The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 44

tives, the failure of business, have been employed \1y God again and again to arouse moral thoughtfulness, and save the soul from destruction. Let us learn the lessons which such tempests can tea.eh us. "What mrancst thou, 0 sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God, if so be th11t God will think upon us, that we perish not," JI. Goo EMP1,0'rl!I UNLIKELY AGEN'l'II TO BRING A WRONG•DOEB TO BEPBNTANOB. The n1an who utfored the words just quoted was a he:\then shipmuter, whom a Jew would despise as a Gont.ile dog or as an ignor11nt idolater. Yet but for him Jonah might have slept on till the vessel founderod. II. has often been so. Naaman, the diatioguiahad Syri11n general, was taught by a slave-girl. David was instructed by Abigail, The Pharisees and scribes were rebuked by the hosa.nnM of little children in the temple. God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and weak things to destroy things whicb. arc mighty. If we sec no reason for fear or for seriousness in the tempest or life, he may arouse us by means we despise. A single phrase in a sermon ~·hich is far from eloquent, a leafiet or tract without any pretension to literArf charm, an caroest word from an inferior in rank or education, the trustful pra7er of a lisping cbild,-may be used (If God, as was the summons which came to Jonah from a auper. stitious heathen. III. A MAN KA V JIB IN GREAT DANGER Wl'l'BOll'T BEING CONBOIOUB OF IT, Jonah slept. Perhaps be dreamed of happier days and of distant scenes, These seemed real to him, but the realities actually around him-the storm, the ship, the asilors-were as if they did not exist. He did not know"hia danger, and had forgotten in sleep hia sad disobedience. Even t.o the sailors his sleep seemed the result of infatuation or or sense• lessness, and they asked (not," What meanest thou?"),•• What aileth thee, 0 sleeper?" -as if there was something abnormally wrong with him, aa indeed there was. But more strange, more fatal, is the sleep in which so man7 lie who believe themselves to be n,vake. Shrewd in business, eager in pleasure-seeking, succeasful in stud7, all that they see nppears for the time to be the onl7 reality. But, like Jonah, they are in dream• land. Heaven a.nd hell, death and judgment, an enemy of BOuls, and a Saviour from sin, are reco~ized by others, not by them. Urge all such to awake, and arise from the dead, that Christ may give them light. "Now is the accepted time; now is the day of sil vation." IV. Goo's WAY or SALVATION IS TBE ONLY on:. It was useless for the sailors to row bard in the hope of bringing the ship to land, and equall7 useless for them to cast the cargo overboard. There was no safety for them or for Jonah except by the wa7 ordained by God. Strange aa it seemed to them and to us, Jonah, in all his sinfulness and helplessness, was to be cast into the sea., where none but God could save him. If the story has oo other lesson, it at least teaches us the impotenc7 of human effort to battle successfully with the storms of life. The struggles some make in their unaided atreogth to win salvation are vain as the efforts of these who" rowed hard to bring the ship to land." The endeavour to get rid of besetting sins without prayer for grace is as ineffectual as the casting overboard of the burden in the ship. A simpler, stranger, means of salvation is provided for us, As Jonah was cast helpless and alone into the sea, for God to save in his own way, ao we are called to aucn imflicit truat aa will prompt ua to cast ourselves wholly upon Christ, in whom we ahal find eternal rest. -A.R. Vera. 1-3.-God BJ)«l,king to man in mercy, and 'f114njl,eeingfrom God ln dis,,11edimoe. •• Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, a:i.ying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me." This iH a strange book. It ia not the record of a dream, nor the sketch of an allegory, but the history of a man written by himself, •rrue, he speaks in the third person ; but ao did many of the old prophets, so did the Apoatle Paul, and BO have maoy great men. Intellectual children are prone to use the personal pronoun I; great intellectual men prefer writing of themselves in the third person, Speeches and books bristling with I are generally the effusions of little aoula. We have here his name and that of hill father, the one signifying "Dove," aod th.e other ''. t~e Truth of God." Na1;:,es of old were sometimes commemorative, sometimes pred1ct1ve. Names now signify little. Men by great and noble deeds can, and often do, throw into the com- monest names a meaning that will radiate through oent.uries. In theso words we have 011, I, 1-17,] THE BOOK OF JONAH. 41