Jonah is met on his own ground. From his human compassion comes the irresistible enforcement of the argument for the Divine mercy. Mark the contrasts.

I. PITY ON THE GOURD; PITY ON NINEVEH. Useful had been the gourd to Jonah. It had made life tolerable; it had gladdened him. He had saddened to see it wither, sorrowed to see it dead. He had pity on it; his pity would have spared it. Nor was he wrong. It is well to be unwilling to see aught that has cheered us perish. But if he was right in his desire to spare that plant, "should not I spare Nineveh?" asked God. Should a plant be more than a great city? God's great thought is upon men. How the Divine pity moved over repentant Nineveh! How the blessed Redeemer longed to save Jerusalem! On his last visit, with what other eyes than those of his disciples did he look upon it!

"They shout for joy of heart,
But he the King, looks on as one in grief;
To heart o'erburdened weeping brings relief,
The unbidden tear drops start."

II. PITY ON THE SHORT-LIVED GOURD; PITY ON THE NINEVITES, IMMORTAL CREATURES. That gourd had but the life of a day. Then "the grace of the fashion of it perished." So frail! But look at those multitudes in Nineveh. Few there had so brief a life as the gourd. And all of them were heirs of immortality, passing to an eternal destiny. How the human transcends all lower forms of life! Did Jonah pity the short-lived plant? Shall not God pity the ever-living multitude in the city?

III. PITY ON THE GOURD THAT HAD COST JONAH NOTHING; PITY ON THE VAST POPULATION THAT GOD HAD MADE AND UPHELD. The gourd "came up over" Jonah; unsought, unhelped by him - curse to him. He brought it not; he kept it not in life. He had done nothing for it, yet how he mourned its decay! Mark the principle implied in this contrast! This - that we show our value of a thing by the labour we expend upon it. This also - that our sense of the value of a thing, our love to it, grows in proportion to our labour for it. How much God had done for the Ninevites! They were all his creatures. If he had not "laboured for" them, he had made them. He was the Fountain of their life. They lived because he held them in life. He could not lightly let them perish; he was their Maker. Jonah had "not made" the gourd to "grow." But God had made the Ninevites to grow; had built them in strength, fed, clothed, preserved them. And, as with us, the more we do for another, the more we love him; so with God and those Ninevites. They were dear to him, and ever dearer because of what he had done for them.

IV. PITY ON THE ONE PLANT; PITY ON THE MANY-PEOPLED CITY. One plant called Gut Jonah's yearning tenderness. But what was that to a man? - a man made in God's image, "endued with sanctity of reason," dowered with immortality? A man? Here was a city full of men. God knew the number. But in this plea he only gives the number of the children. They in their helplessness and innocence were pleas with him for the preservation of the city. Beautiful, effectual priesthood of children! They are unconscious yet mighty intercessors for us. One hundred and twenty thousand of them are in Nineveh. That is a reason why God should spare it. Better that they should live than die. Heaven, to one who has known God's grace and accepted it, temptation and overcome it, who has "served his generation," will be a nobler world than to an infant caught in his unconsciousness to its unexpected bliss. "And much cattle." Not an animal in Nineveh but is worth more than the gourd. Man's Maker is its Maker. And he who made man made it for man. The very cattle are a plea for the preservation of the city. Conclusive, unanswerable appeal! Jonah, so ready with his replies, is now speechless. He saw that God's way was right. Let our pity to things and persons remind us of God's mercy. A mercy almighty and "to everlasting." A mercy revealed in Christ. A mercy to be accepted. If not, if rejected, if trifled with till life is trifled away - where, where can we look? There is one Saviour, and no other! - G.T.C.

There is no mention of Israel in this Book of Jonah. It is concerned solely about the welfare of a foreign nation. There can be no doubt that the spirit of the book is entirely opposed to Jewish feeling. While its form is historical, in substance it is prophetical. It contains great and important truths which Israel was in danger of overlooking, and foreshadows a time when God's mercy towards mankind should no longer be restrained within the limits of the seed of Jacob. All the concern of the writer is to point a moral lesson. The exclusive spirit which regarded all nations as made to subserve the welfare of Israel was always hateful to God. But Jonah is scarcely to be blamed for not seeing what many excellent Christians have failed to see. We must not throw stones at Jonah, for our own houses are sufficiently brittle. Look at the lesson of the gourd. It had cost him nothing, his wisdom had not provided it, nor his care cherished its growth, yet he resented the loss of it as a personal injury. It was a parable designed to convey a needful lesson to abate Jonah's peevish grief at the sparing of Nineveh. God answered Jonah by dealing with the plant as Jonah would have had Him deal with Nineveh. What was there, then, in Nineveh, which answered to the consolation Jonah derived from the plant? Its sentient life and evident happiness, the work of God's hands, unspoiled as yet by human wickedness, was God's gourd, the consolation of His heart when the hot wind of Nineveh's wickedness blew upon Him. He could not bear the thought of sending the pestilence to crush in pain and death all this innocent life and enjoyment, or of giving up these tender little ones to the cruel carnage of savage foes. Judgment is His strange work, and only when absolutely necessary will He sacrifice the innocent and helpless for the sake of punishing the world and purifying its moral atmosphere. This is a very beautiful lesson. It sheds a shaft of tender light into God's dealings with mankind. God will not let the happiness of creation be sacrificed for the sake of punishing human Corruption. The final lesson of this Book of Jonah is full of encouragement, and gives us a conception of God which is scarcely surpassed even in the New Testament. He is represented as more merciful than His servant, and as possessed of far wider sympathies. If God were not more merciful than man there would be little hope for us. Repentance instantly calls forth Divine mercy. The prayer of the contrite no sooner reaches His ear than the justifying word goes forth.

(E. W. Shalders, B. A.)