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"Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet -- 'of out the belly of ****' -- when the whale grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulfed, repenting prophet when he cried.

"As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped around his head,' and all the watery...

"But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached.

"How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Ninevah, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa.

"And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God.

"I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye.

"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me.

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words:

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.

His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.

"Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."

"Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin, but I do place him before you as a model for repentance.

"And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale.

"And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

"He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple.

"He feels that his dreadful punishment is just.

"For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance.

"But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson.

"Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly.