II. PITY ON THE BIIORT-LIVEO GOURD; PITY ON THE NINEVITEB, IMMORTAL 0DEATUREB. That gourd had but the life of a day. Then "the grace of the fashion of it perished." So frail I But look at those multitudes in Nineveh. Few there had so brief a life as the gourd. And all of them were heirs of immortality, passing to an eternal destiny. How the human transcends all lower forms of life I Did Jonah pity the short-lived plant? Shall not God pity the ever-living multitude in the city? Ill. PITY ON THE GOURD THAT HAO COST JONAH NOTfilNG; PITY ON THE VAST POPULATION THAT Goo HAD MADE AND UPHELD. The gourd "came up over" Jonah; unsought, unhelped by him-came to him. He brought it not; he kept it not in life. He had done nothing for it, yet how he mourned its decay I Mark the principle implied in this contrast I This-that we show our value of a thing by the labour we expend upon it. This also-that our sense of the value of a thing, our love to it, grows in proportion to our labour for it. How much God had done for the Ninevites I They were all his creatures. If he had not " laboured for" them, he had made them. He was the Fountain of their life. They lived because he held them in life. He could not lightly let them perish; he was their Maker. Jonah had "not made" the gourd to "grow." But God had made the Ninevites to grow; had built them in strength, fed, clothed, preserved them. And, as with us, the more we do for another, the more we love him; so with God and those Ninevites. They were dear to him, and ever dearer because of what he had done for them. ' IV. PITY ON THE ONE PLANT; PITY ON THE MANY-PEOPLED CITY. One plant called out J onah's yeal'ning tenderness, But what was that to a man 1--a. man made in God's image, '·' endued with sanctity of reB10D," dowered with immortality? A man? Here was a city full of men. God knew the number. But in this plea he only gives the number of the children. They in their helplessness and innocence were pleas with him for the preservation of the city. Beautiful, effectual priesthood of children ! They are unconscious yet mighty intercessors for us. One hundred and twenty thousand of them are in Nineveh. That is a reason why God should spare it. Better that they should live than die. Heaven, to one who has known God's grace and accepted it, temptation and overcome it, who has" served his generation," will be a nobler world than to an infant caught in his unconsciousness to its unexpected bliss. "And much cattle." Not an animal in Nineveh but is worth more than the gourd. Man's Maker is its Maker. And he who made man made it/or man. The very cattle are a plea for the preservation of the city. Conclusive, unanswerable appeal I Jonah, so ready with his replies, is now speech- less. He saw that God's way was right. Let our pity to things and persons remind us of God's mercy. A mercy almighty and "to everlasting." A mercy revealed in Christ. A mercy to be accepted. If not, if rejected, if trifled with till life is trifled away-where, w'here can we look? There is one Savionr, and no other 1-G. T. C. Ver. 11.-The unconscious priesthood of children. The Ninevite litUe ones effectually, though unwittingly, interceded with God for the preservation of Nineveh. And are not little children still unconscious intercessors with God? 1. By their innocence. They have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, 2. By their dependence. Their dependence on God makes them the dearer to God; their depend- ence on their parents makes their pa.rents the dearer to him. 3. By their undeveloped moral possibilities, What a work in the earth they may do for God I " I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said"- Ninevite babe and suckling-" spare me, teach me," and then in the future "send me." -G.T.O.
Ver.11.-God's consideration/or animals. The" much cattle" in Nineveh a plea with God for the preservation of the city. And still, be animals where they may: 1. God has made them. 2. He preserves them. "His full hand supplies their need." 3. He dowers them with beauty, or swiftness, or strength, with sensibility and sagacity. 4. He makes them of varied serviceableness to man, and has given man authority over them. "Thou mndest him to have dominion over all sheep and oxen; yea, and the beasts of the field." 6. "He regardeth the life of the beast;" complacently, in their "lower pleasures;" pitifully, in theh- "lower pains;" constantly aud minutely, "not JONAH, B 98 THE DOOK OF JO.NAH, [on. 1v. 1-11.