is but one true and living God, and that he made all things, and governs all things. We know that it is he, and he alone, who gives sunshine and clouds, fair weather and rainy weather; who causes the soft and gentle breezes to fan the air, or bids the winds blow roughly, and storms and tempests to arise. He has taught us this in the Bible, and that we should pray to him alone, to save us in times of difficulty and danger. God has been very kind thus to make himself known to us; and ought we not to pity those who have not yet the Bible in their hands, and who, like the mariners in the ship with Jonah, still look to false gods and to idols to protect them? Ought we not to do all we can to give them the Bible, that they may know the true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God has sent into the world, to save us from what is a great deal more dreadful than a storm at sea, or the loss of our lives-to save us from the loss of our never dying souls?

After crying for help to their false gods, the mariners began to take the goods that were in the ship and cast them overboard into the sea. And they cast them all overboard, hoping that this would lighten the ship so much that it would ride more easily over the waves, and not be in danger, as it was every moment, of being filled with water and sinking into the deep.

Men will do any thing to save their lives. If necessary, they will part with the most valuable things, and even be willing to lose all that they have. If you had been in the ship, would you not have been

ready to throw all the things that belonged to you overboard, and never see them again, if, by so doing, you could have helped to lighten the ship, and save your life?

I dare say you would have done so very quickly and cheerfully. You would not have hesitated to do it, a moment.

Are you now willing to do as much to save your soul? Your soul is worth a great deal more than your body. In a few years your body will die, and molder away to dust. But your soul will never die. It will live hundreds, and thousands, and millions of years-longer than you could count in a whole year-longer than all the people in the world could count, if they should keep on counting all their lives, and if all that they should count could be added together, and make a number of years so vast that you could not think how vast it would be. Your soul will live hundreds, and thousands, and millions of years longer than this vast number of years and longer still, and longer. Your soul will still keep on living; it will live as long as God lives, that is, it will live for ever.

And your soul will be happy for ever, or it will be wretched forever. God tells us so in the Bible.

You would cast away all that you have, all that you love most, if it were necessary to do this, in order to save your life. How much are you willing, and ready to cast away, to save your soul? Jesus Christ has told us, that if we have any thing as precious to us even as one of our eyes is, and which

keeps us from loving God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves; or which leads us to think, to feel, or to act wickedly; we must give it up, we must cast it away from us, as the mariners in the ship threw their goods into the sea. No matter how precious it is to us, or how much soever we love it, we must love it no more, we must part with it readily and cheerfully, that we may not be tempted by it to sin; and that we may be the better able to love and obey God; and to love and to do good to others. And Jesus Christ says, if we do not do so, we cannot be his friends-we cannot be saved by him.

On the Sabbath, perhaps, you had rather play, or read some amusing story-book, than go to church and the Sabbath school; or, if you are at home, than to think of God, and pray to him, and read his holy word. Then you are unwilling to give up these things that you may save your soul. For your soul will be lost unless you trust in Christ, and love him; and he has said, that if you do indeed love him, you will keep his commandments. His commandments are the same as God's commandments, one of which, as you know, is, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And so, if you do any thing else that keeps you from loving and obeying God; or if you love any thing else more than you love God, and are unwilling to give up and forsake these things; it shows that you are not so wise as the mariners in the ship with Jonah were. How foolish they would have

been, to refuse to cast their goods into the sea, if doing so would render it more probable that their lives would be saved.

How much more foolish and guilty will you be, if you are unwilling to give up and forsake any thing that will prevent you from trusting in Christ, and loving and obeying God, and saving your soul. Hear what our Savior, Jesus Christ, says on this subject, and may you never forget it.

For what is a man profited, (what real gain will it be to him,) if he shall gain the whole world, (every thing in it that he loves and wishes to possess,) and lose his own soul, (never go to heaven to be happy there, but be miserable in hell for ever ;)—or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

What would you be willing to give away, or exchange, for your life, that it might be saved, if you were in danger of losing it, as the mariners and Jonah were of losing theirs? You would give up any thing, and every thing. Are you willing to do the same, that your never-dying soul may be saved? I ask you the question. You alone can answer it.

CHAPTER V.

Jonah asleep. The captain wakes him, and calls upon him to pray. Sinning makes people leave off praying. Remorse a source of wretchedness. Casting lots explained. The mariners cast lots. The lot falls on Jonah.

WHILE the storm was still raging, and the mariners busily engaged in throwing their goods over

board, Jonah was gone down inside of the ship, and was there fast asleep. The rattling of the rain, the roaring of the wind, the waves rolling and beating against the ship, and all the noise which the captain and sailors made in throwing the goods over board, did not awake him. He slept soundly, and was, perhaps, dreaming of sailing along pleasantly to : Tarshish, and of soon arriving there. He must have been very much startled and surprised, as he awoke, on hearing the master of the ship crying out, with a loud voice,-" What meanest thou, sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not."

The mariners had all been praying to the gods in whom they believed, and the captain thought that Jonah ought to pray to his God also. He might have thought that this God of Jonah, if Jo