Divine wisdom required. And to this our thoughts

must now be turned-but not till we have first descended with Jonah into this valley of the shadow of death, to learn from him what lessons of wisdom his experience there has furnished for the Church and people of God.

CHAPTER IV.

JONAH IN HIS DISTRESS AN EXAMPLE OF SANCTIFIED AFFLICTION.

It is always interesting, and may be profitable as well as interesting, to mark the workings of a soul when struggling with the strong billows of affliction, especially if that affliction has come in the immediate train of backsliding, and appears as the net in which God has caught a wanderer from the fold, or the rod by which he would bring him back to wisdom and obedience. The effect would be quite uniform: the means would always reach their intended aim, if in the persons so dealt with there were always the elements of a sincere and living piety. This, however, is far from being the case. And hence there is a class of professing Christians, in whom even the heaviest afflictions are found to work no spiritual good-the flesh bruised, but still the spirit not sanctified; earthly delights cut off with a stroke, but yet no springs of heavenly consolation opened up; a valley of Baca, but without its wells of living water; a wilderness with no manna from above, or Canaan in prospect;

a sorrow that either works death or leads with delusive hope to new refuges of lies. A sad case truly, when the medicine of God's righteous discipline makes itself known only in its bitterness, or tends but to deepen the wound it was intended to cure.

But, on the other hand, when the life of grace has really obtained a footing in the soul, another and happier result is sure to flow from the visitation of severe distress. Earnest thought, a spirit of serious reflection, is awakened. The voice of conscience makes itself heard in the chambers of the inner man; and if any delusive charm has been laying the spell of its enchantment upon the heart, the spell is broken, truth and reason regain their rightful ascendant-the soul lives again to God. Such, pre-eminently, was the result of "the horror of great darkness" which fell upon Jonah, and his descent under God's judgment into the bowels of the earth, as the record of his experience amply testifies: "And Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly. And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell* cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast (or, hast cast) me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy

* Literally, out of the womb of Sheol: or, more generally, the interior of the place of the departed; implying, along with the expressions in v. 6, that he felt as if actually in the state of the dead.

E

sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about,* even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever; yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.t When my soul fainted within me (or rather, because of the overwhelming of my soul upon me) I remembered the Lord and my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple. They that observe (regard) lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to thee

:

*The verbs here should properly be rendered in the present tense: "The waters compass me about," &c. For though the prayer might not be composed till he came out of the fish, yet it expresses what he thought and felt while in it.

ever.

This verse admits of various emendations, and would be more correctly rendered thus: "I have gone down to the roots (or clefts) of the mountains; the earth! her bars are about me for And thou shalt bring up my soul from the pit, O Jehovah my God." In the first clause, the prophet expresses the hopelessness of his condition, as having gone to a depth from which he had no power to rise up again. In the second, he glances to the earth, the habitation of the living, and sees only its bars impenetrably shut against him; but in the third, he turns to God, and expresses his confidence, that even from that pit of death the divine power and mercy would recover him. The л from which he expects to be brought up, is falsely rendered corruption, and also still by Henderson destruction; its common, or rather its only meaning is the pit, (see Hengstenberg on Ps. xvi. 10), used here, as elsewhere, in the sense of the grave. Jonah regards himself as actually among the dead.

The last clause should be, "forsake their Loving-kindness," this being understood as an epithet of God. The expression is

with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord."

Now, viewing the thoughts and feelings expressed in this prayer as a proof that Jonah's affliction was truly sanctified to him-the light in which they ought chiefly to be regarded—there are a few leading points that more especially deserve our consideration.

1. First, we remark the altered feeling toward God of which he was now conscious, as compared with that state of mind which tempted him to go astray. In the former respect it is said of him, "he rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord;" he felt too near, as it were, to Jehovah, and would fain withdraw to a greater distance, that so he might escape from a burden which pressed like an iron yoke upon his neck. But now it is one of the bitterest parts of his complaint that he was so far from God: "I said, I am cast out from thy sight,"-driven away, as it more literally is, from before thine eyes. He has got in this respect his desire; God has retired to a distance from him; but ah! instead of finding it to be well with him on that account, the thought of God's averted countenance becomes insupportably painful. How sweet now would it be to him to dwell amid the beams of that countenance! for he sees God as he never did before, in an aspect of tenderness and

taken from Ps. cxliv. 2, where David styles God "my goodness," or loving-kindness, D: God, who is to me all beneficence"Love;" so also, in Ps. lix. 17, "The God of my mercy," or, more correctly," my kindness-God."