THE CATTLE OF NINEVEH.

"And also much cattle." - JONAH iv. 11.

EVERYBODY knows that the Book of Jonah contains a remarkable story about a fish. It is likely that the information of a great many people in regard to this book is altogether confined to the limits of this story. What is the Book of Jonah about? It is about a fish which swallowed a man. That would be the answer of a surprising number, even of intelligent people.

The truth is, however, that while there are four chapters in this book, the account of the adventure with the fish is contained in three short sentences. The Book of Jonah is one of the most interesting, suggestive, and instructive books in the whole Bible. It is one of the text books of tolerance. It teaches the universal love of God. It does not hesitate to compare the prophet of Israel, to his disadvantage, with the pagan crew of a Mediterranean sailing vessel. It records the quick answer that God gave to the prayers of pagan Nineveh. One of

the lessons of it is that all promises of punishment are conditioned upon the penitence of the criminal. The most absolute menace of certain destruction is taken back and changed into benediction when the sinner is sorry for his sin. The Book of Jonah teaches us how to read some hard sentences in the New Testament about the damnation of the wicked. a book of justice and of mercy, a revelation of the universal fatherhood of God. The least important part of the book is the story of the fish.

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To fasten upon that, to emphasize that, to bring that into the foreground, and to put all the great religious lessons of this wonderful book into the dim and neglected background, is as if a congregation should seize upon some petty figure of a great sermon, some singular illustration or momentary error of utterance, and think about that, and talk about that, and forget all the helpful words that had been said. besides. That, indeed, is human nature. But we need to be on guard against the mistakes of human nature. Take a pencil and mark out those three verses, and then read this wonderful, wise, uplifting book.

If we are to give attention to any animals in

the Book of Jonah, we will do well to leave the fish and take the cattle. Let us stand upon the solid ground. Let us turn our backs upon this mysterious fish, which we see but uncertainly beneath the shifting waves, and which, it is possible, belongs rather to the world of poetry than to the world of real fishing-smacks, and let us consider the cattle that we know, everyday cows and horses of old Nineveh, which Jonah cared so little about, and which the critics and commentators and indifferent readers have cared no more about, but which were of interest and value in the sight of God.

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For we read that Jonah was disappointed when his fierce sermon failed to come true. He stood out in the suburbs of the city on that fatal fortieth day and watched the sky. He prayed for thunder and lightning, for red-hot shafts of destruction, for fiery hail and brimstone, for Sodom and Gomorrah over again. And when the sun went on shining, and the day came to an end, and the town still stood, and no torment from the hand of God touched it, Jonah was sore grieved. He felt himself abused. God had dealt unkindly with him. God had sent him to preach punishment, to prophesy hell, and then God had not punished.

Better that all Nineveh should perish, Jonah thought, than that his sermons should be thus discredited.

Then God spoke to Jonah. God told Jonah that he loved those children of his in Nineveh : yes, the most ignorant and the meanest of them; yes, even the very cows and horses of Nineveh. "Should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"

The lesson that I want to emphasize is that God cares for cattle. God looks down upon this city, and he thinks not only about the good people, and the important people, as we count importance, and the rich and influential people, and the poor people crowded together in narrow and unclean dwellings, living in destitution physical and intellectual and moral, scarcely knowing the difference between right and left, scarcely knowing the difference between right and wrong; but God thinks also of all the horses in the city, knows what sort of food they have, and what kind of stables they live in, and the work that is put upon them, and all the treatment that is given them. God has re

gard for all the cattle, for the horses and the cows, for the cats and the dogs, for the birds, for all the living creatures he has made. God is present not only in the house of prayer, but also in the stockyards.

Jonah was willing—yes, and desirous — that the inhabitants of Nineveh, the men and the women and the little children, should all die horribly. He stood by with a certain pleased anticipation, waiting to see the agony begin. There is an unmistakable element of cruelty in human nature. The story of the life of man has fearful chapters in it, chapters written in red, records of war, of massacres, of murders, of martyrdoms. Jonah has stood exulting a hundred thousand times and watched the vindication of his doctrine in the torments of his brethren. The whole world over, in savagery and in civilization, in all lands, in the times that are told of in the ancient histories, and in the day that is recorded in this morning's paper, that old inhuman attitude of the prophet by the city is to be seen.

Think of the slaughter by the great armies of Assyria and Egypt! Think of the horrors of the old religions, with their mutilations and their human sacrifices! Think of the slave life