ten righteous souls vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. But while all were agreed in wickedness, and all pursuing their own ways -the idolaters crowding to their temple feast, the merchants to their gainful traffic, the pleasure seekers to their sensual indulgences-one solitary man enters by one of the city gates, and anon his voice is heard, and one short sentence is uttered by his lips, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And now the passers-by stop their hurried course, and the enquiry is sounded from one to another, Who is this? and some, perhaps, bid him to be silent, while some in mockery would have him cry on, or yet cry louder-but others have heard of that great marvel from a distant shore, that a Hebrew-one supposed to be a prophet of Jehovah-had been cast from the ship into the sea, and after three days was seen alive, and declared he had spent these hours in a living grave, deep in the bowels of the ocean. And then came others yet telling, this is he-which he himself confirmed. And now what struggling and trembling-what stirrings of fear-what convictions rush into the minds of the multitude, that this man's God must be Jehovah! For who else could raise the tempest, detect the culprit, convert the heathen sailors, and deliver his erring servant from his grave in the whale's belly? And now he stands amongst them, "Jonas is a sign to the Ninevites." They hear, receive, believe, and having seen that in judgment God remembers mercy, and spares even while he scourges, they are encouraged to perceive forbearance in the message by the risen prophet, they mark that there is a pause before the threatened overthrow, and "they turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands," for, say they, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" If we have read with interest of the conversion of the sailors, and of the change of mind in Jonah, what will be the kindling of our hearts, while we meditate for a moment upon the royal mandate of the King of Nineveh.

And all was the result of faith. Who can calculate the importance of that word which follows Jonah's preaching-" So the people believed God." As His prophet had spoken, as the simple message declared, so they believed. Here are no subterfuges, no excuses, no hesitatings-"So they believed;" and they received it not as the word of a man, but as the word of Jehovah "They believed God." And thence sprang all the fruits of faith, humblings, fastings, turning from sin to holiness-and this both individually and nationally. What a sight must this hitherto luxurious city have presented! "In that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth." (Is. xxii. 12.) And instead of a girdle was a rent; and instead of well-set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty." (Is. iii. 24.) For the Lord had sent such a sound into the streets of the city, and such a trembling into the hearts of all men, from the king to the peasant, that their "feasts were turned into mourning, and their songs into lamentation, as the mourning of an only son." (Amos viii. 10.) For "who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not?"

Ah! Christian reader, and do you not know the meaning of those few words, "Who can tell?" Have you ever, burdened and sick at heart under a sense of sin, sought unto your God crying out, If I perish I will perish at the foot of the cross, for "who can tell" whether the Lord will not accept even me, that I perish not? Are you a parent, and have you ever watched some poor prodigal child, following him with your tears and prayers from shore to shore? What has kept your hope alive, but the thought "Who can tell" if the Lord may not even yet meet and bless my wayward child? Have you, during anxious days and sleepless nights, watched beside the sick bed of a beloved friend or relative? What has sustained your spirit, and encouraged your all but fainting hope? Have you not tried every suggested remedy,

with the feeling for "Who can tell” but this may bring the cure?

If, then, you can realize this prop to sinking hopes, oh, look at the million of precious souls in Nineveh -see them with downcast eye and bended knee, tracing out a ray of mercy in the respite of forty days, and hear them sobbing forth the hope to which the heart yet clings-" Who can tell, if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?"

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Reader, is God less gracious than his creatures dare to hope? Some might say he is, and that his ministers declare that many who hope for mercy do not, will not find it. But how is The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing." (Prov. xiii. 4.) "The expectation of the wicked shall perish." (Prov. x. 28.) But was it thus with the Ninevites? Did they hold their sins in one hand, and try to grasp mercy in the other? Did they employ one hand to draw in the cord of vanity, and the cart rope of sin-(Is. v. 18.)—and think to be drawn with cords of love to pardon and salvation with the other hand? They had not so learned the character and purposes of the true God. "God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way." And this was "an acceptable day to the Lord. Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward." (Is. lviii. 6, 8.) "And God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not." For "have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live? I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God." (Ezek. xviii. 23, 32.) Here, then, is warning and encouragement to the chief of sinners.

Pleasure - loving, God - forgetting sinner, look at Nineveh and tremble. Trembling, mourning, penitent sin

ner, look at Nineveh, and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh. God sent them his buried, but living prophet - they believed and were saved. God has not spared his only Son, but delivered him up for you. He has raised Him from the dead, that your faith and hope might be in God. And now he is exalted as a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance and remission of sins to poor Ninevite sinners, yea, the chief. "I am he that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. (Rev. i. 18.) And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." (Rev. xxii. 12.)

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Oh! may the heathens in Nineveh not rise up in judgment against Christian Gentiles, but may all who shall read these few observations acknowledge as their own blessed experience, "They repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here."

The story of Jonah affords a proof of that saying, a bad man could not have written the Bible, and a good man would not. For if a godly man had been asked to narrate the story of Jonah, would he not, in all probability, have closed his tale where we last left the prophet? Penitent, humbled, experienced, and so honoured of his heavenly master, that at the delivery of his message the king and the people, as with one heart and one voice, bowed down before the true God, and sought him as their Lord and Master. But the Bible is truth. It not only tells us a part of the truth, but the whole truth. And what confidence and encouragement does the child of God draw, from seeing in Scripture the long-suffering of Jehovah towards his rebellious, backsliding servants. He finds the Lord's people have ever experienced the same temptations to which he is prone to yield, and each and all have had to say with tears, "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant.' (Ps. cxix. 176.)

Where the grace of God enters a man's heart, it brings in new principles, new motives, new desires, new fears. But the old man is just what it was before. The man who is by

nature timid and fearing may have grace to go boldly through persecution for Christ's sake, but the timidity of his character is not changed. And while from a sense of duty, and constrained by love to his Master, he would meet the sorest danger, yet, in some trifling incident in his life, he would tremble and fear, even as heretofore. Hence the incessant need of watchfulness and self-distrust; and hence, too, the conflict in the believer, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members." (Rom. vii. 23.) Jonah was by nature a selfish man. He was more anxious for his own credit as a prophet, than for the salvation of souls. He cared more for man's estimation of himself and of his office, than for God's approval. He preferred his own exaltation to his master's glory-his own present ease to the eternal blessedness of his fellow-sinners. "Therefore,"

he says, "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."

"A double-minded man is unstable

in all his ways." At one moment Jonah is praying, at another moment murmuring-asking for deliverance, then crying, "O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." One day preaching in the streets of the city, the next day "he went out of the city, and there made him a booth." Only in one point is there consistency in poor, wayward Jonah -his love of ease. And by this his besetting sin, the God of all grace would, in his providence, teach his rebellious servant. "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." Yes, He who knew what was in man, knew well, that a little bodily ease, a little proof of favour, a little mark that he was owned and honoured as a prophet, would gratify this self-loving man, "So Jonah was exceeding glad of

the gourd." And here he "sat" in pride of heart, with curious interest, "to see what would become of the city." But he that exalteth himself shall be abased, and only them that honour God will he honour. Many may say (as was once said to the writer of these lines, by one who professed himself an infidel,) 66 What more can we want? we come into no misfortune like other men, we have more than heart can wish." Yet the poor godless man may be exceeding glad of the gifts of a bountiful God, whose love he knows not, whose hand he marks not! "These are the ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase in riches." But if Jonah is throngh all his rebellings, through all his self-indulgence, yet a child, he shall be chastened and scourged-his sin shall bring its punishment, and his own self-love shall be his monitor. And while he is angry for the withering of his gourd, which was not his own, for which he "laboured not, neither made it to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night," God will shew him, how much more He, the former, the preserver, the upholder of the multitudes in Nineveh, should " spare that great city,” and not only the men, women, and children, but even "the much cattle" also, whose lives were of more value in their Maker's sight than the green weed which grew up in a night and perished in a night over the prophet's head.

Reader, the story of Jonah is completed, and how affecting are the lessons which are spread before us in this short portion of sacred Scripture.

1st, Seek to know God.

2nd, Seek to know yourself. Who is the God you profess to serve? Can you hold the credentials of his service in one hand, and the friendship of the world in the other? Can you take up His religion, and lay it aside when you please? Can you obey his voice, or disobey, as may suit you, and yet have his favour, and reckon yourself his servant? Ah! my fellow-sinner, be not deceived! for though Satan may deceive you, and though your neighbours may "speak with flattering lips, and with a double

heart," though you may try to hide your sin and unfaithfulness by concealing it beneath the mask of Christian liberty, and perhaps even arraign the providential dealings of your God, as if the present were not the time nor the place for professing his name, yet be sure your sin shall find you out, and you shall have to learn the character of Him who has called you, while his waves and his billows "Be not decompass you about. ceived, God is not mocked." "His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men." "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth." And poor, mourning, weeping, penitent, heart-stricken believer, does your spirit tell you that you are thus worshipping your God? Then read the character of your pardoning God, sparing even the cattle of Nineveh,

IT may appear that the subject proposed to be treated in this article is out of place in this Magazine. In a journal intended for Christian readers, and appealing to Christian sympathies, a deprecation of immoral works of fiction may be thought superfluous, since to minds really imbued with evangelical principles such books must necessarily be rejected with contempt or abhorrence. But as it is part of the plan of this periodical occasionally to address the young, and as it is the duty of every public writer, however humble, to lift an indignant voice against whatever has a tendency to deteriorate the national morals, we have thought a few observations on this subject, might properly be introduced into these pages.

We are by no means disposed to indulge in a sweeping censure of everything in the shape of fictitious narrative; for, by so doing, we should be declaiming against some of the noblest productions of literary art. The line between right and wrong in this case, is not so very difficult to be fixed, as it may at first appear. The "Paradise Lost" is undoubtedly a work of fiction; but can any one imagine that its effects on the reader's mind are at all similar to those produced by some modern novels, whose pages teem with frivolity and sensuality, and whose scenes alternate between the inanities of fashionable life and the excesses of low brutality?

That works of fiction should have so great an attraction for ordinary readers, may arise from the very nature of our moral constitution. Linked to our fellows by the mysterious laws of association, we cannot but feel deeply interested in the thoughts and deeds of beings of like passions with ourselves. When we read of persons brought into difficulties amid which we ourselves have struggled, or with which we, as partakers of the common lot, are threatened, we eagerly pursue the course of the narrative, to learn how they were escaped or overcome. Hence, the mere abstract statement of truth does not, generally speaking, make

that deep impression on the mind which arises from its exhibition in a personified form; and thus we find that parables have in all ages been used as a means of instruction. As in the case of David, a man may often see in another the heinousness of a crime which his own passions prevent him from seeing in himself. But so great is our power of self-deception, that we often cannot be brought to make the application, unless there be some interpreter at hand to declare, "Thou art the man!" and it may therefore be doubted whether in ordinary cases much effect is produced in the conscience by fictions which cannot be made to have an individual application. For this reason we think that authentic biographies are the safer guides in the perplexities of life; for we have here all the interest of fiction without its falsehood, and the deductions drawn from the facts may be relied on as being the result of actual experience.*

When, therefore, works of fiction appeal only to the curiosity, that lively and restless sentiment ever craving for indulgence, it seems to us that their utility in this respect ceases: for we cannot think it worthy of a rational and thoughtful being to occupy himself in tracing the progress of a narrative which, having lured him through volume after volume, without repaying his toil by one ennobling sentiment, or one scene having a real tendency to purify the heart, leaves him at last with a consciousness of having wasted time that might have been better employed than in threading mazes which return upon themselves, than in lifting veils which conceal nothing worth seeing.

But when works of this kind not only fail to urge to virtue, but absolutely teach vice, their mischievous

*We will just mention a few cheap books of religious biography which at this moment occur to us, equal to romances in interest:-the lives of Colonel Gardiner, David Brainerd, Henry Martyn, and Claudius Buchanan, with the autobiographies of Bunyan, John Newton, Henry Stilling, Christian Godfrey Assmann, and Thomas Platter.