before repentance there is an interval of unnatural insensibility, ancl in this interval Jonah's sleep was taken. H is a horrid sight to see judge and jury and the court affected to tears, and the criminal as bard as iron. Yet that is the analogue of a state into which we have only to defy God in order to fall. IV. A PilAYEilLESB DAOKBLIDER IS AN ASTONISHMENT EVEN TO A HEATHEN. (Ver. 6.) The skipper, a responsible man, and pious according to his lights, thinks Jonah, sleeping there in the crash of the storm, must be either sick or mad. Prayer, whether to false gods or the true, is a universal and instinctive religious act. And so when the great wind-guns began to boom and the billowy mitrailleuses to roar in chorus, when the helpless vessel tossed like a log and creaked and strained as about to break, then began every man to cry unto his god. Even the heathen could see that it was the thing to do, and the time to do it; and when the only worshipper of the true God aboard lies silent and indifferent, the captain and crew are alike astonished. Yet it is just what a little knowledge of the human character in its relation to spiritual things would lead us to expect. The iron that has been heated soft, and cooled again in water, is harder than ever. The process has simply tempered it. So the man who has been softened in the fires of grace, and plunged again into the waters of sin, is a harder man than he was at first (Heb. vi. 4). There are Canas and Chorazins among us, and it will be more tolerat~e for the Tyres and Sidons in the judgment than for them. V. lT IS IN THE ORIBES OF LIFE THAT FALSE CONFIDENCES FAIL AND THE TRUE Gon OOMEB TO THE FRONT. The captain sees appeal to his own gods to be vain, and he surmises that pi:ayer to the God of Israel might be more successful. "Call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us." He knew of the true God as distinguished from the gods many whom he served, but only in extremity does he think of approaching him in prayer. The other gods were fair-weather deities, good enough so long as you wanted nothing from them. But only the God who holds the winds iu his fists will serve now. And thus, in a new sense, the extremity of man is fae opportunity of God. Beliefs, moralities, observances, are made so many substit11tes for the Christ of God. And they do to live with after a fashion. But you never knew a man to die comfortably with them. The last hour is apocalyptic. It unveils things. The bubble of conceit in personal merit bursts. The filthy rags fall off. The soul is flung naked, loathsome, undone, before the majesty of God. Take God in Christ for your trust this hour, and you will never know the withering curse on him that "maketh flesh his arm."-J. E. H.
Vere. 11, 12.-.A voluntary S'UT1'ender. Matters so anomalous up to this point are beginning now to resume their normal aspect. The prophet had been behaving in a most inconsequential and erratic way. His flight had been utterly out of character. He ran away from a duty in the doing of which piety would have met philanthropy, and both have had ample scope. His sleep through the storm which his own sin provoked, when death was imminent, and even the heathen sailors called in terror on their gods, was, if possible, more eccentric still. Most unaccountable of all, perhaps, was the declaration, "I fear the Lord," so sincerely made when in the very act of setting his command at naught. But now the craze is passing off. Like the prodigal at a corresponding stage of his career, we see the prophet coming to himself. The reign of law is comijlg back, and mind and oonscience and will fall into line and begin to act by rule. Tliese verses exhibit to us the workings of the backslider's mind in hia return to God. We see- I. THAT CALAMITY lliS COMPELLED HIM TO THINK. The sinner is seldom logical. If he were, he would be a sinner no longer. There are no valid premisses to which a sinful act will stand in the relation of a conclusion. If Jonah had reasoned out the matter before he started on his flight, he would not have started at all. He adopted on impulse a course the folly of which a single moment's consideration would have shown. And he avuided this consideration as long as he could. It was only the impossibility of getting further that compelled him to face the question, "Why did I collie so far? And was it wisely done?" It is almost invariably the practical results of a liue of conduct that lead us to examine as to its intrinsic wisdom. We con~uit uur taste in the first instance. What promises immediate pleasure or profit comes to 16 THE BOOK OF JONAH. [cH. I, 1-17,