The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 57

God, in fact, bring up each other. And not only is the fact of sin, but the extent anrl evil of it are revealed in the revelation of God. Contact with the plumb-line betrays the curve in the bowing wall. So, side by side with God's ideal holiness, sin looks itself and looks its worst (Job xiii. o). When a man sees his sinfulness, he has also, DB the condition of it, got a glimpse of God. To Jonah his l11te conduct seems nothing now but the pursuit of lying vanities. He had no fruit in 1t. Every promise of good it held out had been falsified. He bad not escaped. He bad not improved matters in any way. He bad only intensified existing evils and involved himself and others in new troubles. And that is a true picture of sin the world over and all history through. It is a following of delusive phantasies, and a rur..ning away from our own mercies. Its prospective blessings burst like bubbles in our hands-the hands that, but for it, would have been full of the choicest gifts of God. V, THE BEOEIVING OF SPIRITUAL 0O0D IB FOLLOWED BY A DESIRE TO MAKE BOMB BETUBN. (Ver. 9.) Gratitude is a universal duty, and ought to be a universal grace. .All men receive blessing from God, and as a consequence owe him thanks. Of the gratitude due, however, they fall far short. Some good things come incognito, and are thus received unthankfully. Other good things, God's free gifts, are traced to some earthly source, and so produce no thankful feeling. And then the multitude of life's mercies, so obviously Divine, are yet so common that their origin is forgotten, and they are received as a matter of course. But spiritual gifts can never be ungratefully received. They are too conspicuously gracious to be taken as a matter of right. They are too immeasurably great to be lightly deemed of. They involve the gift of a new heart itself, in which gratitude is a native growth, because grace has made it God-like. There are no thankless Christians. Ingratitude possibly means the spiritual nature absent or in abeyance, and points, where we find it, to previous spiritual deforcement. Such deforcement Jonah had suffered during the continnance of his rebellious freak. Now that religious principle had resumed the sway in his soul, the gratitude is restored that bad been exiled during the spiritual interregnum. And everywhere and always the heart that has been blessed to saving effect is one in which infallibly is mooted the question of making grateful return. VI. DIVINE DELIVERANCE IS ALWAYS TIMED TO ABBIVE WBEN THERE IS RIPENESS IJ'OB IT. (Ver. 10.) Deliverance any sooner would have been too soon. It would have anticipated repentance, and so have left the erring prophet unreclaimed. It wonld, in fact, have defeated the object for which the entire disciplinary course had been adopted. It could not therefore occur in a divinely ordered life-history. God's providence never counterworks bis scheme of grace. The one is adjusted to the other. His backsliding Jonahs are converted before his disciplinary whales vomit them forth. See you to the repentance, and God will see to your relief. Refining silver, at a certain stage the molten metal becomes for an instant so still and bright that the refiner can see his image in it as in a glass. And this, it is said, is the moment to pour it out, to anticipate which or delay beyond it is to spoil the whole experiment. In the visitations of his hand, God sits, we read, "as a refiner and purifier of silver," to "purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver" (Mai. iii. 3). No fear that he will spoil the process by taking you out of the fire a single moment out of date. He will keep you under discipline till he sees bis image in your purified soul, and in that moment precisely will remove his hand. "He that from dross wonld win the precious ore, Bends o'er the cruoible an earnest eye, The subtle searching process to explore, Lest the one brilliant moment should pasa by When, iu the molten silver's virgin mass, He meets his piotnred faoe as in a glass. "Thus in God's furnace are his people tried, Thrice happy they who to the end endure. But who the fiery trial may abide? Who from the crucible come forth so pnre That he whose eyes of flame look through the whole May see hie image perfect in the soul?" (J. Montgomery.) J E. B. 54 'HIE BOOR OF' JONAH. [ctt. u. 1-10,