And that this hope was full of immortality-a hope bottomed on the only sure foundation-the following remarkable words abundantly testify: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another."

At the same time it must be confessed that expressions did, on some trying occasions in the course of the disputation, drop from his lips, betraying despondency and fretfulness, and not altogether devoid of presumption. "Oh that I might have my request, and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! even then it would please God to cut me off." "Let the day perish wherein I was born; let that day be darkness." "Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God: I would order my cause before him. Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me." These, and suchlike despairing and irreverent expressions, wrung from Job by the severity of his misfortunes, aggravated by the unjust charges of his friends, did not escape the ear of the Almighty, who granted, to his confusion, the rash desire he had expressed, that he would answer him. The God of heaven manifested himself to the disputants, and settled their controversy, by sanctioning with his approval the views which Job had taken of the measures of his administration, sharply reproving him, at the same time, for the weakness and rashness which he had occasionally displayed. Nothing can be more sublime and impressive than the views displayed by the Almighty of his own universal and absolute sovereignty, his unsearchable wisdom, and the grandeur of the whole scheme of creation and providence. Abashed and confounded at his own presumptuous folly, in having dared so boldly to enter upon matters too high for man, and even to desire an opportunity of reasoning with his Maker, Job exclaims, "Lo, I am vile: what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, but

I will not reply; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further." And when the Almighty was pleased still further to place before him a representation of the vast variety of his works, with the many difficulties, unfathomable to human understanding, with which even the visible creation abounds, Job seems to sink under the sense of his own utter impotence and vileness. "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

But although it pleased the Almighty thus to reprove and effectually to humble his servant, that his soul might be further purified from the remains of corruption, and rendered capable of still higher exaltation and enjoyment in his own presence for ever, he administered a still sharper rebuke to his friends, and directed them to accept Job's intercession for them, that they might escape further punishment. "Offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you, for him will I accept; lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath." This was the commencement of brighter prospects to the suffering patriarch. The thick clouds of adversity began to dissolve; and it pleased God to testify, by his restoration to temporal prosperity, his approbation of the religious sentiments he had expressed, and of the trust in his providence and patient submission with which he had undergone the severe trials to which he had been subjected. "So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning;" "and he lived after this an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations." And thus shall he abundantly recompense, if not in this life, certainly in the next, all who endure patiently, committing the keeping of their souls unto him in well-doing. It is the privilege of such to look forward confidently to their union with them who are come out of great tribulation, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and who, with praise and joy, surround his throne for ever and ever.

IX.

MOSES.

AKE him for all in all, regard him not in one but many aspects, Moses is the greatest character in history, sacred or profane.

As a writer, for example, he takes precedence of the most venerable authors of antiquity. Consecrating, so to speak, the press, the first book types ever printed was a copy of the Holy Scriptures; and in beautiful harmony with that remarkable providence, it is more than probable that the first book pen ever wrote was one of the five of which Moses was the author. Certain it is that if his were not the first ever written-written long ages before Herodotus composed his history or Homer sang his poems-his are the oldest books extant. Before all others in point of time, what author occupies himself with themes of such surpassing grandeur? Like one who had met God face to face within the cloudy curtains of the awful mount, he introduces us into the counsels of the Almighty, and records events which, receding into a past and stretching forward into a future eternity, had God for their author, the world for their theatre, and for their end the everlasting destinies of mankind. Apart from the surpassing grandeur of his subjects, even in the very manner of handling them, the world's oldest is its foremost writer. What other poet rises to heights or sustains a flight so lofty as Mosesin his dying song, for instance, his parting words to the tribes of Israel ere he ascended Nebo to wave them his last farewell and

vanish for ever from their wondering, weeping gaze? The inimitable pathos of his style as illustrated in the story of Joseph, the tears and trembling voices of readers in all ages have acknowledged. In simple, tender, touching narrative, no passages in any other book will compare with it; and yet so wide and varied is his range that the writings of Moses contain-infidels themselves being judges-the sublimest expressions man has spoken or penned. By universal consent, for example, no other book, ancient or modern, the production of the highest mind and of the most refined and cultivated age, contains a sentence so sublime as this: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

Again, as a divine, compared to his knowledge of the attributes and character of God, how gross the notions of the heathen! how puerile, dim and distorted the speculations of their greatest sages! The wisest of them look like men with unsteady steps and outstretched arms groping for truth in the dark. As to the mass of people, they imputed crimes and vices to their gods which would now-a-days consign men to the gallows or banish them from decent society. But how pure, and comprehensive also, Moses' estimate of the divine character-of what we are to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of men! Since his day-removed from our own by almost four thousand years-science has made prodigious strides; but those who have discovered new elements, new forces, new worlds, new stars, new suns, have brought to light no new attribute of God, nor a single feature of his character with which Moses was not acquainted. During these long ages philosophers and divines have been studying morals, the duties men owe to God and to each other, the laws that bind society and hold its parts together; but they who have added a thousand truths to science and a thousand inventions to art have not discovered any duties which Moses overlooked, or added so much as one law to his code of morals. Yet he had no Bible, as we have, whereby to acquaint himself with God; nor was he reared, like us, in a Christian land, but among those who,

with all their boasted learning, worshiped the ox and serpent, beasts of the field, fowls of the air and creeping things-divinities so innumerable that it was said there were more gods than men in Egypt. Let the character of his age and the circumstances in which he lived be taken into account, and he is the greatest of divines; nor does his sublime knowledge of God, of the mysteries of religion and of the moralities of life admit of any but one explanation. The glory of his writings and of his face are to be traced to the same source. He was admitted into the secret counsels of the Eternal, and spake, like other holy men of old, as he was moved by the Holy Ghost.

Again, as a leader and legislator Moses occupies a place no other man has approached, far less attained to. History records no such achievements as his who, without help from man, struck the fetters off a million and more of slaves; placing himself at their head, led them forth from the land of bondage; reducing them to order, controlled more turbulent and subdued more stubborn elements than any before or since have had to deal with; formed a great nation out of such base materials; and casting into the shade the celebrated retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, conducted to a successful issue the longest and hardest march on record-a march continued for forty years in the face of formidable enemies, through howling wildernesses and desert sands. Then look at the sacred and secular polity which he established in Israel! That constitution which makes England so prominent among nations has been, like an oak, the slow growth of ages, and it was often only after long and sometimes bloody struggles that right there prevailed over might, and laws were established that render equal justice to all classes of the community. But, event unparalleled in any other age or country, Moses established in Israel a form of government and a code of laws which neither time nor experience has been able to improve. Like the goddess fabled to have sprung, full grown and full armed, from the head of Jupiter, or like those who never hung on mother's breast, the