216 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

Who wants to be a bearer of ill news?

It would take a good deal of courage to preach that kind
of preaching now. Who would care to stand up in State
street in Chicago; or Broadway, New York; or Chestnut
street, Philadelphia, and cry aloud: “Yet forty days, and
this city shall be destroyed?” Who would care to do this kind
of thing? How the people would laugh! And it is almost
certain if you did any such thing you would be arrested.

But Jonah went to Nineveh after all, and right in the
midst of its magnificent splendor, he stood up and cried:

“Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed!”

Did the people laugh at him? Did they arrest him for
insanity? No; they repented! They hoped against hope.
They said: ‘Who can tell? if God will be gracious!” And
God was gracious and spared the city. And though Jonah
was reluctant at first to go to Nineveh, he lived to see that
whole city on its knees, in contrite prayer, and it may be
said that he was one of the most successful preachers that
ever preached the gospel of redeeming grace.

It is very likely that boys will hear a good deal of
merriment made about Jonah and his mission. People who
think it’s quite clever not to believe anything can find great
difficulties in this Bible story.

When the writer of this book was a_ boy, just such
clever people said there was no truth in the story—there was
no such place as Nineveh. Well—would you believe it?—
about this time Austin Henry Layard and a company of
explorers went and dug up Nineveh, and brought parts of
those very palaces, with their winged bulls, to England and
placed them in the British Museum for all the world to see—

“ And there they are unto this day
To witness if I lie.”