magistrate must not; a magistrate must do many things which a father could not. The parental analogy, therefore, fails altogether in its supposed adaptation to illustrate the method of God with man, and its use, instead of being instructive, is deceptive -even ruinously deceptive.

To a certain extent, the forms and processes of human judicature afford points of resemblance far more justly applicable. Human government, in some of its forms, is a moral government, a government of persuasion, of motive and recompense. Among ourselves there is a law which we are required to obey, there are magistrates to ascertain and to punish disobedience; and there are defined penalties proportioning the punishment to the offence. And here, in its salient points, is a shadow of God's administration.

Like a magistrate, God has not before him the well-being of the individual, but the maintenance of a government; like a magistrate, God has not to show kindness, but to execute law; like a magistrate, God has not to cover iniquity, but to search out and to condemn; like a magistrate, God is not to show mercy, but to maintain righteousness.

The illustration thus to be derived of the ways of God towards man is, indeed, far from perfect, as all such illustrations inevitably must be; but, so far as they extend, they are just. Inasmuch as God is not simply a magistrate, but a sovereign also, and blends these two characters in one, it is competent to Him to do much that a mere magistrate could not, and especially to devise and adopt some mode by which righteousness may be maintained and yet may be extended to the sinner: as it is written, "Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm lxxxv. 10).

The conclusion to which these observations have conducted us is this: that the analogies which the paternal relation supplies are not, in their fullest sense, applicable to the attitude of God towards mankind universally, but to a part of mankind only; to that part of them, namely, who are reconciled to Him by faith in His Son, and so brought into a state of gracious fellowship with Him. Antecedently to this great change, God holds to us all the attitude of a moral governor, and the analogies illustrative of this attitude are to be devised from human judicial institutions; when, however, "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. v. 1), He acts towards us on a different principle-no longer as a magistrate, but as a father; as it is written, "I will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, with the Lord Almighty" (2 Cor. vi. 18).

And the practical bearing of this view is at once obvious and important.

In the first place, it teaches us how very serious are our earliest transactions with God. If we had to regard Him as a father, and exclusively as a father, we might form slender notions of the criminality of our disobedience, or of the gravity of His displeasure. We might cherish a fallacious expectation of His unqualified kindness towards us, and might totally misunderstand His method of forgiveness. It is of unspeakable importance for us to understand our position better than this; to know that God has founded on His sovereign rights over us, as His creatures, a system of government by law and retributionof holy law and righteous retribution-which in all His dealings He will inflexibly maintain. On our own part, every sin is a violation of His law, and a provocation of His wrath; on His part, is the necessity of maintaining in full operation a government too" glorious in holiness" for Him to permit it to be dishonoured. He "will render unto every man according to his deeds, in the day when He shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ."

In the second place, the view we have taken opens to us the true and only method of acceptable approach to God. Although righteous in condemning the transgressor, the eternal Judge is not cager to condemn. For God hath so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but should have everlasting life" (John iii. 16). He is, indeed, plenteous in mercy, and ready to forgive; but the manifestation of His mercy is in a peculiar method, devised and prepared to reconcile its exercise with righteousness. It is exclusively through Jesus Christ, "whom He hath set forth as a propitiation for sin, through faith in His blood," in order that He may be "just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (Romans iii. 26). A sinner, therefore, has no reason for either despair or discouragement; he may, on the contrary, be assured of a gracious reception at the hands of his offended ruler; but he must approach in the way prescribed-in submission to "the righteousness of God." It is "the precious blood of Christ," and that alone, which cleanseth from all sin, and that because it has been shed in expiation for sin.

In the third place, the view we have taken, introduces us to the highest view of Christian privilege. It is to those who have peace with Him through Jesus Christ that God is a father. He loves them "like as a father pitieth His children" (Psalm ciii. 13). The very highest exercises of parental love, as it is found to exist among men, may be expected from Him, and infinitely more than these, because we are men and He is God. And if God told us as a father we shall be to Him as children; and if children, then heirs; "heirs of God, and joint heirs with

Christ" (Rom. viii. 17). "Behold, what manner of love," exclaims the Apostle, "the Father hath shown unto us, that we should be called the sons of God! . . . . Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John iii. 1, 2).

JONAH: THE PROPHET AND THE MAN.

THE position of the book of Jonah in the Old Testament canon, is a fact of some apologetic value. It is found a standing rebuke of intolerance among the sacred writings of a most intolerant people. Intense nationality has always been a Jewish characteristic. In the earlier history of the people, their prophets were most exclusively national. In later times, the national religion had degenerated almost entirely into intolerance. Yet, withal, this book was recognized and preserved as divine. We need not commit ourselves to any theory of a miraculous formation of the canon; but this fact is worth contemplating. We say nothing of any Divine interference with circumstances for the preservation of the sacred parchments; but there must have been a Divine influence in the nation. God's Spirit lifted readers and guardians of the Holy Writings above prevailing national sentiment; He who gave to his people a succession of men, inspired to recognize and value all Divine teaching, was thus vindicating for this book its place in the records of his revelation.

It is because it exposes and rebukes the sin of intolerance that this book has been preserved; this constitutes its claim to be in the Bible, and has secured its place here. Jonah was a Jewish prophet, but his words to Israel have been lost. We read, 2 Kings xiv. 25, that Jeroboam the Second "restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher." This is all that is recorded of the prophet's relations with his own people. But for Nineveh, we should know little more of Jonah than his

name.

The reason of Jonah's disobedience to the heavenly voice,

the voice of God still heard directing us to duty, and that once heard can never be mistaken, how hard soever, how unwelcome soever the task to which it bids-is boldly and frankly told in the history. No tenderness for the prophet's reputation is allowed to veil his sin: exclusiveness is laid bare in all its baseness and malignity. It would be quite possible to find gentler reasons for his flight to Tarshish. We should have found such a reason in timidity, the shrinking of a dweller in an obscure town of a petty nation from entering the proud and stately city to rebuke it; or in the reluctance of one whose pleasant work it had been to utter messages of deliverance, now to denounce and threaten. But Jonah has no such mild excuses for himself. He was not a timid man; the history sets him forth as one of turbulent spirit and obstinate force of will. He did not shrink from threatening; it was quite a congenial task for him to denounce woes against Nineveh. The thing that God did in sparing the city " displeased him exceedingly, and he was very angry. 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." That was the secret of his disobedience. He was indignant that the Lord should care for the haughty heathen city; indignant that he, a Jewish prophet, should be charged to call an alien people to repentance rather let the doom come down upon them without warning and without hope. There is no room to weaken the force of these words; there is no need for us to offer other explanations of the prophet's conduct. National antipathy and religious exclusiveness will account for it all. Even to-day bitter words are spoken, and bitter deeds are wrought, in England and by Englishmen, against alien races, without shame or shrinking, that would be utterly intolerable if said and done against our fellow-countrymen or our neighbours. The "horrors of war' are mitigated when white men are in conflict with each other; but the policy of extermination is justified, and pleasant names are given to foul and cowardly offences, when the white man is ranged against the black. "Negrophobia" is respectable; the "negrophiles" are those on whom "society" pours out its scorn. Of what, too, is not religious exclusiveness capable? The belief that God cares, or ought to care, only for an elect few; that the rest of the world are allowed, or should be allowed, to go on in their sin unwarned, unpleaded with, unhoped for, and unsaved, has in itself any possibilities of cold cruelty. If all who profess the creed are not cold and cruel, it is because the personal influence of Christ is stronger than their unhappy logic,

Equally marked in the history is God's determination to expose the workings and rebuke the sin of exclusiveness. Surely there were gentle men in Israel, to whom the woes of Nineveh would have been the "burden," and who would have rejoiced in Nineveh's repentance. Surely there were more reverent prophets in Israel, who could have been more easily persuaded to a mission of mercy to an alien city. Why was the hard and obstinate Jonah called and forced to a work so uncongenial to him;-a work that goaded him to wildest turbulence, and called out his bitterest passion? It might have been the same thing for Nineveh to have listened to a better man; their faith and repentance might have been aroused, and their doom averted. But it would not have been the same thing for Jonah to have gone out into eternity with his bad heart unsearched and uncorrected. We can now read not only that the proud and wicked heathen city received a messenger from Jehovah, and "repented at his preaching;" we have God's solemn rebuke of a common sin, and many a man may find here searching and humbling lessons. Jonah rebelled against the mission appointed him, but he had to fulfil it. "Man is immortal till his work is done," even though sometimes death would be more welcome than to do it. The prophet did not perish in his disobedience, though it brought him so nigh to death. The rescued prophet heard again the voice of the Lord, "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." For to draw up to the gates of death is not to be released from the necessity of obedience; danger and deliverance dissolve not duty. No; nor does even death itself. The voices that men hear in the depths of the soul, the truth that God binds as a burden on them, go with them into eternity. To do his work is our sole discharge. A man may have his hours of faithlessness, when he seeks to escape from God and God's bidding, careless whither he may go if only he can silence the unwelcome voice. But every true man will rejoice that escape was made impossible; that he has been followed in his self-will, and finally delivered from it; preserved in dark prison-houses, and brought out at length to find the unheeded voice sounding still the same, setting him to the duty that waited for him through his estrangement, and still waits, demanding to be done. Only, moreover, by obeying God's bidding can we be purged from the sinfulness that makes obedience unwelcome. God's chosen servants have to yield to him; though often in the yielding they are searched, and convicted of startling wickedness. The prophet's preaching illustrates the prophet's experience. God was calling the preacher of repentance to repent himself. But for the firm hand of God upon him Jonah had been destroyed,