SERMON XXXI.

NATIONAL REPENTANCE, THE MEANS OF

NATIONAL PRESERVATION.

Fast Day Sermon.

JONAH II. 10.

AND GOD SAW THEIR WORKS, THAT THEY TURNED FROM THEIR EVIL WAY; AND GOD REPENTED OF THE EVIL THAT HE HAD SAID THAT HE WOULD DO UNTO THEM, AND HE DID IT not.

SUCH is the Prophet's description of the repentance of the Ninevites; "they turned from their evil way.” And such was the effectiveness of that repentance in averting the Divine judgments which were impending, "GOD repented HIM of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not."

We are not informed in what the guilt of the Ninevites especially consisted, or whether they were peculiarly criminal in certain particulars, which might have been regarded as their national sins. Nor are we told what punishment GOD had determined to inflict. The earthquake, or the sword, pestilence or famine, any of these might have been the weapon which the ALMIGHTY was about to draw forth from the armoury of His terrors.

But such was the general corruption of this mighty capital, that its wickedness came up before GOD. The long suffering of Heaven was well nigh exhausted; the hour of vengeance was approaching. And yet even still GOD remembers compassion; even still mercy rejoices against judgment. He thought with pity upon the innocents of Nineveh, in which were "more than six score thousand persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left; and also much cattle." He arrests the uplifted arm of the destroying Angel, and suspends the threatened judgment upon the issue of another trial. "The Word of the LORD came to Jonah, the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." The Prophet arose, and went, in obedience to the celestial mandate. "And

he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Such a denunciation from the lips of a Jewish stranger seems indeed but little calculated powerfully to impress that proud metropolis, whose circuit was three days' journey, her inhabitants so numerous as to comprise six score thousand unconscious infants. In a city much larger' than Babylon, the voice of this strange threatener may seem but too likely to be drowned in the hum of business, or the whirl of dissipation, or the giddy laugh of mockery. His words, we may think, could have been heard by but a few of that innumerable crowd, and to those few they must have seemed but idle tales, the crazy conceptions of a demented enthusiast. But it was not so. His message was the Word of the LORD, and that allpotent Word had free course, and was glorified. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown:" these πολυ μείζων Βαβυλωνος. Strabo.

1

awful tones reverberated through the broad thoroughfares and private ways. Instinct with some more than magic influence, they made every ear to tingle, and every heart to palpitate with terror. The effect was as universal as it was penetrative, for it pervaded all classes, from the very humblest even to the occupant of the imperial throne. By the interior evidence of a spiritual sensation all felt alike that the message was from GOD HIMSELF. "The people of Nineveh believed GOD, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the King of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes; and he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh (by the decree of the King and his nobles), saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water; but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands."

The Ninevites believed that GOD was about to destroy their city; let us observe the means employed by them to avert the overhanging destruction.

First, "they proclaimed a fast." By a voluntary act of self-infliction, they publicly testified that they had sinned, and acknowledged that they were deserving of punishment. They judged themselves, and guilty was the verdict brought in before the court of conscience. The outward affliction of their flesh by fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes, was but the exhibition in act of the sorrow, and contrition, and humiliation, which filled their spirit. It was a practical confession that they were not only unworthy of those blessings

which they had so long abused, and of some of which by way of specimen as food and raiment) they now voluntarily denied themselves, but also meet to suffer the judgments which were threatened. It was the expression, in the language of action, of the "inward fast of the mind" which our Homily defines as a “sorrowfulness of heart, detesting and bewailing our sinful doings." Such was the significance of fasting in times long anterior, and in places foreign, to the Mosaic institute. A significance in part derived from the natural correspondence between such external acting, and mental humiliation; in part from the primitive tradition that the first trial of man's obedience was a sort of fasting imposed on him almost as soon as he was created. "Of these thou mayest eat,” saith St. Chrysostom, "of this thou shalt not eat, was a sort of fast prescribed."

Of this due connexion of external performances with appropriate internal feelings, we have an example n this fast of Nineveh. “Drunkenness and gluttony shook the city, when it stood fair and flourishing; but the fast, when it shook, and was about to fall, established its standing. Forthwith you might see them all run unto fasting, both men and women, servants and masters, rulers and people, children and old men ; nor was even the irrational nature of beasts privileged from this service. Every where was seen sackcloth, every where ashes, every where lamentation and mourning; and a strange sight it was to see, what the purple and diadem could not do, that sackcloth and ashes prevailed to do, and delivered the city from their dangers."

But further, the Ninevites prayed; they "cried

mightily unto GOD." The spirit of fervent supplication was outpoured, so that their corrupt and mighty city was converted into one vast temple. The fire of devotion kindled every soul, from the humblest up to the nobles and the king himself. Their external developments of sorrow, their fasting, their sitting in sackcloth and ashes, were but faint shadows of the deep emotions which agitated their inmost spirit. They sought not to excuse or palliate what was past. themselves to be verily guilty; but unto God they deprecated the punishment which they acknowledged to be justly their due.

They confessed crying mightily

Nor yet were they content with prayer and fasting. These were but the first movements of their repentance. "God saw their works that they turned from their evil way." The same Divine influence which disclosed to them the sword of the ALMIGHTY unsheathed against them, taught them that repentance was the only possible means of safety. "See we what it was that dissolved that indeclinable wrath; was it fasting only and sackcloth? That cannot be said; but the change of their whole life;-and GoD saw their works. What works? that they fasted? that they were clothed with sackcloth? Neither of these doth he mention, but saith that every one returned from his evil ways, and GOD repented of the evil that He had said HE would do unto them."

Such was the penitence of Nineveh; such its power to alter the resolve of the OMNIPOTENT. GOD repented of the evil that He had said HE would do unto them, and He did it not. How wholly irreconcileable is this striking history with that cold but too prevalent philosophy which excludes from the direction of this

1 Hom. iii. Ad Pop. Ant.