The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 31

courtesy, charity, kindliness, large-mindedness, liberality, self-denial, any virtue what- soever? "Why Rhoukl there be one single department of what is good-good in any ephore, morn!, physical, social, scientific, concerning which the world can with any show of fo.irness profess to school the Church, or ea.y, St.and aside, for we are more at home here than you? " (Martin). IV. CoNDUOT OF THE BHIPMABTER, The absence of Jon1;1h in time of prayer hnrl arrested attention, and was felt to be strange and unseemly. Even the world expects Christians to do their duty. Shipmaster reproves him sharply, cries aloud against him, " What meanest thou, 0 sleeper?" for hie sleep was not the sleep that God gives to his beloved. A rebuke often applicable still to many other classes--to all at ease in Zion, to neglectere of the great salvation, to open transgressors, to worldlings, to forgetters of God, to those who think not of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come! "Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." Jonah is called to prayer--earnest prayer; he must" arise "-a recumbent attitude not soit.able for such prayer-rather the attitude of Jacob wrestling at Peniel. A reason is given why Jonah should pray, but a hesitating reason, "if so be "-if there be even a chance of prayer prevailing; this is very different from the full assurance of faith. Faith knows that God will hear, and that he ever thinks upon his own, and that they cannot perish, in the deepest eenee of the word. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and they shall never perish." The name and work of Christ, unknown to this mariner, give confidence in prayer. The heathen mariner is here the preacher to the prophet, not the prophet to the mariner. "Let us listen to his awaken- ing call. These words of his have aroused many a sleeper besides Jonah.... Hear them, sleeping soul, to-day. What meanest thou, 0 sleeper ?-sleeping here in this great battle-field, where souls are lost and won? In this vineyard of noblest work, where God-given talents are doubled or forfeited for ever? In this treacherous sea of life, girt round with storms which might eo easily break the strongest ships that float? What meanest thou ?-sleeping now, with noonday lights above thee, and about thee men who strive and men who pray? . . . While the gates of heaven and bell stand open, the murky shadows of the one gathering in deeper folds, the joy-bells of the other waiting to peal?" (Raleigh). Oh the unreasonableness of spiritual sleep-sleep of unbelief- eleep of backsliding I "Now it is high time to awake out of sleep" (Rom. xiii 11).- W. G. B. Vere. 7-10.-The fugitive ccinvicted. "And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lets, and the lot fell upon Jonah," etc. The prayers of the mariners, and Jonah'e prayer, if indeed he tried to pray (although that is hardly likely; see eh. iv. 2, " Then Jonah prayed"), led to no abatement of the storm. God's purpose was not to be accomplished in that way-Jonah was not to be restored in so easy n manner. But prayer may seem to be unanswered while it is answered-it is a link in a chain. A much more profound discipline bad yet to be passed through in order that Jonah might be restored and the great purpose of bis mission to Nineveh attained. Let us trace the next steps in the development of the providential plan. I. THE MARINERS RESOLVE TO 0AST LOTS. (Ver. 7.) This is a striking step. They might have given themselves up for lost, perhaps drowning their feelings, as sailors have often done, in intoxication (if that be not an exclusively modern practice); but they resolved to make another effort to save their lives and their ship. '!'bis proceeded on the belief that this storm was causeJ by some man's sin; and to find out who was the offender they determined to cast lots. A dangerous generalization, to ascribe o. calamity to one man's sin, though in this case correct. Perhaps there were unusual circumstances in the storm that led them to reason thus. "If anything should happen strangely, as while we are in this mortality we may very well expect, we can take no better course than these shipmen presently to fear lest iniquity be the author of it" (Abbot). Casting lots was a peculiar device to ascertain a secret; relz'g,ious u~e of lots, however, is very different from the careless appeal to the lot often made (see Josh. vii. 16; 1 Sam. x. 21; Acts i. 26). The lot becomes legitimate only when all the ordinary methods of e~ttling a difficulty have failed, and nothing remains but to make II solerno applla\ to God, 2S THE BOOK OF JONAH. [Cllt, I, 1-11,