134

THE BLESSEDNESS OF AFFLICTION.

for the present; and, without one murmuring word, nay, without a single inquiry, he proceeds to the post which was divinely assigned. He had found that “the way of transgressors is hard," and "Here am I, send me," is in effect the language of the humbled man. "Lo I come to do thy will" was his ready maxim. No more rebellion-no more self-will-no more taking counsel of flesh and blood. The prophet walks by faith, and honouring God, he is honoured by him.

Now, we need scarcely tarry here to point out the lesson which should be learned, for it is written as with sunlight, that affliction is God's messenger of mercy to his people. Let it be supposed again, that Jonah had got success in his flight, and had wandered away from God without a check or a cross-what might then have been the result? He might have sunk by degrees to the level of the heathen, and walked onwards to an unhonoured grave a moral wreck a monument of the results of privilege abused and mercy spurned away. Had Jonah got success in his iniquity—that is, had his will, and not God's prevailed-then his name would have been added with infamy to the long catalogue of those who have sought their happiness in fleeing from God, and found only sorrow and death. But the trials which came prevented all this. They were the very messengers of mercy from God to this man's soul. They arrested him in his career of sin, and in ten thousand times ten thousand cases tribulation has accomplished the same result. It has arrested him whom prosperity was ruining. It has spread solemn thoughts through the soul which was frivolous before. What art thou? where will thy soul be for ever? are questions

pressed by their sorrows upon many, who are pointed thereby to the strait gate and the narrow way, but who were hurrying before their tribulation along the path which terminates in the second death.

But, notice Jonah's rule as he moved submissively now towards the scene of his labours: "He arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord;" that is, the mind of God is now his only counsellor. He had followed his own for a season, and lay down in sorrow at the last; but now it is not self, but God; it is not flesh and blood, it is the divine will which becomes this man's law and guide. He may be alone against a million; his faith shall just be the simpler. He may be the bearer of a message which might irritate and gall men, but that he could not help; he will just lean the more upon Him who holds the hearts of all men in his hands. Enough for him that God had spoken. Jonah would obey, and he accordingly proceeded to preach the preaching which God had bidden.

Now, at this point we perceive again the divine and sovereign remedy for man's misery-the divine and sovereign prescription for happiness to man's soul. To man's eye, Jonah is entering on a path of difficulty-it may even lead to death; but whatever man may think, it is the only path of safety, for the prophet is where God would have him to be. When he fled, his whole soul was in disorder, it was acting in opposition to Jehovah, and that was moral madness-it led to wretchedness and shame; but now God's will is Jonah's will-God's word is Jonah's law. The Supreme is the supreme, the creature is in the dust; and as the result of all, serenity of soul is now enjoyed-a serenity unruffled by the thought

136

MAN'S TRUE DIGNITY-AND WISDOM.

of danger, or even by the prospect of death. The raging ocean, or the reeling ship, was the emblem of Jonah's state while God was disobeyed; that ocean waveless and at rest, like the innocence of infancy, is the emblem of his condition as he moves toward Nineveh, "according to the word," and therefore sustained by the omnipotence, of the Lord. This is man's true dignity, to lean on the arm of the Almighty, and man's true wisdom, to be guided by the skill of Omniscience.

And this, also, we need not say, is written for our learning; the case of Jonah is recorded that we may learn wisdom. We should fix it indelibly in our minds, that the Word of God is the rule both to Jehovah and to us. It is the common standard by which all that relates to the saving of the soul is to be tried and adjusted. “Do as thou hast said," is the appeal which we are privileged to make to the Hearer of Prayer. Do "according to the word of the Lord," is the command which he has laid upon us; and taking that injunction in all its amplitude, we may say that the day-star arises in our hearts, we see light in God's light from the moment at which his Word becomes our only rule-the rule which Jehovah has been pleased to adopt, and which we are invited, nay commanded to obey. It is a truth, but a truth too little regarded, that he among us who does not walk "according to the word of the Lord,” is acting just as Jonah did when he tried to flee from the post of duty.

But it is time to contemplate what is here asserted regarding the city to which Jonah was sent. The brief narrative says, "Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey."

THE MAGNITUDE OF NINEVEH.

137

Now, what is meant by the words "three days' journey?" Do they imply that it took three days to pass through Nineveh? Some think that that could scarcely be the case. Do they mean, then, that it would have required Jonah three days to walk through all the streets, telling his message in each as he passed? That does not seem the natural signification of the words; and hence many adopt the opinion, that the circuit or circumference of Nineveh was sufficient to occupy a journey of three days. It would have cost the prophet that space of time to walk round its stupendous walls, to count its hundreds of towers, and, in short, encircle the city to which he was sent to "preach the preaching which his God commanded."

But against this account thus understood, infidelity has directed its keen assault; and some would found objections upon this asserted magnitude, as showing that the Bible cannot be historically or topographically correct. It is argued or assumed that no city could cover such a space; and that the circumference of Nineveh is erroneously overstated.

Now, in reply to this, we might lay before you the records of ancient historians-of heathens who neither knew the Bible nor cared for its truth; and one after another has described the magnificence of Nineveh, its walls, its palaces, and towers, in a style which is in perfect accordance with the narrative of Jonah. One has made the circumference fully seventyfour of our miles, while none place it lower than from fifty to sixty; and, according to the rate of travelling which is usual in the East, "three days' journey" would be an exact description of such a city. Even in these,

I

there is enough to assure the friends of revelation that the Word of God cannot suffer, and need not shrink, from the most rigid scrutiny. Like burnished metal, it shines the better for such treatment.

But, passing from these accounts of the ancients, we may advert to the researches of one who has only as yesterday returned from a rigid examination of the ruins of Nineveh; and his mind, calmly recorded, is that sixty of our miles, or three days' journey in the East, were literally and exactly the circumference of the city. This is not the place to enter into such details; we mention only the result, and that result is in precise and wondrous accordance with the record of the prophet Jonah. In the same way, God will vindicate at last every tittle of his Word against those who do not believe it to be true. Two great nations, our own and another, are at present competing in their researches, amid the ruins of a city once so vast that it burdened the earth, but which was at last swept so utterly away, that its place was long sought for but could not be found. All that these researches have brought to light has tended at once to corroborate the truth, and illustrate the narrative of the prophet; and another proof is afforded to the friends of revelation that the Bible is all that it claims to be. Neither antiquarian research, nor progressive scientific investigation, nor the spirit of adventure and discovery roaming over the world, has brought any thing to light calculated to do detriment at all to that Word which God has magnified above all his name.

*It is not in the domain of miracle or wonder alone that man's antagonism to God appears. For example, in a work, Vestiges of