- end_line
- 2339
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-18T02:42:17.946Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2276
- text
-
Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned
over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon
the proper page, said: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the
first chapter of Jonah—‘And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up
Jonah.’”
“Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—is one
of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what
depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sealine sound! what a pregnant
lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in
the fish’s belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the
floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the
waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But _what_
is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a
two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to
me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us
all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly
awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally
the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the
sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the
command of God—never mind now what that command was, or how
conveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the things that God
would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he
oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we
must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein
the hardness of obeying God consists.
“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men
will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the
Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks
a ship that’s bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto
unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no
other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of learned men.
And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from
Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when
the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern
Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean,
the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the
westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not
then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?
Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with
slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the
shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So
disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen
in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had
been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no
baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him
to the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he
finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as
he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for
the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s
evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and
confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the
man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but
still serious way, one whispers to the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a
widow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I
guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,
one of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another runs to read the bill
- title
- Chunk 10