The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 17

Thon there ie no epiritnal haH-way house. God in his mercy may arrest him on the way, but tho renegade starts fur Tarshish, the spiritual remotest point. A stone detached from the honse-top has no stopping-place short of the ground. Tum your back on God and heaven, and Satan and hell a.re, humanly speaking, your destination. Moreover, defection from God is not an aimless drifting, but intelligent and of purpose. It is a course wittingly ta.ken and studiously kept. The deterioraterl moral nature presses head and hand into its service, to survey and construct the road by which it would reach the shrine of its chosen idol. At the Joppa of occasion, advisedly sought, is chartered the ship of ways and means, to bring us to the Tarshish of accomplished sin, the goal of our godless hearts. V. A MAN WILL ALWAYS FIND CIROUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO THE COURSE HE HAS RESOLVED TO TAKE. Jonah found a ship about to sail to his destination, got accommo- dation on board, and had the means to provide a berth. Things seem as if arranged on purfose to facilitate his flight, Had it been otherwise, we sometimes think the prophets "Hegirah" might have been stopped earlier, and a good deal of suffering saved. But that would be a shallow philosophy of human action. Physical surround- ings cannot thus shape our moral course. Intelligence makes its own use of them all. Purpose is formed; action is decided on; and then the circumstances are examined to see what mode of action they can most easily be made to help. The ship, the berth, and the passage-money to Tarshish were available to many besides Jonah, yet he only prostituted them to the purpose of shirking duty. They lent themselves to his project, because the project had, in the first place, been adjusted to them. So if a thief finds an open window, and no policeman in sight, the circumstances are said to favour a burglary. If a would-be murderer finds the same state of things, then we say the circumstances favour assassination. But if a man who would neither kill nor steal finds them so, they favour no project of his, and so are either put right or passed uuheeded. Circumstances favour neither good nor evil particularly, but each man makes use of those that fit his own purpose, and passes the others by. We hear often of wicked men who are the victims of circumstance. And there are some such, no doubt. But the cases are fewer and logically weaker than you might think. Here are two country youths apprenticed in town among a godless set. One turns out a profligate, and friends pity him and say, "He got into bad hands : what better could we expect in such a place? " But the other, with the same surroundin2;s exactly, turns out, as often happens, an honest tradesman and a godly man. And if you e:xan1ine you will find that he has honest men for his friends, and Christian people for his associates, and enjoys beneficial influences in every relation of life. In other words, he is in a new set of circumstances altogether, _fa.vonrable to the religious life, an,i which his own conduct ha.a drawn a.round him. 'l'he circumstances have not made the men, but the men have practi€ally made the circumstances. Aud so we reason out the truth which God reveals," T? the pure all things are pure," etc. (Titus i. 15). We are greater than our environment. "Each man creates his own world. . . . The soul spreads its own hue over everything; the shroud or wedding garment of nature is woven in the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the image and counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and all nature replies-I am divine, the child of God; be thou too his child and noble. Bo mean, and all nature dwindles into a contemptible smallness" (Robertson). "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;. behold, all things are become new." To you and me the world will be a new world when we are new creatures in Christ. It is not what it was, but a transfigured thing, when we view it "the eyes of our understand- ings being enlightened," and make all its elements tributary to a new life in Christ.- J. E. H. Vers. 4-10.-An effective hue and cry. We see here a man who ought to run for God endeavouring to run away from him, and also how he speeds. 'l'ho flight was illogical, a fatuous attempt to get outside the sphere of omnipresence, as much of our sin is a practical endeavour to get, or imagine ourselves, beyond the cognizance of omniscience. And it was made in the blindness of egoism and carnal self-will-the qualities which are generally to be found at the bottom of ministerial unfaithfulness to tho message of God. A lorry off the lines attracts attention, when a whole train on  14 'l'IIE DOOK OF JONAH. [oH, I, 1-17.