5. We learn by the language these heathen used in their prayer to stop the storm, "We beseech thee, O Lord," &c., that they believed in one supreme God. Where, then, is the truth of the claim of the Jews that they alone believed in one God, or the unity of the Godhead? In this way their own Bible often proves this claim was false; that the nations they had intercourse with believed in one supreme and overruling God. 6. It is stated, that after Jonah was thrown overboard, and was swallowed by a fish, he prayed to the Lord. How was this discovered? Did he pray loud enough to be heard through the sides of the whale? or did the fish open its mouth for his accommodation? 7. As for the prayer, it appears to have been made up of scraps selected from the Psalms of David without much connection, or relevancy to the case. 8. It is stated that the Lord spake to the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land. It must have been a very singular fish to understand Hebrew or any human language. 9. In another respect the whale must have been a peculiar one, or of peculiar construction. The throat of an ordinary whale is about the diameter of a man's arm. It must therefore have been very much stretched to swallow Jonah, or Jonah must have been very much compressed and elongated. 10. The gourd that sheltered Jonah must also have been of a peculiar species to have a vine that could grow several yards in one night, and stand erect so as to hold the gourd in a position to shelter the prophet; and the gourd would have to be as large as a cart or locomotive, or it would soon cease to afford him shade. 11. Jonah seems to have been a very proud and selfish man, with but little of the feeling of mercy, as he preferred that the whole nation of Ninevites should be destroyed rather than that his prediction should not be fulfilled, for he became very angry when he found the Lord was going to spare them. 12. The reason the Lord assigns for sparing Nineveh is a very sensible one,--because "there are more than threescore thousand persons that can not discern between their right and their left hand." This is certainly very good reasoning; but why did he not think of this when millions of innocent persons perished in the act of drowning the whole human race, excepting four men and four women, or when Sodom and Gomorrah were swallowed up, or when seventy thousand were killed for a sin committed by David, or in the numerous cases in which a war of extermination was carried on against whole nations, with the order to slay men, women, and children, and "leave nothing alive that breathes"? Why such partiality? But this is one of the two thousand Bible inconsistencies. 13. This is a very poor story, with a very bad moral. It indicates fickleness, short-sightedness, and partiality on the part of Jehovah; and selfishness and bad temper on the part of his prophet. 14. There are other absurdities in this story which we will bring to view by a few brief questions.