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I. WHERE IS A COMMON CHARACTER IN ALL HUMAN LIFE. Job seems to be suffering from exceptional troubles. Yet he regards his condition as typical of that of mankind generally. He turns from himself to "man that is born of a woman." We differ in external circumstances, possessions, honours; in bodily, mental, and moral characteristics. But in our fundamental constitution we are alike. The points of resemblance are more numerous than the points of difference.

1. All born of women come in the common descent from the first parents.

2. All are frail and short-lived.

3. All suffer from the troubles of lit e.

4. All sin.

5. All have Christ for their brother, able and willing to be also their Saviour.

6. All may enter the eternal life and dwell for ever in the love of God, on the same conditions of repentance and faith.

II. MAN SHARES THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATURE. Job sees in nature types of human life. We are a part of nature, and the laws of nature apply to us. This fact should save us from amazement when trouble comes upon us. It is just in the course of nature. We have not been singled out for a miracle of judgment. It is not that God is writing bitter things against us in particular. Oars is part of the general experience of all nature. Our greatest evil, however, is not that which befalls us in the course of nature, but that which we bring upon ourselves unnaturally. There is something monstrous about sin. We feel a gentle pathos in natural sorrow, but we recognize a terrible tragedy, a dark and dreadful curse, in our self made sorrow of sin. That is infinitely worse than the lading of flowers and the fleeing of shadows.

III. NATURE SETS FORTH THE SAD SIDE OF LIFE.

1. Brevity. Man is "of few days." The age of nature is maintained by succession, not by continuance. The race goes on, the individual passes.

2. Trouble. "Full of trouble." "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together" (Romans 8:22). The advance of nature is through conflict and struggle.

3. Frailty. Man is born of a woman, "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7). The flower, which is the most beautiful thing in nature, is the most fragile. Crushed by a careless step, or nipped by frost, or withered by the very sun that drew out its life and painted its loveliness, it is yet the type of human life. The most exquisite flowers may be the most delicate, and the finest souls the most sensitive. The hot Southern sun quickly turns a garden into a desert. The same fate is found among the most cultivated and valued lives. The flowers are not saved by their beauty and fragrance. Some of the most precious lives are cut down in their prime. The scythe that mows the meadows cuts off the summer flowers in the height of their short-lived beauty. The rough, common fate of man is indiscriminate, laying low the best of men together with their less-valued companions.

4. Unreality. A mere shadow! and a moving shadow! What could be more unsubstantial anti transient? Yet the frailty and changefulness of life make our human existence appear no more real. CONCLUSION. Observe another side of the scene. The very melancholy of the picture suggests that it does not cover the whole field. Nature is not dissatisfied with her changefulness. The flowers do not bewail their untimely end. Man alone looks with sorrow on his fate. The reason is that he is made for something greater. The Divine instinct of immortality is in him. lie is more than a part of nature. A child of God, he is called to share a larger life than that of the natural world. The Christian who is cut down as a frail flower on earth will yet bloom as an immortal flower in Paradise. - W.F.A.

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KJV: Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

WEB: "Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble.