receive permission than he begins in terrible earnestness. He does not seem to have lost a moment. Like a hungry vulture in a carrioned atmosphere, he pounces down upon his victim. Now he strikes at the cattle that were ploughing the field, and the she asses that were beside them. Then he slays the servants, then with a shaft of fire from heaven he burns up the " sheep and servants," and then he breathes a hurricane through the wilderness, and levels to the dust the house in which his children are revelling in the festive pleasures of family love, and destroys them all. Thus he goes to the utmost point of the liberty which his great Master granted him. He could do no more with Job's circumstances. He deprived him as in a moment of all his property and his children. In one short hour, it would seem, he reduced this, the greatest of all the men in the East, to a pauper; and, perhaps, one of the happiest of fathers to the desolation of childlessness. He had no authority to go beyond this point at present. He had to wait for another Divine communication before he could touch the body of Job. He did his utmost, and did it with an infernal delight.

II. THE VARIETY OF HIS AGENTS. He employedFirst: Wicked men. He breathed his malign spirit into the men of Sheba, and they rushed to the work of violence and destruction. He inflamed the Chaldeans with the same murderous passions, and then "three bands fell upon the camels," carried them away, and slew the servants, &c. Alas! this arch-fiend has access to human souls. "He worketh in the children of disobedience." He leadeth them captive at his will.

The great God gave him power
He kindled the lightning, and

He employed-· Secondly: Material nature. over the elements of nature. made it consume the sheep and the servants. He raised the atmosphere into a tempest, levelled its fury against the house and brought it down to the destruction of all within. With heaven's permission this mighty spirit of evil can cause earthquakes to engulph cities, breathe pestilences to depopulate

countries, create storms that will spread devastation over sea and land. "He is the prince of the power of the air:"

III. THE CELERITY OF HIS MOVEMENTS. How rapidly his fell strokes followed each other. Before the first messenger of evil had told the patriarch his terrible tale, another appeared. Whilst the first was "yet speaking," another came; and whilst the second was yet speaking came the third. The carriers of misery trod on the heels of each other. Why this hurry? Was it because this work of violence was agreeable to the passions of this foul fiend? Or was it because the rapidity would be likely so to shock Job's moral nature as to produce a religious revulsion, and cause him to do what he desired him to do-curse the Almighty to his face? Perhaps both. Perhaps the celerity was both his pleasure and his policy. Trials seldom come alone. The first is generally the harbinger of the second, and so on. It is true what our great

dramatist has said:

"When sorrows come They come not single spies,

But in battalions."

IV. THE FOLLY OF HIS CALCULATIONS.

What was the result

of all this on Job? The very reverse of what Satan had calculated. He had told the Almighty that such visitations would rouse Job to curse Him to His face. Instead of which Job falls down and blesses his Maker:-"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." He "worshipped." He did not curse. In his worship we discover three things:

First: His profound sensibility. "He rent his mantle and shaved his head." He was no Stoic. He deeply felt his trial. He fell prostrate under its heavy load, and "down upon the ground," with the load on him he worshipped. His heart bled at every pore. Great was his grief. There would be no virtue in his not feeling. He would have been less than a man not to have done so. Genuine religion, instead of

deadening the human sensibilities, gives them depth and refinement. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus.

In his worship we discover

Secondly: His exalted philosophy. He traced all to the Great First Cause, God. All that he had lost God had given him. When he came from the womb of the great mother of all-the earth-and when he returned back into his chambers of everlasting forgetfulness, he would have nothing.

All that he had possessed came to him as a gift from Jehovah. He did not trace it to luck, or to fortune, or even to his own industry. "The Lord gave," he says. "The Lord gave me my sheep and oxen; the Lord gave me my children. These are all his gifts." And what he had lost the Lord had also taken away. He does not trace his loss to chance, necessity, misfortune; nor does he trace it to the plundering Sabeans or ruthless Canaanites; nor to the lightnings or the winds; nor even to the great arch-enemy of humanity; but up directly to Jehovah. He knew that the forces of nature, the passions of wicked men, and the plots and workings of infernal spirits were all under the master control of Jehovah. This was his philosophy; and is it not true? The philosophy that traces the events of our history up to some secondary causes, or the laws of nature, is but a philosophy "falsely so called." All is under the Absolute One. He originates all good, He controls all evil.

"All good proceedeth from Thee,

As sunbeams from the sun,

All evils fall before Thee,

Thy will through all is done."

In his worship we discover

Thirdly: His religious magnamity. "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Wicked men would have vented their rage in curses on the Sabeans and Chaldeans, on the lightning and on the wind; or would have risen up in rebellious hostility against heaven. This is what Satan expected. But instead of this, Job says, "Blessed be the name of the Lord. I praise Him, I adore Him in all." This is something more than submission to the Divine will under suffering; something even

more than acquiescence in the Divine will in suffering. It is exultation in the manifestation of the Divine will in all the events of life. It amounts to the experience of St. Paul, who said, "I glory in tribulation," &c.

How disappointed this arch-fiend must have been with the result. The result was the very opposite to what he had expected-to what he had wrought for. Thus it has ever been, and thus it will ever be. God may permit Satan to blast our worldly prospects, to wreck our fortunes, and destroy our friendships. But if we trust in Him He will not allow him to touch our souls to their injury. He only uses the fiend to try His servants. An old Welsh minister, in preaching on this text, is reported to have said that God permitted Satan to try Job as the tradesman tries the coin that his customer has tendered in payment for the purchased wares. He strikes it on the

counter and hears it ring as rings the true metal, before he accepts it, and places it in his drawer. The great Merchant Man employed Satan to ring Job on the counter of trial. He did so did so with all the force of his mighty arm, and in the Divine ear the moral heart of the patriarch vibrated as the music of Divine metal, fit for the treasury in the heavens.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SATAN.

"He above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower: his form had not yet lost
All its original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams: or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs: darkened so, yet shone
Above them all th' archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had entrench'd, and care
Sat on his faded cheeks, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and consid'rate pride,
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather,
(Far other once beheld in bliss!) condemn'd
For ever now to have their lot in pain."-Milton.
VOL. XXVIII.

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Sermonic Glances at the Gospel of

St. John.

As our purpose in the treatment of this Gospel is purely the development, in the briefest and most suggestive form, of Sermonic outlines, we must refer our readers to the following works for all critical inquiries into the author and authorship of the book, and also for any minute criticisms on difficult clauses. The works we shall especially consult are:-"Introduction to New Testament," by Bleek; "Commentary on John," by Tholuck; "Commentary on John," by Hengskenberg; "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels," by Westcott; "The Gospel History," by Ebrard; "Our Lord's Divinity," by Liddon; "St. John's Gospel," by Oosterzee; "Doctrine of the Person of Christ," by Dorner; &c., &c.

Subject: CHRIST AND THE CREATION.

"All things were made by Him: and without Him was not anything made that was made."-John i. 2.

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HE old Gnostic Christians held that the world was not created by the Great God, "but by Demiurgus, a spirit descending from the Eons, which were themselves derived from the Deity." John's statement stands in direct antagonism to this. He says, "All things were made by Him❞—the Infinite Logos-"all things." Some of the ancients said that part of the universe was made by a good, and part by an evil principle. John's language stands opposed to this also. The work of creation is not a partnership work, it is the product of One Being. "All things," organic and inorganic, animate and inanimate, material and spiritual, rational and irrational. “And without Him was not anything made that was made." This covers all; whatever has been, whatever is, in the universe, sin excepted, He created. The universe had a beginning; it is not eternal, and it originated, not in chance, not in a joint authorship, but in the fiat of One Supreme Intelligence. Creation is ascribed to Christ in many other passages of Evangelic Writ: see Col. i. 16; Heb. i. 10, 12; Rev. iv. 11.

From this we infer :

I. That Christ is OLDER than the universe. The worker must be older than his productions. How old then is the universe? Who shall go back enumerating ages until he