^ We must be careful not to impose upon the Book of Job or this prophet conceptions belonging to a more advanced period. The Satan of these books is no mere " evil spirit," the real enemy of God though His unwilling subject. There is no antagonism between God and the Satan. The idea that the " attacks of Satan are aimed primarily at the honour of God " ; that his purpose is to deny that God is " ever disinterestedly served and sincerely loved by any being whatever " ; and that " the object of the trial of Job is precisely to demonstrate to him the contrary " — such an idea is altogether at variance with Old Testament conceptions. The Satan is the servant of God, representing or carrying out His trying, sifting providence, and the opposer of men because he is the minister of God; hence Job's afflictions, represented as inflicted by the Satan in one place, are spoken of as due to the hand of God in another, " thou hast set me on against him, to destroy him " (ii. 3), just as Job's friends " came to condole with him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him" (xlii. 11), and of course everywhere in the poem the Almighty is assumed to be the author of Job's calamities both by the sufferer and by his friends. The angels and Satan among them are the
^ Dean Bradley,
JOB I. 9 5
ministers of God's providence. The Satan being the minister of God's trying providence, which is often administered by means of afflictions, it was an easy step to take to endow him with the spirit of hostility to man which such afflictions seemed to reflect. This step is taken in the Book, though not very decidedly.^
2. What are the signs of the " Satan " character ?
(1) The first sign is a want of regard for one's fellow-creatures. — This is a faint enough way of putting it, so far as Satan is concerned, the spirit that moves through the world, deceiving and destroying, of whom Christ has said, " He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him." With no belief in principle or goodness, he can cherish no reverence and feel no pity. All may be treated remorselessly where all are so contemptible. The belief and the moral nature must in the end come into harmony ; and where a spirit sets itself only to doubt and deny, it sets itself also to tempt and seduce. It must prove its own theory valid. Hence, probably, what otherwise seems insanity — the temptation of the Son of God, in whom there was no shade of sin. The mocking and sceptical spirit, which feels nothing but hollowness within, sees nothing else around and above it, and believes it possible to drag all that seems to be higher down to its own level.
^ The possession of reverence marks the noblest and highest type of manhood and womanhood : reverence for things consecrated by the homage of generations — for high objects, pure thoughts, and noble aims — for the great men of former times, and the high- minded workers amongst our contemporaries. Eeverence is alike indispensable to the happiness of individuals, of families, and of nations. Without it there can be no trust, no faith, no confidence, either in man or God — neither social peace nor social progress. For reverence is but another word for religion, which binds men to each other, and all to God.^
^ It was about 6.20 a.m. when we reached the canal bridge at Tel-el-Kebir. Two or three hundred Highlanders, a squadron of cavalry, and some odds and ends of mounted corps had just arrived. The seamy side of a battle was here painfully apparent ; anything seemed to be good enough to let off a rifle at. Dead and wounded men, horses, and camels were on all sides. Some of the wounded had got down to the edge of the water to quench their
^ A. B. Davidson. * S. Smiles, Character, 14.
6 UNSELFISHNESS OF TRUE RELIGION
thirst; others were on the higher banks, unable to get down. Many of our officers dismounted and carried water to these unfortunates, but the men were not all similarly disposed. 1 heard an officer ask a man who was filling his canteen at the canal to give a drink of water to a gasping Egyptian cavalry soldier who was lying supporting himself against the battlement of the bridge. " I wadna wet his lips," was the indignant reply.^
(2) The next consequence to the spirit which has no belief in unselfishness is the want of any centre of rest within itself. — The condition of Satan is thus described, in verse 7, " And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." Incessant wandering, " going about," "seeking rest and finding none," is the view given of him in Scripture. There is the constant endeavour to find a fixed point, and inability to discover it ; and this may be the truth intended to be conveyed in that strange but significant narrative (Matt. viii. 28) where the evil spirit is urged from place to place by the conquering power of good, till it is driven to beg for a refuge in the lowest and most grovelling forms of creation, — to find itself, even here too, rejected, and cast forth naked and shelterless. This is most certain, that if the heart does not give quiet, no place in the universe can, and the personal head of evil has been for ages making the attempt to find that quiet in vain.