Arizona republican., 1904-02-22
JoNAH's MESSAGE TO NINEVEH.
Yesterdays Sermon at the Methodist
 Episcopal Church.

Text-"And Jonah began to enter into the city, days journey, and he cried. and said. yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be overthrown."
 Nineveh was the ancient capital Of Assyria From northeast to southwest for six or seven hundred miles, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers flow all most parallel, giving to Asia a valley far surpassing in area and rivaling in fertility the great Nile of Africa This valley lies beyond the Syrian desert from Palestine, and was embraced by the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Babylonia was identical with Shinar of the Bible and Assyria was, known as the land of Nimrod. Ninevah was situated on the east bank of the Iii gris some five or six hundred miles from the Persian gulf, and about the same distance northeast from Jerusa- lem. We have in the tenth chapter of Genesis, the account of Nimrod found- ing four cities, of which Ninevah was the principal one. From this time B. c. 234S-tilI the coming of Jonah B. c. S62-there is no reference to Nineveh in the Bible.
 The subject for discussion today is Gods message, sent by Jonah, to this great and wicked city. Let us note the following thoughts:
 l. The moral condition of the people of Nineveh.
 ?. The fitness of the message.
 3. The effect on the people.
 4. Gods forgiveness.
 l. The Bible tells us that Mneveh was an exceedingly wicked city as well as a very large one. Probably, the city offers the opportunity for doing the greatest good, hence the developing of the strongest character; and, cer- tainly. it furnishes the strongest temp tation to sin. But, after all, the unit of society is the same in the city as in the small town; and may not the great apparent difference in vice be in the massing of sin rather than the vileness of the sinner. In fact, the man who goes as far. into sin, in the rural dis trict, as public sentiment will allow is just as vile at heart as the more grave offender under environments more lax.
 It would be impossible to enumerate the sins of, Nineveh, as it would be equally foolish to undertake to give a list of the vices of any community but-certainly, the prevailing sin of the city and the nation may be discerned And to my mind, the word selfishness accurately expresses it. It was not the fabulous wealth the Ninevites had amassed, that constituted their sin, but the use they made of it; neither was it in their desire for pleasure that God found grounds for complaint, but in the sources from which they satisfied these desires On the one hand, they devoted their means wholly to the temporal and aesthetic demands of nature; and, on the other, they turn ed to the appetites and bestial channels of life for enjoyment, rather than to the affections and those higher ave nues of the mind which lead to the noble atmosphere of truth and God.
 This was a wondreusly prosperous city The ruins that were upearthed during the last part of the 18th cen tury, and that are being worked now, reveal a magnificence that was quite if not equal to that of Babylon. This Is not surprising when we consider the fact that Ninevah was the capital and principal city of a great fertile plain and that for nearly two thousand years she had saved and hoarded the wealth of the surrounding country; and, furthermore, her warlike and