revenge for private injuries, but it cannot be otherwise than that all those desires which spring from hatred must be disordered. David's example, therefore, must not be alleged by those who are driven by their own intemperate passion to seek vengeance."

The unjustifiableness of such a prayer as this will appear from the fact that:-

IV. It involves a DISPOSITION ETERNALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH PERSONAL HAPPINESS. The passion of anger is an element of misery to hate is to suffer. "What a chain of evils," says one, "does that man prepare for himself who is a slave to anger! He is the murderer of his own soul; yea, to the letter he is so, for he lives in a continual torment. He is devoured by an inward fire, and his body partakes of his sufferings. Terror reigns around him; every one dreads lest the most innocent, the most trifling occurrence, may give him a pretext for quarrel, or rouse him with fury. A passionate man is alike odious to God and man, and is insupportable even to himself."

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: THE MADDENING FORCE OF SUFFERING. "AFTER this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day; and Job spake, and said

Let the day perish wherein I was born,

And the night in which it was said, There is a man-child

conceived.

Let that day be darkness:

Let not God regard it from above,

Neither let the light shine upon it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it:

Let a cloud dwell upon it:

Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

As for that night, let darkness seize upon it:
Let it not be joined unto the days of the year:

Let it not come into the number of the months.
Lo, let that night be solitary,

Let no joyful voice come therein.

Let them curse it that curse the day,

Who are ready to raise up their mourning.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark:
Let it look for light, but have none:

Neither let it see the dawning of the day,

Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

Why died I not from the womb?

Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

Why did the knees prevent me?

Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

For now I should have lain still and been quiet.

I should have slept: then had I been at rest

With kings and counsellers of the earth,
Which built desolate places for themselves;
Or with princes that had gold,

Who filled their houses with silver:

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been;
As infants which never saw light.

There the wicked cease from troubling;

And the weary are at rest.

There the prisoners rest together:

They hear not the voice of the oppressor.

The small and the great are there;

And the servant is free from his master.

Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,

And life unto the bitter in soul;

Which long for death, but it cometh not;
And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
Which rejoice exceedingly,

And are glad when they can find the grave?

Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
And whom God hath hedged in?

For my sighing cometh before I eat,

And my roarings are poured out like the waters.
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
And that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet,
Yet trouble came."-Job iii. 1-26.

EXEGETICAL REMARKS.-This chapter commences the poetic debate of the book, which extends to the 6th verse of the 42nd chapter. Here Job begins. For "seven days and seven nights". he sat in mute anguish; meanwhile his sufferings abated not, but probably increased. The passions of soul which they generated grew and became irrepressible, and he speaks. The swelling waters break through the embankment, and rush forth with fury and foam.

Ver. 1.-" After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day." "Reviled his day" would perhaps be a better translation than cursed, “which appears," says Dr. Lee, "too strong, and what is never really intended by the word here used. Cursing is an imprecation made by a direct appeal to God for vengeance, which cannot be said to be done here." "His day"—his natal day.

Ver. 2, 3,-" And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived." From this to the twelfth verse the patriarch employs language of terrible grandeur and wild extravagance in reviling his natal day. "There is nothing," says Gova, "that I know of, in ancient or modern poetry, equal to the entire burst, whether in the wildness and horror of the imprecations, or the terrible sublimity of its imagery." Jeremiah, one of the boldest of the Hebrew poets, has language strikingly similar, chap. xx. 14-16. Dr. Bernard's translation of the entire passage seems as faithful as it is beautiful, which is as follows:

"And Job spake and said:

Perish the day wherein I was born!
Or the night in which one said :*
'She bringeth forth a man-child!'
May that day be darkness!

God regard it not from above!

Neither let light shine upon it!

Pollute it darkness and the shadow of death!

May there dwell on it a cloud!

Black vapours of the day affright it!

As for that night-deep darkness seize it!

Let it not rejoice amid the days of the year!
Let it not come into the number of the months!

i.e., of my mother.

Lo, that night may it be cheerless!
May there come into it no sound of joy!
May those that curse their day point at it!
Those ready to arouse the crocodile !
Darkened be the stars of its twilight!

Let it wait for the full light, and then be done!
Yea, let it not behold even the eyelids of the dawn!
Because it shut not up the doors of the belly I lay in,
So as to hide misery from mine eyes.

Why should I not have died from the womb?

When I came forth from the belly, then I ought to have expired.

Wherefore did knees meet me?

Or why breasts that I should suck?"

Thus speaks his storm-tossed soul, as speaks the ocean in a hurricane, in wild grandeur and savage majesty. He has no language too strong, no figures too bold, to express his detestation of his natal day. Ver. 13.-"For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest." Job means by this, that had he died as an infant, instead of undergoing his present torture, he would have been sleeping quietly in the dust.

Ver. 14-19.-" With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves," &c. He seems in this passage to speak with equal grandeur, but with a more subdued and reflective soul. Never was the physical condition of the dead more magnificently and impressively described. A condition of rest,— -a condition common to men

of all social grades,-the king and his subject, the prince and the pauper, the good and the bad, the oppressor and his victim.

66

Ver. 20, 21.-" Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery: and life unto the bitter in soul," &c. Why is light given to the miserable, and life to the bitter soul who waits for death, but it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures?"-Dr. Lee. Ver. 22, 23.-" Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?" The question here asked is, Why should man, whose misery leads him to desire death, be kept in life? A very natural question this. A modern expositor has answered the question thus:(1.) Those sufferings may be the very means which are needful to develop the true state of the soul. Such was the case with Job. (2.) They may be the proper punishment of sin in the heart, of which the individual was not fully aware, but which may be distinctly seen by God. There may be pride, and the love of ease, and self-confidence, and ambition, and a desire of reputation. Such appear to have been some of the besetting sins of Job. (3.) They are needful to teach true submission, and to show whether a man is willing to resign himself to God. (4.) They may be the very things which are necessary to prepare the individual to die. At the same time that men often desire

death, and feel that it would be a great relief, it might be to them the greatest possible calamity. They may be wholly unprepared for it." Ver. 24.-"For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters." Dr. Noyes explains this thus:-"My sighing comes on when I begin to eat, and prevents me taking my daily nourishment." He compares his roarings to the waters: they were like the restless billows, numerous and tumultuous.

Ver. 25.-" For the thing which I greatly fear has come upon me.” Margin, "I feared a fear and it has come upon me." Perhaps he had a deep presentiment, even in his prosperity, that some terrible catastrophe lay before him; or perhaps he refers to the apprehensions which the first trials awakened; for it is common in human nature to apprehend a second when a first calamity comes: when one child is taken away, the parent naturally fears lest a second should fall.

Ver. 26.-"I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet: yet trouble came." "If I rightly apprehend," says Dr. Lee, "the drift of the context here, Job means to have it understood that he is conscious of no instance in which he has relaxed from his religious obligations: of no season in which his fear and love of God have waxed weak: and, on this account, it was the more perplexing that such a complication of miseries had befallen him."

HOMILETICS. This chapter is the language of man overwhelmed with suffering. There have been suffering men in all ages, and there are suffering men still, but we can scarcely conceive of a greater sufferer than Job. He suffered in his circumstances. The fortune which, perhaps, he had gained by years of industry, which he had long enjoyed, and with which he had done great good, was utterly destroyed as in a moment. He suffered in his body. He was smitten with "sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown." A virulent poison rankled in his blood, and covered his frame with burning eruptions. He suffered in his heart. His faithful servants, and his beloved sons and daughters, who were rooted in his affections, were ruthlessly snatched away, and his heart was bleeding at every pore. The partner of his bosom, too, instead of soothing him with kind words and loving attentions, taunted him with impious remarks. He was wounded in his intellect. His calamities broke in upon his religious belief, and confounded his judgment. He was involved in the most agonizing perplexity concerning the character and procedure of his Maker. The amount of his anguish we can scarcely exaggerate.