p. 9 | A FITTING REBUKE by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 18, 1897

A FITTING REBUKE.

By Editor

WE are glad to chronicle the good words of our contemporaries when space permits. We must refer to the deserved rebuke of the Advance against those ministers who make light of portions of the Word, such as the book of Jonah. After referring to a case of that kind in which the story of Jonah and the whale is spoken of as a parable by a prominent preacher in so trifling a way as “that guffaws of laughter shook the building,” the Advance proceeds to make application of the parable:—

“First, that ministers are sometimes seized with a strong desire to escape the unpleasant duty of facing the inhabitants of a wicked city with a stern message against their sins and a denunciation of impending wrath. It is easier to dodge off to some other kind of preaching than to face wealth, fashion, power, and luxury with a call to repentance. In these days of criticism of everything from Moses to Malachi, it requires no moral courage to slash into Jonah and the whale, but it does require more old-fashioned grit to stand up against the real sins of the day than four out of five of these critics are showing.”

“In the next place, these ministers who keep denominations stirred up by attacks on things believed may learn a parabolic lesson from the story on methods of keeping the peace. When the sailors threw Jonah overboard, the storm ceased and they got on to their destination. . . . The men who want to go to Joppa should not take ship with a church which is going out to save the lost Ninevehs of the world.”

“Still another lesson: Jonah was made better by being swallowed by the whale. Short rations and dismal surroundings for three days and nights worked a radical change in his feelings and purpose. There are men in the ministry who would be much more benefited by three days and nights in the cavern of a whale than by three years in a theological school where criticism is standing diet.”