1 John Ker, Thoughts for Htart and Life, 216.
JONAH iv. 10, ii 343
for the love of God. There was nothing wonderful in the fact that a Hebrew prophet should desire that a Divine judgment should fall on a heathen city, and that Jehovah should be magnified in His mighty power. It was accordingly with very human, but by no means creditable, feelings of vexation and anger that Jonah saw that Nineveh was not to be destroyed after all. There was but little excuse for him. He had had a large experi- ence of God's methods of working; he knew what God in His inmost nature was ; and it is almost unaccountable that he should thus set himself in opposition to the Divine will, should grumble at God's goodness to his fellow-creatures, and should in effect tell Him that He had done wrong.
And yet how full and how complete was Jonah's knowledge of the character of God. " I knew that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest thee of the evil." Surely this was a knowledge fitted rather to send a tide of joy surging through a human heart, to make a man happy all his life. Yet, strangely enough, it was this very thought that roused such bitter feelings in Jonah's mind, and made him wish rather to die than to live — a proof, if proof were needed, that when we think that we are most religious, our feelings may be by no means in accordance with the mind of God. Knowledge of God's nature is one thing, sympathy with it is another. To have such sympathy we must drink in largely of the Divine Spirit.
Tj As the end drew near, Eomanes began to make notes for a work which he meant to serve as a correction of the teaching of his book, A Candid Examination of Theism. As the notes grew, his faith came. The process of reviewing his past, the looking back on the way by which he had come, not only gave to him a truer view of the proportion of things, but also brought to him, first, the consciousness of God, and then that momentous experi- ence in religious life — the kindling of the soul with the realized love of God. After his death, the notes were published, with the title, Thoughts on Religion. Bishop Gore thus describes the main position which is set forth in the book :
" Scientific ratiocination cannot find adequate ground for belief in God. But the pure Agnostic must recognize that God may have revealed Himself by other means than that of ratiocina- tion. As religion is for the whole man, so all human faculties may be required to seek after God and find Him — emotions and
344 THE WIDENESS OF GOD'S MERCY
experiences of an extra 'rational' kind. The 'pure Agnostic' must be prepared to welcome evidence of all sorts."
Romanes takes the positive side of the evidence for faith in God as shown by " the happiness of religious, and chiefly of the highest religious — i.e. Christian — belief. It is a matter of fact that, besides being most intense, it is most enduring, growing, and never staled by custom. In short, according to the universal testimony of those who have it, it differs from all other happiness, not only in degree, but in kind. Those who have it can usually testify what they used to be without it. It has no relation to intellectual status. It is a thing by itself and supreme." *
3. Notice the peculiar impiety of Jonah's words : " Therefore now, 0 Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me ; for it is better for me to die than to live." This is the language of petulance. A man's worth may be measured by the reverence ne has for his life. It is well for us to be aware of the real impiety that lurks under a longing for death and weariness of the life which, day by day, God is bestowing on us here. The gospel which delivers us from a coward fear of dying was never intended to foster an equally coward fear of living.
My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore.
He who brought immortality to light through the gospel, brought also life to light. He claimed for God this daily being, wherein men toil and sorrow and are disappointed, and filled it with a spirit and a purpose, a presence and a power, that make it sacred as any after-life can be. To despise this high gift of God, — to set it in the balance against disappointments, or labours, or unwelcome duties, and the common daily demands ; because of sadness or weariness, to stretch out hopeless hands, and long for death — this is not only the mark of a coward spirit, it is also dark impiety. Such a scorn of God's rich blessedness is scorn of God Himself.
Tj " To live," says Sir Thomas Browne, " to live, indeed, is to be ourselves ; which being not only a hope, but an evidence, in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard as in the sands of Egypt, ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the Moles of Adrianua." " Eeady 1 H. Lewis, Modern nationalism, 374.