Father Mapple

And God prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Shipmates, the sin of Jonah was in his disobedience of the command of God. He found it a hard command. And it was hard, shipmates, for all the things God would have us do are hard. We would obey God we must disobey ourselves. But Jonah still further flouts at God by seeking to flee from him, Jonah thinks that a ship, made by men will carry him into country where God does not reign. He prowls along the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. As he comes aboard the sailors mark him. The ship puts out. But soon the sea rebels it will not bear the wicked burden, a dreadful storm comes up, the ship is like to break, the bosun calls all hands to lighten her. Boxes, bales and jars are clattering overboard, the wind is shrieking, the men are yelling. "Fear the lord," cries Jonah, "the God of heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land." Again the sailors mark him, wretched Jonah cries out to them to cast him overboard for he knew for his sake this great tempest was upon them. Now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor, and dropped into the sea, into the dreadful jaws awaiting him. The great whale shoots to all of his great ivory teeth like so many white bolts upon his prison, and Jonah cries unto the lord ut of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer shipmates, he doesn't weep or wail, he feels his punishment is just he leaves deliverance to God and even out of the belly of hell grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, God heard him when he cried. God spake unto the whale from the shuddering cold and blackness of the deep the whale breached and vomited out Jonah upon the dry land and Jonah, bruised and beaten, his ears like two seashells still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean. Jonah did the Almighty's bidding and what was that shipmates? To preach the truth in the face of falsehood, no shipmates, woe to him who seeks to pour oil on the troubled waters when God has brewed them into a gale, ye, woe to him who as the pilot Paul has it: 'while preaching to others is himself a castaway.' But delights is to him, who against the proud Gods and commodores of this earth, stands forth his own inexorable self. Who destroys all sin, though he pluck it out from under the robes of senators and judges! And eternal delight shall be his, who coming to lay him down, can say "Oh father, mortal or immortal, here I die. I've striven to be thine, more than to be this worlds or mine own. Yet this is nothing. I leave eternity to thee for what is man, if he should live out the lifetime of his God?"  

4 minutes