to order if he has departed from it. Mercy is extended to all finite creatures at all times, from the highest angel to the lowest subject of the King of kings. Our holy things need to be viewed by mercy, to pardon their shortcomings. And although it is mercy which touches our failings with a tender hand, it is also even fuller mercy when the righteous are rewarded according to their works (Ps. lxii. 12). It is not to any merit of ours, or of the highest seraph, that the riches of heavenly peace and joy are imparted, but only that to heavenly-minded ones, though still imperfect, Mercy can bestow angelic bliss. He charges His angels with folly; but His angels see and shun and detest their folly, keeping self under their feet, abiding in Him, and His Divine Love and Wisdom abiding in them.

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It is merciful to impart to a suffering wayfarer a little help for present needs, and to alleviate immediate sorrow; but how much greater is the mercy which takes the erring one by the hand, strengthens and guides his feeble virtue, restores him to order, and preserves him in constant well-being. The higher the angel and the greater the mercy he feels, and he adores. 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Just and true are Thy ways, thou King of Saints. Who shall not fear Thee O Lord, and glorify Thy name; for Thou ONLY art holy." Such are the confessions of all the blessed. The adoring seraph covers his face. The higher in grace and the deeper in humility are all the inhabitants of heaven. They follow Divine truths, and thus are preserved, elevated, and blessed by Infinite Mercy. Mercy framed the heavens, mercy redeemed and regenerated every angel of heaven, and mercy imparts to each one, according to his capacity, eternal peace and joy. The things which induce men to forsake THEIR OWN MERCY, are, indeed, LYING VANITIES, as Jonah came to see by bitter experience.

What a lying vanity is pride! It fills the heart of its possessor with vain phantasies of his self-sufficiency of self-sufficiency when he knows his heart would not beat once, nor one breath remain a moment, if a power higher than his own, were for one moment withdrawn. Yet this lying vanity makes its possessor insolent, ambitious, envious, anxious, suspicious, defiant against God, and rebellious in opposition to the blessed commandments which mercy has imparted as the means of wisdom, health, happiness, and heaven. For this "lying vanity thousands forsake their own mercy. What a "lying vanity" is inordinate worldly love. The preference of glitter and show for

a moment, over the solid worth of spiritual graces and heavenly gifts, which endure for ever; of a fleeting earth to an everlasting heaven, is a folly so great that did we not know it as a common fact, we might well be incredulous of its possibility. Yet, for this lying vanity, myriads forsake their own mercy. What a "lying vanity" is impure pleasure! It promises bliss, and it leads to pain. It spreads before its dupes dreams of passionate enjoyment, it allures by phantoms of gorgeous felicity, of degraded but voluptuous and extatic bliss, and the reality is broken character, broken fortune, broken health, decay, imbecility, ruin, death, fiendishness. Oh may we shun these "lying vanities," and follow for ever that true wisdom which is from above, and which purifies, enriches, and ennobles both soul and body. Let us bless that unutterable mercy which has provided a shining way along which the humble tread, which leads to "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report," and conducts its lowly but pure-hearted traveller into the higher country of his Saviour, the realm of endless peace.

SERMON XLIV.

THE REPENTANCE OF NINEVEH.

"And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them."-JONAH iii. 10.

THE fundamental error which the book of Jonah is designed to correct, is that God was concerned with the Jews only, and His mercies and His laws had no relation to the world at large. Nineveh, the magnificent capital of the proud empire of Assyria, then in its greatest glory and extent, represented the world outside of Judea. The world of Assyria, as seen in its metropolis, loaded with wealth and glittering with splendour, was giving itself to wild indulgence, giddy mirth, forgetful of the great aims of life; was flitting from one gay scene to another, until all serious purpose was lost in sensuous profusion and unprincipled extravagance. Let us eat and drink, dress and pamper ourselves, lead dainty lives, and disdain all useful pursuits, esteeming those who follow them as the meaner herd, whose business in life it is to minister to our pleasures and passions. Such were the thoughts of the gay crowds of Nineveh in olden times, even as of those of many a modern capital.

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All this may go on for a time, for man is a wonderful being, not easily spoiled; but when principle has been dethroned, and lawless luxury is the passion of the hour, the wheels of the chariot of judgment will be heard in the distance by the ear of the wise; and if repentance-real repentance— -come not, the day of chastisement will arise. 'Know, O man, that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment." By Divine mercy and forbearance it may seem that judgment is long deferred, but it will surely come. For men and nations the law is precisely the same: "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door" (Gen. iv. 7).

Because Jonah conceived that God had no concern with Ninevites, or others than Jews, he avoided the duty which the Divine command had given him to perform. To teach him

and us that the law is universal, God enforced his going, and manifested that He was good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. Jonah, however, not only exhibited repugnance to go on the mission Divine Providence had allotted to him, but manifested his narrowness of character in the lamentation he made when the threatened overthrow of Nineveh was averted by the repentance of the people, high and low, from the king to his meanest subject.

Jonah was more concerned for his message than for the safety and wellbeing of that vast multitude of people. "And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray Thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live." What a strange complaint, and what a perverse conclusion! Surely the object of his mission was warning and repentance, not merely to announce destruction. The end was most successfully accomplished, and yet here is this poor prophet filled with a sense of his own importance, and bewailing the fact that, from the goodness of God, penitent Nineveh was not to be destroyed. That was just cause for gratitude and thanksgiving, not for lamentation.

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The prophet Jonah, however, was the type of the Jewish Church in their narrowness and bigotry. He valued the means more than the end; he wanted to have his consistency and importance secured, although men, women, and children should perish in myriads. Not so, however, with Divine mercy. is the goodness of God which leads man to repentance. The Sabbath was made for man, the Church was made for man, the Word was given for man, the ministry exists for man, the world itself and heaven exist that men may become angels, and everincreasing multitudes become everlastingly happy. The pharisaic system, which cared more for the sect than for the people, more for the ceremony than for regeneration, more for the Church than for man, was never any part of the Divine government. Through varied means ever to operate to attain the end in view, and that end to rescue as many as possible from the dominion of sin, such has ever been the design of the Most High, who is the Most Merciful. Such will ever be the aim of those whose hearts beat in harmony with Him Who desires not the death of a sinner, but that all should turn to Him and live.

Jonah complained that his warning, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown," was not fulfilled to the letter. But as a prophet, and as an Israelite, he should have known that all warnings and all promises are conditional. Whether expressed or not, there underlay the warning that Nineveh should be overthrown, the condition, unless it repented. How plainly this is stated in the prophecy of Jeremiah: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down, and to destroy it. If that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it: if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." It was simply in harmony with this well-known principle that penitent Nineveh was spared, and most unreasonable as well as pitiless was it of the prophet to seek that his consistency should be maintained even if a whole repentant people perished.

At the same time we have a lesson for all time of the efficacy of repentance, and its indispensable character. Repent and live; repent not, and you will assuredly perish. This doctrine of repentance is often evaded at the present day, but in the nature of things it is the only way to happiness. Prophets, Apostles, and the Divine Saviour himself declare, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The universal necessity for repentance arises from the fact that all men are born with tendencies to evil, and all suffer themselves, more or less, to go into actual sin. "All we like lost sheep have gone astray." "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." All do wrong-one in one way, and another in another; but all feel within them capacities for still greater wrong. If the law and usages of society did not restrain men generally, we should be appalled at the infernal nature which would manifest itself where now things appear tolerably smooth and decorous. In a seditious riot, or the sack of a city after a siege, when authority is briefly suspended, the wild lusts which rush forth for insane gratification tell of the smouldering fires of horrid passion which are usually hidden under a decent exterior.

Thus it is that society presents so strange a mixture of virtue and vice, order and disorder, beauty and deformity, joy and sorrow. Minds are mixed. There is something from heaven -the remains of man's once-glorious nature, the ground of