The perennial miracle of love is this, that it increases in the ratio of the expenditure of our pains, and thrives on sacrifice. The more we bestow — the more we are prepared to spend. God had put out and expended long-suffering and patience and grief and holy striving on His Nineveh. And is He to have no return ? No interest from this invested devotion ? It is just the Old Testament version of the missing sheep, the lost coin, the wayward
352 THE WIDENESS OF GOD'S MERCY
son. If we be straitened we are not straitened to God, but in ourselves.
For the love of God is broader Than the measures of man's mind ;
And the Heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.
•[j Eobert Browning, in his poem Saul, represents the youthful David mourning over the sad decay that has fallen upon the powers of the first King of Israel, and rising as he communes with his own heart to this high faith, that his own pity for human sin and sorrow is but a spark from the glowing fire of pity in the heart of God.
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the
parts shift ? Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the end, what Began ? Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone
can 1X
5. The text sends a shaft of tender light into God's dealings with mankind ; it reminds us that as He looks down upon the millions of heathen, upon hordes of uncivilized men, among whom, after all, there is much innocent child life, full of just such enjoyment as abounds throughout the domain of nature, He sees much in which His fatherly heart can take pleasure. The world below the level of its perverted moral life is very dear to God. He delights in the works of His hands. The flowers of the field are beautiful, the birds of the air are blithe and full of song, the cattle upon the hills browse in contentment, because God loves them and cares tenderly for them.
(1) God has compassion on the children of godless parents. There is a magnificent limit to the omnipotence of God — the limit imposed by His love. His power cannot pass the boundaries of His heart. All the voices of the universe called for the death of Nineveh — all but one. Law called for it ; prudence called for it ; morality called for it; political economy called for it; the survival of the fittest called for it. But there was one thing which cried against it — God's compassion for the infants. It
1 D. Connor.
JONAH iv. 10, ft 353
was a solitary voice — a voice crying in the wilderness. It was unsupported by the voice of policy, the voice of worldly prudence, the voice of public opinion. It gave no cause for its cry. It did not say, " These infants may be good some day, great some day, believers some day." It was the wilderness that made the cry ; it was sheer pity for the helpless that opened the arms of God.
Tf Mr. Sully, a great authority on Psychology, who has written most learnedly on the subject of children, has recently published a book containing some very striking and beautiful incidents in child life. But not one struck me more than this — a little boy in a moment of frankness and confidence, in speaking to his mother, said that if he could ask God for what he liked, he would ask God to love him when he was naughty. Truly as Christ said, we are taught the perfection of wisdom out of the mouths of babes.1
(2) God's tender pity reaches to the cattle. If we love all things both great and small, we are in good company. We remember Columba of Iona, and how the old white horse was so knit with him in fellowship that it discerned the approach of his death before Diarmaid and Baithene understood their impending grief ; we remember Francis of Assisi, and how he tamed the wolf and preached to the twittering swallows ; and John Woolman out on the Atlantic, and how he " observed the dull appearance of the fowls at sea, and the pining sickness of some of them, and often recalled the Fountain of Goodness who gave being to them all." We think of Kobert Herrick, lamenting the loss of his spaniel Tracie with "one teare" though the lowly friend "deserved a million " ; of Matthew Arnold, singing the elegy of the dachshund Geist, with his " temper of heroic mould," his " liquid melancholy eye," and all his life and all his love crowded into four short years ; of Dr. John Brown, celebrating the loyalty and affection of Bab. A man should wish to surround himself with the wisest and gentlest associates ; and it will dignify one to move in so gracious a society. ^j William Blake has a sweet little poem to a lamb. He says —
Little Lamb, who made thee ? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bade thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead;