ancient writers there is not one thing to show that Nineveh occupied more space than the ruins indicate and the inscriptions confirm.

Is the description in the book of Jonah correct? The author shows not the slightest knowledge of Nineveh, even as it stood in the time of its greatest prosperity. He knew Nineveh only in legend, or as some traveler may have related of it, and the tale which he heard of the great city already in ruins consisted more of exaggeration than of truth. Not one statement in the book of Jonah regarding Nineveh is in harmony with the facts which the ruins and the inscriptions present.

6-JONAH'S PRAYER.

The circumstances attending Jonah when he is said to have uttered his beautiful prayer were certainly most trying. A conservative writer asserts that Jonah prayed but the first two verses of the psalm while

in the fish's belly, and that they were sufficiently sincere to move Yahveh to compassion. Yahveh, who is so easily moved, immediately commanded the fish to cast the unfortunate prophet out upon the shore, where he continued by giving thanks for his safety; the same author honestly asks if Jonah was three days in composing the prayer before he ventured to offer it. Kaulen, the Roman Catholic expositor, supposes that we have in this prayer but the first and last of all the many prayers which came from Jonah's lips during the three days of his horrible imprisonment. Still another would show that the Hebrew should be translated so as to read Jonah prayed on account of, or, while he was out of the fish's belly. The most elementary student of Hebrew knows that no such thought is to be found here. No statement can be plainer than that in the book: "Then Jonah prayed unto Yahveh his God out of the fish's belly, and he said (the prayer).

And (when the prayer was finished) Yahveh spake unto the fish and it vomited jonah upon the dry land."

Three days in a fish's belly and still conscious! Not yet had the prophet thought of his deliverance but cramped up in his dark prison, submerged in water and slime, stifled with the three days' absence of air, with nothing to breathe but the gases of the fish's stomach, he at last becomes penitent. We should expect to find his prayer filled with regrets for his past unfaithfulness, and with promises to go to Nineveh and preach what should be bidden him. He would cry out in despair: O Lord, save me! This cry would be accompanied with vows and promises of sacrifices. The language of the prayer would have been simple, disconnected, mingled with sobs and chokings. It could not have been otherwise.

Was Jonah's prayer like this? We are surprised to find that it is in poetry, in good Hebrew poetry, in which every care

has been given to the accents and pauses. We should not have expected him to utter a prayer in beautiful verse with perfect meter and syllables of proper lengths, as if it were composed by the shepherd bard, "David, the sweet singer of Israel." We are still more surprised at the contents of the prayer. While in that living grave, in the most horrible darkness, swallowed alive, he makes no allusion to his present distress. He says distinctly that once. he was in trouble, but Yahveh heard his prayer and saved him. Once he was cast into the sea; the floods, the waves, and the billows had passed over him. All this trouble has passed and he will now go to the temple to fulfil his vows and offer the sacrifices which he has promised, for he has been saved. He even makes the observation, "They that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy," a truth which can hardly have occurred to one who was in Jonah's circumstances. As in the prayer of Hannah, (1 Samuel ii.)