CHAPTER X.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS.?

THE reflections naturally growing out of the life and labours of Jonah, have already, for the most part, been suggested in connexion with the several topics that have successively engaged our attention. But there are, besides, some additional reflections, which a review of the whole is fitted to suggest, and with which, very briefly illustrated, we shall sum up our meditations on the subject.

1. The first we shall mention is the warning furnished by the remarkable history we have surveyed, to beware of allowing expected results to interfere with present and pressing obligations. For the most part these run into each other, and the obligation to enter upon and prosecute a definite course of labour, usually arises from our being charged with the working out of a certain beneficial result. In the duties of everyday life, and the walks of common usefulness and philanthropy, this is almost invariably the casethe good to be aimed at and secured lies before us, perfectly within our reach, if the proper means be

employed-and the faithful and diligent application of such means, is just the discharge of the obligation that rests upon us.

There are circumstances, however, not unfrequently occurring in providence, in which there is not this apparent harmony between the present and the future. It sometimes happens, as with Jonah, that the obligation to take a certain course of action seems to point in one direction for its result, while the result to be actually attained is very different, and in the first instance entirely opposite. And when such circumstances do arise, we must be careful to avoid Jonah's error, which led to so much that was painful in experience, as well as to what was wrong in behaviour; we must endeavour to have our course shaped, and our wills also directed by the felt obligations under which we lie, rather than by desired or anticipated results. The prophet Isaiah readily undertook, on the occasion of his obtaining a vision of the divine glory in the temple, to go as the Lord's messenger to the people; he exclaimed, "Here am I, send me and yet the result he was presently taught to expect, was the reverse of what he was bound to aim at accomplishing. The path of duty remained the same, though the anxieties and labours to which it called him were doomed from the outset to comparative fruitlessness and general disappointment. And a greater than Isaiah, our forerunner and pattern in all spiritual excellence, the Lord Jesus Christ, was never moved from the rectitude of his course, by the clear

foresight he possessed of the unsatisfactory and mournful results in which it was immediately to issue, but continued faithfully to do the will of his Father in heaven, and to execute the work given him to do, not less than if all were yielding to his wishes.

The Lord may render it manifest to the consciences of his people, that they ought to pursue a certain line of active service for the good of a neighbour, or the society in which they dwell, while still possibly the desired result may seem very doubtful, and in the issue may be found absolutely unattainable. But by the former alone should their views of duty be regulated, and their efforts in its discharge guided, for with that more immediately is their responsibility connected; and, in regard even to the results that may ultimately be made to arise from their course, these may possibly depend far less on any good immediately secured, than on the faith and patience, or even the sufferings and disappointments, which may have attended their efforts to realize it. The good that discovers itself in their example of self-sacrificing and devoted labour, may do more for the cause of righteousness than could have been accomplished by the good they were intent on achieving by their exertions, and even present defeat may be the necessary prelude to success of another and more important kind. Let but the path of present duty be made clear to us, and nothing of a collateral or contingent nature should be allowed to turn us aside; that is for us the will of God, and whatever may be the success of our

course as regards the immediate objects in view, by the faithful prosecution of the course itself, the name of God is magnified and the interests of righteousness advanced.

2. Another reflection furnished by the life and labours of Jonah, respects the spheres of greatest usefulness for the servants of God, and admonishes them to watch in regard to these the leadings of providence, rather than give way to their own desires and inclinations. The field in which they are destined to reap most fruit, may possibly not be the one which they are themselves disposed to choose-it may not even be that which has received the largest share in their prayers and personal application. As generally "the times of men are before appointed by God, and the bounds of their habitations are set," so in particular his most faithful and honoured servants are often shut up by him into peculiar, and by themselves entirely unsought channels of usefulness. Jonah by no means stands alone in having accomplished, by what might in some sense be regarded as a few incidental efforts, greatly more than he was honoured to do by the regular labours of his prophetical calling. The field in which his chief success was won, though he himself knew it not, was precisely that for which he was peculiarly qualified; there his spiritual gifts and his singular experiences found the soil in which they were fitted to produce their most powerful influence. And, as many labourers in the Lord's vineyard know as little beforehand as he did what is the particular

province for which they are most peculiarly adapted, they should keep their eye awake to the indications of God's hand, and should hold themselves ready to cultivate such portions as promise under his grace to yield the largest increase to their labours.

The consideration now mentioned is one also that applies in great measure to the different kinds of spiritual labour. Men are not always themselves the best judges of the department of service by which they can do most to glorify God, any more than of the particular stations they can most successfully occupy. And some special turn of providence, not uncommonly one that in its first aspect carries an unpropitious appearance, has often been employed by God to give that direction to their powers of service, which was to render them, much beyond their own immediate expectations, benefactors to the Church or the world. It was certainly a frowning providence which threw the apostle Paul into chains, and suspended for upwards of two years his public exertions in the cause of the gospel; but to that very suspension we owe not a few of his epistles, which were called forth by the circumstances connected with his imprisonment; so that the Church of Christ only suffered, through the adverse turn of affairs, a partial and temporary deprivation of his services, that the generations to come might be more abundantly supplied with the means of spiritual life and nourishment. Nor can we doubt -the records of the past have supplied too many proofs of it-that the most fruitful exertions in the