Though this may occur with human parents it can never be so with the Infinite Father; our best friends may forsake us, but He never. Sometimes if some of our friends desert us, the remainder are disposed to do so. Either from a suspicion that there is something wrong in us, or from a dislike to adhere to one who is losing his popularity, they, too, forsake. Not so with the Great Friend; though all forsake, He remains faithful, He is influenced by no example. "Can a mother forget her sucking child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb?" &c.

Fifthly: This prayer indicates the true method of safety. What is the true method of safety? It is suggested in the 11th and 12th verses. (1.) Obedience to the Divine law. "Teach me thy will, O Lord, lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies." (a.) There is a "way" in which God would have us walk. That way is His law concerning us. (b.) That "way" God Himself must reveal to us. God alone can reveal His own will to the soul. (c.) To walk in that "way" is the true security. The path of duty is the path of safety. (2.) Interposition for Divine help. "Deliver me not over

unto the will of mine enemies."

The next great division of this Psalm is

"I had fainted

IV. SELF-EXHORTATION in Life's Storms. unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living," &c. I agree with Hengstenberg in regarding these words as addressed by David to himself: it is a selfexhortation-an encouraging soliloquy. Man can commune with himself; man ought to commune with himself. The Psalmist admonishes himself to be strong, that is, morally strong; strong to bear up magnanimously under trial, strong to pursue the path of duty with an invincible march. Such strength he seems to refer to two sources :

First: Faith in Divine goodness. "I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." (1.) There is Divine goodness "in the land of the living." "Goodness and mercy are over all the works of His hand." The world floats on the sea and basks under the sky

of goodness. (2.) Men do not always see this goodness. So blinded often are the souls of men, that instead of seeing goodness they see nothing but evil; all is wrong, all is organized on the principle of malevolence. (3.) The blindness to this goodness is moral weakness. The man who sees no Divine goodness in the world must be weak; he is inspired by no lofty motive, animated by no soul-bracing hope. The vision of Divine goodness is the only moral tonic for the soul. David says, "I had fainted" unless I had seen it; and men are fainting everywhere for the want of seeing it. Such strength he refers to.

Secondly: A consecration to the Divine service. "Wait on the Lord." To wait upon the Lord is to serve Him, serve Him lovingly, thoroughly, faithfully, practically, and such service is moral strength. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount as on eagles' wings, shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint.

0

HEATHEN PRAYER.-Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, never began to address an audience without first praying to the gods. Cornelius Scipio, the great Roman general, when once he had assumed the toga, never undertook any affair of importance without having passed some time alone in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. "The best and noblest action," says Plato, "which a virtuous man can perform, and that which will most promote his success in life, is to live, by vows and prayers, in continual intercourse with the gods: nay, all who would act with due consideration ought, before beginning any undertaking, whether great or small, to invoke God."

WATCHING UNTO PRAYER.-When an archer shoots his arrow at a mark, he likes to go and see whether he has hit it. When you have written and sent off a letter to a friend, you expect some day that the postman will be knocking at the door with an answer. When a child asks his father for something, he looks in his face, even before he speaks, to see if he is pleased, and reads acceptance in his eyes. But it is to be greatly feared that many people feel, when their prayers are over, as if they had quite done with them; their only concern was to get them said. An old heathen poet speaks of Jupiter throwing certain prayers to the winds, dispersing them "in empty air." It is sad to think that we so often do that for ourselves. What would you think of a man who had written, and folded, and sealed, and addressed a letter, flinging it out into the street, and thinking no more about it? Sailors in foundering ships sometimes commit notes in sealed bottles to the waves, for the chance of their being some day washed on some shore. Sir John Franklin's companions among the snows, and Captain Allen Gardiner, dying of hunger in his cave, wrote words they could not be sure anyone would ever read. But we do not need to think of our prayers as random messages. We should, therefore, look for a reply to them, and watch to get it. Dr. Edmond.

on the Book of

Homiletic Sketches
Sketches on the
Job.

The Book of Job is one of the grandest sections of Divine Scripture. It has never yet, to our knowledge, been treated in a purely Homiletic method for Homiletic ends. Besides many learned expositions on the book found in our general commentaries, we have special exegetical volumes of great scholarly and critical worth; such as Drs. Barnes, Wemyss, Mason, Goode, Noyes Lee, and Herman Hedwick Bernard: the last is in every way a masterly production. For us, therefore, to go into philology and verbal criticism, when such admirable works are available to all students, would be superfluous if not presumption. Ambiguous terms, when they occur, we shall of course explain, and occasionally suggest an improved rendering: but our work will be chiefly, if not entirely, Homiletic. We shall essay to bring out from the grand old words those Divine verities which are true and vital to man as man in all lands and ages. These truths we shall frame in an order as philosophic and suggestive as our best powers will enable us to do; and this in order to help the earnest preachers of God's Holy Word.

Subject: SATAN, AS A SERVANT OF THE INFINITE, MALEVOLENTLY DEALING WITH JOB'S CIRCUMSTANCES.

"And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house. And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly."-JOB i. 18-22.

EXEGETICAL REMARKS. Ver. 13.-" And there was a day.”—' And it came to pass as it might be to-day.' This was probably the regular day for their domestic banquet. It was a convivial family party. Ver. 14.-"The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding."—And the she asses were feeding. Female asses were then and there much more valuable than male ones on account of their milk. On the journey they carried support for the traveller, as well as the traveller himself and his baggage.

Ver. 15.-" And the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away."—"When a host of Sabeans fell upon them and took them "-Dr. Bernard. So also Dr. Lee. The idea is that these wandering plunderers rushed violently on them. These Sabeans were evidently a predatory tribe prowling through the districts of Arabia for purposes of outrages and plunder.

Ver. 15.-" Yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword." Not only were the oxen and the asses taken, but the servants who were at work with them in the field they slaughtered with the sword. Ver. 15.-" And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." "I," who was the messenger? The word translated messenger here is usually translated angel, but its meaning here is one who is sent. Who was the bearer of the terrible errand? Was he in Job's employ, or was he a stranger who had happened to witness the outrage?

Ver. 16. While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." “The fire of God" here refers in all probability to lightning. In the margin it is called "a great fire." A terrible electric flash came and burnt up the sheep and the servants.

Ver. 17.-"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." "The Chaldeans were a fierce and warlike people; and when they were subdued by the Assyrians, a portion of them appear to have been placed in Babylon to ward off the incursions of the neighbouring Arabians. In time they gained the ascendancy over their Assyrian masters, and grew into the mighty empire of Chaldea and Babylonia." A very striking description of these Chaldeans we have in Habakkuk i. 6-11. This messenger who followed so swiftly in the steps of the first declares that he only escaped alone to tell him.

Ver. 18.- "Whilst he was yet speaking there came also another, and said," &c. What sad tidings did this third messenger bring? He says, "Behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." Though the word here rendered "young men is the same as that rendered "servants" in verse 17, it is generally believed that here it represents Job's sons and

daughters, the young people. The great wind from the wilderness was one of those tornadoes more common in oriental countries than others more distant from the equator. This fearful hurricane from the wilderness came in all its force upon the house where Job's sons and daughters were enjoying their convivial banquet. Ver. 20.-" Then Job arose, and rent his mantle." "Job arose " not necessarily from sitting, but from the wonted calmness of his soul he was mentally roused. He seems to have heard with calmness the other messages, but when tidings of the destruction of his children met him, he was moved to the depths of his nature. The rending of the mantle was the conventional mark of deep grief (Gen. xxvii. 34). Orientals wore a flowing mantle over their shirt, and loose pantaloons. “Shaved his head." This also was an old symbol of grief (Jeremiah xli. 5, Micah i. 16). "Mother's womb." By this he poetically means the earth. The earth is the universal mother of mankind. Out of it, as to our bodies, we came; into it we return, as destitute as when we first appeared.

Ter. 21.-"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Job here realizes God's assertion (verse 8) against Satan's (verse 11). Instead of cursing, he blesses the Lord Jehovah, that is, Jehovah Himself. Ver. 22.-" In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." "In all this," that is, in all his expressions and feelings on this occasion Job did no wrong, nor did he attribute folly to his Maker; that is, he vented no murmuring remark against God.

HOMILETICS.-The great subject here is a continuation of the former homiletic sketch, namely the FOE OF FOES. In the former passage he appeared before us as a being who had a personal existence, who intruded into the holy, who was amenable to his Maker, a vagrant in the universe, and a servant of the Infinite. It is in the latter aspect that he still appears before us in these words. He has received from the Almighty permission to deal with Job; and here we have him malevolently dealing with the patriarch's circumstances. In the next paragraph we shall have to study him as malevolently dealing with Job's personality. In dealing with Job's circumstances as here recorded, we are struck with four things concerning him-the enthusiasm of his malignity, the variety of his agents, the celerity of his movements, and the folly of his calculations.

I. THE ENTHUSIASM OF HIS MALIGNITY. No sooner does he