I. THE REBELLION OF THE PROPHET. Continued from page 175.

Jonah then, in the meaning of his name, is "the dove," the vessel of the Spirit, the son of Amittai, the "Faithful One." He is, as we learn from the book of Kings, one of the tribe of Zebulon, the representative among the tribes of that "dwelling in relationship " (Gen. 30:20), which God would have, and will have, His people know. It is plain that here we are looking at what God means Jonah to be. The Israel that God takes up begins his life, as we know, as Jacob, and for long years is that. Jonah has yet to come to the value of his name.

God has a message for him. He is to arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it because their wickedness is come up before Him. Nineveh means apparently "a dwelling-place;" and the word seems to be reduplicative in its form, and thus to have an emphatic force. God meant man -fallen as he is-to be, for his own blessing, a pilgrim and a stranger upon the earth; but he who first went out from the presence of the Lord with the brand of his guilt upon him, went out to build a city in the land of Nod, the land of vagabondage, and to make for himself, therefore, a dwelling-place, which his posterity enriched, as we know, with all the beginnings of civilization,-things of which men boast so much, without realizing how far they may be led away from God by them. Cain says, as if he mourned it:"From thy face shall I be hid;" but alas, how readily do men accept this and desire it! Jonah, alas, prophet of the Lord as he is, has no heart to face that great world-city, Nineveh, and cry against it. How little have we, as the people of God, followed Him who said with regard to Himself, that the world hated Him because He testified of it that its deeds were evil! Surely we know how gracious, too, that testimony was, and how He besought the men whom He would have aware of their condition, to come to Him for the effectual remedy of it. Nevertheless, for His love He got hatred, and how we shun a testimony like this! Jonah shuns it, and would rather flee from the presence of the Lord than be the messenger of the Lord with such a message. He rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. How solemnly the moral of it all is pressed upon us here! It is a downward course indeed. It is a terrible story of how the refusal of God's will leads to estrangement from Himself; and how the people of God even can doggedly accept this, rather than take that place of estrangement which the God-estranged world would give them.

Joppa is the last place in Israel from which Jonah departs. Joppa or Japho is "fair to him." That was what Israel was, as we know, in God's thoughts; but Joppa was in the territory of Dan, that is, of judgment; and self-judgment is truly that which will alone enable us to be "fair to Him." With Jonah there is nothing of this. He is off to Tarshish. He goes with the merchants of the earth, as if at least he were going to pursue traffic among them. How striking a picture it is of Israel's condition! Are they not, in fact, of all men even proverbially, the keenest traffickers? They have learnt it where they learned to treat that which was their treasure, God's own revelation, as a mere matter of gain to themselves, as others of whom the apostle speaks, supposed in his day that "gain was godliness." Israel has grasped God's revelation after an unholy fashion as gain to self, instead of for self-judgment; and thus they have built themselves up in self-righteousness, and cast themselves away from the very One whom His word should have revealed to them. Thus they have become but like the Gentiles from whom professedly it is their boast to be separate.
God has done more for them than they desired. If they will be uncircumcised in heart, they shall not merely have their place with the uncircumcised, but shall find themselves swallowed up of the nations to whom in ignorance of the Lord, their Lord, and for mere earthly gain, they became like Issachar, (their representative in their father's prophecy, Gen. 49). Issachar is a mere ass couching between the hurdles, seeing rest that it is good and the earth that it is pleasant, and bowing the shoulder to bear, and becoming servant to tribute.

But a worse fate still was in store for them. The Lord sends out a great wind into the sea and there is a mighty tempest in it, and then Jonah's condition is discovered. Morally and spiritually he was indeed asleep. So Israel has had to own, if not with their lips, yet in their manifest condition, that they were, as the people of the Lord, cast out from the land which was for them identified with the fulfilment of all the divine promises. That land they never have lost except as having indeed fled from the presence of the Lord; and here the Gentiles have, perforce, whether they will or not, to inflict the judgment of God upon them. In fact, the very grace which goes out to the Gentiles now is bound up with the judgment of the nation who gave Christ their King, the cross. Here is the full discovery of Israel's condition; and only in consenting to her judgment do the Gentiles find themselves rest and deliverance. This is but, indeed, a glance at what grace has wrought for us. It is not in the nature of Israel's prophecies to do more than give a glance at that which was to them a hidden mystery, as the apostle witnesses. Those who recognize her as the object of divine judgment would, in fact, fain deliver her from it, but they cannot. They can merely escape themselves while Israel is overwhelmed in the sea of the nations. It is a beautiful touch here with regard to those in the ship that had carried Jonah, that seeing what had taken place, "the men feared the Lord exceedingly (feared the true God, not their idols) and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows." It is but a .glance, as already said; but we ought to be able to interpret even a glance in this way.

Let us pause here to apply this story to ourselves and to ask ourselves if Israel found that which had been committed to them become, through their unfaithfulness, so great a burden upon them, how great must be the burden for those whom God has freighted with all the blessed truth which He has given His people now, but who have not been stewards of His grace to others; who have kept simply for themselves, for their own use (if indeed for that), the priceless things which should be enriching others? How easily we may, all of us, in measure do this! For it is not the gospel only about which we have such responsibility. In this, no doubt, it will be more readily recognized, though here also it will not be in vain to ask ourselves how earnest we have been to give that which is the bread of life to others. But beyond this, every truth that God has given, every whit of that which is in every part of it blessing and nothing else but blessing, has its necessary responsibility attached to it. We are not only responsible to receive it ourselves, but to give it to others. Every fresh acquirement for ourselves in this way is fresh responsibility. To be tongue-tied and silent where we ought to speak, how great a failure is here on the part of those who own the blessedness of what God has given to them!

Jonah might have said, How likely is the proud city of Nineveh to listen to a despised Israelite ? and we may, even among the people of God themselves, have cause also to realize how little acceptable is the whole truth of God to those to whom every whit of it should be pure blessing, and nothing else ! But that we have nothing to do with. God has said, "He that hath My Word,"-simply hath it,-"let him speak My Word faithfully." It is not a question of any official place here. It is the possession of the Word which makes us responsible to speak of it, and to speak it all. Whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, is not the question. The glory of God requires that what He has given for blessing should be fully known, and how much, can it be doubted, we are all of us more or less suffering for want of absolute faithfulness in this respect ! Jonah fleeing from the execution of his commission fled from the presence of the Lord; and how much do we lose of the power, at least, of that Presence with us, by our lack of speaking out the Word which God has put into our lips ! Does He not always join the heart and the lips together,- confusion with the mouth with belief in the heart ? Does He not link them as if they were but different aspects of one and the same thing ? And may not the Lord have oftentimes in this way a controversy with us, of which we may be simply unconscious only because of the lethargy which has fallen upon us as it fell upon him who slept in the sides of the vessel, when all others were aroused by the storm that was upon them ?

The Lord give us in His grace that we may examine ourselves faithfully in view of such a history as this, not forgetting the importance of what we may be apt to call minor applications of divine principles, where, if we are only true to God, we shall realize that the principles apply all through and that here we have no business to count any application minor. To His principles we must be true or false; and that is no minor question for us, whatever may be the principle. What blessing God has given us in all the truth which He has made known to us; and what honor He intends for us in making us the means of the communication of it to others ! We are indeed but the hands to distribute the bread which we have received from Him, and which His own grace alone can multiply for the need and make effectual; but how blessed to be, in this way, as the hands of the Lord Jesus, or as His feet also to run errands and to do His will ! Is it not part, at least, of what is implied in membership in the body of Christ ? the body that in which the indwelling Spirit expresses and even our body being the temple of the Spirit which is in us ! F. W. G.