^ Just as science tells us that each order in creation — each successive type in the long evolution of living creatures — gives, in some rudimentary organ or function, its mute mysterious prophecy of the higher type that is to follow it, so that each type is at once a prophecy and a fulfilment of a prophecy, an accomplishment of a past foreshadowing, a foreshadowing of a coming future — so in the slow evolution of redeemed humanity, all along its course, there may be seen like tokens and prophecies of its completion ; prophecies all the more real, because they are not read in words, but in facts and events ; profound analogies, * Lucy Larcom. ^ W. C. Magee, Christ the Light of all Scri;pture, 223.
JOB XIX. 25-27 87
marvellous correspondences between what has been and what is, and again between what is and what we are told is yet to be ; successive and ever clearer indications of the one great design that runs through all the ages ; prophecies, as the buds are of the spring — as the flowers are of the summer — as the dawn is of the sunrise; prophecies which are, therefore, a far weightier evidence for Christianity than any number of merely verbal predictions, because they are predictions which could not possibly have been interpolations of later date, made to fit the events after they had occurred; prophecies entirely free from questions of dates, or authorship of books, or verbal niceties of translation, because they are interwoven through the whole structure of the sacred books — nay, throughout the whole structure of human history — of human life itself — which they illustrate and explain. As the cross in the ground-plan of some great cathedral shows that its idea from the first must have been Christian, whereas the external cross placed upon it might have been but the after- thought of later builders ; so this prophetic structure of all sacred history is in itself a far greater, a far more certain word of prophecy than any single word or words of this or that individual XJrophet.^
2. Job turned from the harsh theories of men to the mercy of a Divine Vindicator. He had expected sympathy from his friends. They were men of his own age and standing ; they were religious men, men of very sincere, though perhaps of somewhat narrow, piety ; and, more than that, they were wise, thoughtful, experienced men, accustomed to trace the working of God in providence and to find the principles by which His dealings with men were regulated. They were men with whom it had been the pleasure in happier days of Job to converse upon the great mysteries of human life and destiny. And these men, when they heard of their friend's trouble, did not desert him. They were mindful of the claims of friendship. They knew that Job needed their help, and so they made an appointment, and rose up each man from his place, and came to see Job and to comfort him in his affliction, and sat with him there seven days and seven nights in silence, respecting the sacredness of his grief. And yet we know that these men, so good, so faithful, so promising, failed Job utterly in the hour of his trouble. He had to say that they were like a deceitful watercourse, which the travelling caravan in the desert ^ W. C. Magee, Christ the Light of all Scripture, 215,
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88 I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
hastens to in order that it may be refreshed with water, and finds that the water has disappeared. So they had been to him. He had waited for their coming, he had waited after they came for their speaking, and when they spoke, and when he was able to hear the thoughts that were in their hearts with regard to him, he found that they were miserable comforters, that they could give him no help. And it is just then, when he has touched this lowest depth of despair, that he comes to see how near he is to the fountain of all hope and consolation. Why should he wish this impossible wish ? What good would it do him to have his words recorded and read by future generations ? Ah ! was it not that deep in his heart, though he hardly knew it, there was a conviction of a day of witness somewhere else than upon earth, that those thoughts and words which had passed through his mind were all known to One ? And that thought now breaks through his darkness, and he leaps up to meet it with this exclamation : " But I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth." It is Job's appeal from the sympathy of man, which was refused, to the sympathy of God, which at last he dared to claim and to trust.
Into the heaven of Thy heart, 0 God,
I lift up my life, like a flower; Thy light is deep, and Thy love is broad,
And I am not the child of an hour.
As a little blossom is fed from the whole
Vast depths of unfathomed air. Through every fibre of thought my soul
Beaches forth, in Thyself to share.