The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 24

The conformity is there, and in the highest sense; it is only the tyro who oannot eeo it. So with actionH done in the highest moral plane. The actor is too intent on doing whet God says to look after the minor congrnitiee. Ilut the thing ho does has an essential and fundamental rightness which lifts details into a new connection where they also become appropriate. "Whatsoever the Lord saith, that will we do." The men who accentuate the "whatsoever," and do it honestly, are seldom favourites with the crowd, but they have scaled the loftiest moral heights, where the voice of human opinion is neither listened for nor heard. IV. THEY FOUND DELIVERANCE IN FOLLOWING Goo's LEAD. (Ver. 16.) Attempts at escape in every other direction were made persistently, hut all in vain. '!'he ship- light.eni □ g, the prayers to idols, the strenuous rowing, were so many exercises in the bootless task of fighting against God. Against the wind and tide of his purpose no human power can sail. "God was pursuing this matter _to his own appointed isHue, and would allow no effort, however well meant, to baffle his purpose" (Martin). This obvious fact the sailors are compelled at length to recognize. Reluctantly they give up their unavailing struggle, and take the course to which all along events had been conspiring to shut them up. Aud on the instant the face of affairs is chancred. The elemental war is hushed in peace. The hurricane in which earth and hea~en reeled becomes the calm as of a tropical night. The waters which had "gaped at their widest to glut him" swallow their prey, and forthwith cease their raging, How easy the end if we only take God's way I How swift the transition from impossibility to attainment I Yet it is just the transition from man's way to God's. Have we not all experiences on which by analogy the event may throw light? Aiming at a legitimate object, we adopt what seems to us a fitting course. But we never get on in it. Disappointment awaits us at every step. Disaster springs on us from every covert, It seems as if men and things were joined together in a universal conspiracy to baulk us. Disconraged at last, and bitter at heart, we take without definite intention or expectation a step in a new direction, and which circumstances seem to thrust upon us; and lo, before we are aware, and almost without an effort, our object is attained. God works, not against means but with them, not apart from means, but by them; yet everywhere and always he works his own will in his own way. As we recognize that way and take it, are we on the moral rectilineal-the shortest line between our present and God's future. V. THEY ARE FIN.ALLY WON TO Goo's SERVICE BY THE EXHIBITION OF-HIS CRARAOTEB. In the incidents of the day the sailors read a revelation of God. "The storm they clearly saw was in hi.s hand; a reason for it, they saw, was in his heart. And that reason they saw as clearly as they saw the storm. His hand they saw was almighty. Bis heart they saw was righteous. They even became executioners of his wrath. It was a solemn initiation into the knowledge of his name" (Martin). And what but the revelation of God's character wins men to his service everywhere (Ps. xxxvi. 7; Rev. xv. 4; 2 Car. v. 14, 15)? Conversion has many elements leading up to and meeting in it. There is the truth, the instrument in all saving change. There is the Holy Spirit interpreting the truth and bringing it home. But there is something else to which both refer. The power of the truth, even as applied by the Holy Ghost, must lie in the subject-matter of it, and that subject-matter is God (John. v. 39; Rom. i. 16). God is the Infinite Beauty. God made manifest means men attracted, all minds dazzled, and all hearts won (Ps. iL 10). Hie character commands confidence and challenges fealty. He is one whom to know is to trust, whom to see is to love aa.d choose. It is on this fact that inspiration founds in a familiar maxim of the kingdom (John xvii 3). Knowledge of God is salvation, for every saving grace inheres in it or goes with it. VL THEIR RELIGIOUS LIFE GAVE EVIDENCE 01!' ITS GENUINENESS BY FOLLOWING scmPTURAL LINES. (Vers.14-16.) Prayer,fear, sacrifice, and vows;-what essential element in religious life or worship do not these exercises cover (Acts ii. ~1; Heb, ix. 22; Ps. iii. 10; Jsa. xliv. 5)? Jn prayer is the coming to God for the things that are his gift if they come at all. Jn tiacrifice is the coming symbolically by atonement., tbe only coming to which ble~sing is promised. Fear epitomizes the attituJe and line of action in which praclical relig1oa. may be summed up. A vow is a testimony Lhat tbe ideal life i.s consecratiou--a pledge that they will freely give who have received so  !JI, J. 1-17.] THE ROOK OF JON AH. !1