that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." Disgraced as a prophet, the denunciation being to be uttered on positive, not conditional terms, (how abominably considerations of self may interfere with obedience to God!) he determines to flee to Tarshish, that is, Tarsus in Cilicia, a place more than one hundred leagues to the north of Joppa, completely across the Mediterranean, where Paul was to be born, a man of another spirit. How he would have acted!

And then the purpose of this voyage-to flee from the presence of the Lord! This betrays a most unworthy conception of the Divine Being, whatever might be the prophet's notion. Some have asserted, that Jonah could be little better than a kind of heathen worshipper of the true God; that his idea of God was very much that of a local deity, in partial conformity to the absolute paganism which is believed to have much prevailed in the part of Judea where he dwelt; and it is even asserted as probable that at Joppa he might formally commit himself to the protection of the deity worshipped in that place, and in many others in the East; a god or goddess in the form of a great fish. But surely this is going a great deal too far, concerning a man who had previously sustained the character of a prophet of the Lord, considering also his subsequent expressions. Still it is too probable (for the Jews, except the most illuminated, were most wretched theologists) that he was under the influence of a notion that God maintained a peculiar jurisdiction over Judea, and a less absolute one beyond: although he knew that it must extend with awful authority at least to Nineveh, yet we are forced to suppose something of this in explanation. This heathen admixture in his ideas would favour the notion, which was probably the prevailing one in his mind, namely, that if he went but far enough away, God would do without him-would choose on the spot other ways and agents for his purposes respecting Nineveh. "There will be no need of ME in the case: he will not follow me over the sea." He embarked—but with what feelings? His commission upon him as guilt. An auspicious gale! to carry him to a distance, as he hoped, from the peculiar province of God's dominion! Happily, here is less and less of the Divine presence! But what providence did he invoke? Would he go unprotected over seas, and to strange lands? Is he contented with some secondary and dubious providence? In what terms did he PRAY before he went to SLEEP? Like other men, when conscious they are going about something wrong, he could not pray. And supposing there were some one devout Israelite on board, that did pray in his hearing, he could not say "Amen." He slept; but it is not wise to sleep in guilt-how he deserved to be awaked! He shall not sleep long, for there is a power that can awake the tempest! The God that is disobeyed on the land can make the sea avenge him. And here again the very first thing is a pointed, direct infliction on his

conscience, for it is a summons to pray. "Awake, and call upon thy God." And to think that a prophet of the Lord should be the only one in the company that could not, dared not, do this! There is no situation more pitiable than that of a religious man who has disabled himself to take the benefit of his religion. His associates had various gods, and they could all pray earnestly to their objects of adoration. But he could not; he who knew the real Lord of the land and the ocean. There must soon have been manifested some peculiarity of circumstances in the storm, indicating that it was of a nature extraordinary and judicial. Superstition, indeed, easily fancies such a thing, but here it was not superstition. Religion, even in its rudest forms, has always been faithful to its general principle thus far, that when the anger of the Divinity has been apprehended, it has been understood to be against sins and crimes; and also that the Divinity was believed to know who was the criminal. The mariners, therefore, referred it to the avenging Power to point out the criminal, by a common ancient practice. "Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us." (chap. i. 7.) A reference this not to chance, but to a superior intelligence. Could our prophet feel any doubt where the lot would fall? No: his conscience must have been a prophet to him. Then follows the account of the questions and expostulations to him. His answers were perfectly explicit. And if there had been, before, any cloud and mist of paganism hanging over his ideas of God, the storm seems to have dispelled it, for he speaks of God in the great and comprehensive terms appropriate to him. (chap. i. 9.) The mariners were terrified the more for one thing, their conviction was now rendered absolute, that the tempest really was preternatural and vindictive. And also whatever various gods they might acknowledge, they felt that they were now abandoned to the power of one. Did not Jonah wish himself in Nineveh, even with the wicked inhabitants in an angry or scornful tumult round him, rather than surrounded by these raging billows? The rage of the people God might have quelled: the tumult of the waves it was God that excited. And then the state of CONSCIENCE in the one place, and in the other! The perfect honesty shown by Jonah made the mariners think it but right to inquire of himself what they should do to him; and his ready explicit answer and self-devotement, no doubt, made them much more reluctant to do what he directed them. It would strike them as generous and heroic. And they, on their part, displayed much of that courageous generosity which is at this day so conspicuous in men of their vocation. They could not doubt of what he assured them of, but they persisted to labour and struggle-" rowed hard to bring the ship to land." The necessity became imperative at length. And we can imagine the prophet telling them that their labour was in vain! At the same time it was not for himself to execute

the righteous doom. The mariners would not execute it, even in the extremity of their peril, without first solemnly imploring that they might be acquitted of guilt in doing it. "We beseech thee, lay not upon us innocent blood." It would seem as if some new light respecting the true Divinity had broken in upon their minds through these strange and tremendous circumstances. They address the Almighty not as Jonah's God only, but as theirs also. They had now to offer their sacrifice, and in such an act would for a moment be insensible to the storm. But it was a willing sacrifice, like that of Him of whom Jonah was a type. They offered it, and the storm was gone! The effect upon them appears to have been, that they became genuine converts to the worship of the Almighty. And it is very reasonable to suppose that a great and useful impression might have been made on the people of Joppa. This would be confirmed supposing Jonah, as it is not improbable, to be cast back on their shores. And if so, an important incidental use was by Providence made of the disobedience of Jonah. But where was he while these circumstances were exciting conversation and wonder? There was to appear, very shortly, a prophet of the Lord in Nineveh. Whence to come? Where his place of abode, at a point of time a few weeks before his arrival? The conjecture of millions would have been in vain. "The man that shall denounce the Divine judgments in your streets not many days hence, is not on the earth, nor in the heavens, nor in the air, nor on the sea;" yet you will most certainly see and hear him. The predicament is nearly as strange as if a mere mass of clay were to be suddenly formed into a man. It might seem as if the Almighty had invented a predicament of things expressly in contempt of the vain and impious philosophy which will insist that all things in the creation shall proceed with an invariable regularity and quiet uniformity. As if God should say, The course of things, which they require to be so uniform, shall, when I please, start out into the strongest conceivable deviations. An ass shall speak and reprove a wicked prophet, and a fish shall swallow and disgorge alive a disobedient one. And if they then will presume to deny the attested facts, and even ridicule them, let them "sport themselves with their own deceivings."

"The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow," &c. (chap. i. 17.) It has been often enough observed, that the species of this fish is altogether uncertain. There even might have been at that period of time sea-monsters which exist not now, as anciently there were enormous animals on the land of a kind now no more. The one in question came to be considered a whale, just because that is the largest known fish, (sometimes more than one hundred feet long.) And cavillers have determined that a whale it should be, and no other, for a good reason, namely, that the whale's throat is found to be very strait for an animal of such size, and therefore the word of God is not

true. Now we must not imagine we honour God by asserting a plain mathematical contradiction, and then protect the absurdity by calling it a MIRACLE. One has heard of a good man's uttering so silly a thing as that, if God had declared that Jonah swallowed the whale he would believe it, for that God's testimony must bear down all objections. The folly is in supposing it possible for God to have declared any such thing, as that the less may contain the greater. There would be the same contradiction in asserting that Jonah went through the throat of the whale, Ir the whale's throat (of three or four inches diameter when dead) were of the consistence of a tube of iron or stone. But it has been justly observed, that it is idle to assert anything as to the possible capacity of the throat of the living fish, from its dimension after death. The boa constrictor can swallow animals of great size, and even men have been found in large sharks. The fish, then, might be a whale that swallowed Jonah, and nothing either of miracle is supposed thus far; the miracle comes afterwards. Jonah lived during three days and three nights in the stomach of the sea-monster without breathing, and that not in a state of suspended animation, but, it appears, in a state to be able to reflect and pray. Here we rest simply and plainly on the exertion of a Divine Power, which miraculously preserved the vital economy under the suspension of one of its grand functions. This however was not more out of ordinary nature than that suspension of another law of life by which Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fusted forty days. It is, at the same time, worth while to mention what men of science have asserted, with examples from fact, namely, the possibility of a circulation of the blood without any breathing, or dependence on the lungs at all, from the continued communication with the heart of a certain blood-vessel, which almost always ceases that communication at the very beginning of infancy, a most extremely rare case, they state, but of which there have been instances-persons who consequently could not die by suffocation. Now Jonah might be selected as having this singular peculiarity. This might serve to quash some scoffs of infidels; but Christians do not at all need such a supposition. As to Jonah suffering no harm from the digestive power of the sea-monster, how should he, if what Hunter and others have asserted be true, that the stomach has no power at all to act on a living substance? Think now of the prophet in his living tomb! is it possible to conceive so strange a transition of state and feelings? A few hours since at Joppa, intending and eager for Tarshish-WHERE NOW? and where next? whither has he fled "from the presence of the Lord ?" His voyage has sped indeed! and in a manner which he could not have believed, though an angel from heaven had foretold it to him. This was something that left all wonders and adventures of mariners behind! This was truly to be thrown on a terra incognita, to discover a place never found before. God had more places to send him to than Nineveh; and he found that God absolutely

would choose whither he should go; himself had wilfully prepared for a distant port, but another will had prepared the great fish. We may suppose he felt an utter confusion of all thought at first-an indistinct consciousness of something between life and death—as if taken out of this world, yet not into another. Perhaps a kind of desperate horror next; the agony of a man that cannot live, nor die. But by degrees the amazing fact, that he did really live, and continue to live, would bring him to the distinct sense of a miraculous and protective Providence over him. Every moment would add strength to his impression of the Divine presence, and he came at length to a state of thought, and faith, and hope, capable of prayer. From how many unthought-of, unimaginable situations the Sovereign of the world has drawn devotional aspirations! but never, except once, from a situation like this! What is here given as the prophet's "prayer" (chap. ii.) is doubtless the brief recollection, afterwards recorded, of the kind of thoughts which had filled his mind during his dark sojourn; with the addition of some pious and grateful sentiments caused by the review. This devotional composition gives by much the most favourable view of his character. It makes us regret that he could not be so good a man on the surface of the earth as in the depth of the ocean. In order to pray in the best manner, he must be unable to see, or move, or breathe. The final result, no doubt, of these mental exercises, was a full consent of his will, that He who had sent him hither should send him anywhere else he pleased, even to Nineveh. And then the sea-monster had to finish HIS office, by discharging the prophet on the shore-most likely near Joppaafter three days and three nights, during which the earth and heavens had been concealed from him by such a veil as never was drawn before any other eyes. It is to be noted, that our Lord declares all this to have been a type of Him. (Matt. xii. 40.) The analogies are being consigned to the deep and to the grave in order that others might be saved; the same duration of time in the dark retirement; the coming to light and life again for the reformation of mankind. This citation in the New Testament authenticates the wonderful history of the prophet. It will not, perhaps, be impertinent to mention a pagan authentication of it; Hercules was fabled to have been the same three days in a fish.

We shall now follow Jonah to Nineveh, where we must leave him. Surely his recollection during the journey would be most vivid. The image of the "great fish" would be predominant above those of all the objects that passed before his eyes. He came to the great city, described as having been more than fifty miles in circuit, and which may be calculated to have contained more than half a million of people. Nineveh was at a great distance from the scene of the wonderful facts, and we do not know whether Jonah carried with him thither any witnesses or evidences of what had befallen him on