one was to put away his sin, restore his ill-gotten gain, abstain from violence, and at the same time humble himself by all tokens of grief. The King himself set the example by throwing aside his royal purple, fringed, and embroidered robe; and not only were man and woman, but the very animals, to be clothed in sackcloth (it is the Eastern custom still in times of mourning to shave the horses' tails and manes, and hang sackcloth on them); and men and women, children, animals and all, fasted from food and drink for a long day of humiliation and prayer. And the merciful God had pity on their ready faith and fear, and destroyed them not. So it is that we know, when war, or famine, or sickness threatens us, that timely repentance, fast and prayer, such as Joel taught us to use, may prevail with God to turn away the evil; and so it is too that our Lord bids us take an awful lesson from the Ninevites, when He says (Matt. xii. 41): “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here." "This generation" did not only mean the unbelieving Jews around our Lord. It means all who have lived since His coming. The Greater than Jonah is still here. He has given a greater sign than even Jonah's preservation, and if we will not repent or believe, we shall be assuredly worse than these heathen Ninevites.

:

But it displeased Jonah 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.

Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.

Then said he LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?

So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.

But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.

And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

COMMENT. It had not been with pity, or as a warning, that Jonah proclaimed the peril of Nineveh. He hated the city that he probably knew, and certainly feared, would be the ruin of his own people Israel. He had hoped to see it fall, perhaps by brimstone and fire like Sodom and Gomorrah; and when he found that the repentance of the people was accepted, he was absolutely angry, and complained to God, declaring that it was because he knew God was merciful and forgiving, and repented, or changed His purpose, that he had tried to escape to Tarshish, lest he should merely threaten and not see the punishment. He used God's own words through Joel on the effect and hope of fasting and humiliation. God's answer was very short. "Doest thou well to be angry?” And perhaps Jonah did not understand its drift, for he seems to have thought the judgment on Nineveh was still coming-perhaps that the repentance would soon be forgotten, and that the people would return to their wicked ways, so that he might feast his eyes upon their destruction. So he went out to the east side of the city and made himself a bower, or booth, there to watch for the fall of Nineveh; and there, as one of the teachings that God prepares for us all in nature, a gourd—as our translation calls it, but more properly a palmchrist-grew up and sheltered him. This palmchrist is a very handsome plant, which grows up very fast; it is sometimes

to be found in gardens here, and is called the Ricinus, or castor-oil plant. It has beautiful reddish leaves, one growing on each branch, each in seven long pointed divisions, and whitish flowers, which leave oil-bearing nuts behind them, only our summers are not long enough nor hot enough to ripen these, nor to allow the plant to come to the huge size to which it rapidly shoots up in warm countries. Under this tree Jonah rejoiced, till in one night it rapidly withered, as palmchrists often do under the attacks of a small black caterpillar, which in a few hours brings down their beautiful leaves to nothing but the bare ribs. Then came a dry, scorching, sultry wind and burning sun; and the prophet in his bower was fevered with anguish, and bitterly lamented the sheltering leaves. Doest thou well to be angry? asked the Divine Voice; and again he was not afraid to declare that his anger and grief for the beautiful, stately, refreshing plant, so sadly withered and killed in the midst of all its glory, was right and just. Then came the short lesson. Jonah grieved for the senseless palmchrist, the growth of a night without labour or toil. Might not God, then, well have pity on the great and noble city, where, if there were many stained with sin, there were 120,000 little innocent children too young to know their right hand from their left, and likewise much cattle, which must share any misery sent on it? What a picture of God's mercy and pity, and readiness to spare, we carry away from these few words! Do they not teach us how hateful our anger and malice or cruelty must be in His sight? And if He had compassion on the cattle in Nineveh, must He not be displeased if we care little for putting an animal to pain for our amusement or over-fatiguing it for our convenience or pleasure, or letting it suffer hunger by our carelessness? Never let us forget the "much cattle" of Nineveh.

And another lesson we must take home is, that God's justice is not always our justice. We see things done wrong, and we expect the punishment; but after all the wrong-doer goes on and prospers. Or we see some fault forgiven by a parent or master much more easily than we think right. Let us remember how little we know of the real deserts of the persons, how little we can guess at their sorrow or at God's dealings with their conscience, and let us watch ourselves, lest what we think zeal for the right and for His justice should be only the wish to see our words come true.

LESSON LXI.

THE REIGNS OF ZACHARIAH AND SHALLUM.

B.C. 773-2 KINGS XV. 8-15; HOSEA vii. 1-7.

In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

When I would have healed Israel,

Then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered,

And the wickedness of Samaria :

For they commit falsehood; and the thief cometh in,

And the troop of robbers spoileth without.

And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their

wickedness:

Now their own doings have beset them about;

They are before my face.

They make the king glad with their wickedness,

And the princes with their lies.

As an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened.

In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine;

He stretched out his hands with scorners.

For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie

in wait :

And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

And the rest of the acts of Zachariah, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

This was the word of the LORD which he spake unto Jehu, saying, Thy sons shall sit on the throne of Israel unto the fourth generation. And so it came to pass.

Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in Samaria.

For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

And the rest of the acts of Shallum, and his conspiracy which he made, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

COMMENT.-After Jeroboam's long and prosperous reign there must have been a time of confusion without a king for eleven years, since Jeroboam died in the twenty-seventh year of. Azariah, or Uzziah, in Judah, and his son Zachariah did not begin to reign till the thirty-eighth year of the same reign. He was the last of the house of Jehu. In Jehoahaz, Joash and Jeroboam, had been fulfilled the promise that Jehu's sons to the fourth generation should reign, and now the equally certain doom of idolatry and debauchery was coming upon Zachariah, the last of his race.

What Zachariah's reign was like, and what his end, we can gather from the prophets. Amos (vi. 3—6) speaks of the luxury that no doubt continued :—

Ye that put far away the evil day,

And cause the seat of violence to come near ;

That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their

couches,

And eat the lambs out of the flock,

And the calves out of the midst of the stall;

That chant to the sound of the viol,

And invent to themselves instruments of music, like David;
That drink wine in bowls,

And anoint themselves with the chief ointments.

Such had been Zachariah's luxurious youth in the court of his father. He must have had a time of adversity in which he might have learnt better things, and then, if we may venture so to explain the words of Hosea, some healing was permitted to Israel, in the restoration of her lawful king; but the sin of Ephraim and Samaria only grew more apparent; falsehood, theft within houses, and bold, open robbery by marauders prevailed unchecked, just as they do in any country where there has for a time been no government, and then where a weak, self-indulgent king has been set up. The sinful never considered that their God remembered their misdeeds, and that their own evil deeds were like enemies besetting them and bringing about their ruin. The king himself rejoiced in the wicked