I. THE PITY OF GOD FOR HIS SUFFERING SERVANTS. (Vers. 1-3.) Jehovah looks down and beholds "his servant Job," as he stands unshaken amidst a very hurricane of calamity, holding to his integrity as something dearer than life; and he condescends to expostulate with the accuser. Has not the trial gone far enough? Is not the test that Job has already undergone sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical observer of his truth? Must the furnace be heated still another degree? But the adversary is not content; and it would appear that, if further trial is demanded, the demand is not to be resisted, according to the laws of heaven. The moral government of the world may require this. Thus, while the pity of God would relieve from further suffering, his righteousness-which is his adherence to fixed law - may require its continuance, until every doubt concerning a particular character be solved. But the language ascribed to the heavenly Father is, meanwhile, full of the tenderest compassion. There is individualizing regard. There is recognition of integrity and innocence. There is profound sympathy. We are reminded of the touching words of Psalm 103., "He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

II. In opposition to this, we observe THE MALIGNANT PERSEVERANCE OF THE DEVIL.

1. His specious plea against Job. (Vers. 4, 5.) In the form of a proverb he launches a keen insinuation: "Skin for skin;" like after like; one thing after another will a man give for dear life. Job has only made a barter after all He loses all his property; but then he has that left which outweighs all the rest. The loss of goods teaches him to prize the health which is left. He feels the greatness of this blessing as he never felt it before. Any circumstance which teaches us the worth of a common blessing is so far an advantage to us. An eminent living man has said that, given health, we have no right to complain of anything in the world. Job, then, has only been half tempted after all; and the trial will only run its full course when it has assailed this last great, chief blessing - his health of body and of mind. Such is the "case" of the devilish prosecutor against Job.

2. The final test permitted. (Vers. 6-8.) The All-disposer grants the permission: "He is in thy power; but spare his life!" And then a sudden poison strikes through the sufferer's blood; he becomes from head to foot a mass of disease and loathsomeness, sits in ashes, scraping himself with a potsherd, to allay the fearful irritation of his malady. His mind is, of course, deeply affected by the illness of his body. Natural hope is extinct. It is a life in ruins. Yet that Divine and immortal principle we call the soul is still intact, still glimmers like a bright spark amidst the embers of a dying fire.

III. TEMPTATION IN THE GUISE OF AFFECTION. (Vers. 9,10.) And now what remains of conscious life is to know one further shock; and the hand of woman, the voice of a wife, is employed to urge the tottering sufferer over the brink on which he sits, into despair and total renunciation of faith and God. Then his wife said to him," Dost thou still hold fast to thine innocence? Say farewell to God, and die!"

1. This is a second signal instance in which, in the Old Testament, woman plays the part of the tempter. There is instruction in this pointed fact. Woman is the weaker vessel, in mind as in body. She has less firmness of intellectual texture. Her weakness as well as her strength lies in feeling. She is quick in impulses, both of good and of evil. She represents passion, and man represents strength. On the whole, she is less capable of strong, profound, patient convictions, less able to take a large view of questions, to look beyond the present and immediate aspects of things. Here is the picture of a lively temper, quick to feel resentment at pain or gratitude for good; but a shallow understanding, unused to meditation and reflection on the deeper meanings of life. Her language is that of haste and passion. But this serves to bring out by contrast the calm, reflective piety, the convictions established by lifelong thought and experience of her husband.

2. The rebuke of Job to his wife.

(1) "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women;" that is, thy language is like that of a heathen, not of one who has been trained in the knowledge and worship of the true God. The heathen turn fickly from one god to another as pleasure and pain or the caprice of fancy may suggest. For their gods are but idols, creatures of their own imagination, which they take up and cast down as children with their toys. But there is only one God for me! And that God, the eternally Wise and Good in all that he gives, in all that he withholds!

(2) There are two sides of life and the one must be taken along with the other. Here, too, the language of manly reasonableness and of intelligent piety speaks out Life is a garment woven of both pleasure and pain, of seeming good and evil. The one conditions the other. All experience teaches that constant happiness is the lot of none. Why, then, should I expect to be an exception? Surely we are but crude scholars in life's great school, so long as we think we are entitled to immunity from any particular form of suffering. We are still children who think they have a right to their own way, and are astonished to find themselves withstood. "Who told thee thou hadst a right to be happy? Art thou a vulture screaming for thy food?"

"Couldst thou, Pausanias, learn
How deep a fault is this!
Couldst thou but once discern
Thou hast no right to bliss!" Here, then, the weakness of distrust and the folly of despair in the human heart, represented by Job's wife, stand opposed to the nobleness and grandeur of a fathomless confidence in the Eternal. God is the Author at last of all we suffer. Is that a reason for forsaking God? No, replies faith; it is a reason for reposing more entirely upon his everlasting arms. "If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea." - J.

I. THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR EVEN THE RIGHTEOUS MAN TO SUFFER IN THE EXTREMEST DEGREE. It is one part of the purpose of the book to illustrate this truth for sufferers in all time, to make known that "many" may be "the afflictions of the righteous."

II. THAT THE PURPOSE OF THESE EXTREME AFFLICTIONS IS THE TESTING AND PERFECTING OF VIRTUE, which, even in the ease of the righteous, is necessarily imperfect. Reading through this book, it would appear that the work of Satan is to test virtue. Satan is called "the agent of probation." He displays a malignant and antagonistic spirit. But whatever may seem to be the motives on the one side, it is obviously the Divine purpose to make the testing an occasion of blessing to him who is tested. "When he is tried he shall receive a crown of life." Satan must be considered as a servant of the most high God, whose agency is employed in the spiritual discipline of the righteous. The conditions of temptation to evil are so intimately identified with all those of the human life, that we can only think of them as a necessary part of the present constitution under which human life is held. By it virtue is exposed to injury; but in its fires virtue is purified and perfected.

III. THAT THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE IN RESISTING TEMPTATION TO EVIL AND TO IMPATIENCE UNDER THE OPPRESSION OF PAIN, IS THE UTMOST TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SOUL, AND ENSURES THE HIGHEST REWARD. He who subjects the delicate life to the fierce blast of evil will not so expose it as needlessly to endanger its highest interests. Temptation does not appeal to the virtue of the heart, but to its remaining faultiness, which it exposes for destruction, and so proves its own beneficent action.

IV. In the history of Job we further learn that EVEN LOFTY VIRTUE MAY RE BOWED DOWN, AND SHOW SIGNS OF WEAKNESS BEFORE FINALLY TRIUMPHING.

V. We also learn THE WISDOM OF PATIENTLY SUBMITTING TO THE TRIALS OF LIFE, HOWEVER SEVERE. Rebelliousness brings no ease to the troubled spirit. The only alternative offered to Job was, "Curse God, and die." The better course is to retain integrity, to sin not, nor charge God foolishly. - R.G.

I. THE FORCE OF THE PROVERB. Take it how you will - that a man will sacrifice a less vital part to save a more vital part, holding up his arm to shelter his head; or that he will give the lives of his cattle, slaves, children, to save his own body's skin; or that he will sell hide after hide of precious skins from his warehouse, i.e. all his property, for his life - the proverb plainly means that a man will make any sacrifice to save his life.

1. There is an instinct of self-preservation. Here we come to an impulse of nature. When in a state of nature all creatures try to save their own lives at any coat. Even the would-be suicide, when once he finds himself drowning, screams for help, and clutches madly at the rope that is flung to him. Accordingly, juries usually bring in a verdict predicating an unsound mind in the case of any one who has succeeded in taking his own life. Now, this instinct of self-preservation is a gift from the Author of nature; it is innocent because Divine, and powerful because primitive.

2. Life is a first condition of all experience and possession. If a man loses his life he loses his all. He may sacrifice many things for the sake of one coveted end - selling all he has to buy one pearl of great price; he may risk his life on a great venture; but if he loses his life he can obtain nothing in return. "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life?" (Matthew 16:26).

3. Life is seen to be supremely valued. Starving men become cannibals. In the siege of Jerusalem women boiled their own children for a last meal, natural affection itself being sacrificed to the instinct of self-preservation. Desperate men sell their lives dearly.

II. THE FALSITY OF THE PROVERB. We must be on our guard how we quote texts from Scripture. This is especially important in the Book of Job, where the form is dramatic. The proverb before us is in Scripture; yet it is not from God, but from the devil. This very fact should make us suspicious about it. It looks like truth, but it comes from the "father of lies."

1. It denies the higher life. Satan refers to a natural instinct. But that instinct does not cover the whole of our being. His lie is the more deadly because it is the exaggeration of a truth, or rather because it is the statement of one truth which needs to be qualified with another truth. Bishop Butler has taught us that human nature in its fulness includes conscience. But conscience may go against the lower part of our nature. The higher life may dominate and suppress the instincts of the lower.

2. It ignores the fact of self-sacrifice. Satan uttered his saw as though it were a generalization from wide experience. We may have our fine theories as to how things ought to be; he will tell us how he finds them really existing in the world. The devil only perceives the lower life, only perceives the selfish side of man. He is the "spirit that denies," because he is blind. But self-sacrifice is as much a fact as self-preservation. The cross is its great witness. The good Shepherd giving his life for the sheep is the triumphant refutation of Satan's old saw. So in a secondary way are Job in his fidelity, and every martyr and hero and Christ-like man. - W.F.A.

I. THE MISERY OF THE INFLICTION.

1. It touches the man himself. Hitherto the blows have fallen on his outer world, though, indeed, they have come very near to him in striking his children. Still, he has not felt them directly. Satan has drawn a marked line between these external troubles and personal troubles (vers. 4, 5). Now he crosses the line. Every man must feel what touches himself, though some may be too callous, too unimaginative, or too unsympathetic fully to appreciate what is outside them. No man can feel his brother's toothache as acutely as he feels his own.

2. It lays hold of his body. Bodily pain is not the worst form of suffering. A broken heart is infinitely more pitiable than a broken skin. Still, bodily pain has this about it, that it cannot be denied or eluded. It is a very tangible and unquestionable fact.

3. It is loathsome and disgusting. Elephantiasis makes its victim an object of repulsion, hideous to behold, shunned by all his fellows. Job had been a prince among men, living in universal respect. He now comes down, not only to poverty, but also to a condition of visible degradation and disgust. To the man of sensitive feelings shame is worse than pain.

4. It is hopeless. Elephantiasis was thought to be incurable. Job took no medical remedies. He only retired to his ash-heap, seeking temporary alleviations. The worst agony can be endured with some patience if there is a prospect of cure; but even a milder complaint becomes intolerable if there is no hope of escape.

II. THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE SUFFERER. The most significant thing about the narrative here is that so little is said about the behaviour of Job. As yet we have no word from him under his fearful malady. The silence is eloquent.

1. Great suffering stifles thought. This is a merciful provision of Providence. We could not bear both to feel acutely and to think profoundly at the same time. There is a sort of mental anodyne in fearful bodily pain. Its paroxysms act as an anaesthetic to the finer feelings of the soul When the worst of the bodily pain is over the mind recovers itself; but at first it is stunned and crushed into numbness.

2. True fortitude accepts alleviations of suffering. Job does what little he can to relieve the intolerable torments of his disease. He has no idea of attitudinizing as a martyr. Small sufferers may try to make the most of their pains, foolishly nursing them, and obviously playing for pity. This is not the case with the great tragic heroes. The depth of their sufferings are known only to God.

3. Bitter distress seeks solitude. Job retired to the ashes. His complaint made this action necessary; his mood must also have welcomed the retirement. In bitter distress the soul would be alone - yet not alone, for God is present as truly among the ashes as in the gorgeous temple. - W.F.A.

I. THE WIFE'S TEMPTATION.

1. Its source. Job is now tempted by his own wile - by her who is nearest to him, and who should be almost his second self. Chrysostom asks, "Why did the devil leave him his wife?' and replies, "Because he thought her a good scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other means." Certainly the temptation which comes through one whom we love is the most powerful. Christ met the tempter in a favourite disciple. It is the duty of love not simply to sympathize, but also to give good counsel; it is its error only to show sympathy by aggravating the evil tendencies of a trouble.

2. Its excuse. Men have been too hard on Job's wife for this one foolish saying of hers, forgetting how huge was her affliction. Indeed, a great injustice has been done her, and while sympathy and admiration have been lavished on the husband, the partner in distress has scarcely received a glance of pity. But his troubles were her troubles. She had been in affluence, the happy mother of a happy family. Now she is plunged into poverty and misery, bereft of her children, with her once honoured husband in disease and corruption. Is it wonderful that she should utter one hasty, impatient word?

3. Its point. We cannot say that Job's wife urged him to curse God; for she my have meant, "renounce God." At all events, let him give up the struggle and commit suicide. It is the Stoic's advice. Others since have advised euthanasia in unbearable sufferings. It needed a brave heart to resist such an appeal. Only those who have been plunged into the lowest depth know the fearful inducement to despair of life and go -

"Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world."

II. THE HUSBAND'S REPLY.

1. Its reprimand. Job quietly tells his wife that she is talking like one of the foolish or ungodly women.

(1) There is patience in this reprimand; he does not angrily repudiate her hasty advice.

(2) It is discriminating. Job sees at ones the defect. His wife has forsaken her higher plane of living, and fallen down to conventional ideas of the world. There was this excuse for her, however, that her conduct was not without precedent, though the precedent was not worthy to be followed.

(3) It is generous. Job delicately hints that her words are unworthy of her. He implies that she is not herself one of the foolish women. Often the best and most effective reprimand is an appeal to a person's self-respect.

2. Its resignation.

(1) It recognizes God as the Source of all things. Job does not seem to be aware that Satan has a hand in his calamities. He attributes them wholly to God. Thus he fails to see one side of the dread mystery of iniquity. Yet there was truth in what he said. Nothing happens but by God's permission.

(2) It admits the justice of God's dealing. How fair is Job! And how unfair are many men in accepting boundless mercies without a thought of gratitude, and then shrieking with rage at the first twinge of adversity! If we struck the balance between our blessings and our troubles, should we not find the former vastly outweighing the latter? And if we accept the blessings from God, should we not be prepared to take the reverse of them also?

3. Its self-restraint. "In all this did not Job sin with his lips." It is uncharitable of the Targum to add, "But in his thoughts he already cherished sinful words." If thoughts of rebellion were beginning to rise - and Job was but mortal - the brave man silenced them. It is much to learn how to "be still." - W.F.A.

I. OF THE BLESSING OF FRIENDSHIP. Sympathy is the indispensable need of the heart. It deepens the colour of all our pleasures; it throws a gleam of light athwart our deepest gloom. "Rejoice with them that do rejoice; and weep with them that weep." Our joys do not burst into flower till they feel the warm atmosphere of friendship. Our heaviest griefs only cease to be crushing when we have poured our tale into the ear of one we love. One of the humblest, yet best offices a friend can render to a sufferer is to be a good listener. Draw him out; get him to talk; movement and change of mind are what he needs. Exertion, if only the exertion of speech, will do him good. Do not pour upon him a cataract of well-meaning but stunning commonplaces. Imitate the kindness of Job's friends, but not their want of tact and perception. Let him only feel that in your presence he can relieve himself of all that is on his mind, and will not fail to be kindly understood.

II. SEASONABLE SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF SORROW. On the arrival of the friends, seeing the heart-rending condition of the noble chieftain, whom they had last seen in the height of his health and prosperity, now sitting in the open air, banished by disease from his dwelling, defaced by that disease beyond recognition, an utterly broken man, they express their grief by all the significant gestures of Eastern manners - weeping, rending their clothes, sprinkling dust upon their heads. They then take their places by his side, and keep a profound and mournful silence for a week, as Ezekiel did when he visited his countrymen captives by the river Chebar. What exquisite manners are taught us in the Bible! And the great superiority of its teaching in this respect over the common teaching of the world is that it founds all manners upon the heart. It is truth, love, sympathy, which can alone render us truly polite, refined, and delicate in our relations to others, teaching us always to put ourselves in thought in the other's place. "There is a time to keep silence." In great grief we recognize the hand of God, and he bids us be still and own him. Our smaller feelings bubble, our deeper ones are dumb. There are times when reverence demands silence, and a single word is too much. Leave the sufferer alone at first. Let him collect himself; let him ask what God has to say to him in the still, small voice that comes after the earthquake and the storm. "Sacred silence, thou that art offspring of the deeper heart, frost of the mouth, and thaw of the mind!" Sit by your friend's side, clasp his hand, say simply, "God comfort you, my brother!" In the earlier stage of a fresh and sudden grief this will be enough. We cannot doubt that the wounded heart of Job was greatly comforted by the silent presence of his sympathizing friends. It was better than all their spoken attempts at consolation. Let us thank God for friendship and for true friends; they are messengers from him. "God, who comforteth them that are cast down, comforted me by the coming of Titus!" - J.

I. THE CAUSES OF OUR IMPOTENCE IN PRESENCE OF SEVERE SUFFERING ARE:

1. Our inability to descend to the depth of the sorrow of another. It is only as we ourselves are sufferers that we can know what others feel. We must have drunk of the same cup if we would know its bitterness.

2. But even though we have suffered as we see others suffer, no words, even of the tenderest pity, can effectually relieve the mourner. Hollow human words, words of merely pretended sympathy, only wound the sufferer more deeply; while words of true friendship, cooling and cheering as they may be, can take up no part of the burden. For a time they draw off the mind of the sufferer from his sorrow, but it returns as a flowing tide.

II. THE PAINFULNESS TO A TRUE FRIEND OF CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE EFFECTUALLY TO AID THE SUFFERER. Days or hours of silence are days or hours of keen suffering to the faithful friend unable to stanch the wound, to abate the fever, to restore the lost possession or the lost friend. By all we are driven to -

III. THE TRUE AND ONLY EFFECTUAL SYMPATHIZER, THE GOD-MAN, who, having suffered, and having power to descend to the lowest depths of the human heart, and having the Divine resources at command, the power to inspire the word of consolation and supporting strength; and who, measuring the need of the sufferer, can abate the severity of bodily pain or mental anguish. To the sufferer the welcome of this honest sympathy opens the door for the incoming of the true Healer and Comforter and Helper, who can give strength to the feeble, and, above all, can sanctify sorrow and calamity to higher ends, and make all things work together for good. He can brighten hope and sustain faith and strengthen patience, can soothe the fretted spirit, and give peace and joy and life. - R.G.

I. TROUBLE SHOULD COLLECT FRIENDS. We see very much of the faults of Job's three friends in the course of the poem. Let us be fair to them, and recognize their good points. They were true friends; they did honestly desire and attempt to render to Job all the consolation that was in their power. They aimed at being "friends in need." False friends fall off in the hour of trouble. Such a spectacle as that of Job on his dungheap would not invite the crowd of sycophants that swarms about the table of the great man. No doubt Job had been pestered with plenty of such pretended friends in the old days of his fame. Doubtless one blessing among his many calamities was that he was now relieved of their presence. But three genuine friends still hold to him and seek him out in the time of his deepest distress. It is well to go to the house of mourning. But few are they who know how to conduct themselves when them.

II. SYMPATHY IS THE BEST COMFORT. The three friends were amazed at the sight which presented itself. They were prepared to see trouble) but no imagination could picture so huge a distress as that of Job. It needed to be witnessed to be believed. The sight of it calls forth natural sympathy. Although the decorous Orientals proceeded at once to adopt the conventional forms of mourning, there is every reason to believe that their sympathy was genuine and heartfelt. It is only the heart made callous by selfishness that is incapable of sympathy. In this most Divine attribute of human nature we may recognize the root of what is moot fruitful in good. Sympathy is the spring of all the most helpful service, and when the service is impossible, the sympathy itself is consoling; for it is much to know that friends feel with us in our trouble.

III. SYMPATHY MAY BE SHOWN IN SILENCE. Those seven days sad seven nights of silence are a sublime spectacle. Job's comforters began well. It would have been good for their reputation if they had gone home at the end of the week. Then they would have been known as model comforters instead of becoming bywords for tormentors. We often make a mistake in thinking we ought "to say something." Great distress should hush hasty words. There are times when the gentlest words sound harsh on pained ears. What is wanted in trouble is not advice, but sympathy; and this is best shown by the unbidden tear, the silent pressure of the hand, the look of love. We feel a sad separation from one who is in great sorrow, for sorrow is naturally lonely. Only Christ can perfectly enter into it. He needs no words. - W.F.A.