in Holy Trinity Cathedral By Bishop J. Curtis at Mattins, August 11
WANT to bring before you today the Book of Jonah and suggest to you as many commentators. do that here the revelation of God's love reaches a pitch unsurpassed in the Old Testament. It is written as was the Book of Job when problems were beginning to worry the Israelites. A psalmist might say "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread" but the Book of Job was written nevertheless to discuss the big unsolved ships problem of why the righteous suffer as they often do.
The problem the Book of Jonah wants to suggest an answer to is "What does God really think about the heathen, the oppressors of Israel?"
Chapter 2. Here Jonah in the great fish prays to God and God hears him and he is delivered again on to the dry land. We have many portions in the Psalms which show us the yearning of Israel in captivity for deli verance and her gratitude when deliverance comes. "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then were we like unto them that dream, then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with joy; then said they among the heathen the Lord hath done great things for them—yea the Lord hath done great things for us already whereof we rejoice" (Ps. 126, 1-4) Israel is brought back and given the opportunity once more to deliver her message of God's love anq forgiveness to sinful man, Nineveh Repents Hi Chapter 3. The second time Jonah is sent to preach to Nineveh and this time he goes. He goes a day's journey into the heart of the great city and cries to the sinful people "yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed" and from what follows we can see how he exulted in his message of doom on these persecutors of the people of God. But, wonder of wonders, the people of Nineveh believe God and repent; the king puts out a proclamotion bidding all to "turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in theft hands, who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from His fierce anger that we perish not," and the story goes on, "God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that He said that He would do unto them and He did it not." Here we have the Old Testa-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.