consistency of this language of complaint with their avowed theory of the world's government. For if all events occur as the result of immutable and inevitable law, acting uniformly through all time, it is scarcely philosophical to select one particular event as the work of a capricious and unkind will. And yet in the very inconsistency is matter, not for our ridicule, but for profound pity and awe. For the heart, thus dashing against the bars in which the intellect seeks to cramp it, bears terrible witness to the truth that the heart, not less than the intellect, is a talent given to us by which to learn our relation to God.

Now let us turn from this, one of the latest utterances of the advanced religion of the nineteenth century, to one of the earliest recorded in the world's history. The authorship and date of the Book of Job are problems yet unsolved. This only is certain, that it presents a picture of a very early civilization. It is not Jewish. It stands out, indeed, among the Jewish Scriptures by its un-Judaic character. Its religion, manners, scenery, are Gentile. And yet, in many respects, it appeals to modern sympathies, even to Christian sympathies, more immediately than the records of the chosen people them

selves. For the very vagueness of time and scene has the effect of making more universal the moral of this story of man's trial and God's justification. We feel separated from Jewish history by the strongly-marked impress of the Hebrew mind. The teaching of the Book of Job is unlocalized, and is of all time because it seems to be of no special time.

Hence it is that portions of this ancient book sound to us so strangely modern; and the verse before us is one in point. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." It is a height of spirituality which we are not prepared for in a civilization so remote. It sounds rather like the triumphant death-cry of a Christian martyr than the calm confession of an Arab chief. It suggests the more profound of David's Psalms, or the outpourings of heart of a St. Paul. It is not merely the philosophic calmness of a Cicero, or the religious patience of an Epictetus. There is a ring of enthusiasm in the words, the spirit of a mind possessed with the reality of a divine world above and beyond this. And we feel, with shame it may be, how we are with difficulty trying to enter the same sphere of faith; how far we are from being able to say, Thy

will be done;" how still further we

are from the true spirit of thankfulness to God that His will is being fulfilled, because that will is good.

For we are here regarding Job's first emotion on hearing of his losses and bereavements, before his orthodox and well-meaning friends came to confuse his moral sense, and pervert his old and true convictions of God's ways. We cannot now enter in detail upon the arguments of Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar. But bearing in memory the ingenious theories which they broached of the meaning of suffering, we see even a new pathos in the first instinct of the good man's heart that suffering has an aspect in which it may be regarded apart from its causes, direct or indirect. The three friends went casting about for the cause of this sudden affliction. Had it happened to themselves, they would probably have regarded it as a trial; happening to another, they saw in it a judgment. But the first thoughts of the sufferer himself were, as is so often the case, the best thoughts; and if, under the sophistries of his consolers, he wavered for a time, he comes in the end to those third thoughts which are "a riper first." And this is the moral of the Book of Job, that there are lessons in suffer

ing or loss as true and precious as those which are learnt from regarding it as punishment: and this truth, though we are surprised to find it enforced so long ago, is one which we are still far from having mastered.

No doubt there is a connection between suffering and sin, which, as we were saying last Sunday, it is allowed us often to see. We know, as a fact, that much of the trouble that is in the world proceeds from wilful violation of God's laws, and much more from a violation of them through ignorance. We cannot break one of God's laws without reaping the penalty. This source of suffering could not of course be ascribed by Job's friends to him. His possessions were taken from him through no fault of his own; and the death of his sons through a sudden tempest was manifestly what we still call "the act of God." The three friends' notion of suffering and sin was the vulgar notion of an arbitrary penalty sent for disobedience; the same which saw in the fall of a tower in Siloam, a judgment upon the sinners who chanced to be standing below it. Job, who had no theories to which facts must be squared, saw with truer eyes. He had served God always.

His conscience did not deceive him in this.

The sacred historian confirms the language of the sufferer. And being thus assured of the love he bore to God, he could not see in the afflictions which were sent to him a punishment sent for sin. His friends thought him selfrighteous, and doubtless there are some who still take this view of his character. But Job felt sure that true humility could not be worth much if it was not sincere. And how could it be sincere if it contradicted the voice by which God had been speaking to him all these years? He had made God his friend; he had served Him in faith and fear; he had felt the sunshine of His favour resting upon his head. Was this experience worth nothing; and was it to be lost directly trouble came? If misfortune proved that all this time he had been a hypocrite, what was communion with and experience of God worth? If chastisement meant that he was not a true son of his Father in heaven, but a bastard, what had been gained by the chastisement? In the problem presented here to Job was the dawn of that light which burst in all its fulness upon mankind in the Son of God. We have here a true foreshadowing of the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; of Him who was made perfect by sufferings, not