God told Jonah to go to Nineveh on an unpleasant errand. He would not go.
He thought to get away from his duty by putting to sea.
With pack under his arm, I find him on his way to Joppa, a seaport. He
goes down among the shipping, and says to the men lying around on the
docks: “Which of these vessels sails today?”
A sailor answers: “Yonder is a vessel going to Tarshish. I think, if you
hurry, you may get on board her.”
Jonah steps on board the rough craft, asks how much the fare is, and
pays it. Anchor is weighed, sails are hoisted, and the rigging begins to
rattle in the strong breeze of the Mediterranean.
Joppa is an exposed harbor, and it does not take long for a vessel to
get out on the broad sea. The sailors like what they call a “spanking
breeze,” and the plunge of the vessel from the crest of a tall wave is
exhilarating to those who are at home on the deep.
But the strong breeze becomes a gale--the gale a hurricane. The
affrighted passengers ask the captain if he ever saw any thing like this
before. He answers:
“Oh, yes. This is nothing.”
Mariners are slow to admit danger to landsmen.
But, after a while, “crash!” goes the mast, and the vessel pitches so far
“a-beam’s-end” that there is a fear she will not be righted. The captain
answers few questions, but orders the throwing out of boxes and bundles
and so much of the cargo as they can get at.
At last, the captain confesses there is but little hope, and he tells
the passengers they had better begin praying. It is seldom that a sea
captain is an Atheist. He knows there is a God, for he has seen Him at
every point of latitude and longitude between Sandy Hook and Queenstown.
Captain Moody, commanding the Cuba, of the Cunard line, at Sunday service
led the music and sang like a Methodist.
The captain of this Mediterranean craft, having set the passengers to
praying, goes around the vessel, examining it at every point. He descends
into the cabin to see whether, in the strong wrestling of the waves, the
vessel has sprung a leak, and he finds Jonah asleep.
Jonah had had a wearisome tramp, and had spent many sleepless nights
about questions of duty, and he is so sound asleep that all the thunder
of the storm and all the screaming of the passengers disturb him not.
The captain lays hold of him, and begins to shake him out of his
unconsciousness with the cry: “Don’t you see that we are all going to the
bottom? Wake up and go to praying, if you have any God to go to. What
meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God--if so be that God
will think upon us--that we perish not.”
The remainder of the story I will not rehearse, for you know it well. To
appease the sea, they threw Jonah overboard.
The devil takes a man’s money, and then sets him down in a poor landing
place. The Bible says Jonah paid his fare to Tarshish. But see him get
out. The sailors bring him to the side of the ship, lift him over “the
guards,” and let him drop with a loud splash into the waves. He paid his
fare all the way to Tarshish, but he did not get the worth of his money.
Neither does any one who turns his back on his duty and does that which
is not right.
The worst sinner on shipboard, considering the light he had, was Jonah.
He was a member of the Church, while they were heathen. The sailors
were engaged in their lawful calling--following the sea. The merchants
on board, I suppose, were going down to Tarshish to barter. But Jonah,
notwithstanding his Christian profession, was flying from duty. He was
sound asleep in the cabin. Oh, how could the sinner sleep?
If Jonah had been told, one year before, that any heathen sea captain
would ever waken him to a sense of danger, he would have scoffed at the
idea; but here it is done. So now--men in strangest ways are aroused from
spiritual stupor.
If, instead of sleeping, Jonah had been on his knees confessing his sins
from the time when he went on board the craft, I think God would have
saved him from being thrown overboard. But he woke up too late. The
tempest is in full blast, the sea is lashing itself into convulsions,
and nothing will stop it now but the overthrow of Jonah. So Jonah was
cast overboard.