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THE KING’S BUSINESS
enough to give passage to the body of a man, presenting a . strong contrast to the contracted gullet of the Greenland whale.” The idea of a whale’s gullet being inca-- pable of admitting any large substance, Mr. Bullen characterizes as “a piece of crass ignorance.” He tells how on one occasion “a shark fifteen feet in length has been found in the stomach of a sperm whale,” and adds this remarkable piece of evidence: “When dying, the sperm whale ejected the contents of its stomach.” He tells of one full-grown whale which was caught and killed, “the ejected food from whose stom ach was in masses of enormous size, larger than any we had yet seen on the voyage, some of them being estimated to be of the size of our hatch-house—-viz., eight feet by six feet by six feet!” And yet we are ' asked to believe that a whale could not swallow a man! Mr. Bullerv further des cribes these monsters, which are capable of swallowing substances of such enormous size, “swimming about,' the lower jaw hang ing in its normal position, and its huge gullet gapping like some submarine cavern,” into which Jonah could have slipped so easily thai-'-ihe whale would scarcely have known it. He tells us that “a whale could swallow—well, a block four or five feet square—a mass which was two feet longer than a tall man, and whose other dimen sions were about thirth-six feet square, or equal in breadth and width to the bodies of six big, stout men rolled into one.” It ought ,to be noted in this connection that the book of Jonah does not say that it was “a whale,” but “a great fish,” or, as the Revised Version of Matthew translates it, “a sea-monster,” that' swallowed the prophet. Surely if God could create a sea- monster at all, He could create one, even a whale, with a | mouth and, gullet large enough to Stvallow a man. A sceptic was once arguing against the story of Baalam’s ass speaking. His friend said; “Well, if you will make an ass, I will make him talk.” Ability to create carries with it the power to endow with such powers as the Creator wishes.
“There is no miracle in the fact that Jonah was swallowed by ‘a great fish’.” The sea dogs which live in thé Mediter ranean (into which sea, by the way, Jonah was cast) can easily swallow a man, or even a larger object; and they swallow their food Without chewing it. Blumen- bach, the eminent German zoologist, says that a horse has been found whole in the stomach of a sea dog. Other noted natur alists, such as Lacepede, Gunther, and Bruniche, give confirmatory testimony and cite other instances.” ' GOD’S SPECIAL INTERVENTION It is‘ remarkable to note that the great fish was .“prepared” to swallow Jonah. This word “prepared” occurs four times in Jonah, and only in three other places in the whole Bible, although the ordinary word “prepared” occurs hundreds of times. This word indicates that God appointed in a special way this fish to swallow Jonah, just as in tfye New Testament Jésus appointed a special fish to have a coin in its mouth at the appointed time and place (Matthew 17:27). In the book of Jonah God “appointed,” or “prepared,” four special things: “a great fish to swallow Jonah” (1 :17) ; “a gourd . j . to come Up over Jonah” (4:6) ; “a vehement east wind” (4:8); “a worm” to smite the gourd (4:7). These four words indicate a miraculbus manifestation of God’s power for a spe cific purpose. “That the Almighty could, if necessary, extemporize a sea-monster for the assigned purpose we should not doubt. To say that God could not do this is to deny God altogether ; to say He w o u lf not do it is absurd—any one of us would do it in similar circumstances if only he had the power; ,to say He did not do it is a fla grant case of begging the question.” —Anderson. JONAH A TYPE OF CHRIST By this extraordinary occurrence Jonah became one of the most remarkable types of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus to be found anywhere in the Old Testament Scriptures ; “For as
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