SERMON XVII.

"And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not."-JONAH, iii. 10.

THE history of Jonah and also of the Ninevites, to whom he was sent upon an errand of compassion, contains those evidences of the goodness and benevolence of Deity, which are calculated to affect the heart, and to awaken the gratitude of every rational intelligent

On the one hand, the tenderness of the Almighty, in deputing a messenger of mercy to visit a people abandoned to every transgression, strikes the mind with irresistible. force; on the other, the forbearance of God to a disobedient, rash, and repining Prophet, awakens the attention, and impresses the heart with the fullest conviction that the long suffering mercy of Jehovah runs parallel with his

power.

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire; great in the number of its population; and remarkable for its wealth. The prosperity it enjoyed was productive of all those demoralizing effects which too frequently grow out of such a state of things. Instead of awakening the devotion of its inhabitants, their rebellious practices were in proportion to their riches; their inconsideration kept pace with the profusion they enjoyed. Their wickedness was so flagrant and outrageous in its character, that it went up be

fore God, to testify against the people; and to present the charge of their licentiousness at the tribunal of the great Eternal.

To this people, wicked and depraved as they were, Jonah was sent by the Almighty with a message of peace. He was enjoined to proclaim their approaching ruin; but as the sequel of the history proves, it was the intention of heaven that the ruin he proclaimed should be averted, by their repentance and reformation. Their danger was to be presented to their view, before the stroke of vengeance was to be inflicted. The warning voice of a God of mercy was to be sounded in their ears, prior to their destruction; a door of escape was to open, and they were to be entreated to embrace the proposed deliverance, before Nineveh and its guilty inhabitants should be cut off at a stroke, and plunged in ruin. "Arise," said Jehovah to the Prophet, "and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me."

The danger which awaited the people, is evident from the expression of Jonah's commission. He was ordered to proceed with haste, and to be earnest in his expostulation. His message was to be delivered in the most public manner, not whispered in a corner but proclaimed upon the house tops, that every individual might be warned, and be made sensible of his danger. "Arise, and go to Nineveh that great city, and cry against it."

Jonah, instead of obeying the command of the Almighty, embarked in a ship for Tarshish; and vainly thought by such an expedient, to have escaped the presence of the Lord. His disobedience arose, as we are informed by himself, from that conviction of the mercy and loving kindness of the Almighty which rested upon his mind. He was confident that provided the Ninevites should attend to his message and repent of their sins, the Almighty would reverse the sentence he had pronounced against them, forgive them their iniquities, and subject him to the pain of being viewed as a false Prophet. He had forgotten, that the

threatenings, as well as the promises of God, are conditional. He had forgotten, that a threatened punishment is never inflicted, except upon such as wilfully persevere in sin, and that the promises of the Almighty are only made good to those who obey his voice, and practice his precepts.

To avoid the difficulty to which he considered himself exposed, provided the Ninevites should repent; to free himself from the charge of proclaiming a punishment, which would not be carried into effect; he rashly ventured to act in opposition to the declared will of God, and to neglect a duty imposed upon him by the Judge of all the earth.

Under this delusion of mind, he took ship, determined to go to Tarshish. But whither could he go to escape the allsearching eye of God? He took indeed the wings of the morning, with an intention to fly to the uttermost parts of the sea; but to his astonishment found that the swifter hand of the Almighty had preceded him in his flight, and arrested him in his rebellious course; a violent tempest overtook the ship in which he had embarked; and when the lot was cast, in order to ascertain the individual on whose account the wind and the sea thus awfully raged, the guilt rested upon Jonah. He confessed his sin, and pleaded guilty to the charge. "Take me up," said he, "and cast me into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging." The mercy of God was signally displayed upon the occasion, embraced in this part of my subject. Jonah's rebellion arose from the opinion he entertained of the compassion of Deity, and the expectation under which he laboured, that upon the repentance of the Ninevites, the compassion of the Almighty would be extended to them. Notwithstanding, however, his opposition to the divine command, the mercy he would have withheld from others was vouchsafed to him. Instead of perishing for his rebellion, a large fish was mercifully prepared by the Almighty, in whose bowels Jonah was preserved from

destruction, and again restored to his country and his friends.

After so extraordinary a punishment, and so signal a deliverance, it would have been reasonable to suppose, that the mind of Jonah would have been divested of all opposition to the proceedings of the Almighty; that he would have bent with submission to his will; that the compassion of God would have engrossed his whole soul, and formed the unceasing theme of his discourse. The sequel of the history, however, proves, that such was not the case; his rashness was more than once evinced, and more than once was that rashness mercifully pardoned.

The commission which Jonah had formerly received was repeated after his restoration; and he was ordered to repair instantly to Nineveh, and to proclaim its approaching destruction. The salvation of those people formed the object of the divine attention; and Jehovah was determined to arouse them from their lethargy, and to awaken them to their danger.

In compliance with the divine mandate, the Prophet went to Nineveh, and in the streets of that licentious city announced the impending calamity: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." It was not by war, that the destruction of which he spake was to be accomplished; it was not by pestilence, which would have been attributed to local causes, that they were to be awakened; the moral disease under which they laboured was such as to require the most potent remedy; the judgment, therefore, was to be of a description which would speak the source from which it came; the hand of God was to be fully manifested, and the power of the great Eternal was to be seen, and felt, and heard by its guilty inhabitants: "Yet forty days," cried the Prophet, "and Nineveh shall be overthrown," -razed to its foundation-swallowed up.

It is supposed, that the mariners who had cast the prophet into the sea, or that Jonah himself, had informed the Ninevites of his former disobedience, and his wonderful preservation; and that the tidings of his miraculous escape

had impressed them with a belief in the God of Israel, and prepared their minds for the reception of his message. The king of Nineveh, as soon as the declaration of Jonah reached his ears, attended to the communication. In token of his penitence, he arose from his throne, laid by his robe of state, the badge of his imperial dignity, and covered himself with sackcloth; he ordered a fast to be instituted, and that it should be proclaimed through the city, for the observance of its inhabitants: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing; let them not feed nor drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?"

The period allotted for the destruction of Nineveh was at the very door; forty days formed but a short time for those to live who had never thought of a dying hour, and in whose minds the idea of future responsibility had never, perhaps, for a moment found admission. To be separated from all their usual festivities; to see their flourishing city overthrown by the convulsive movements of the earth; to see its riotous inhabitants swallowed up, and buried in an instant, formed a consideration which excited their fears, produced a reformation, and brought them upon their knees at the footstool of the Almighty.

What a sudden, what a happy change was effected in a few hours! A whole people, who had never thought of God; a people whose wickedness had reached to heaven ; a people whose time had been devoted to dissipation, and every excess; to see them change their course of life, disrobe themselves of their costly attire and put on sackcloth, relinquish their feasts and consent to fast, give up their songs of riot, and with those tongues with which they had offended the majesty of heaven, crying mightily unto God for mercy! How transporting the scene! Their penitence was so impressive, that the compassion of the Almighty was awakened; there was joy among the angels of God; the destroying