What ! you clean ! you whiter than snow ? Yes, /, even 7. Hear how particularly he himself notices the speed with which his prayer was answered. " When I kept silence (and refrained from prayer), my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me : my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. But at last I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity I hid not : I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord ; and (instantly) thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin m."
We may notice, also, the instance of Manasseh, who was perhaps the most daring in his impieties of all the human race: " He built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed ; he reared up altars for Baal, and worshipped all the host of heaven ; he built altars for them all, even in the house of the Lord itself, and set a graven image there ; he made his son to pass through the fire ; he caused his subjects to do more evil than had been committed by the nations whom God had driven out before them ; and to all these impieties he added this, that he shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem with it from one end to the other". Now can we suppose that such a monster of impiety as this could ever be forgiven ? Yes : not even his prayer was shut out, when he besought the Lord. We are told, that " in his affliction he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him ; and He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God0." Repeatedly is this noticed in the history respecting him ; " his prayer unto his God, his prayer, and how God was entreated of himp :" and no doubt it is thus repeated in order to shew us, that, whatever be our demerits, we shall not be cast out, if, with humble, fervent, and believing supplications, we betake our- selves to the prayer-hearing and sin-pardoning God.
The whole people of Nineveh attest this blessed truth. There was no call to repentance suggested by the Prophet Jonah : the judgments denounced by him were altogether unqualified with the smallest hope of mercy : the Prophet himself seems scarcely to have contemplated a possibility of forgiveness to them ; yet were they, even the whole popula- tion, spared at the voice of their cryq.
I say then, without hesitation, to all the sinners of mankind, " Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord ; and he will have mercy upon him ; and to our God, for he will abundantly
m Ps. xxxii. 3—5. " 2 Kings xxi. 3—16.
0 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13. p 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18, 19.
i Jonah iii. 10.