1 Hngh Price Hughes. JER.-MAL. — 23
354 THE WIDENESS OF GOD'S MERCY
Gave thee clothing of delight Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice ?
Little Lamb, who made thee ?
Dost thou know who made thee ?
Then he tells the lamb who made it — God. God made the little lamb.
In another poem he asks the tiger the same question —
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night,
Did He smile His work to see ?
Did He who made the lamb make thee ?
Yes, God made the tiger too. He made heaven and earth and all that in them is — all the angels in heaven, all the animals on earth. The same God made them all ; and He loves all that He makes, and is sorry when an animal is hurt on earth, as He would be sorry if an angel were hurt in heaven.
For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.1
Tj In the popular traditions of East and West, Jonah's name alone has survived the Lesser Prophets of the Jewish Church. It still lives not only in many a Mussulman tomb along the coasts and hills of Syria, but in the thoughts and devotions of Christen- dom. The marvellous escape from the deep, through a single passing allusion in the Gospel history, was made an emblem of the deliverance of Christ Himself from the jaws of death and the grave. The great Christian doctrine of the boundless power of human repentance received its chief illustration from the repent- ance of the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah. There is hardly any figure from the Old Testament which the early Christians in the Catacombs so often took as their consolation in persecution as the deliverance of Jonah on the seashore, and his naked form stretched out in the burning sun beneath the sheltering gourd. But these all conspire with the story itself in proclaiming that still wider lesson of the goodness of God. It is the rare protest of theology against the excess of theology — it is the faithful delineation through all its various states, of the dark, sinister,
1 J. M. Gibbon, In the Days of Youth, 115.
JONAH iv. 10, ii 355
selfish side of even great religious teachers. It is the grand Biblical appeal to the common instincts of humanity, and to the universal love of God, against the narrow dogmatism of sectarian polemics. There has never been a " generation " which has not needed the majestic revelation of sternness and charity, each bestowed where most deserved and where least expected, in the " sign of the Prophet Jonah." x
1 A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, ii. 305.
Life for God.
357
Literature.
Balmforth (R.), The New Testament in the Light of the Higher Criticism,. J
Bowne (B. P.), The Essence of Religion, 73.
Butcher (C. H.), Sermons Preached in the East, 64.
Chapin (E. H.), God's Requirements, 7.
Cox (S.), Expositions, iii. 70.
Davidson (J. T.), A Good Start, 217.
Davies (J. LI.), The Gospel and Modern Life, 190.
Dewey (0.), Works, 684.
Faithfull (R. C), My Place in the World, 207.
Farrar (F. W.), The Silence and the Voices of God, 71.
Fraser (J.), Parochial Sermons, 189.
Gollancz (H.), Sermons and Addresses, 64.
Henson (H. H.), Ad Rem, 109.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, ii. 214.
Hughes (H. P.), Essential Christianity, 259.
Kingsley (C), Sermons for the Times, 81.
Lewis (A.), Sermons Preached in England, 218.
Maclaren (A), Expositions : Ezekiel to Malachi, 230.
Matheson (Q.), The Bible Definition of Religion, 1.
Moinet (C), What is Religion? 1.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament, 146.
Newbolt (W. C. E.), The Cardinal Virtues, 51.
Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, vii. 50.
Smith (W. C), Sermons, 99.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvi. (1880), No. 1557.
Stimson (H. A.), The New Things of God, 98.
Thompson (J.), Words of Hope and Cheer, 137.
Christian World Pidpit, xix. 237 (J. Vaughan) ; xxiii. 322 (R. Balgarnie) ; xxxiv. 321 (F. W. Farrar) ; xlvii. 138 (F. Hall) ; lxviii. 317 (B. Chadwick) ; lxxvii. 298 (W. B. Selbie).
Church of England Pulpit, 1. 309 (H. D. Rawnsley) ; lv. 110 (H. C. Beeching).
Churchman's Pulpit : Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 420 (H. Goodwin).
Homiletic Review, lxii. 231 (J. H. Melish).
Jexoish Chronicle, Nov. 21, 1913.
Methodist Times, Jan. 19, 1911 (F. B. Meyer).
353
Life for God.
What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ?— Mic. vi. 8.
1. Isaiah of Jerusalem and Micah the Morashtite, who lived at the same time, present a striking contrast. Isaiah was by birth an aristocrat, if not of royal descent ; Micah was a yeoman from an obscure village. Isaiah was a statesman, Micah an evangelist. Isaiah addressed himself to the largest and highest political issues ; Micah dealt with social morality and personal religion. It is not without significance that at first, though not ultimately, the fervent and pointed preaching of Micah was more effective than the majestic statesmanship and sublime teaching of Isaiah. An intensely interesting passage in the Book of Jeremiah (xxxvi. 18) reveals the important fact that the famous Reformation of Hezekiah was the direct result of the preaching of Micah.