(Chap. 1:17-3:2.)

That God is the God of resurrection, is a testimony which seems exclusively that of the earth. We have it at the very beginning. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," and the next thing we find is the earth (but not the heavens) "without form and void," (or waste and desolate, ) and "darkness on the face of the deep. " Thus if this is the picture, as it surely is, of a lapsed condition, – for " He created it not a waste " (Isa. 45:1 8, R. V.) – the very ground upon which we tread is a witness to the fact of resurrection. The earth coming up out of the waters on the third day contained within itself, even to the tops of the highest mountains, the evidence of former life, of forms stages of existence passed away, but now in a higher form renewed. Resurrection lies, as we may say, at the foundation of things here.

Again, when God said:"Let there be light and there was light," we are told that "the evening and the morning were the first day." That is the Scripture order, and it has evidently meaning in it. To a spectator upon the earth at that time, the light that appeared at the bidding of God would seem at once to decline and pass into extinction. Yet, as we know, the true "morning" was that which was to follow it. Resurrection thus puts its stamp upon every day's work after.

The seasons manifest the same thing. Autumn passes into winter, in which life becomes comparatively extinct, but to yield once more to summer with all its fulness of life.

Thus it was from the beginning, the witness abiding to this day, and the history of man ever since has repeated that God is still the God of resurrection. Especially in those in nearest relation to God, where one might expect it most, is this manifest. Take Abraham:he who had the promise, '' In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," had yet to see himself a childless man as to the real fulfilment of that promise, until his body was now dead; and not till then was he born in whom the seed was to be " called."And so '' there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable."Israel again has to go down into Egypt, as it were ceasing to be a nation before it had fairly multiplied into one. Egypt might have seemed to be its tomb, but out of this in due time God summoned it to a new existence.

The lesson of resurrection is, as we know, above all to be found in this history of Jonah. It was a lesson that he had himself to learn, and to learn it before he was morally competent to be a witness to others. Jonah in the belly of the great fish speaks of himself, as well he might, as in the "belly of hell" (or hades,) a man gone out of living existence in the world. But this was only God's way of doing a necessary work in him and preparing him for that which was, after all, his mission. As a type of Israel, he speaks distinctly to us. Israel has gone out of existence, as it were, swallowed up by Daniel's monster from the sea, and learning in her long waiting time what man is before God. She is to have the sentence of death in herself that she may not trust in herself, but in God who raiseth the dead; and thus the "picture of her restoration at the end, as we find it, for instance, in the thirty-seventh of Ezekiel, is a picture of resurrection. , Her hope is gone; her very bones, to use the language there, are dry; but God's word remains:"Behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am Lord." That is the lesson of resurrection. To know the Lord, we have to know, first of all, ourselves. We have to realize the condition of a creature upon whom death has put its stamp, the stamp of a fallen being, that thus we may find a life which is of God alone, and learn His power and His grace aright. Through all her past, in her condition, hitherto, a stranger to her own need, and so to divine grace, Israel was as yet unable to fulfil her mission to the world. God indeed, as we know, raised up in her midst those who could be the channels of His communications to others, and we are all witnesses today of what we have in this way gained through her; but for the nation itself, built up in self-righteousness, and turning the privileges which God had accorded her into mere evil and a curse through her abuse of them, there was no remedy. Death had to pass upon her. Governmentally, she has to pay to the "uttermost farthing" for her sins, only at last, however, to find a mercy which rejoiceth against judgment, to hear the voice of redeeming love, and learn the goodness of Him against whom she has rebelled. Then will she be the messenger of that grace to others, and, repentant herself, she will lead the nations to repentance.

This is plainly the lesson of the whole book of Jonah. It is striking how the prophet's prayer in the fish's belly is almost a repetition of her voice in the Psalms, witness as they are all through of just these times of trial that are in store for her, those pangs of suffering by which she is to come to her new birth as a nation, when, cast out, as it might seem, out of Jehovah's sight, they look again towards His holy temple. How little they had realized that wondrous privilege which had been there accorded them, and in which the heart of God had disclosed itself,-in God's dwelling place amongst men, and which is to be His witness yet in millennial time when that house shall be indeed a "house of prayer for all nations," when "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it." This was the house to which the Lord came, the Messenger of the covenant according to the promise (Mal. 3:i), and would then have purified it, that there might be '' offered to the Lord an offering in righteousness;" but they had no ears and no heart for Him. Thus their house was left unto them desolate, and they shall see Him no more until they shall say:"Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."

But this leads to the second view of what Jonah here presents, for the sign of the prophet Jonas, such a sign as he was to the Ninevites, is yet to be given to the nation itself. '' An evil and adulterous generation," says the Lord, "seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as Jonas was three day and three nights in the whale's (or fish's) belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here" (Matt. 12:39-41). Here, "the sign of the prophet Jonas" refers, of course, to the miracle of his restoration, as it were, out of death itself. One can easily see that what wrought repentance among the Ninevites their consciousness that here was, as it were, the testimony of a dead and risen man. The sacrifice and vows offered to the Lord by the Gentile mariners would have carried far and wide the report of his death under judgment from God because of the refusal of his mission to them, and here was the same man risen up out of death with his mission renewed. How could they resist this mighty God ? Here, plainly, was the sign or miracle that spoke with conviction to the hearts of men in the great city; but the nation itself shall have the sign of One dead and risen, and now the Son of man in heaven (Matt. 24:30) ; the sign being Himself, coming in the clouds of heaven, once crucified, now glorified, and which is compared to the lightning-flash of threatening judgment (Luke 17:24), a greater than Jonah indeed. The lesson of resurrection, – not a message of judgment only, but with abundant mercy also for those upon whom is poured "the spirit of grace and of supplications " when they look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn for Him as one that mourneth for his only son and are in bitterness for him as one who is in bitterness for his first-born (Zech. 12:10). For that resurrection sign is what we know also as the justification of all that believe in Him, a justification which His death has wrought out for us, but which His resurrection publishes as good news for all that will receive it.

Christ is Himself here, as in many of the prophecies, the true Israel, entering into all the deep reality of that judgment upon sin which they have as a lesson to learn, which through Him alone can they have profit in the learning. Here Jonah becomes, as we see, a double type. Two histories run necessarily together, and the Lord's words in application to Himself are not an arbitrary application, but give us the full depth of the meaning here. For Him who has stood for Israel, under Israel's penalty, the word is uttered further:'' Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (Isa. 49:3). See how the divine Voice answers the complaint of the One so addressed in the verses that follow, assuring Him that He was formed from the womb to bring Jacob again to Him; that not only should He be the Restorer of the preserved of Israel, but also for a Light to the Gentiles that He might be God's salvation unto the end of the earth.

Thus, then, in a double way have we the lesson of resurrection here. For ourselves as Christians now, these two lessons are indeed united. The objective and the subjective, as one may say, come together. What we find for our souls in Christ dead and risen, we learn in faith to make our own, as dead and risen with Him. We accept the sentence upon man as man, which must be accepted for all real deliverance. We accept the setting aside of all man's pretension to goodness or to strength, and the sign of the Son of man in heaven speaks to us of how truly nothing else is left for us to glory in but the Lord Himself. But here all the glory of God in the face of Him who abides in His presence for us, in whose cross we have found at once our judgment and our salvation, and whose glory revealed, is that by which, as delivered from ourselves, we are "changed, into the same image from glory to glory."

The lesson of Jonah is thus of central importance for our blessing, as for Israel's blessing, at all time. There is no other way. For all who have accepted it, the billows and the waves of wrath that once passed over them are gone forever, and the dry ground, yea, the Rock of our salvation, is under the feet of the delivered man. Crucified with Christ,- " our old man " crucified,-all confidence in the flesh buried in His grave, to know no resurrection,-He alone remains to glory in, whose glory has shone out in the wonder of an unspeakable humiliation. And here is the One in whom we are:our history and His have come together; the stamp of death is removed and replaced by that of resurrection:raised with Christ, we are "created in Christ Jesus," and "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new." F. W. G.

(To be continued.)