I. THE GREATEST HUMAN PERIL. What is it? The loss of life? Not in the common sense of those words. For the loss of life in this world is not necessarily the loss of the soul. The loss of worldly goods? Still less; for a man's life consisteth not in these. The loss of family, of reputation, of health? All these may be repaired; but the loss of God is irreparable. The mangled tree may sprout again, and send forth vigorous suckers from its root; but how if that root itself be extirpated from its holding? It is the horror in the prospect of losing reverence, trust - of losing God - that now looms upon the patriarch's soul. We need only refer to the twenty-second psalm - to those words quoted by our Saviour in the agony on the cross - to remind ourselves of the fearfulness of this last trial to every godly soul,

II. THE GREATEST HUMAN MINISTRY. It is to do something to save a sinking brother from such a fate. A cheerful faith is infectious. A noble courage will thrill in the vibrations of sympathy to another's soul. And this is, then, the best office our friends can discharge for us in our greatest troubles. Let them remind us by their words, their prayers, their looks, their tones, of God. Let them not throw a new burden upon our drooping consciousness by reminding us of what we are or are not, but relieve us by telling us of what he is and ever will be - the Refuge and Strength of them that seek him. And this may be a fitting place to speak generally of -

III. THE QUALITIES OF FRIENDSHIP. By a beautiful image Job describes the failure of friendship. An unfaithful or unintelligent friend is like a brook swollen with snow and rain in spring-time, but dried in its channel under the scorching heat of summer. The poet says of one who has been lost to his sorrowing companions by death -

"He is gone from the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest!" The pathos of those words is, alas I applicable to living but absent or unsympathetic friends. There is nothing more beautiful or more useful in all the world than true friendship. Perhaps as "all other things seem to be symbols of love, so love is the highest symbol of friendship." But for the service of friendship there must be:

1. Constant affection. The equal flow of a deep river, not the intermittent gushings of a fickle fountain.

2. Habitual sympathy. We must feel with our friend so long as he is our friend. There are crimes which will break up this holy tie. Connivance at guilt can be no part of this sacred covenant. But so long as I can call my friend my friend, I must bear with his infirmities, "not make them greater than they are." How unhappy the knack of seeing all that can be said against our friend, with blindness to all that can be urged in his favour! We dread the coming of these "candid friends," so called. If there are unpleasant truths, let him hear them from another's lips than ours. Let not the troubles of those we own by this sacred name be made occasions for airing the conceit of our superior wisdom, or indulging a vein of moralizing, but for unlocking all the treasures of our heart.

3. Lively imagination. Want of imagination, or, in other words, dulness and stupidity, is a great defect for general social intercourse. Men quarrel and fly asunder because they do not understand one another. They do not use the faculty of imagination to "put themselves in another's place." And what may hinder general intercourse may be a fatal bar to friendship. "I am not understood:" what commoner complaint? Yet what is this high faculty given us for, but that, under the guidance of Christian love, we may identity another heart with our own, appropriate all its sorrowful experiences, and think and speak and feel towards others, as well as do unto them, as we would they should do unto us? But these demands for an ideal friendship are not, after all, to be satisfied by frail human nature. Let us, then, think:

4. These qualities of friendship can be only fully found in God. The Divine Friend! - he whose unfailing, self-replenished love alone is equal to supply the thirst of our hearts, whose sympathy is that of One who knows us better than we know ourselves; who numbers our hairs, and gathers our tears into his bottle; who needs to exercise no imagination in order to realize our condition, because he knows! O God! greater than our hearts, whose knowledge is the measure of thy sympathy, whose sympathy is fed from the eternal well-spring of thy love; God manifested in Jesus Christ; thou only art the Friend of our sorrow, the Sustainer of our help. LESSONS. May we listen with humble obedience to the voice which says to us, "Henceforth I call you friends"! As life wears, and many shallow torrents of earthly kindness are dried, may we experience more profoundly thy never-wasting fulness! - J.

1. In one scale look how he has put his SELF. The first personal pronoun is heavy enough in these speeches. Job's friends perceived his egoistic spirit, and heaped up therefore the opposite scale. What art thou compared to the Eternal? Very sublime is the God whom Eliphaz puts over against Job. He fills all — man is nothing. No man's thoughts or sufferings are to be seen or heard or reckoned against the Absolute. But should I not say "I"? Am I in no sense to feel myself and be an egoist? in my solemn hours I cannot but know and dwell with a very real being within me which is my ego. God and sin are nothing to me unless first of all I have a personality, What is the indwelling of Christ, unless I have a separate individuality Into which He can come? David says, "I am a little lower than the angels." May I not say the same? Yes, say it; say it loud and clear. But balance it. Put into the other scale, for example, your fellow men. Other men have as intense a self as you. They, too, are crowned with glory and dignity, and have their range of feelings, strong and tender, like thyself. "Let each esteem other better than himself." Put also into the other scale over against thyself the great Other. Down on the seashore when we wander, or when we look out on the starry heavens, how clearly and with all its mystery we say "I." But as we say it, there comes back from the ebon walls of night the echo of the voice of That Other, which brings ourself into equilibrium. We sweep our hands out and whisper to ourselves, "my power," or we lift up our heads, proud in the consciousness of our knowledge. But when God sweeps His hand across the heavens, or lifts up the might of His knowledge, then the pride of the human heart is humbled. We bow our heads in silence; not crushed out of all consciousness, but balanced and rightly weighed by the thoughts of men and God.

2. Job's egoism arose from his sorrow. How much he makes of his afflictions. His howling is dismal. Chapters 6 and 7 are one long lamentation, with much poetry in them, but truly a terrible heaping up of one scale. What shall we do to balance human sorrow? Laugh at it? Call it nothing? Call it commonplace? Nay, let us try and put something over against it which may outweigh it. Philosopher! hast thou aught which can balance a broken heart or a soul convulsed with agony? Surely thou hast something. Let us try your maxims, your precepts of self-control and of wholesome thought. Put them into the opposite scale; Bacon's "Essay on Adversity," beautiful extracts from Marcus Aurelius. Put them all in. Now lift up the balance and see. Ah! they weigh nothing. Scientist! canst thou do this great work? Go and tell Job your germ theories. Explain to him the nature of his sloughing sores, and see if you can answer his complaint. No, never. Religionist, what can you put into the opposite scale? Let us hear your doctrine. "God is the potter and man the clay. We are creatures of His, and He can do as seems best. Let us learn to submit to His sovereign will. The discipline is good, though bitter." Oh, what bitter drops of acid are all these to wounded souls. You only crush a man when you hurl at him, at such a time, God's sovereignty. No, lot us put into the opposite scale human sympathy. Let us acknowledge all the pain and sorrow and affliction of the sufferer. Let us suffer it, and feel its weight. Let our tears flow. Put our sufferings and our feelings into the opposite scale. Let us seek to put God's sympathy into the opposite scale. Not the absolute hard stern Deity Eliphaz labours to construct. Let us speak of His tenderness and pity. Is it not said, Jesus wept? Christ's tears will outweigh ours. When looking down into the dark and horrid grave, listen what Christ says, "Thy brother shall rise again." That is Christ's sympathy to balance thy crushing pain.

3. Job asks of God the question, "What have I done?" Ah! well might he heap up that scale; piling up to the heavens his sins, and offences, and ignorance. Probably there would be no scale large enough to hold our iniquities. Is this right? Oh yes. Know thy sins, O soul, all of them, black as hell and heavy as lead, and high enough to hide the light of heaven. But be not men of one idea. Have two ideas. Look into the other scale and see, if you can, a drop of Christ's precious blood. Lift up the scales, and see if this drop of precious blood does not balance all your sins. Yes! Thank God it does, cries out Bunyan. Nay, more, it outweighs them. "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin."

(J. D. Watters, M. A.)