The phrase in our text is a quotation, slightly altered, from Psalm
xxxi. 6: 'I hate them that regard lying vanities; but I trust in the
Lord.' The alteration in the form of the verb as it occurs in Jonah
expresses the intensity of regard, and gives the picture of watching
with anxious solicitude, as the eyes of a servant turned to his master,
or those of a dog to its owner. The world is a very hard master, and
requires from its servants the concentration of thought, heart, and
effort. We need only recall the thousand sermons devoted to the
enforcement of 'the gospel of getting on,' which prosperous worldlings
are continually preaching. A chorus of voices on every side of us is
dinning into the ears of every young man and woman the necessity for
success in life's struggle of taking for a motto, 'This one thing I do.'
How many a man is there, who in the race after wealth or fame, has flung
away aspirations, visions of noble, truthful love to life, and a hundred
other precious things? Browning tells a hideous story of a mother
flinging, one after another, her infants to the wolves as she urged her
sledge over the snowy plain. No less hideous, and still more maiming,
are the surrenders that men make when once their hearts have been filled
with the foolish ambitions of worldly success. Let us fix it in our
minds, that nothing that time and sense can give is worth the price that
it exacts.
'It is only heaven that can be had for the asking;
It is only God that is given away.'
All sin is slavery. Its yoke presses painfully on the neck, and its
burden is heavy indeed, and the rest which it promises never comes.