vows at the same time. "Now Jehovah had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

Next (Jonah 2:1-10) we come to a very great change. It is not a man sent out on an unwelcome errand from Jehovah; nor his endeavour to escape from the execution of God's commission; nor yet again the divine dealings with him when he proved refractory and kicked against the goads. We see by the way that Jehovah is exceedingly pitiful and of tender mercy as regards the Gentile mariners, when they forsook their vanities and were brought to worship the only true God, Jehovah the Lord of heaven and earth. But now we have the silent and secret dealings of God that went on during those three days and three nights when Jonah lay in the depths and spread his misery before God. "Then Jonah prayed unto Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto Jehovah, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice."

In this there can be not the slightest doubt to the believer that Jonah is a type of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ when He too was for three days and nights, as He said Himself, in the heart of the earth the crucified Messiah. But then how different! Jonah's singular fate was because of his sin his manifest insubjection to God. Christ suffered for others exclusively. It was for the sins of His people. Nevertheless the result was so far similar that our Lord Jesus Himself being without sin was utterly rejected, not because He did not the will of God, but because He did it to perfection, offering His body as a sacrifice once for all. Thus our blessed Lord obeyed unto death, instead of disobeying it like the first Adam. Jonah then cries, and Jehovah hears. Deeply does he feel the position in which he found himself; and this was well. Discipline is meant to be felt, though grace should not be doubted.

But I believe on the other hand that his confidence, as was natural, was not unmingled with fear. For if a type of Christ he was a type of the Jewish people. Indeed he sets forth not inaptly the people failing in their testimony, misrepresenting God before the Gentiles, not yet a channel of blessing on them according to the promises to Abraham, but rather a curse because of their own unfaithfulness. Nevertheless, just as Jonah was preserved of God in the great fish, so also are the Jews now preserved of God, and will be brought out to be a joy and praise to His name in the earth, whatever their present lost estate. That day is hastening apace. In Jonah's history we find its pledge; in Christ's its righteous ground and the means to accomplish it when Jehovah pleases to His glory.

It is a principle with God that "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." This I do not doubt to be at least one reason for the three days, whether one looks at the case of Jonah, or of Christ, or of any other. It means a fully adequate testimony, as in our Lord's case, to the reality of His death when He had been rejected to the uttermost; so with Jonah. Two would have been enough; three were more than sufficient, an ample and irrefragable witness. So our Lord Jesus, though by Jewish reckoning three days and three nights in the grave, literally lay there but the whole of Saturday the Sabbath, with a part of Friday not yet closed, and before the dawn of Sunday. For we must always remember in these questions the Jews' method of reckoning. Part of a day regularly counted for the four-and-twenty hours. The evening and the morning, or any part, counted as a whole day. But the Lord, as we know, was crucified in the afternoon of Friday; His body lay all the next or Sabbath day in the grave; and He rose early the Sunday morning. That space was counted three days and three nights according to sanctioned Biblical reckoning which no man who bowed to scripture would contest. This was asserted among the Jews, who, fertile as they have been in excuses for unbelief, have never, as far as I am aware made difficulties on this score. The ignorance of Gentiles has exposed some of them when unfriendly to cavil at the phrase. The Jews found not a few stumbling-blocks, but this is not one of them: they may know little of what is infinitely more momentous; but they know their own Bible too well to press an objection which would tell against the Hebrew scriptures quite as much as the Greek.

In Jonah 3:1-10 we come to another point. The word of Jehovah comes to Jonah again. How persistent is His goodness, and how vain for His servant to think of evading! A fresh message is given in these terms: "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah." And the Spirit of God tells us, "Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." The people listened to the word. And here is another use for which our blessed Lord employs Jonah. He does not merely cite the most marvellous part of Jonah's history as a type of His own rejection in Israel, or of the consequence of that rejection for Israel, but He holds up before the proud and hard spirit of the Jew in His day the repentance of the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah, two wholly different references which are main incidents in the history of the prophet. "So the people of Nineveh believed God." They did not go so far as the mariners: they "believed God." There was a certain conviction that His moral character was justly offended by their wickedness; for well they knew that they were living as they listed, which practically means without God at all. "They believed God," it is stated, "and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth."

Does this again warrant the inference that the book had two authors? Later on, as at the early part, all is recounted with the most perfect order morally, and as naturally as possible flows from one and the same inspired mind. The fact is that the application of the different names for God is quite independent of the question of one or more authors, and is owing to a different idea which the author meant to convey: and this is true throughout scripture early or late, Old Testament or New. Indeed all the holy writings are parts of the same web; but it does not follow that there may not be a different pattern in different parts of it. To make it all the same monotonous colour or shape is not always necessary even among men. How strange that vain man should sit in judgment on God, not even allowing Him to do as He pleases with His own word! Of course the use of the names is adapted to a different apprehension of God on the part of men, the one being mainly the general expression of His nature, the other of that specific relation in which He was revealed to His chosen people of old; the one what, the other who He is. Hence under the hand of the Holy Spirit we may surely reckon that God furnishes the terms used with the most perfect propriety. Never is it either arbitrary or unmeaning; but we may not be able always to discern aright. So far indeed is it from being true, that I am persuaded a variety of authors would rather have struck these differences out. Thus, supposing there were two authors giving really conflicting reports, I consider that an editor, finding the two documents at variance, would have in all probability tried to assimilate them; for instance in this case either by striking out "Jehovah" and putting in "God," or by striking out "God" and putting in "Jehovah." This would have been no hard task, and most natural if there had really been a mere editor dealing with old relics which he wished to reduce into a tolerably harmonious whole for perpetuation.

Let me endeavour to illustrate the truth by a familiar figure. An artist of intelligence would not represent the Queen in the same way opening the Houses of Parliament as if reviewing the troops at Aldershot. He who could fail to see the reason of the differences in paintings of the two scenes' even if drawn by the same artist, would simply prove that he had no discernment of propriety. In the one case there might be a horse or a chariot; in the other there would be the throne. Horses would not be suitable in the House of Lords any more than. a throne at the camp. Every one can see in such a case as this that the difference of the surroundings has nothing to do with a question of this or that artist, of few or many, but is due exclusively to the difference of relationship.

So even we in ordinary life do not always address the same person in the same way. Suppose the case of a judge, and of a barrister who is the judge's son addressing him in court. Do you think the barrister would so far forget the court as to call the judge his father when addressing the jury, or even the judge? Or do you suppose when at home in the intimacy of his father's house that his son would call the judge "my lord," just as he and all else would in court?

It is to me then certain that the objection raised is due to nothing else than an astonishing want of discernment; but I should never blame one for this if he did not pretend to teach and in his effort dishonour God's word, and injure if not ruin man. If people cannot form a sound and holy judgment as to such questions, it is their own loss. But they are not entitled to publish the fruits of their ignorance of scripture, and palm them off as something new, profound, and important, without being sifted and exposed, especially as the necessary tendency if not the object of all they say is to destroy the true character of scripture as divine. Were the learning in which such efforts may be arrayed ever so real, which it rarely is, I do not think a Christian ought to make a truce for an hour.

Here then we learn that God was believed by the men of Nineveh, who accordingly took the place of the guilty in repentance before God. When the matter came to the king, "he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God." Here the place of humiliation is kept up in a thorough, if somewhat singular, manner. "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" They have not long to wait for an answer of mercy. "And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." Yes, Jonah is the same man still when proved to the core. It may appear to us wonderful that so it should be after all the dealings of God with him. The mercy shown was too much for him whose message covered Nineveh with sackcloth What he had warned he had warned; and he could bear no mitigation lest it should detract from himself. This feeling was too deeply ingrained in his nature to be altered even by such discipline as he had passed through. No experience can ever correct the evil of the fleshly mind. So thoroughly hopeless is it in itself that nothing short of death and resurrection with Christ, given to faith and kept up in dependence on Him, can avail. To be swallowed up by the great fish and to come forth again was used for good doubtless; but no such measure sufficed to meet the demand. We only live by present dependence on God; and there can be no greater ruin for a soul than to attempt to live on the past alone, still less going back to one's old thoughts and feelings.

Jonah indeed practically set aside the fruit of the solemn discipline for his soul which he had gone through in the depths of the sea. But God was the same God; and had His own way of setting Jonah right. "He prayed unto Jehovah." Here we find the propriety of the language again. The prophet does not fall back merely on the place of man as such with God; he speaks to Him as one who knew Him on special ground, according to the covenant name of Jehovah in which He is known to the Jew. "He prayed to Jehovah, and said, I pray thee, O Jehovah, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." This was the secret spring of the prophet's dread God's mercy! "Therefore now, O Jehovah, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live." He could not bear to live if his word were not accomplished to the letter. He would rather see that word carried out rigorously in the extermination of all the Ninevites than that it should seem to fail. How proud, selfish, and destructive is the impatient heart even of a godly man! And how beautiful it is to find in the apostle Paul what I referred to at the beginning! A man of like passions with Jonah and with us, who nevertheless gives patience as the special, chief, and most memorable sign of an apostle. He says truly that all the signs of an apostle were found with him in reproving the ungrateful Corinthians; but what does he allege as the first great sign of it? Not tongues or miracles. Be assured of this that patience is better than any such powers; and patience in every form God wrought in the heart of that blessed man. Yet it does not seem to my mind from all we read that Paul was a patient man after his own nature. Does it not rather seem that he was amazingly quick of feeling, and as rapid in coming to a conclusion as he was firm in holding to it when formed? Nevertheless, though he had a mind as fitted for deep-sea fathoming as for taking in the various sides of whatever came before him, we know that he was thoroughly a Jew "a Hebrew of Hebrews" as he says himself, to whom his nation was unspeakably dear. At the same time he was a man most energetic in carrying out practically whatever conscience and heart received as according to God. This he was even in his unconverted days; and certainly he was not less so when broken down by grace and filled with a love which poured forth from every channel of his large heart. But the permanent quality that marks Paul as apostle, as he urges to the Corinthian doubters and for the good of all saints, is patience. I doubt that any other thing is so great a sign of spiritual power. There is a day coming when power will not be shown in patience; but the truest sign of divine power morally carried on now is this ability to endure. Now this was what Jonah completely failed in. He had known wonders of divine power and mercy in his own case; but there is nothing like the cross, no lesson like that of death and resurrection as Paul had learnt it. Some may think it a very unusual expression of our hearts, bad as they are, to put one's own reputation above the welfare and even the lives of the people of the great city; and that few or none of us would be tempted to feel so hardly. Be assured however that the flesh is untrustworthy; and that self is as cruel as it is paltry when allowed. This may seem to some a dreadful thought; but is it not true? Man is the first man still; and it is in the Christian ready to repeat itself, unless by faith held for dead.

"Then said Jehovah, Doest thou well to be angry?" How admirable His patience! "So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city." There sat the prophet coolly and deliberately waiting with what comfort he could muster to see if God would then and there exterminate the people he, Jonah, had devoted to destruction. And now we see the wonderful way in which Jehovah corrected the mischief. "Jehovah God prepared a gourd." It is not now simply "God," nor only "Jehovah," but the blending of nature with special relationship. Such seems the reason why it is Jehovah God in this instance. He "prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd." Simply as God, we may say, He prepared the gourd; but as Jehovah God He prepared it to be a comfort for His servant Jonah. "But God prepared a worm." Observe the appropriate change. It is not "Jehovah God" now, but Elohim the author of creation. " God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live." Indeed impatience must always be about self. The thing that ever most provokes human nature is such a wound. It is never God; nor need the test by which God puts one to the proof provoke impatience, which is found when analysed to be just a finding fault with Him. Do you think that God has not His eye on every thing and every one? Do you forget that God is measuring all the grief and trial and pain inflicted and borne here below? Of course He concerns Himself actively with each and all. Hence it is only when we lose sight of this that the impatience of nature breaks forth; but it is assuredly always there ready to break forth. So it did break out with the vexed prophet. "And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death." How manifestly we see the same soul hot but feeble: "I do well to be angry!" "Then said Jehovah, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" You would like the gourd spared. What is the gourd to Nineveh? You value its ephemeral shade: what is it in mine eyes to that great city with its teeming myriads of such little ones as know not their right hand from their left? Yes, God even thinks of and feels for the cattle. What surer or more evident sign of greatness than to be able to take in what we consider petty along with what is to us boundless in magnitude? And such does our God; He despises not any. Such exactly is the God whom Jonah knew so little and was so unwilling to learn. There is no real knowledge of God except in crushing nature in its impatience, pride of heart, self-confidence, everything And it is right that it should be so. It is a poor gain to acquire considerable knowledge of God without its having at the same time a deep moral effect on the soul. God at any rated would have the two things together associated in us.

How admirably complete are His ways and His working! He who prepared the fish prepared the palmchrist and the worm and the vehement east wind. All things serve not His might only, but His gracious purposes. It is as characteristic of our prophet as of all scripture to state calmly every incident just as it was, all under God's hand, the least as truly as the greatest, and this too not to his own credit, but to the praise of mercy so infinitely above the thoughts of man. And this is imbedded among the Jewish prophets, written in the Hebrew tongue, by one who felt as keenly as ever Israelite did what it was to warn the destined captor of Israel, with the certainty that God would repent Him of the menaced judgment, if they by grace repented themselves of their ways against Him. And so he proved after that he, given back from the grave of the sea, had performed his mission, type of One risen from the dead, as much greater in His grace to the Gentiles as in the glory of His person and the perfectness of an obedience which went out only in doing the will of His Father. But God is as wise as He is good; and the prophet's grief over the perishing palma-christi is made a reproof to his own rash spirit, and a justification from his own mouth for the mercy of God to the men of Nineveh. Once more out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of the weak, as erst out of the strong, comes forth sweetness.

Such then is the book of Jonah, and I cannot help thinking that, as far as it goes, a more instructive book for the soul, and in view of the dealings and dispensations of God with man and creation, there is not in the Bible.