sinner.

However prosperous he may be in life, he has nothing to hope for after death, as I now have. He does not, as I do, delight himself in God, and confidently invoke Him for justice. God does not hear his prayer as He will hear mine. I will explain to you how the hand of God is manifested upon the wicked; and yet you have seen it for yourselves, so that there is no excuse for your foolish speaking. This is the doom of the wicked. He may have many children, but they shall perish by the sword or by famine; and if any survive, they shall be destroyed by a pestilence -by a pestilence so dreadful that not even their widows will follow them to the grave. He may amass gold as though it were but dust, and raiment as though it were of no more value than mire, but eventually his property shall all be enjoyed by the righteous. The house which he builds himself is fragile and destructible as the moth's. His riches vanish in a moment; and in the twinkling of an eye he himself is no more. Terrors overtake him like a flood. Death shall carry him away suddenly like a whirlwind. shall shower evils upon him without sparing, and men shall regard his discomfiture with scornful derision.

God

The cause of my suffering cannot be discovered.

It is one of the unsearchable secrets of God. Man has found the veins of silver and the places where gold-dust may be washed out. He has discovered the iron-mines, and the rocks which contain copper. In his mining operations he invades the kingdom of darkness; and, passing through the subterranean rocks, penetrates, as it were, into the very blackness of death. He sinks his shafts deep down below all human habitations, and carries on his work far away from the sound of human footsteps. The under parts of the earth he blasts by fire, in order to reach the precious stones and the nuggets of gold. The path thither neither the eagle nor the hawk have seen, neither the lion nor the tiger have trodden. This is man's prerogative. No difficulty can stop him. He assaults the granite rock, and uproots the mountain from its base. He dams up the waters, and turns them into channels of his own contriving. But what of wisdom? what of the understanding which comprehends the divine procedure? That is beyond man's faculties. knows not her abode. She is not to be found with mortals. The sea saith, She is not with me. The abysmal depth which feeds the sea replies, Nor with me. Neither silver nor gold can buy her. Corals and crystal are not to be

He

The topaz The price of

mentioned in comparison with her. of Ethiopia is inferior to her. wisdom is beyond pearls. Where, then, does wisdom dwell, and how shall she be obtained? Her abode is hidden from every living eye, yea, even from the fowls of heaven with all their powers of divination. Hades and death, which reveal so many secrets, have to confess that they have heard but the vaguest rumours of her. He only who can look to the ends of the earth, who can observe all that is under heaven, God alone, has seen the abode of wisdom. When He was weighing out the winds and measuring the waters, giving a law to the rain and tracing a path for the lightning, then He saw her and gave her a place in His creation. But He perceived that she was beyond the reach of human faculties. Man can never comprehend things as God comprehends them. We may attain to perfect goodness, but not to perfect knowledge. To man, therefore He said,— "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding."

141

Fob.

VII.

CHAPTERS XXIX.-XXXI.

IN

N the last sermon, we broke off in the middle of Job's soliloquy. Having summed up the debate, he now falls into a less argumentative and a more pensive mood. He gives a pathetic description of his former prosperity, full "of the tender grace of a day that is dead." We learn that he was the sheikh, not of a nomadic, but of a settled clan; that his estate was situated in the suburbs of a well-ordered city; that he had held the office of a judge, and had been universally respected and beloved. After reviewing his former life, he passes on to contrast with it his present position. Instead of being reverenced by the highest, he was now despised by the lowest. The base-born churls, to whom he

refers as the most virulent of his insulters, were probably the aborigines of the Hauran, conquered and dispossessed by the superior race of which Job was chief. They would, no doubt, be glad of an opportunity for revenging themselves, such as was afforded by his present misery and helplessness. Job brings his soliloquy to a conclusion by re-asserting his uprightness, and giving a minute description of the innocency of his past life. His conduct, we shall see, had fallen little, if at all, short of that inculcated by the Sermon on the Mount.

Oh that I were as in months of old, in the days when God kept guard over me, when I walked in the light of prosperity, which He caused to shine about me,—in those golden days of the autumn of my manhood, when the Almighty dwelt as a friend in my tent, when my children were yet about me, and nature showered her choicest blessings on me with unstinted prodigality! If I went into the city, and sat in its gate as a judge, young men withdrew as being unworthy even to salute me, and the grey-headed arose and remained standing. Princes and nobles were silent when I wished to speak. All who had ever seen me or heard of me, had something to say in my praise. For I rescued the helpless out of their troubles, I filled