---

A very awful proof of human depravity, in God's own people, is recorded in the case of Jonah. If Jonah's corruption is very conspicuous, the mercy of God is yet more so, both as it respects Jonah and the Ninevites. See what absolute obedience God requires of all His prophets and people in general This prophecy teaches us that God's dispensations may vary, and be different from His threatening, without any change taking place in His nature or purpose. God so wisely governs His kingdom that even in His very punishment of the rebellions of His people He investeth them with honour, so little is His goodness dependent on human worthiness. Here we find Jonah exceedingly displeased, very angry indeed, at God's merciful conduct towards Nineveh. He reasons with God against His merciful conduct towards that great city. In the heat of his angry impatience he wants to die. God rebukes Jonah's impatience in gentle terms, and the prophet seems to have conceived some hope that God for his sake might yet destroy the city; therefore he fled from it and waited the issue in painful suspense. He made a booth, and rested under its shade, and to make it more comfortable God covered it with a gourd. But as Jonah's grief had been carnal and rebellious, so now his joy was merely sensual, the excess of which it behoved the Almighty to curb. Therefore God suddenly destroyed the gourd. Doctrine — That as mankind in general are apt, like Jonah, to delight to sit under the shadow of a gourd, God hath very wisely, and in great love, ordained a worm at the root of every gourd of creature delight and comfort; by which means He drives His people to a more excellent dwelling-place, and more certain dependence.

1. Point out some things in which people are apt to promise themselves great pleasure and satisfaction, but which in the event evidently appear to be no better than Jonah's withered gourd. Such as riches, self-indulgence in food, children, human esteem, connections in social life. Trust in mere outward ordinances. Too high expectations even from relation to a gospel church.

2. At the root of every gourd there is a canker worm, whose envenomed bite smiteth it that it withereth. Apply to the above-mentioned human pleasures. God will by no means have creatures dignified with any dignity besides that with which He Himself is pleased to invest them. Now point out a certain antidote against the poison of this canker-worm which is the thing to be attended to.

(1) The vanity, emptiness, and uncertainty of worldly riches.

(2) All temporal honours vanish in the grave, where distinctions are no longer known.

(3) Children are certain cares, but very uncertain comforts. Cease, then, O believer, cease from temporary gourds. Call back thy wandering affections from transitory objects, and sit down under the "shadow of thy only Lord and Saviour."

(John Macgowan.)

---

---

KJV: But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.

WEB: But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine, so that it withered.