times when to doubt the truth of legend or myth was an offense, or in the middle ages when ghosts and other ridiculous fancies existed in the human imagination, the story of Jonah may have been commended to the belief of ignorant man; but now-? Would you seriously ask your intelligent friend if, in his judgment, this miraculous story is true?

THE CONVERSION OF THE PEOPLE OF NINEVEH IS CONTRARY TO ANALOGY.

Whenever a nation or a large body of people lay aside one religious belief to accept another, the change is always caused by violent means and accompanied with great disturbances. In Israel, before and after Jonah's time, there was a continual bloody struggle between the Yahveh worship and the various forms of idolatry with which the Hebrews were surrounded. The early followers of Mohammed gained converts to Islam only at the point of the sword, and when the sword was withdrawn

the newly converted "Faithful" nearly always fell back to the religion which they had been compelled to abandon. The Protestant Church was separated from the Roman Catholic and gained a condition of peace only after centuries of struggling and bloodshed. China, India, and Turkey have for years resisted the powerful efforts of the most capable Christian missionaries, and many a noble life has been sacrificed while seeking to plant Christianity in those lands. Not in the history of the world is there found a single instance of a sudden conversion of a great people as here. Farrar tells how "Jesus, the son of Hanan, the unlettered rustic, went through Jerusalem for four years before the siege, shouting, "Woe, woe, Jerusalem!" (Lives and Times of the Minor Prophets). Any man who knew the circumstances of the time might have done the same. Layard

says:

"It is not necessary to the effect of his preaching that Jonah should be of the

religion of the people of Nineveh. I have known a Christian priest frighten a whole Mussulman town to tents and repentance by publicly proclaiming that he had received a divine mission to announce a coming earthquake or plague " (Nineveh and Babylon), p. 632 n. This comparison is not in the least applicable. To frighten a small town of the most superstitious of people by announcing the coming of an earthquake or plague, is not the same as to convert the people of one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful cities of the world, as the Hebrews supposed Nineveh to be. We can no more compare the modern Moslem of some parts of the Mohammedan world with the proud Assyrian, than the ignorant negro of the South with the cultured people of our largest cities.

After three days of impossible experiences and the difficult journey across the desert to Nineveh, Jonah enters the city, apparently unattended. He walks about twenty miles towards the center of the

great city, and then is but a third of the distance to the opposite wall. Standing in the street, he begins to preach. There is no record that he is armed with a rod, such as Moses carried to Egypt, to give proof by sign that he was sent to warn the people. Unlike the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, and unlike Jesus, he gave sight to none of the blind, or raised none who were dead. He simply stood in one of the streets of the city and cried out to the passing people, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." There is no evidence that he said more than these words, and within a few moments a great change came over the city. The proud Assyrians, the rulers of the world, who, according to the Hebrew writers themselves, defied Yahveh to harm them (2 Kings xviii. 35), suddenly believed in him. A fast was declared, and nobleman and poor man alike covered their bodies with sackcloth. Word was brought to the king of Nineveh; the proud monarch

rose from his throne, laid aside his garments, and wrapping sackcloth about him, seated himself upon an ash-pile! Heralds were dispatched throughout the city forbidding man and beast, herd and flock, to taste of food or water, and, all covered with sackcloth, both man and beast must

cry mightily unto God"! It was all over; Jonah's work was accomplished. By a single sentence, probably spoken in a language which few, if any, could understand, almost instantaneously, he had converted 120,000 people! The great temples of Assur, Bel, Istar, and the other deities which had so long guided the Assyrians, had fought at the side of the king in battle, had overthrown every enemy, were now useless. All the gods of their fathers were deserted, and the people of Nineveh, with one voice, "prayed mightily" to a foreign god whom a small Hebrew nation over in Palestine worshiped, and of whom they had hardly, if ever, heard before that day! Is it true?