JONAH iv. 6-8. As Elijah the Tishbite sat down in the wilderness under a juniper-tree, heavy-hearted, and fleeing for his life from the grasp of Jezebel, yet requesting for himself that he might die; as he said, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life,” yet anon found rest and refreshment under the juniper-tree, and did eat and drink, and lay down again, and went in the strength of that rest and that meat, forty days and forty nights, unto Horeb the mount of God; so Jonah the son of Amittai, displeased exceedingly, and very angry, prayed in bitterness the same prayer, “O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” Did he well to be angry? Did Elijah well to despair? Under a juniper-tree Elijah recovered strength, took heart, and became of good courage. For Jonah there was preparing a gourd. A gourd; and a worm to make short work of the gourd. Jonah left the city in wrath, and made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city—the city which he had doomed and God had spared. Under the burning sun he awaited the judgment of Nineveh. “And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. “But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.” And when the sun arose, there arose too another thing of God’s preparing. As He had prepared the gourd, and prepared the worm to smite the gourd, so, at sunrise, “God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die.” And not only so, but again expressed the wish, with the old bitterness and even increasing wrath. Did he well to be angry for the gourd? “I do well to be angry, even unto death,” he exclaimed. The gourd was so gladdening a creation, it made even that morose spirit exceeding glad. But scarcely had he time to congratulate himself on this relief, in complacent assurance of its continuance, when the sheltering gourd was eaten to the heart by a speeding worm, and what came up in a night, perished in a night; and this also was vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit. A perverse fate seems to lie in wait for man, “And though he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such charges of vexation on’t, As it may lose some colour.” In the words of another of Shakspeare’s dramas, “joy cannot show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.” _Inter delicias semper aliquid sævi nos strangulat_, says the Latin adage; the _aliquid sævi_ answering to the _aliquid amari_ of Lucretius, _quod in ipsis floribus angat_; or again to the _aliquid solliciti_ of Ovid, ... “Nulla est sincera voluptas; Sollicitique aliquid lætis intervenit.”