Jonah and The Whale

       We this morning disembarked where Jonah embarked. How vividly now the story comes to mind! God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and, declining that call, he came here to Joppa. I have been consulting some weeks past with tourist companies as to how I could take Nineveh on this trip. They have not encouraged me to go. It is a most tedious route and a desert. Now I see an additional reason why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. He not only revolted because of the disagreeable message he was called to deliver at Nineveh, but because it was a long way and rough and bandit-infested. So he came here to Joppa and took ship. But alas for the disastrous voyage. Why people should doubt the story of Jonah and the whale is more of a mystery than the Bible event itself. The same thing has occurred a thousand times. The Lord always has a whale waiting outside the harbor for a man who starts in the wrong direction. Recreant Jonah! I do not wonder that even the whale was sick of him.

       Now the sun is sinking behind the hills, and my first day in Palestine is closing. Never will I forget Joppa, the city by the sea, city of architecturaled hill; city where Dorcas immortalized her needle and conquered death on her own pillow; and city where the two dreams of Peter and Cornelius met: and where Napoleon on the retreat had his sick soldiers poisoned because he could not take them down through Egypt; city at whose harbor floated the timber rafts, for two temples, the ox-teams drawing through these streets the cedars for Jerusalem.

       To-day I have seen floating the American flag, the English flag, the Russian flag, the Turkish flag, and the Mohammedan dropping his forehead to the earth in devotion, and all nations on the streets of one of the strangest cities I ever beheld.

       This morning for the first time I have seen a man "take up his bed and walk." He had slept out of doors, and now he rolls together a blanket and pillow and a mattress, with a cord binds them securely, and then shoulders the bundle which he easily carries away.

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