The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 69

they ma.y be formally in office, but are incapable of spiritual work. When Jonah fell for the time being out of the spiritual connection, be ceased to be a prophet of God. He could not be o.t once a recruiter and a deserter, an ambassador and a rebel. Now ho has come back, and in resumed spiritual relations he finds the condition of restored religious functions. He may again speak for God now that again he is on God's side. No man goes legitimately on God's errand who cannot do it con amore. Spiritual officers are to be sought exclusively by promotion from the spiritual ranks. Every true shepherd has been first of all a sheep in God's fold, and to each relation has come in by Christ, the Door. 11. GoD'B PROGRAMME IB STEREOTYPED,· WHATEVER ELSE MAY CHANGE. (Ver. 2.) God has not changed, although Jonah bas. The prophet's mutinous outbreak has not moved him a hairbreadth from his purpose. What he meant at first he means still, and will have. So the prophet is brought back exactly to the point at which he h~l broken away, and tolrl to begin where he had left off. 1. God is moved still by the same compassion/or the doomed. "That great city." The repetition of thes~ words on each occasion of the mention of Nineveh is significant. It shows that God had regard to the fact of its size; that all through the arrangement of measures for its warning he was moved by the thought of its teeming population given over to death. Hence it is styled in ver. 3 "a great city to God," i.e. in his estimation, and in eh. iv. 11 the Divine compunction is directly connected with the existence of its hundred and twenty thousand children, not yet responsible, but bound to perish with it. The Divine compassion is a glorious factor in human life. Its attitude is catholic. H embraces in wide paternal arms the heathen that knows not God, the infant that could not know him if revealed. Its outflow is unstinted, averting myriad evils altogether, softening the inevitable, indemnifying the past by the amends of rich compensatory good. Believe in God's pity. It is a splendid fact. It is hunger's provision, and pain's anresthetic, and misery's comforter, and humanity's good Samaritan in the darkest reaches of its Jericho-journey, and the most calamitous experiences by the way. 2. God's prescribed step remains the/Wing 0'11,B to talce. What other methods it was within the resources of Divine omnipotence to use for the conversion of the Ninevite;, we cannot tell. What we know is that the proclamation of the truth was the ordinary method, and that God keeps to it. "The sword of the Spirit," with which he pierces the soul and kills its sin, is the "Word of God.'' "The foolishness of preaching " is that special presentment of the Word by which in all ages it has pleased God to save them that believe. .And there is, if we could see it, the perfection of fitness in this ordinance. Truth is light revealing things as they are and a.s they ought to be. Truth is motive, presenting considerations that move intelligence to seek that better state. Truth is force, conveying to the soul and constituting in it the Divine omnipo- tent energy in the strength of which the new man arises, and the new life is lived. Truth is comfort, unfolding the soul-rest and joy of the free which climb the throne of being when the new regime of righteousness begins. Then truth preached with the living voice and personal element is all this and more. To the influence proper to the abstract truth is added its influence as concreted in a human life. As light it is intensified by the added ray of an illustrative experience. As power it is reinforced by the impulse of a co-operant human will. As comfort it is at once confirmed and sweetened by personal testimony and fellow-feeling. There is no conceiv!!.ble substitute in the enginery of grace for the personal preaching to sinners of the word of life. 3. Repentance is best pr01Jed by obedience in the matter at which there was stumbling before. Jonah bad passed through a severe discipline for the conquest of his self-will. Whet.her or not it WaB really overcome, this reiterated commission would test. .And there was a needs-be that the point should be settled. All judgment is "unto righteousness; " to bring us to it if afar from it, to restore us to it if we have strayed. .And it is this, not in the general, but in the particular. It is to check particular faults and produce the opposite virtues. In this object God will see that it succeeds. He cannot fail as men fail His chains must bind. He gives no disputable instructions, nor moves to their observance by futile action. In tow of his disciplinary privateers, when they return to port, will be found, as a prize of war, every skulking craft that had been trying to do the enemy's work. 'l'he proof that his measures have not been nugatory js the oircumstantial realization of their purpose. The iniquity he visits with the ru<l. JONAH, F 6G THE BOOK OF JON AH. [ou. m. 1-10.