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ness, you may, at last, become as wicked as the people of Nineveh were. That will be dreadful, indeed! For such wickedness, if it is not repented of and forsaken, will meet with a very terrible punishment, after death, in a future world.

CHAPTER IV.

Jonah tries to flee to Tarshish. A dreadful storm. The sailors cry to their false gods. They throw their goods overboard, to save the ship. Men will part with any thing to save their lives. How much more ought we to be willing to part with any thing to save our souls!

THE wickedness of Nineveh was so great, that God commanded Jonah to go and cry against it ;to go and cry aloud in the streets of the city, so that all the people could hear him—and tell them of their great wickedness, and of the dreadful punishment which their sins deserved.

Jonah was afraid to do this. He thought it would be a difficult and dangerous journey, to go alone, a great way from his own country, among strangers. And, when he should get to Nineveh, and begin to preach to the people, he feared that they would be very angry with him, and perhaps kill him. He forgot that God could take care of him; and that it was his duty to obey God, whatever might happen to him. For no fear of any thing, however dreadful, which man can do unto us, should lead us to disobey the commands of God.

Being thus afraid to do as God commanded him, Jonah thought if he could get out of his own country, and from the presence of the Lord,-from that peculiar presence of God which, in some way, he was sensible of when called upon to prophecy,God migth not again direct him to go to Nineveh. So he went to a place on the sea-coast, called Joppa, where he found a ship about to sail to Tarshish, and there he thought he should be safe. For Tarshish was a great distance from Joppa; some think it was in Cilicia, a country at the east end of the Mediterranean sea. But in all this Jonah acted both foolishly and wickedly. For how could he hope to escape from God, who could see him as well at Tarshish as in his own country; and would do with him as he thought best, as well in one place as in another?

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Jonah forgot all this, and paid the master of the ship what he asked for carrying a person from Joppa to Tarshish, and went on board. Pretty soon the ship sailed from Joppa, and got out into the sea, a great way from land. And as the wind blew fair, and the ship went pleasantly along through the waves, Jonah felt more and more secure. He looked toward his own country which he had left, and thought from how much trouble and danger he was escaping. He looked toward the place where he was going, and expected before long to be there; and there, he thought, God would let him remain, without commanding him any more to go to Nineveh.

Sometimes it is so with persons who are doing wrong. Every thing seems to go on pleasantly; and they think it will always continue so. But, sooner or later, those who disobey the commands of God, and continue to do so, will find trouble and sorrow; and if this does not happen to them in this life, it certainly will in that which is to come. For God tells us, in the Bible, that there is no peace unto the wicked; no peace that will be of long continuance; sometimes it is wholly destroyed in this world, and it will certainly be so in the next.

It was not long before Jonah found this to be true in his own case. "The Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.".

A violent storm at sea is a terrible sight; the ship rolls about, sometimes on one side, and sometimes

on the other. The large pieces of wood of which it is built, and which are fastened together, are pulled and strained, and make a loud creaking noise, and sometimes it almost seems as if they would come apart. The sails flap about, the ropes creak, the masts tremble, the captain is crying with a loud voice, to tell the sailors what to do; and they are running one way and another, pulling the ropes and altering the sails, to try to keep the ship right, so that it may not upset and sink.

All the sky is covered with dark clouds, so that in the night the moon and stars cannot be seen; and in the day time it looks almost as if it was night. The rain falls fast; the wind blows furiously; the waves roll high, like hills or mountains, and the ship rides fearfully over them. Sometimes it is at the bottom of the waves, with high waves around it, looking as if they were just about to come over it, and bury it in the deep. Then the ship goes up a steep wave, like a wagon ascending a hill, only it mounts up with astonishing swiftness. Then it stands a moment on the very top of the wave, balanced there and trembling. Then suddenly it begins to descend again, and down it goes, down the long steep wave into the gulf below, as if to be buried in the ocean and lost for ever.

How do you think you would feel in such a storm at sea, if you were to stand on the deck of the ship, and look all round, and see what I have been describing to you? Would you not be very much afraid,

and feel that it was God alone who could save you, and pray to him for protection?

Yes, not only little boys and girls are afraid in such storms at sea, but men and women also. And it often happens that the captain and sailors are afraid, and will cry to God to save them; though at other times, perhaps, they think very little about him, and even take his name in vain, and do many wicked things. No persons are more afraid to die, or more alarmed when they are in great danger, and death seems to be near, than those wicked people are who are the least prepared to die.

It was just so with the persons who had the care of the ship where Jonah was, while the tempest was raging. The captain and the sailors, or, as they are also called, "the mariners, were afraid, and cried every man unto his god."

These men, it seems, did not all worship the same God. Perhaps they were of different countries, for this is often the case among the sailors who are on board the same ship. None of them knew the true God. They were false gods and idols which they worshipped, and these were different one from another. How strange, that they should think that these different gods should have made the storm! Did they all unite together to make it? Or did one god make it cloudy, and another make it rain, and another cause the wind to blow, and still another the waves to rise?

How happy we are, that we know so much better than these poor mariners did! We know that there

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