HISTORY.-See page 204. ANNOTATIONS.-Ver. 3.-" Draw me not away with the wicked." Professor Leigh reads, “Reckon me not." This language is parallel to Psalm xxvi. 9, on which see our notes. The word 'wicked' etymologically signifies to decline, or to fall away. Wickedness is an apostasy, and this comprehends all sin. The wicked, in this verse, are represented as "workers of iniquity." Wickedness is not a mere condition, it is a conduct. Wicked men are active, and they are active in unrighteousness. They are represented here also as hypocritical: "Which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts." They speak honey, but feel gall. They have the devil in their heart, but the angel on their lip. They cover their malice with the robe of kindness. ARGUMENT. See page 205. HOMILETICS.-This verse is a strong prayer against identification with ungodly men. "Draw me not away," &c. He would have expressed himself more correctly to the Almighty if he had said, "Prevent me from falling into the society of the wicked;" for Jehovah never draws men into such companionship. Permit me not to be drawn; this is the idea. The text leads us to consider three things: I. The CHARACTER of ungodly society. First: They are apostates. This is the meaning of the word "wicked." They have gone away from truth, virtue, and God. They have forsaken God, the Fountain of living waters. They are "without God." Secondly: They are rebels. "Workers of iniquity." They are always doing the wrong, wrong in relation to their own nature, to society, and to God. Sinners are busy workers. The devil has no drones; his service is no sinecure. Thirdly: They are hypocrites. "Which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts." Wicked men are almost necessarily hypocrites. Did a wicked man really show to society all the vileness of his heart, he would be shunned with abhorrence, and denounced without mercy; to live in and by society, he must be a hypocrite. Such is the society which David deprecates, and from which he seems to recoil with horror. Such a society is, alas! the great society of this earth; it is so large, that it is called the world in the New Testament. "It lieth in the wicked" one, says John. The text leads us to consider II. The ATTRACTIVENESS of ungodly society. The prayer implies that David felt a power drawing him into this foul fellowship; and such fellowship has an attractive power, even to the best of men on this earth. Christ recognised this, when He said, "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but Thou shouldest keep them from the evil of the world." In what does its attraction consist? First: In its numerical force. It is the largest society on the earth. There is a wonderful power in numbers. This society in the world is a morally magnetic mountain, attracting the gregarious steel of our hearts to itself. As the little spring from the mountain is drawn to the river, individuals are drawn to the multitude. The attraction consists— Secondly: In its social resources. The ungodly society, being the great society in the world, has at its command not only most of the means of human subsistence, but most of the means for secular advancement, and artistic gratification. It has the prizes of fortune and the delights of pleasure at its disposal. All this is attractive. Why should these things be attractive to a good man? Simply, because his goodness is not perfect; remnants of depravity are still in his heart, and these incline him thitherward. To a thoroughly pure soul the power of ungodly society is repulsion, not attraction. Ungodly society had no drawing force with Christ; "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." The text leads us to consider III. The BANEFULNESS of ungodly society. David evidently apprehended evil from being drawn into such society. First: This society is detrimental to the higher interests of human nature. It may enrich our coffers, it may gratify our senses, it may promote our interests as citizens of time, but it is ruin to the soul of all. It cannot appease a guilty conscience, it cannot cleanse a polluted heart. It cannot bring to the soul those spiritual blessings for which it craves, and without which it must be miserable for ever. Nay, instead of doing this, it does the reverse; it enhances the guilt, it deepens the pollution, it obstructs the entrance of that good, for which the soul craves, as for its life. Secondly: This society is doomed to ruin. Doomed by the moral constitution of the universe; doomed by the express Word of God. "Gather not, my soul, therefore, with sinners." Who would be gathered with the sinners in the great world of retribution? Who would spend their eternity with the Herods, the Neros, and the Napoleons of the world? Even bad men pray against it. Balaam exclaimed, "Let me die the death of the righteous." Homiletic Sketches on the Book of 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: GENUINE FRIENDSHIP. "Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him for they saw that his grief was very great.”—Job ii. 11-13. EXEGETICAL REMARKS. Ver. 11.-"Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place." These three friends, whose names are given in the next clause, were, in all probability, the patriarch's most particular friends. Elsewhere in the book we are given to understand that his admiring and grateful acquaintances were numerous. A man of his high intellectual power; deep, tender, and practical philanthropy; high social influence and affluent means, could scarcely fail to gather around him a large number of attached friends; but these "three" were special-hence they came to visit Job in his deep affliction. How they "heard of all this evil" we are not told. There were no postal communications in those days, but in all societies ill news has swift pinions. They come together, we are told, by pre-appointment; each left his own house and started on his mission. "Eliphaz the Temanite." From the fact that he seems to take the lead in nearly all the conversations of the book, and the others to have followed and sustained his propositions, we may infer that he was the most influential man and the oldest friend. The name signifies "My God's strength,” and his parents, in all probability, were religious people. He is called the Temanite, perhaps because he was a native of Teman, a country of Idumea, settled by one of the descendants of Esau. (Gen. xxxvi. 10; comp. Jer. xlix. 7, 20; Ezek. xxv. 13; Amos i. 11, 12; Obad. i. 8, 9.) “Bildad the Shuhite." It is supposed that he was a descendant from Shuheh, a son of Abraham by Keturah. This Shuheh is the only person to whom we can trace the denomination of Shuhite. (Gen. xxv. 2). "And Zophar the Naamathite.” “Naamah, from which Naamathite is derived, was a town mentioned in Josh. xv. 41. in a list of the uttermost cities of Judah's lot, 'toward the coast of Edom southward.' (ver. 21). It is, further, among that portion of those towns that lay 'in the valley,' which is supposed to have been Petra. Naamah was probably, therefore, in or near the Ghor, or valley, which extends from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akabah."-Kitto. The residences of these three friends render it probable that the scene of this book was laid in the land of Edom. "For they had made an ap pointment together, to come to mourn with him, and to comfort him." The fact that they "made an appointment" to visit Job indicates that they did not live far apart; and the fact that they came to mourn with him and to comfort him shows that the strong reproaches which they afterwards addressed to him never entered into their purpose at first. Ver. 12.-"And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not.” His terrible afflictions had so transfigured him that his friends could not recognise him. "From our being told here," says Dr. Bernard, "that his friends lifted up their eyes from afar, and did not recognise him, together with the fact that he was sitting amidst ashes, we may fairly conclude that Job had taken up his seat in the open air: and there the reader will do well to imagine he continued during the whole time occupied by the events recorded in this book; as thereby, will not only the grandeur of the description given in the latter chapters of this book, of the phenomena of nature, and of the approach of the whirlwind, from which God addresses Job, be greatly enhanced; but also some passages be cleared up which might otherwise seem obscure." "They lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantie, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven." Here we have a natural and a conventional way of showing grief; the natural way is by tears-they "wept." It is natural, the world over and the ages through, for sorrow to flow forth in tears. But the rending of the mantle and the sprinkling of dust on their heads toward heaven seem to have been acts of fashion or custom among the Ancients. (Josh. vii. 6; 1 Sam. iv. 12; Ezek. xxvii. 30; Acts xxii. 23). "This custom," says a modern expositor, "resembles in a remarkable manner the mode in which Achilles gave utterance to his sorrow when informed of the death of Patroclus."-ILIAD Xviii. 21-27. "A sudden horror shot through all the chief, And wrapp'd his senses in the cloud of grief; On the hard soil his groaning breast he threw, And roll'd and grovell'd as to earth he grew."-Pope. Ver. 13.-" So they sat down with him seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him." "They did not remain in the one posture and without food &c. all this time, but for the most of this period daily and nightly. Sitting on the earth marked mourning. (Lam. ii. 10). Seven days was the usual length of it. (Gen. 1. 10; 1 Sam. xxxi. 13). This silence may have been due to a rising suspicion of evil in Job; but chiefly because it is only ordinary griefs that find vent in languageextraordinary griefs are too great for utterance."-A. R. Fausset. HOMILETICS.-This record of the visit of these three friends to Job suggests a few of the leading features of genuine friendship. I. It was DEEPENED BY ADVERSITY.-The effect on their minds of the overwhelming calamities which overtook Job, was not to drive them from him, but to draw them to him. When they heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place.' His afflictions so roused and intensified their affections, that they left their homes and hastened to his presence. Adversity is one of the best tests for friendship. The Germans have a proverb "Let |