LYING VANITIES VS. GOD'S MERCY.
By William J. Boynton
WHILE calling upon a family a short time since, a friend of the lady who was visiting her began to talk against the Bible, introducing point after point which she did not believe, and concluded by saying: "Only an idiot could believe that whale story about Jonah." I asked her if she did not think that a God who could create the world was able to make a fish that could swallow a man without killing him? She admitted that he was. I then turned to the record in the Bible, and read that God had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and that Jonah's experience drew from him the acknowledgment that "they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." If she could not believe that such an incident occurred, then she must also doubt that Christ ever existed, for he said that the men of Nineveh, who repented at Jonah's preaching, would rise up in the judgment and condemn those who rejected His miracles, because He was "greater than Jonah;" also that all the sign Christ gave the Jews was the sign of the prophet Jonah. "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Matt. 12:40. Further, I said that God had recorded the past "for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Rom. 15:4. The case of Jonah presents one of the most wonderful examples of God's mercy recorded in the Bible. Here was the prophet Jonah, who had been favored to see God's glory in holy vision, and God had signally blessed his warning messages from time to time. Men had heeded his warnings, and thus received the benefit which God intended when he sent the messenger. But Satan through his agents had thus, as he is ever wont to do, misrepresented and maligned God's messenger, by saying, "He said destruction was coming, but it did not come." And so they taunted Jonah as he passed by, till poor Jonah lost, in a measure, the true object of God's warning message, viz., that those who are warned may repent, and live God's life among men, and so prepare for a happy future. Jer. 18:7-11; 29:11. And so he desired vengeance upon those upon whom judgment was pronounced, simply to vindicate himself before the maligners of God; and, finally, he decided not to give any more messages, and, therefore, when called to go to Nineveh, he went in an opposite direction from the orders of the Lord. But God had seen all this in Jonah's heart in its first inception, and had prepared a lesson of mercy for Jonah, as well as for all the rest of mankind, by preparing the fish, and having this fish at hand in the tempest, to catch him when, at his own desire, the men of the ship should cast him into the sea. God in his mercy preserved this rebellious prophet for three days, till he cried to heaven in faith, and plead God's mercy and also his power to help and deliver him. What, there in the fish at the bottom of the sea did the Lord hear him?—Yes. Jonah says: "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. . . . When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple." Jonah 2:6, 7. Then follows the statement: "They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." Jonah 2:8, 9. Jonah had now learned that it was the salvation of men, not their destruction, that the Lord was seeking. What a cruel foe is Satan, to tempt men to disbelieve these illustrations of God's great mercy recorded in his word, when the very object of their being written and preserved was to strengthen the faith and hope of mankind when in deep trial and affliction! I am glad "salvation is of the Lord." Sinner, will you accept this salvation?
Melrose, Mass.