The Prayer of Terror, and the Sleep of Sorrow, in the Storm

“Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them; but Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.” — Jonah i. 5. “■Lord, in trouble have they visited Thee; they poured out a prayer when Thy chastening was upon them.” — IsAiAH xxvi. 16. “And when He was come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow.” — Luke xxii. 45.

IN last chapter we were engaged in considering the prophet, not only as overtaken with punishment himself, but as a source of calamity to others. We saw in this that God was righteous, and Jonah guilty — that God was righteous, not merely in pursuing Jonah, but in involving others in the calamity which was sent forth immediately for Jonah’s punishment, while Jonah was guilty in entailing distress upon those who sailed with him. Let us watch against carrying about with us a cloud of God’s anger, that may break upon ourselves and all round about us. The Lord our God in such a case can easily clear Himself, but He will not hold us guiltless. If the man is reprobated who, knowingly bearing in his body a most virulent and infectious disease, ultroneously mingles with society on all hands, and extends the plague to multitudes, why is it that in moral and spiritual things the same sharp and righteous judgment is not pronounced? “One sinner destroyeth much good” (Eccles. ix. 18). But one backsliding saint may destroy even more good, and originate even more evil. For, on the one hand, God pursues with much sharpness and severity His erring people. He can let His enemies alone; but He must, in very love, chastise and correct His sons, — even at the risk of judgment that may swiftly involve many around them, and, it may be, terminate to many their day of grace and probation. He must chastise His children: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos iii. 2). A sinner, therefore, in your home or household, may not so swiftly nor sorely be dealt with as a backsliding and rebellious son. And on the other hand, as God’s rio-hteous chastenings in this case are more immediate and severe, so also are Satan’s malignity and malice: for, an unconverted sinner he has always in his power and when he will he can blind him and soothe him into deeper insensibility than ever. But when he has advantage over a saint ensnared in sin, he knoweth that “his time is short,” his opportunity precarious, and his work by no means easy; therefore is he strung to the utmost pitch of subtlety and power, “having great wrath,” and drawing forth on such a case his uttermost resources. Hence, whether from Satan’s devouring malice, or God’s correcting chastisements, a saint in rebellion is, in some respects, a more dangerous inmate of a house, or congregation, or community, than a sinner — more likely to prove a centre of danger, a source of calamity to many.

What a thought is this! How impressively ought it to tell upon the hearts of believers! And with what watchfulness and jealousy ought it to inspire them! For, what can be more painful than to see the godly, through indwelling sin and indulged corruption, acting on the surrounding world, not as the lights thereof, not as the preserving salt thereof, the centres and sources of providential blessings and prolonged forbearance, prevailing to ameliorate the condition, and prolong the probation, and delay the condemnation of the ungodly, — but as swift provocatives to wrath; no more binding up the hands of God from “His strange work” of indignation, but loosening the avalanche of Judgment, and entailing on many a swift destruction? Oh, how unutterably more desirable the position of Paul in the selfsame seas, and overtaken by the same “strong wind which breaketh the ships of Tarshish “! How different with Paul, in the prosecution of his ministry, from Jonah in fleeing from his! — not entailing danger, but deliverance:” And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship; for there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and idioiin I serve, saying. Fear not, Paul; thou must be

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brought before Caesar: and lo, God Itaili given thee all them that sail luith thee” (Acts xxvii. 22-24).

Believer! are you, in this respect, as Jonah; or as Paul? Are you, to others, a source of deliverance, or a source of danger? Is your company and neighbourhood dangerous, because you are provoking the forth-flash of the bolt of anger? Or is it truly to be desired? — according to what, while you are faithful to God, shall evermore be God’s faithfully fulfilled promise to you, “I will bless thee, and mahe thee a blessing.”

Let us proceed with the narrative. In the verse now before us, the fifth verse, the immediate conduct of the mariners is described — and the immediate conduct of Jonah, — under the storm.

I. The effect of the storm on the mariners.

They “were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them.”

1. We read, first, that “the mariners were afraid.” From this we learn that the storm was singularly violent, and the danger imminently great. Sailors are not speedily alarmed. They are proverbially brave and bold. But when even the crew themselves on this occasion were alarmed, we gather that the tempest was unusually terrific. God, indeed, employed no miracle in raising this storm; but having a special purpose to serve by it. He stamped upon it a special terror, that His power and will might be the more readily recognised as engaged in it. When we provoke a controversy with God, and constrain Him to send after us a prosecutor or pursuer. He can easily confer on His agent some mark of majesty or terror, — some insignia of special power, — some resistless tone or token, whereby we may be baffled in attempting to hide from ourselves the source of his commission. The Lord, the great Judge and Lawgiver, can clothe His officers with somewhat of His own delegated attributes, and compel us to recognise them as sent by HiTn.

2. The mariners “cried every man unto his god.” Their heathenism here displayed itself in their worship of many gods, every man praying to his own god: while the amount of religion

In the Storvi. ‘l’h

natural to the human mind comes to light in these poor heathen men. For there is in the bosom of every man by nature the conviction that there is a God; that there are at least superior beings, if not One Supreme. There is wrought into the inmost frame of our minds a conviction that we are dependent creatures; not our own masters, not gods unto ourselves. The consciousness of sin — and sin is just an attempt to be gods unto ourselves — is itself sufficient to testify to us of a God. Were our effort to be independent a calm, simple, strengthening thing, the proof might fail. But no man can consider his own feelings without being convinced that the attempt to be his own lord and master, to do just as he pleases, to be in subjection to no lord over his inmost will, to walk in the light of his own eyes — the attempt, in short, to be his own ruler, or his own god, is really a revolt against the deepest convictions in his soul; that it carries with it anything but rest, calmness, strength, and satisfaction; that, on the contrary, it has in it all the marks of a struggle, of an unsuccessful struggle; that he remains still restless, unsatisfied, struggling — struggling still in vain. The stronger his will is, the more is he doomed to feel that he cannot assert its supremacy; and circumstances outwardly conspire to aid the inward conviction. There is a power controlling all things, and not to be controlled by us. The will of man must break or bend; it cannot possibly reign supreme. The very restlessness — the very impatience of restraint or contradiction — which men so often exhibit against the allotments of Providence, is a confession that they feel themselves in the grasp of a power mightier than their own. Whether we bend in submission, meek and patient, or resist and defy, we are alike owning a superior power. We are constituted so as that we cannot help doing so. A knowledge, a feeling, an intuitive belief in a God, is one of the deepest principles created in our nature, and never extinguished.

Nor is it merely a superior power that we are by nature so profoundly convinced of, but a living and personal Being; and this profound conviction manifests itself in calling upon Him, as one who can exercise His power voluntarily, or refrain from exercising it. This knowledge of a God may be unattended to by multitudes, whether of heathens or of nominal Christians. For the most part, it lies buried under worldly security. Sensual

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indulgence seems to drive it farther and farther back into a region of conceahnent and slumber. The prosecution of worldly interests as the chief good tends more and more to impair its testimony. But it is never dislodged. Men may “not like to retain God in their knowledo-e;” but the knowledsre of a God abides within them still. Seasons of dansfer and terror call it forth to view; and the sudden prayer of alarm is the proof that even the most profane and profligate carry in their bosom the evidence of their righteous condemnation; when, not liking to retain God in their knowledge, they are “given over to a reprobate mind” for being unfaithful to the knowledge conferred upon them from the first (Rom. i. 28).

We learn, then, from the conduct of these heathens, how deeply rooted in human nature is the conviction of a God. But we learn also the great worthlessness of prayers wrung out under terror. There is inlaid in human nature a central assurance or conviction of a God. In the case of the ungodly it is allowed, for the most part, to lie utterly dormant and concealed. If imminent and appalling danger force out some alarmed manifestation of it in some excited cry to God for mercy or protection, there is really as little evidence of grace or virtue in such a prayer, as when the war-horse, in the instinct of self-preservation, rears in terror as the gleaming sword flashes round his head. The prayer that is acceptable to God is the prayer of faith, of calm confidence and reliance on the word and love and wisdom and power of a gracious and reconciled Father. Very different from this is the prayer extorted amidst the terrors of a storm from those with whom otherwise prayer is unknown. Such prayers have in them as little holiness or grace as the crash of the elements amidst which they mingle, or the instincts of animal life. They are prayers which a heathen may offer up — which these heathen mariners on this occasion offered. Alas! how much trust is often placed — and how groundlessly — on prayers presented where the terrors of Providence, acting on the mere instincts of nature, have forced out something like the appearance of religion! It is said of the children of Israel that, when the Lord “slew them, then they sought Him; they returned and inquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their Redeemer.” Under the constraint of afflictive dispensations and retributive judgments, they could not avoid calling God to their remembrance; and with much appearance of sorrow for their offence, and promise of better things, they seemed to return to their allegiance to the Lord, the King of Israel. They remembered their obligations to Him as their Redeemer and Deliverer — their high tower and their rock. Better feelings seemed for the time to gain the ascendancy; and, judged of by their conduct under these punishments and trials, they would seem to have been turned from the error of their ways to the living and the true God. But it is added by the Spirit, through whom holy men wrote as they were moved to put on record the melancholy narrative: “Nevertheless, they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His covenant” (Ps. lxxviii. 34-37). And what are the enormous majority of prayers extorted by the smart blow of affliction, or the sudden apparition of danger or of death? What are they but a “flattering” of God, and a telling of “lies” unto Him? In the near view of eternal woe, the sinner may make promises of any kind or to any amount; and no wonder though he should. To escape immediate and eternal ruin, no wonder though the most abject, submissive, servile resolutions should be formed. The alarmed wretch cringes at the feet of Omnipotence, and promises whatever conscience may demand or superstition may suggest, careless utterly for the time whether he have the prospect of fulfilling his promises or not. But does such a style of relio-ion or relio-ious exercise honour God? Or is it honourable to man? The God who is so addressed is not honoured as a holy, righteous, good and gracious Father; He is flattered, fawned upon as a tyrant, and cozened as a fool; while the worshipper himself, clutching at false arguments and coining false promises, if by any means he may avoid destruction, is clothing himself more abundantly with disgrace, and sinking his moral nature into deeper degradation. By

such worship God is robbed of His glory, and man of his manhood. Oh! there is no “glory to God,” no “peace on earth,” except through the great Advocate and Intercessor, and through the prayer of faith presented in His name. Through Him, and His infinitely perfect sacrifice, how manifestly does our God appear to us, as no terrific tyrant under whom we must

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cringe in abject servility? as no flexible fool whom we may flatter into a change of purpose to suit our convenience, or secure our impunity in sin. No: He is the God of infinite Love, giving up His Son to die for sinners. He is the God of infinite, inflexible Justice, subjecting His Son to death for sinners. It is an unspeakably righteous thing to pray to Him. It is to be in calm, deliberate, perfect resting in his righteousness and love in Jesus: — no fit of momentary fervour; no sentimental flash of feeling, drawn forth as by the loveliness and beauty of the heavens above; and no instinctive spasm of soul created as by the terror of the scene when all is changed, and storm and death seem to fly around: — but the passing over unto God, on the terms of an infinitely righteous and gracious covenant, of the whole inner man, to take up its rest in God, as a Father and a Friend — the Lord and King of the conscience, the Governor of heart and life! Ah! there is often an impetuous blasphemy in the prayers of the ungodly, when sudden danger or death first forces them to pray. Nothing then of the spirit of godliness, adoring the majesty of the Most High; — nothing of tender, mournful sorrow for sin, owning the righteousness of every punishment, however great, of every threatened blow, however terrible; — nothing of the meek submission that says, or essays to say, “Not my will, but Thine be done;” — nothing of the filial, unbounded trust which believes that in any case all shall be well, and says, “Though my house be not so with God, yet hath He made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” Oh, if these are some of the elements of true prayer, how offensive unto God must be many of those bowlings amidst danger, when the wild cry of terror dictates impetuously to God what He shall do! And in how many cases does the danger serve only to bring to light that original and instinctive knowledge of God which the wicked so wickedly suppress, till by such means it is forced into the light, and its existence discovered only to become the means of discovering also the righteous ground of their final condemnation! How solemnly do such considerations teach us that the time of health and quiet is the time for prayer; and that if we leave prayer to the time of danger or the approach of death, there may be wrung from us, in that case, some instinctive cry to God, that may serve merely the purposes of condemnation, and be only our own sealing of our own death-warrant for ever! “Behold, now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation,”

It is not meant to say that every believer, at the approach of appalling danger, will be able to pray with holy calmness, with undismayed and holy courage. He may, on the contrary, be overwhelmed by the thought of having speedily to appear before God in judgment. And every believer must know how insufficient he is in himself for maintaining the honour of God, and the honour of his own profession, in such a crisis. But it will be his earnest prayer that, in such circumstances and scenes, in which the raging selfishness and evil conscience of the ungodly are often so frightfully displayed, he may receive grace to manifest the superiority of the Christian’s character — to maintain the calmness of the Christian’s hope. It cannot be that, in such a case, holy trust can rise superior to terror without a conflict, a good fight of faith — the calm courage and believing confidence of the spirit surmounting and suppressing the unbelieving terror and distracted cowardice of the flesh. Every manifestation of Christian character is indeed a triumph; a triumph over precisely the very principles which rule supreme in the sinner. And hence, amidst scenes of sudden terror, a man’s Christianity may not be denied, though he cannot at once and immediately confront danger with a hero’s calmness. Nevertheless, Christianity inspires a calmness and a courage in the hour of danger, which nothing else can inspire. And every Christian ought to pray, that in the hour of danger his Christianity may triumph. We do not know through what scenes of unspeakable danger or distress it may yet be our lot to pass. We may have to witness — we may have to share — the overwhelming dangers of the tempest and the shipwreck. We may have to pass through that most searching of all ordeals, discovering, perhaps more intensely and correctly than almost any other, whether the conscience is still guilty, or the heart established in grace. It is for each of us to inquire whether there be a well-founded probability of our passing through such a scene, with anything like true peace to ourselves, and credit to the profession which as Christians we make. Soon may some such trial overtake us. With what lowly humility does it become us to think of it — to seek the grace that is sufficient!

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3. But we read further concerning these mariners, that “they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them.” Yes: “skin for skin; all that a man hath will he give for his life.”

Thus the infinite littleness and triflingness of all earthlypossessions is revealed. In such an hour, the heir of a hundred estates is on a level with the humblest peasant: the richest and the poorest meet together: the riches of the one must be tossed overboard: for the life of either is more — infinitely more than them all.

Why is not this habitually remembered? Why should it need storms, and tempest, and shipwreck, and threatened death, to remind reasonable beings that their souls are infinitely more precious than all earthly things? Why should men not notice this and act upon it, until God compels them, as in this case, to see it? He forces, in such circumstances, — He forces a sight of the uselessness of all worldly good. “Thou fool,” that lovest these things more than God, more than thy soul; if “this night thy soul shall be required of thee,” “whose shall these things be?” Were it not better to prefer thy life to them now, and sit loose to them ever henceforth? “The life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment.” “Wherefore spend ye your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not” — which must be thrown overboard — which must be parted with at last? Oh, rather “eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” Feed it not on husks. Prefer not perishing idols.

What will they do for thee in a dying hour? The cry to the physicians has been heard from the dying lips of the rich, “All my fortune for another day of life.” And “We could not prolong your life for another hour, though you gave us the wealth of worlds,” was the answer. Blessed they who have the pearl of great price! “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

II. But having considered the manner in which the mariners were afi’ected by the mighty tempest which the Lord sent out: let us inquire after the unhappy prophet who was the guilty occasion of this alarming calamity. While terror reigned on the

In the Stoinn. 79

decks, and the very mariners themselves were unmanned, strange to say, he formed a singular exception. “Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay, and was fast asleep.”

It has been customary with commentators to deal out very hard measure to Jonah; and it is an easy task. Nothing can be easier than to denounce his disobedience in fleeing from the presence of the Lord, and refusing His commission to Nineveh. And this has been done abundantly by many who have shown little real knowledge of Jonah’s actual position, and still less insight into his character. And, in particular, he has been much abused for being asleep during the storm; and his sleep has been spoken of as if it were the very acme or model of insensate spiritual stupidity and godless security and apathy. Alas! hov, little do such persons understand this singular man of God! We venture to say that had Jonah been distinguished for less sensibility, he would have been more likely to be awake than asleep. It was not insensate, secure, and slumberous apathy that lulled the prophet into this singular, and so curiously timed, and so very deep sleep. It was not because the things of God, and the will of God, and his relation to God, were topics of negligent or slight consideration with Jonah — but precisely the reverse.

Ah, how deeply agitated has this poor prophet — this frightened fugitive — been! Has it been costing him little care, think you, that he is on the footing of a disobedient servant, a self-banished son, with God? Have his thoughts been few, and slow, and calm, and easily arranged, and fully mastered? And has he been quite quiet in mind, and altogether self-possessed? Oh, very far from it. A thousand anxieties cut and harass his weary heart. The sore sense of all being wrong between him and his God; — the sad consciousness of being the victim of his own rebellion, and yet choosing to continue in it, a voluntary slave, disobedient knowingly; — the resignation of his ministry, a ministry so honourable, though difficult ;: — the loss of his native land, and such a land, Emmanuel’s land! — the dark future wrapt in gloom, having nothing to promise, and everything to threaten; — the countless fears and fightings with which, “in the multitude of his thoughts within him,” he must have been exercised, while in the multitude of these thoughts no “comforts of the Lord deliofhted” or relieved “his soul:” — these things must have cost

8o The Sleep of Sorrow

him an amount of anxiety and of mental excitement, that, working on a temperament like Jonah’s, naturally nervous, and sensitive to the very excess of irritation, must have worn him out both in body and in mind, till at last, as he ended his weary flight, and laid down his weary head in the hold of the ship, excited and now exhausted nature locked him fast in sleep. Discrimination is needed in judging of Scripture characters. And discrimination is needed — and charity — in judging one another among ourselves. Sorrow, not insensibility, shall account to a gracious Lord for

/ His disciples sleeping at Gethsemane’s gate. “He found them ) sleeping for sorrow” (Luke xxii. 45). May He not graciously accept the same explanation of Jonah’s deep sleep, while tempest and terror reigned around?

But while a more charitable account may thus be given of the prophet’s deep sleep, it does not hinder that we should see in it the deplorable effects of being overtaken in a state of disobedience to God. Jonah sleeping in the storm reminds us that the officers of God’s justice may be on the track of the fugitive, and hemming him in on every side; and he ignorant that they are let loose against him. He, in fact, may be the very last to suspect that they are already in pursuit.

O sinner! the bolt may be almost on the wing that is to pierce your heart. The tempest may be at its very height which is to engulf you. The pestilence may be gathering up its chiefest virulence to discharge into your body, and reduce it to a putrid mass of corruption: and in your prayerless and ungodly estate you may be locked in deep sleep of spirit. How can you tell but substantially this may be your very case now, if you have never yet entered into peace and fellowship with God? To be verging into the imbecility of second childhood, or to be nearing the grave, without knowing it, is a melancholy picture. “Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not.” But, for God to be gathering around you the fuel and flame by which to burn down your self-complacency and your refuges of lies, and to be setting fire to them, and still you not knowing it, — this is indeed alarming. Such a thing is, however, but too possible in the case of those who are still neglecting the question of their peace with God. “Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the Lord, He against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in His ways, neither were they obedient unto His law. Therefore He hath poured upon him the fury of His anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart” (Isa. xlii. 24, 25).

Even so. The rage of the tempest alarms others, while he for whom it rages is asleep.