(Concluded from page 305.)

Jonah finally went on his mission; but how much he could have saved himself had he obeyed at once! And God speaks to us, too. He would lead sinners to the feet of the Saviour, confessing their need and receiving Him into their hearts. Perhaps, like Jonah, you may be a child of God seeking your pleasure in the world, and God has been calling to you to come out from among them and be separated. Have you turned a deaf ear to Him and gone down to Joppa, to flee from the presence of the Lord ? Do you hate this pleading on the part of God and His servants speaking to you out of His Word ? Better listen and obey. Jesus is the lowly One, but remember that every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess Him Lord. He is the Lord; serve Him.

God destroyed the old world with a flood on account of its wickedness. He also destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the same reason; and He threatened to destroy Nineveh for the same cause. Jonah, however, knew of God's gracious ways, and how much rejoicing over Nineveh might he have known had he been in harmony with God, who rejoices "over one sinner that repenteth." Though Jonah knew of God's graciousness, he had, in figure, to pass through death and resurrection, as all God's people have to learn before they can serve Him intelligently. In this Jonah was a type of our Lord, who went through death in order to become the Saviour; having borne the sentence of death that was upon us, in resurrection He becomes the bearer of glad tidings-is our Saviour. At the cross God judged our sins in our Substitute; and in His resurrection He proclaimed justice's full satisfaction by the release of our Substitute; they are therefore the foundation of God's mercy and grace to sinners. Jonah thus passes through death and resurrection, in figure, ere he goes with his message to Nineveh. In Jesus' death believers are justified; they also are crucified to the world and the world to them. They are in a new creation. They have a new nature, with the capacity to enjoy God and the things of God. They love righteousness and hate iniquity. They love the people of God. Like a dead man raised to a new life, with a new nature, the Christian is to enjoy Christ and his heavenly portion, which the world neither knows nor loves.

Nineveh was of three days' journey-a fulness of wickedness. So Jonah (a dove) carries, after all, a message full of meaning-of patience, of mercy and pardon, with the awful threat of destruction if grace were spurned.

We see, however, that Jonah goes outside the city to watch what will become of it. What a lesson we have here! How small the heart, how unworthy of God when looking for self-glory in His service! Jonah's pride made him angry at the thought that God would, after all, pardon the Ninevites. And what patience in God as He pleads with His erring servant! God uses nature, and an insect, and the element-all things serve His might-to teach His proud and wilful servant:He prepares a gourd for a shelter from the heat, but though Jonah was glad because of the shade it afforded, he did not turn to God to own his failure. Then God removes His temporary blessing for which He had received no thanks. A worm then smites the gourd and it withered. The withdrawal of the comfort did not move Jonah's heart toward God. God then sends a sultry east wind-hat and oppressive, which caused him to faint (we are told not to faint when we are reproved), and see what a miserable ending is this story of Jonah :he wished to die, he was so angry and wretched. There can be no real lasting joy apart from communion and harmony with God. The unerring hand of God has delineated it all, before the eyes of all, both for the Christian and those who are yet in their sins, unreconciled to Him.

2. Jonah as a Type of Christ.-Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites who, no doubt, had heard of his being cast into the sea, and his miraculous deliverance from the fish. Men who seek a sign of Christ, find that the only sign given is His death and resurrection. If they believe not, why the Ninevites shall rise up in judgment with such and condemn them, "for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a Greater than Jonah is here." The resurrection shows the power of God. None but God can raise the dead. " I create; " "I kill, and I make alive." Man is dead in trespasses and sins- spiritually dead before God; and the cross of Christ has pronounced him judicially dead. However, God raises the dead; and to those who, like the serpent-poisoned Israelites, look to Him lifted up on the cross, He gives life, eternal life. Christ is that life, communicated from Him to those who look to the Crucified One. The grace of God reaches out to all:"The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved "-shall have life in Christ, whom God hath raised from the dead. We who believe in Him have died with Him, have been buried and raised from the dead with Him, and one day, soon, we too shall be caught up to glory with Him, to go no more out from His presence forever.

Who, that has ever felt the weight of sin, realized the distance of the sinner from God in the blackness of despair reserved for the day of judgment; who, I say, experiencing what death, spiritual death, is, will not welcome that Saviour who gives life, life which death cannot touch-who saves for eternity ? See the new earth, clothed with new garments in the Spring-a type of resurrection and new life. How glorious is resurrection, the coming up out of death! So is the new-born soul; raised out of spiritual death, born into a new sphere, in the joy and life of God. It is ours to enjoy this. It is our portion; but, oh, to know the power of His resurrection!

And who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord " (Romans 8 :35, 38, 39).

3. Jonah as a Type of the Jewish Nation.-God meant Israel to be a blessing on the earth to all nations. God was to dwell in the midst of Israel, and they were to make Him known to the nations. But Israel refused to obey God, and followed their own wicked ways. Israel has not yet fulfilled the
command nor gone with "the preaching that I bid thee." God's purposes, however, shall be fulfilled, and in the latter days Israel, now dead as a nation, will be revived, raised as from the dead-for God will bring them again to their own land. Israel today is like Jonah in the great fish which God prepared to swallow him. And "as the whale could not assimilate Jonah, so also the nations cannot assimilate Israel." This is the time of Israel's captivity among the nations of the earth. God, however, will regather dead Israel, and the Spirit will move upon the dry bones and cause them to live-"an exceeding great army." (Read Ezek. 37:1-14; Isa. 66:7-10; Jer. 31:10-12.)

As Jonah, after his revival or resurrection, obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh (type of the Gentiles), so will Israel go, "And they shall declare My glory among the nations" (Isa. 66:19, 20). "And these glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable earth for a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come " (Matt. 24:14). For God will gather His people Israel from the east, the west, the north and the south, and will bring them to their own land again, when they have passed, as it were, through death and resurrection. Then shall Israel be a blessing in the earth, and all nations shall be brought to the knowledge of God:"The knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."

Let us not forget whose death and resurrection this is a figure of-our ever blessed, adorable Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in His own body on the tree. " He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God."

Jonah has four chapters, with an average of twelve verses each. God tells us in it of four things He "prepared" (chap, i:17; chap. 4:6, 7, 8). What a great story is told out in a small book of the Bible- and that book has been caviled at, and discredited by men of the world and false "Christians." Why? Let those answer who will not own themselves lost and guilty sinners in God's presence, and who do not, therefore, feel the need of a Saviour. "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." A. H. C.