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The pilot not only rebuked the prophet, he had a proposal to make to him. "Arise, call upon thy God." And he backs his proposal by a reason, a motive, an expectation of benefit. "If so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." All this, as coming from a heathen, is peculiarly instructive. The two great truths conveyed are these.

1. That in man's inmost nature, originally and radically, there are certain principles of religion most strong and ineradicable.

2. That these, without the guidance of revelation and faith, are altogether insufficient as guides in his real relation to God. Man's natural helplessness, and his natural conscience, necessarily imply a capacity for religion and a certain religiousness, appertaining, of necessity, to human nature, and developed, in peculiar strength, even in heathen worship. In the progress of modern civilisation man may emancipate himself from the solemn awe with which the heathen contemplate the powers of nature, but if he rise not to a holy veneration of the one Supreme Author of nature, as a revealed and reconciled God, it is very questionable whether he does not become in some respects a more shallow and trifling being than the worshipper of idols. We might very easily maintain and prove the assertion, that godless men, in the days and in the state of society in which we live, are more thoroughly irreligious than the heathen are: that covetousness, which is idolatry, is more contemptible than the worship of stocks and stones. Two facts conspire to make man naturally and necessarily a religious being.

1. His observation of the powers of nature.

2. His experience of the powers of conscience.

I. WHAT CAN NATURAL RELIGION DO FOR US? What is it that reason, unenlightened by the Word and Spirit of God, can do towards furnishing man with a religion?

1. It may tell us that there is a God, that God is one. The existence and the unity of God may be proved by reason. These heathen mariners had many gods. Jonah, they took for granted, would have a God too. The whole herd of inferior deities whom the heathen worshipped were only so many sectional representatives of a portion of the powers believed to reside in a God, to whom might fairly be given, even by reason, the lofty designation, "God over all." The wisdom, power, and goodness which man sees to be requisite for creating, preserving, and controlling the visible universe, are felt to be unbounded, infinite. One such Infinite Being is felt to be necessary to account for things as they are. But not more than one is felt to be necessary. Indeed, more than one such Infinite Being, possessing all knowledge and power, is felt to be impossible. The same result follows from our connection with the moral world. Conscience tells of a Ruler and Judge, but only of one.

2. Reason, fairly interpreted, assures us that this God is a Being capable of intercourse with His creatures. The creation of an intelligent Being is manifestly the work of a Being who Himself is intelligent. Hence reason itself demonstrates the possibility of a revelation from God, and of the possibility and efficacy of prayer.

II. REASON'S LIMIT, AND REASON'S WEAKNESS.

1. Reason knows that God exists, but it does not know God. We need revelation to make us acquainted with Him. You never really know any person merely by discovering his intellectual or scientific abilities. You never do know a neighbour save by knowing his moral character and his heart.

2. Reason tells us that prayer is possible, yea reasonable, but revelation alone puts us in possession of the terms on which God actually hears prayer, — puts us in a condition actually to pray. Reason, therefore, without revelation, is sure fatally to err; and whether in ancient paganisms or in modern rationalisms, which are heathenisms, or in popery, or in nominal, formal Christianity, the error at bottom is identically one and the same.

(Hugh Martin, M. A.)

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KJV: So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.

WEB: So the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, "What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will notice us, so that we won't perish."