no such terrible forebodings as rack the soul with torture. On the contrary, they express such ecstatic confidence; such thrilling emotions of happiness; such sublime views of the operations of God's benignant providence; that, were the apostle now on earth, he could well say to men, "Whom," Jesus, "having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."

SERMON X.

LIMITED AND UNIVERSAL COMPASSION.

"And God said unto Jonah, doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry for the gourd, even unto death. Then said the Lord, 'I'hou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle." (Jonah 4: 9, 10, 11)

Jonah was sent to warn the inhabitants of Nineveh of the destruction which impended over them. He was ordered to tell them, that unless they turned from their wickedness, this destruction would fall on them with complete ruin. They gave good heed to his preaching, repented of their sins, and averted the judgment from smiting them.

Now, at the first thought, it would seem as though the sympathy of our common humanity ought to have caused Jonah to rejoice over this result of his mission. His soul should have leaped with joy, when he saw that the misery which would have been caused by the overthrow of that great city, was prevented by their reformation. But it was not so. For, absurdly supposing that the city ought to be destroyed, because he had declared to the people that if

they persisted in their sins they would meet with just punishment, he was angry, and besought the Lord to take his life, for the reason that the city had not been ruined. And, perhaps supposing that God would yet overthrow Nineveh, and gratify an angry cruelty so unbecoming a prophet, Jonah went out of the city, and watched to see what would befal the Ninevites. But while waiting, the Lord prepared a mode of showing Jonah that his anger was foolish and cruel, and that his conduct was sinful and unbe. coming.

A gourd was made to spring up, whose shade sheltered Jonah through the day from the heat of the sun. But the following night, the gourd, being smitten by a worm, withered and died. The next day, the sun beat down so vehemently, that Jonah wished he might die. Then came the pungent rebuke, "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night; and should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that can not discern between their right hand and their left hand?" This simple yet startling appeal must have produced a powerful effect upon the feelings of Jonah. It showed him how completely his bitterness of soul had swallowed up all sympathy for the wretched. He had sympathy, albeit the sympathy of selfish anger, for the gourd ; an inanimate thing, which could not think, could not suffer, could not feel anguish in the act of perishing. But for the thousands of thinking, sentient people who inhabited Nineveh, whose destruction would cause the streets of that city to flow with blood and produce intense distress,

he exercised no sympathy. So completely was he wrapped up in his narrow and mistaken notions of prophetic honor, that he concluded that his veracity was destroyed by the salvation of Nineveh. He thought that Nineveh ought to have been overthrown, if for nothing else, yet to sustain his false views of the character of a prophet. Hence, while he greatly sorrowed over the withering of the simple gourd, he was angry because ruin had been averted from Nineveh, instead of rejoicing that its people had found redemption from disaster, by pursuing the path of sincere repentance.

Such are the facts with which the text is connected. Under these facts, is still another fact, not so completely on the surface as the rest, which I wish to bring up to inspection, inasmuch as it is to be the subject of farther consideration. It is the fact, that the sympathies of the soul may be completely blinded and misdirected, so that while they shall act with intensity upon comparatively minor objects, yet they shall be complacent and inactive in regard to momentous and absorbing questions which involve the excessive anguish of millions. Jonah lamented the fate of the gourd. Its appearance was pleasant and its shade refreshing. He therefore regretted its loss.

But where was his sympathy for the people of Nineveh? Where were his prayers for their deliverance? Where was his rejoicing when their doom was averted? Here he had no sympathy, no benevolent feeling. The adults might perish; the youth might be cut off in the streets; the wail of infants might be heard in the hour of their suffering; but the contemplation of such results called no answering cry for mercy from his soul. They found him cold, pas

sionless, and unmoved, yet exercised with anger because the ruin was not consummated without regard to the repentance of Nineveh.

This inconsistency in the application of human sympathy on the one hand, and the limiting it to minor objects on the other, is every where discoverable. Precisely what is meant by this statement, is unfolded in the fo'lowing fact.When, the Russian Emperor Nicholas, lost his daughter by death, some years since, he fainted. His paternal affection was so strong, and the shock was so great, on witnessing the sufferings and departure of his beloved child, that he was overcome by his anguish. But when the sons of unhappy Po'and were bravely struggling for the land and rights of their fathers, of which they had been deprived by oppressive tyranny; and when armies, by the will of the Russian autocrat, were slaughtering those sons; when he drowned the Polish nation in a sea of blood; and when the Imperial robber and ravisher stole thousands of her daughters to be placed in the tents of his soldiers; did all this suffering cause him to faint? did he show any sympathy which led him in the least degree to check the widespread ruin he produced? He mourned for his child. State purposes, increase of territory, and love of power, absorbed all his kindness, and left him without one ray of mercy for the victims of his tyranny.

Precisely the same spirit is manifested everywhere in the world, only upon different objects. People sympathize deeply, warmly, and fervently with some scenes of misery, when upon others, which they believe to be transpiring to a vast and terrific extent, they are cold and passionless. Many reasons can be offered to ac