it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

"There is

no peace, saith my God, to the wicked" (Isa. lvii. 20, 21).

There are occasions more terrible than this, when the sea is wild and furious, and ships, ill-made or with rotten timbers, fail and founder, and even the best vessels are tossed and buffetted, and have a hard struggle for existence. These are spoken of in Scripture constantly as mental storms. David says, "Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me" (Ps. lxix. 15). "Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise of thy waterspouts; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me (Ps. xlii. 7). These mental tempests will come, and they require a good spiritual ship.

Jonah, however, evidently wished to have a smooth life, and thought he could get out of the difficulty of reproving and overcoming wickedness, by getting into a ship, and closing his eyes. The Jewish nation strove to do the same, even to the last. They were far busier about their traditions, their washing of hands and pots, as matters of religion, their tithings of mint, anise, and cummin, than about the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith. This was mentally getting into their ship, rather than do the work assigned them by the Lord, to preach repentance and obedience to Him.

They are not alone in this. Myriads at the present day do the same. They enter a church, that is to say they confess a doctrine, and enrol themselves amongst its adherents. They pay their fare, they give their warm assent, and undertake the support of their particular form of religion, and attend to its external requirements, and then, like Jonah, they go into the sides of the ship and fall fast asleep. They have cleansed the outside of the cup and the platter, but the inside, the thoughts of the mind, and the affections of the heart, are taken up with self and selfish fancies, just as much as the worldliest of the worldly. External pleasures and greatness charm them as much as others; the demands of fashion are as imperious for them, and similar vices, if not the more deadly secret lusts of the soul, are as little combatted against in them, as in those who make no profession against whatever the Divine commands forbid. Cease to do evil, and learn to do well, in reference to fashionable evils, and sins not shocking to the ordinary usages of society, is a Divine law which gives their inward consciences no concern. Jonah is fast asleep. They have paid their fare; they meet all the demands made upon them; and they consider that things

are all right, or ought to be. Some are so besotted as openly to say they leave religion to the ministers, whom they pay to attend to it. They are dead asleep to the awful words spoken by the Highest, "Ye must be born again." Their tempers, hasty or sulky as the case may be, are unsoftened and unrenewed by the adorable spirit of Him who said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." They are vigorous at self-indulgence; but for the advancement of real religion they are fast asleep.

Going to sleep, however, has never been found to be a successful way of overcoming difficulties. The evils increase. What might have easily been removed becomes rooted and ramified. We should be up and doing. Success means going early to work, and working well. The very worst of all ways of accomplishing anything is GOING TO SLEEP. To such sleepers the Apostle Paul cried, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. v. 14). Too many, however, instead of walking in the holy light of Divine Truth, lie quiet, slumber on, and think all is right, they have paid their fare, and are in the ship. Yet the storms of life will come. Prepared or unprepared, trials will arise, and occasionally become fierce tempests; and woe to him whose conscience has not been purified and renewed, only benumbed by mental opiates.

Such will find the storm rage wildly, and no remission. They will trim their sails, and cry in wild alarm, but the tempest will not be stilled.. The waves and the billows will roll over them. They mount up to the heaven, they go down into the depths, their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. They have fled from the presence of the Lord, the only stiller of tempests; and now the sea rages, and becomes pestuous more and more. At length inquiry is made throug.: the whole mind, and Jonah is wakened up. By the secret providence of the Lord, represented in the narrative before us by the casting of lots, it is seen that upon Jonah is all the blame. Jonah sees it himself. The sleepy religion is fully wakened up, and filled with terror and self-condemnation. Confession is made by the conscience that it is a Hebrew, that it has been born for heaven, and ought to have been doing the work of heaven. A great dread comes over the soul. All the intellectual powers, represented by the mariners, are filled with awe and amazement at the folly of man, and the majesty of Divine Omnipotence. Self-condemnation comes on. The soul con

demns itself to utter unworthiness, as only worthy of the earth to which it has clung, or to hell itself. It is totally unfit for the church, it prays to be cast overboard, to be rejected as a worthless thing, as a mere cumberer of the ship. Before any one is saved, he must become lost. The Son of Man comes to seek This is represented by Jonah

and to save those who are lost.

being cast overboard.

Now, the Lord, however, had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah (verse 17). There has often been great difficulty felt in this announcement, that the Lord had prepared a great fish, that the prophet for three days and nights existed in a trance state buried in the animal, for the sake of the spiritual lesson to be taught. Yet, when we remember the far greater wonders which indeed formed the very life of the Israelitish Dispensation, -the deliverance from Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the supply of Manna in the wilderness for forty years, all for the sake of that representative Church which was for the time "SALT OF THE EARTH," the preservative of religion and the world-we need not hesitate at the statement that the Lord prepared a fish to swallow Jonah. Far more wonderful are the amazing laws which operate every day in the mighty world of waters. Who raises the tide, and moves the enormous mass of ocean with so much gentleness, that when we look upon the wondrous scene we lose the idea of omnipotent effort in the perfect ease? Who governs the myriads of living creatures which inhabit the watery world, assigning to each its food, and its particular geographical province, as perfectly as the birds of the air and the beasts of the land have their climates and regions adapted to each? All these things are wonderful to the thoughtful mind, and not less wonderful because they are common. The Lord prepares and sustains them all for the purposes of infinite love and wisdom, and for the same gracious purpose He prepared this great fish for Jonah.

In spiritual things, fish-because they inhabit and enjoy the water-correspond to the appetites for knowledge and science which explore and enjoy the sea of information. When science is kept subordinate to the higher and grander aims of the religious life and virtue, the soul is in order, and the mind has all manner of beautiful and useful ideas, clear courses of thought flow like clear streams, swarming with graceful fish. Distinct conceptions are the fish mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel as living where the waters of the sanctuary came (xlvii. 9).

It is possible, however, for a person to be too much absorbed in science, and too little concerned about his affections, or about

his conduct. He may be curious to know, busy to conceive and to argue, but heedless of loving the Lord and His kingdom, slow to recognize the higher and more generous impulses of the angelic part of our nature. Such persons are cold-blooded and flat like a fish. They are altogether enveloped by the lower intellect, and are often a painful compound of great knowledge and great vanity. The Word describes Pharaoh, king of Egypt, as such a one. It is written, "Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, who has said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself" (Ezek. xxiv. 3).

Vanity often says, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself; and does not know that its poetry, its painting, its eloquence, its wealth, its greatness, whatever it may be, is a talent from the Lord, a gift as surely of His as our life is, and should be used for Him. But to be absorbed in scientific life, and in the cares, anxieties, and carnal indulgences of sense, with scarcely a thought or feeling for eternal interests, is to be swallowed up in a great fish. It is a paralysis of the best side and the higher region of man. And if we learned that he had chosen this condition, and prided himself upon it, and imagined he was rather a superior kind of man, our hearts would be filled with pity. Yet this is just what the man of science is, who rejects all higher things. It is Jonah buried in the fish.

Happily, the Lord prepared the fish. The Lord does not leave us, though we flee from His presence. He over-rules our earthly affairs, and our very talents, so that, if possible, our hearts may again be turned to Him. Sometimes by failure and afflictions, sometimes by observing the afflictions of others, sometimes by family sorrows, sometimes by a dear one being taken away, sometimes by all our plans being scattered, and in a thousand ways known and over-ruled by Infinite Love, men are trained for the better life; because the Lord has prepared all things, that they may form His immortal children for their everlasting good.

Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, because these times represent in the Divine speech a full experience, both of the full joys and the full sorrows, the full lights and the full shades, of a merely external life, until we are taught how narrow, poor, and low is the life of mere science and earthly thought; and we are all brought, like Jonah, to pray that we may be drawn from the darkness of earth into the glorious sunlight of day once more, a day to become brighter and brighter until we are settled in the perpetual glory of heaven.

SERMON XLIII.

JONAH'S PENITENCE IN THE FISH.

"When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy."-JONAH ii. 7, 8

It was a strange, cramped, confined sort of life that Jonah experienced in the fish. He seems to have had an inner consciousness of what was passing around, while the external was helpless, and as if paralysed. A similar life is sometimes realised in a trance state, and in some conditions of the dying. They perceive what is passing around, but have no power to stir a muscle. The external has fainted, but the internal is fully alive. Some who have recovered from apparent death by drowning have declared that their inner perceptions and sensations were quite vivid, when their outward powers were suspended, and their whole life seemed placed before them in the strongest and clearest light. Others have heard and known what was passing around them, but with no power to speak a word or move a limb. Jonah perceived the waters about him, and that he was deep down in the sea-the heart of the sea he calls it, verse 3, in the Hebrew. He felt the weeds floating and wrapping themselves about his head, but he knew he had no help for himself; he saw the real nature of his folly, and his utter incapability to procure for himself deliverance, and he remembered the Lord. His prayer was heard from the depths of the sea. "My prayer," he says, came in unto Thee, into thine holy temple;" and he was delivered to know and to say, "Salvation is of the Lord.”

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In the depth of his distress he remembered the Lord. How strange it is that he, or any of us, can ever forget the Lord. He is goodness itself, and has loaded us with tender mercies. We live every moment by His life. Our talents, our gifts, our daily support, the marvellous arrangements of our being, both

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