^[ When Jehovah asked the question : " Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in all the earth ? " Satan said, " Hast thou not put a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side ? " I am very thankful for Satan's own confession of the security of this servant of God. " The hedge was so high," says one of the old Puritans, "that the big demons could not get over it, and so thick that the little demons could not get through it." 2
1 F. Godet, Commentary on Corinthians^ ii. 70. 3 J. G. Mantle.
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1. Since God controls the temptation, and is testing us by it, we ought to bear it faithfully, believing in His faithfulness. We know God's faithfulness to us only when we are honestly faithful to ourselves. He is no paternal despot who will make us good by force ; and no more shameful cry than that petulant demand exists. He preserves our independence ; it is dear to Him ; He will compel us to work out our own salvation with resolute labour, and in this more than in all else His faithfulness to us is shown. That fidelity is often stern enough, it inflicts our due penalties, it proves to us the weaknesses of our nature by the trials in which they break down, it reveals what is strong in us by testing it sometimes to the last strand of the rope, and we quiver under the severity of the test ; but what is the worth of our manliness, and what the use of a long experience, unless we are sufficiently strong of heart to realize that faithfulness is often sternness, and love sometimes apparently cruel ?
Tf We shall all be tempted, but the effects of the temptation depend upon ourselves. Fling into the same flame a lump of clay and a piece of gold, the clay will be hardened, the gold will melt; the heart of Pharaoh hardened into perfidious insolence, the soul of David melted into pathetic song. Bear temptation faithfully, and it will leave you not only unscathed, but nobler.1
0 Beauteous things of earth!
1 cannot feel your worth
To-day.
0 kind and constant friend! Our spirits cannot blend To-day.
0 Lord of truth and grace I
1 cannot see Thy face
To-day.
A shadow on my heart Keeps me from all apart To-day.
Yet something in me knows How fair creation glows To-day. 1 F. W. Farrar, The Silence artd the Voices of God, 11-2.
288 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT
And something makes me sure That love is not less pure To-day.
And that th' Eternal Good Minds nothing of my mood To-day.
For when the sun grows dark A sacred, secret spark Shoots rays.
Fed from a hidden bowl A Lamp burns in my soul All days.1
2. We must trust Him in the darkness of our temptation. He is faithful ; but to us in our blindness, ignorance, waywardness, He does not always seem so. To the strong man when he sits, despairing and stricken, amid the ruins of his life, to the father whose erring son causes him agony and shame — to these the sun shines not, and the stars give no light, the heavens above their heads are iron, and the earth beneath their feet is brass. Yet, how gently He heals even for these the wounds which His own loving hand has made ; how do the clouds break over them and the pale silver gleam of resignation brighten into the burning ray of faith and love. For our path in life is like that of the traveller who lands at the famous port of the Holy Land. He rides at first under the shade of palms, under the golden orange- groves, beside the crowded fountains with almonds and pome- granates breaking around him into blossom. Soon he leaves behind him these lovely groves ; he enters on the bare and open plain; the sun burns over him, the dust-clouds whirl around him ; but even there the path is broidered by the quiet wayside flowers, and when at last the bleak bare hills succeed, his heart bounds within him, for he knows that he shall catch his first glimpse of the Holy City, as he stands weary on their brow.
There came a cloud; it fell in shining showers. Lo! from the earth sprang troops of radiant flowers.
1 Charles G. Ames.
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 289
Grief o'er a joyous heart its shadow threw. Lo! in the darkness love's sweet graces grew.
The golden sun dropped sudden out of sight. Lo ! silver stars made glorious the night.
Death came. The soul, affrighted at its guise, Was led protesting into Paradise.
3. Because God is faithful, He sends temptation to drive us to Himself. There is no escape from His love ; no escape from the restlessness He will excite in our hearts till we find rest in Him. A thought will rise in our minds, we know not whence, a dim emotion kindle there which will seem to have no cause ; they are the inspirations of God. In early times we have heard, as Samuel heard, His voice, and, unlike Samuel, we have forgotten. In after years, in issuing into life, we have met Him, in our first loneliness, as the infinite Inspirer. He has kindled in our hearts a fire of duty and hope and aspiration ; but we have lost the music of that vision in the din of business and the clangour of the world. But He will not lose us ; we forget, but not He. Again He comes to make our life shake in the tempest. If tenderness will not touch us, perhaps this stern education will. Therefore, there comes keen testing — "thrilling anguish," the death of earthly hopes, the hours in which life seems a dreadful dream out of which we cannot wake. For only so can some be awakened to feel that they are not their own, but God's ; that the invisible is the real, and the visible unreal ; that this world is, to us, children of immortality, no more than one flash of the shuttle through the loom, in comparison with the eternal world in which we are at one with Him.