SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 December 1924, Page 13

SUNDAY READING.

A PROPHET’S PETULANT PRAYER. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was 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 hasted to flee to Tars’hish.”—John iv., 1,2. (Rev. A. H. Collins.) I am not going to discuss the problem of the book of Jonah. The adventure with the great fish- has been the subject of many a ribald jest by men who might have been saved the indecent folly, if they had reached an inkling of insight into tlie true meaning of the story; and those who make belief in the marvel of the fish a test of orthodoxy, are scarcely less ill advised. If people will insist on reading allegory as history, and the drapery of a parable as its essential message, we can only pass on to something more important. This is not my present concern. I wish to ask the cause of Jonah’s grief, and I do so far the sake of the light it sheds on certain modern movements.

THE MAN AND HIS MOOD. It must be confessed Jhat Jonah does not shine in this particular chapter. For see how the case stands. He 'is represented, as being sent to Nineveh, and instead of obeying the Divine behest he arose and fled to Joppa, and made straight fpr Tarshish. Arrested in his flight, and compelled to retrace his steps, he received a second command, and not daring to disobey a second time, he entered the capital of Assyria and delivered his fateful message, ‘'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall perish.” But when the people repented, and the city was spared, "it displeased Jonah exceedingly and lie was angry,” and prayed that his life might be cut short! I say that presents the man in a very odious light. That he should be angered because a million peopled city was spared, even though their deliverance made him look like a false prophet, is a spirit imore akin to Nero, than to Jesus Christ, more like to Robespierre, who wished “the world had one neck so that he might behead it,” than like Saint Paul who was willing to be anathema from Christ if Israel might be saved. A good man has no greater joy than to see the triumph of divine mercy, and the wider the sweep that mercy takes 'the more complete the good man's gladIness. Isaiah was separated from Jonah iby only a few years, and Isaiah speaks lof the coming of God’s Kingdom as ‘‘a | joy like unto the joy of harvest”; and I when in the case of Nineveh it was the I deliverance, not of a few but of the ■entire city, one might have supposed the prophet’s great heart would have been the home of a great joy like that the angels know when "one sinner rejpenteth.” Instead of this, here is a 'man angry and fretted and praying I' death might swallow him up! I say Jonah comes out of this business very badly. Others have felt this, and there have been attempts at literary “whitewashing,” and some ingenious efforts to ’explain away plain facts. Let us not ' follow that course. Let us deal quite ; honestly with the man and his mood, for in so doing we shall find he was "a man cf like passions with ourselves.” These Bible men were not perfect, and we do not serve the cause of truth by • slurring over their faults. Attempts have been made to soften the word “anger.” But the word is Kero, and the 'thing is here. It is true his mood was mixed. There are times when no one word explains our feelings, however deftly the word is chosen. There may :-e pity and sorrow, blended with irritation intense and blistering. It was so with Jonah. The Hebrew might be .rendered, “Jonah was exceedingly grieved and inwardly hot.” Can we find the cause ? WHY JONAH WAS z.N<®Y?

The late Dean Farrar says it proceeded from petty vanity and selfishness. He speaks of Jonah’s conditions as proceeding from “a wretched peevishness. wishing himself dead, because his gourd withered and because God spared Nineveh and God’s mercy triumphed of his petty personal credit.” But that is a conclusion only to be accepted in default of a better one; and with all respect for the late dean, that explanation does not seem quite just. There was a strain of selfishness in the prophet. and selfishness dwarfs any man. Jonah was a smaller man than Moses or Elijah, than Jeremiah or Saint Paul, but he was not simply an amalgam of vanity and selfishness. There are touches of nobility. In the teeth of the storm, and at the risk of his life, he tried to save the ship. He did not want others to suffer for his misdeeds. That he was in a bad mood is undeniable; but that he was simply a small souled, selfish man not proven. His weakness sprang from sources quite apart from regard for his own credit. His vice was a virtue run to seed.

It has been suggested that Jonah’s anger arose from, ignorance of God’s character, but this chapter refutes the suggestion. "I knew that Thou art a gracious God and full of compassion, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.” I knew how it would turn out. I expected Nineveh would be spared. That is a noble confession and not unWorthy to stand beside many a passage in the gospels. lie had grasped the truth that Eternal Justice rules the world; that God’s pity meets and pardons the repentant; that mercy triumphs over wrath; and the man who saw that so clearly cannot be isaid to be ignorant of 'Gods character. REDEMPTION AS WIDE AS SIN,

What, then, cause of Jonah’s grief. It was due to a vice which sleeps in our own heart: a vice that is raising grave problems in India -and other peoples of the East, and may plunge the world in racial war. Recall the exact situation. Jonah was called to minister to the enemies of his country. Nineveh was his field. But Nineveh be--1 inged tq Assyria, a vast military empire that loomed up threateningly on the northern horizon. Israel hated and dreaded Assyria. 'God’s mercy was for Israel and not for Gentile dogs. What the typical American feels towards the negroes of the southern States; what the Britisher feels towards the Boer; and the New Zealander feels towards the Chinese and the Jap; that the Hebrew felt towards Assyria and felt it as part of his religion. Jonah .suffered from a darker disease than wounded vanity; it was ruthless and unrelenting hate of the heathen, which made him dread that, after all, he would not <see them destroyed, and he even dares to fling God’s mercy in His face and comjplaiii of the Divine clemency! Yet he, this prophet of the elect race, is bidden go and teach the Ninevites the truth that Christ taught in the synagogue, the truth Saint Peter learned at Joppa and Saint Paul preached on Mars Hill; the truth that God cannot be localised, nationalised, monoipolised; the truth that the gospel is for all and His mercy overleaps all racial barriers and the redemption is as wide as the sin. God loves all his children. His glory will not stay at home. Race and colour are nothing to Him. His beloved Son was born of a coloured people, and the western nations are debtors to the East, for the sacred scriptures and the ruling ideas of the Christian faith. “Arise, go to Nineveh,” was the first streak of gospel light which shone in full-orbed splendour when Jesus healed the Caananish woman, welcomed the Greeks from the land of Secrates, and cried: And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” JONAH’S TYPICAL PATRIOTISM. Jonah's grief sprang out of his intense love of his own land, and his shivering fear of Assyria. .Jonah was patriotic rather than philanthropic. He 1 ,ved his own people and wanted to see his own nation prosperous and mighty, which was right, but he did not want t) see Assyria the same, and that was ]is infirmity. He was a good man and ia true prophet, but crippled by narrowness, as we are all apt to be. He was national and not international, parochial nor catholic. Patriotism of the baser sort says: "My country, may she be right; but right or wrong my

country,” which is heathenish. Patriotism of the Christian type says, “My country for the service and salvation of the world. "■For the ways of men are narrow, But the gates of heaven are wide. Jonah is dead, and his dust mingled with the sand of the desert, but his spirit lives on, and it is the mother of strife. Jonah lives in the family circle and wants the good* things of this life for himself and his children. "God bless me and my wife. Gur Jock and his wife "We four and no more.” Jonah has gone into business and "monopoly” is his blessed word. He would tax sunlight and fresh air if he could form a “combine.” Jonah has camped in the church. Protestant can see no good thing in a Roman Catholic, and Rome pays Geneva back with interest. The 'Fundamentalist cannot endure the Modernist who does •not pronounce his "shibboleth,” and |good men hate one another for the love |of God! Oh! the pity of it. Truth is a big thing. The kingdom of God is [spacious. The liberal thought and plan spirit is the true thought and plan and spirit; for devotion to the larger interests of the Kingdom of God is the true way to conserve the lesser things. Caring for the wide world is the best way of serving our own land.

MENACE OF RACIAL BITTERNESS. The missionary is the true patriot. Honour and charity towards other churches is the way to serve our own church. "We ourselves the better serve in serving others best.” Michael Angelo entered the studio of Raphael one day, in the absence of the artist. There were some sketches on the easel. Michael Angelo took a chalk and drew some freer lines around the sketches, and then chalked the word "Amplius.” It was the turning point in Raphael’s career, for hitherto his style had been too cramped. Tile Master is saying “Anrplius” to us all. Wider thoughts, bolder interpretation, braver living. “There’s a wideness in God's mercy Like the wideness of the sea. There's a kindness in his justice, Which is more than liberty.” There is no graver menace to world peace and the progress of the Kingdom of God than the racial bitterness which

confronts America and is creating a perilous situation in India and Australia. In India the coloured problem confronts us with inexorable severity. The difficulties of administration in India are due to race prejudice and the inability of Englishmen to realise that men of different skin can be our equals and our brothers. In his latest volume, “The Mystical Quest of Christ,” Dr" Hofton tells of a personal experience. He was lecturing at Yale University and requested that he may meet the coloured students of the college, and one of them gave an instance which shocked Dr. Horton. Au open-air preacher concluded his address by inviting all to come to Christ and to signify their so doing by coming forward and shaking hands. A negro responded to the invitation by stepping forward, but the preacher— a. Christian preacher —met him by saying that dark men were not included! Dr. Horton says he was horri'fied at tbe story, and felt that Christ’s whole purpose was being frustrated by racial antagonism and colour prejudice. Yet that preacher’s attitude was the logical conclusion of the spirit that compels the coloured man to walk apart and live apart and worship .apart. But beyond dispute our contemlpt for foreigners and the coloured races is unChristian. A Christian has not a shred of excuse for despising men of another race mid colour.

(CHRISTAS GOSPEL FOR ALL MEN. Christ and His salvation do not rest on colour, but on common humanity; it is only as a man, and not as a white man or an Englishmen, that he can <be saved. Nay. if it comes to a question of colour at all, it is not the black, the yellow, the brown, or the red. but tlie white man whose position is in doubt. Europeans were admitted to the primitive church in spite of their pale faces, simply because Christ's gospel was for all men. I say nothing of the political aspect of the subject, but rudeness to coloured men, whether it take the form of arrogance or patronage, is bad religion. The repugnance we feel towards them is the fruit of pride land selfishness and directly we begin to pity, to succour and to save, then we shall begin to love them. “In Christ there is neither Greek nor Sythian. neither bond nor free”; there are only men, all made of one blood, all needing one Redeemer, all redeemed by the one sacrifice, all members of the same family, -an one in the 'Cosmic Christ.