The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 20

t111r judgment so highly recommended by the fact, tb&t few questions aro asked. No one supposes th!lL t.he drunkard takes the moral, economic, or hygienio measure of hie disastrous habit before he forms it. He has a lively feeling that it is please.nt and Fuits his taste, and he waives the consideration of other points till a more conve~ient season. It is only when his habit has brought misfortune that he really faces the question whether it is a good one or not. With his mouth full of the bitter fruit, he naturally begins to form an idea of the character of the treo. If the fruiting had never come, the appraising would have heen left undone. 'l'here is to every sinner a day when be cannot but think. He is happy if the needs-be overtakes him at the outset of his straying ere yet return has become impossible. II. THOUGHT HAS OO?'o'VINCED mM OF SIN. We can read a sense of guilt in every word of the arrested fugitive. His mind has a.waked. In thought he has faced the situation. And his thought has not been barren. It has brought forth conviction, It would have been weak indeed if it had not. The fact of sin is patent to ordinary intelligence. And so to a certain extent is its demerit. To declare its existence and quality is the function of natural conscience; and what is conscience but reason dealing with moral truth? Of course, its diagnosis of sin is inadequate. The awful demerit of sin done against an infinite and holy God cannot be reached by mere force of think- inir. It takes an-enlightened eye to see it as it is, an op,,ued heart to realize the whole truth regarding it. You must know God, in fact, in order to know sin, which is an offence against him. This, no doubt, Jonah did. There was B mote for the time being in his spiritual eye, but it had been opened once for all to see God. He came, there- fore, to the contemplation of his sin with a measure of spiritual insight. A.nd all may come t-0 it similarly furnished. Obey the call of Scripture to "consider." Make a sincere attempt to examine yourself. Turn your eye inward, desiring honestly to know yourself as sinful in God's sight. You won't be left to your own unaided efforts and to failure. God awaits the beginning of such action to strengthen it. He awaits the attempt at such action to help it. He waits the aim at such action to move to attempt it in the strength of grace. It follows from the connection between wanting and getting in the spiritual sphere--" examine, and you shall know ; " for the Spirit con- vinces the world of sin, and that by guiding into all truth the searchers after its hidden treasures. III. Uo:!.-VICTION HAS DRIVEN HIM TO CONFESS. There is a natural egoism in men that is unfavourable to confession. You get it out of them only by a difficult process as men get water out of a still. And the reasons of this are obvious. One is that men are more or less unconscious of their own moral state. They do not realize sin. They deem it an outrage to have guilt charged home. In the impudence of their uncon- sciousness they would bandy words with God himself (Mal. iii. 8). Here is evident failure to discern the sinfulness of sin. And failure is due as much to pride as to i11capacity. Men are naturally prejudiced in their own favour. Faults that others see well enough they ignore, or weakly disapprove what others utterly condemn. They abide in darkness because they hate the light (Joh11 iii. 19). Given a man who cannot see his sin if he would, and who would not if he could, and you have a case in which confession need not be named. Even grant a measure oi conviction, and confession does not necessarily follow. When sin is realized in a certain degree, the sinner's tongue is unloosed, and he tells it out with shame to God. But it does not follow that he will do it before his fellow-men. That means a great deal more, is harder to do, and more reluctantly done. It is greater humiliation. It involves stronger reprobation. It implies deeper self-abasement. When it is honestly done conviction may be held to be at its intensest; in fact, to be true and adequate. Jonah's repent• ance had now come to this advanced stage (vers. 10, 12). "When the whip of God and the rod of his justice had overtaken Jonah, so that he now sees heaven and earth to be against him, down comes his proud heart: the sleeper now awaketh; the runaway crietb, Peccavi; contrition and confession come now tumbling upon him" (Abbot). Confession of our faults is au essential part of true repentance. To deny them is to lie, to conceal is to bolster up. When a transgressor is either sullenly ~ilent or volubly apologetic, he bas not broken with his sin. He could bear to ~peak U,~ truth about it if he bad definitely cast it off. Hence God makes confesston a criterion of sincerity and a condition of pardon (Lev. xxvi. 40-42; J er. iii. 12, 13). CH, I, 1-17.] THE BOOK OF JONAH. 17