Welcome was the broad shadow of the gourd rising round the booth and above it! The great glare in subdued green light streamed through the leaves to the calmed and cooled and comforted prophet. Just now he wished to die. Now he was willing to live - "exceeding glad of the gourd." Short-lived was his gladness. Worm-smitten, the gourd withered. A day of beauty and value, and then the end of it. And now, unsheltered by the plant, exposed to branding sun and burning wind, Jonah longed again to die. Note here: Divine discipline. The gourd, worm, wind, divinely sent, have each a ministry for the prophet. He needs correction if he is to amend. They are to teach him. But such is the Divine pitifulness that there comes -

I. THE LESSON OF REFRESHMENT. There was sent the gourd "to deliver him from his grief." He needed a shadow. It was given, and the plant shielded him from the oppressive, life-exhausting heat. The gloom of his mind had been increased by the heat of the booth; the outer had aggravated the inner weariness. In the coolness of the gourd he was calmed and soothed. The mind affects the body, and the body the mind. "Heaviest the heart is in a heavy air." Much mental and even spiritual depression must be put to the account of physical causes. Jonah sheltered was cheered and refreshed; gloom became gladness. Did he rejoice in the gourd? How, then, must God rejoice to spare his human creatures! And did Jonah meanwhile, "glad of the gourd," with, we may hope, thankfulness to God for it, think that after all God was favourable to his bitter longing for the punishment if not utter destruction of Nineveh though repentant? If so, he thought wrongly. Outward prosperity is no proof of the Divine approval. In doing wrong, in feeling wrong, all may seem to go well with us; still, it is none the less wrong. Are we in accordance with Divine truth and righteousness - our will in harmony with the Divine? Then all providences are in reality friendly, and "even the night is light about us."

II. THE LESSON OF BEREAVEMENT. Did Jonah pity, miss, and mourn for the gourd? Shall not God have pity on the myriads in Nineveh? That was the lesson of his loss to the prophet. But how reluctant to learn it! We may be bereaved of our strength, competence, loved ones. Ah! how God is bereaved! "Shall a man rob God?" What multitudes do - of their love, loyalty, service! He appeals to each. "How can I give thee up?" he says. He may take away his gifts. It is the more fully to give us himself. All earthly gourds will wither. But for all who will, there is an abiding shelter from every storm; a living shelter - Christ, in him, though the tempests come of sorrow, bereavement, death, we have peace, safety, and eternal life. - G.T.C.

It would be difficult to say whether the tokens of God's holy justice, or of His abounding mercy, be the more numerous in the Scriptures. But all doubt is dispelled the moment that we understand the Gospel of our salvation. We can no longer question the loving-kindness of the Lord, when we see what has been done that sinners might have hope. But God's mercy had strangely distempered the mind of the prophet. He complained like one defrauded of his due. And that complaint led only to misery. What made others happy only fomented Jonah's grief. Sunrise brought no joy to him; the wind parched him, and withered the gourd; he was smitten with faintness by the eastern sun; he became weary of existence; he prayed that he might die.

1. The longer a sinner continues in his sin, the more wretched does he become. Jonah was obviously sinking deeper from hour to hour.

2. Suffering and sin are inseparably linked by the appointment of the holy God. It is the sinner himself who brings sorrow on the sinner.

3. God in holy sovereignty may punish sin by sin. When His creatures go astray His restraining grace is sometimes withheld, and then sin follows sin in rapid succession, until the wanderer at last perhaps stands appalled at his own iniquity, or else is proved to be hopelessly degenerate. See in Jonah's case how transgression followed transgression, lie is offended at the mercy of God to Nineveh. He refuses to acknowledge his waywardness, — he would rather die. Then he withdraws from all intercourse with those whom God had in mercy spared; their proximity was a source of pain to Jonah. Then he pines for death; then he tries to justify his waywardness, and comes at last to declare that he did right in sinning. It is thus that sin deludes the very conscience, darkens the understanding, and enslaves the will. Blinded by passion, resolute in self-defence, determined to acknowledge no fault, but to vindicate all that he had done, Jonah makes a confession which justifies the ways of God with Nineveh. If the prophet lamented the loss of the gourd, and pitied it when it perished, surely much more might the compassionate One pity the city which had repented.

(W. K. Tweedie.)