his life from corruption, and his prayer reached Him in His holy temple. Here was another Ebenezer for the humble, the trustful, the devout. "Salvation is of the Lord."

A symbol was supplied by the recovery of the prophet after his imprisonment for three days and three nights. Our Lord refers to it as foreshadowing His own resurrection. It is remarkable how the incident laid hold of the imagination of the early Church. There is hardly any painting on the walls of the Roman catacombs so marked and so frequent as Jonah and the fish. It seems to have been identified in the minds of believers with the crowning miracle of Christianity. And if found thus actually suited to the apprehension of common minds a few centuries after the Christian era, we should not be surprised at its being suited to the apprehension of common minds a few centuries before. Not that it could have the same suggestiveness before as afterwards. Yet in an age of symbols this incident of the sea might stand out as more than ordinarily symbolic. "I do not know," says a writer on the progress of revelation, "that I ever saw the idea before, yet I cannot help putting it forth here, viz., that the passage in Hosea vi. 2, 'After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight,' was penned by that prophet at the time when Jonah's singular story was engrossing the Israelitish mind. What more likely than that one prophet should allude to, and comment on, another? especially as I have before shown the strong probability of their being contemporaries. Hence nothing remains to prevent this inference; on the contrary, it seems to me to be almost necessary, from the otherwise incomprehensible nature of Hosea's allusions. Discon

nect them, and they are difficult; unite them, and they are natural." 1 It should be noticed, moreover, that whilst Hosea was contemporary with Jonah, he long survived him; the end of Jonah's ministry being reckoned in the first quarter of the seventh century before Christ, and the end of Hosea in the last. It appears likely that the deliverance of Jonah made a great impression-well it might, wherever known. And wherever known amongst thoughtful Jews given to the study of symbolic events, such an unparalleled occurrence might easily suggest some corresponding, and yet more important, deliverance and restoration in the future.

Jonah's ministry included the revelation of God's mercy to the Gentiles. We recognize in the teachings. of very early prophets intimations of the wide-spread care and love of the Most High; they are seen overflowing national boundaries, and in the case of Jonah, the first of the writing prophets, he appears Divinely commissioned personally to go himself and address a heathen nation. He is not only entrusted with a message concerning the Gentiles, but he is entrusted with a message to be personally delivered by him to the Gentiles. He is the first missionary of revelation to the heathen. And though the mission is one of rebuke and of righteous threatening, it ends in Divine pity and human salvation. The great truths were taught to the outside world, as well as to God's chosen people, that He delighteth in mercy, that He is ready to forgive, and that repentance is the way to secure His forgiveness.

1 Titcomb's Revelation in Progress, p. 253.

J

CHAPTER XV.

JOEL. 810-795 B. C.

OEL exercised his ministry in Judah, not in Israel;

this is plain from the tenor of his teaching; but there is some difficulty in coming to a conclusion as to the time in which he lived. Some suppose he is the earliest prophet whose writings are preserved, and place him in the reign of Joash; others rank him as contemporary with Hosea and Amos at the close of Uzziah's reign.1

As the Book of Joel is the first instance in which we find a written prophecy throughout penned by the prophet's own hand, it is desirable to notice the style of the composition. "He not only possesses a singular degree of purity, but is distinguished by his smoothness and fluency, the animated and rapid character of his rhythms, the perfect regularity of his parallelisms, and the degree of roundness which he gives to his sentences. He has no abrupt transitions, is everywhere connected, and finishes whatever he takes up. In description he is graphic and perspicuous; in arrangement lucid; in imagery original, copious, and varied. In the judgment of Knobel, he most resembles Amos in regularity, Nahum in animation, and in both respects Habakkuk,

1 This is the opinion of Abarbanel, Hengstenberg, Winer, etc. An earlier date, adopted by Dr. Angus, is followed here. Certainty as to the exact period of these prophetic ministries is impossible.

but is surpassed by none of them."1 Joel was accustomed to think methodically, and to gather up his thoughts in harmonious arrangement, artistically to bind the flowers he plucked, architecturally to build the stones he gathered. He weighed and balanced words, not for the sake of ornament, but for the sake of mental impression and moral effect. He had evidently studied the uses of language as an exponent of thought, as an instrument of beauty and power, and especially as a vehicle for conveying the truths of the Divine mind and the precepts of the Divine will.

He had an eye for the beautiful in creation, and had learned the true expression of nature's face. He was familiar with the trees of the forest and orchard, and watched with care the ways of insects and the paths of cattle. He mused on the waters of the valley, and watched "the morning spread upon the mountains,” and gazed into the depths of the skies at midday and at midnight.

One great point in this prophet's teaching-not by any means a new one, yet by him illustrated with singular power and freshness-was, that nature forms a Divine realm. He saw God in everything, beneath the mountains, and over the heavens; drying up the vine, and making the fig to languish; causing the rain to descend; filling the floors with wheat, and the fats with wine and oil; marshalling the insects, the palmerworm, and the locust-types of a people great and strong—and sending them forth to run to and fro in the city, to climb the wall and to enter the houses. All were like soldiers under See also Keil and

1 Henderson, Minor Prophets, p. 91. Delitzsch on the Minor Prophets, i. 171 et seq.

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command. This the prophet saw, and proclaimed, "The Lord shall utter His voice before His army: for His camp is very great for He is strong that executeth His word.”1 Another thing in his teaching is noticeable. insisted on God's moral government of the world. looked upon judgments as brought down by sin; upon the operation of natural evil as subservient to moral ends. People might say that there were natural causes to account for swarms of insects lighting upon the land: without denying that, the prophet taught the existence of something further. He exclaimed, with the force of a profound conviction, "Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come."2 The old Hebrew faith in a personal God as ever working throughout all things, on the side of righteousness and against iniquity, comes out most vividly on this ancient roll of prophetic writing.

If we look for an expression to characterize Joel, we cannot find a better than the prophet of repentance. He clearly expounds and forcibly urges the duty.

"Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go 2 i. 15.

1 Joel ii. 11.