evidences of the beneficence of God, we come down to one special and peculiar form ol it. He is good to us in our pains as well as in our ple&eures. His power is exercised to purify and chasten as well 119 to destroy. The recognition of this truth is one o{ the leading features of Scripture revelation. How different from the gloomy creed of the most enlightened heathen concerning suffering sent from heaven! He felt the wrath of his gods, bnt be never knew their blows as signs of a. secret and remedial love. Where there is no belief in supreme righteousness, suffering must always be without relief. The blessedness here described is both internal and external. l. Internal. The man ls blessed (1) who recognizes his sufferings as corrections. Then their worst bitterness passes; despondency is cheered ; hope dawns in the heart. He is blesP.ed (2) who rejects not the warnings which they bring. He willingly takes the medicine, and submits to the direction of the heavenly Physician. But they aggravate their sufferings and inflame their ills who know they a.re being corrected, yet refose to take the Divine hint for amendment; who are like the stubborn horse or ass chafing at the bit, resisting the guidance of the rein. He is blessed (3) who yields himself up implicitly to the Divine treatment, suffers his evils to be expelled, his follies to be plucked up by the roots. He is blessed (4) because he is thus brought into the deeper knowledge and fellowship of God. To know God as the Almighty Benefactor is one step in religion ; to know him as the Almighty Chastiser is another and a higher. And this is never reached except through suffering, the deeper con- sciousness of sin, struggles with self, a higher purity, and a deeper peace. 2. External. The man at peace with himself and with God seems to bear a charmed life ( ver. 19). (1) He is defended from outwa,·d evils. (Vers. 20-22.) He passes through seas of trouble, and rides upon the crest of each advancing wave; passes through fire, and it hurts him not. The greatest outward calamities are mentioned, only to show how he rises superior to them all. "Famine." The histories of Elijah, of the widow of Zarephath, of the temptation of Jesus Christ, all illustrate the grand truth that man's strength is derived, not from bread alone, but directly from the Word and will of God. The truth is a general one. It is that expressed by St. Pan! that, though th.i outward man perish, the inward man may be renewed day by day. "The power of the sword," " devastation," " famine," "wild beasts," form the catalogue of the ills most com~on and most dreaded in ancient times. None of these can harm the man who is reconciled to God, The truth again is general, and admits of a twofold application. In the first place, history is full of the providential escapes of good men, in which every discerning mind will see the hand of God. But there are exceptions. No law of nature is set aside. The sword of the foe, the tooth of the lion, is not blunted, nor is the body hardened against hunger. Good men, like others, perish from these causes. But here the truth applies in another way. 1'he souls of the martyrs flee to the altar of heaven (Rev. vL 9), or are borne from the scene of suffering to that of rest, as Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham. In either case they are unh:ll'med and happy in God. But another evil, more keenly felt in more civilized times, is the "scourge of the tongue." Slander- " Whose edge is sharper than the sword ; whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie All corners of the world-kings, queens, and state, Maida, me.trons--nay, the secrets of the grave This viperous slander enters." From this fearful scourge the blessed man is hidden, protected. Good men are often attacked, but cannot be destroyed, by sla1,der. They do not feel it as do the consciously guilty. They, in the beautiful words of the psalm, are kept "secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." The slanderer does service to the upright man in the end by forcing him into a position of self-defence, or of silent dignity, which brings the true qualities of his character into a clearer light. (2) He is favoured with outward good. (Vere. 23-27.) The stones that afflict the fields with barrenness, the devouring beasts, aeem to be in secret pact with him and refuse to do him harm. This is poetry wrapping •1p truth. We are reminded of the beautiful ode of the Homan poet (Horace, i. 22), where, dwelling on the theme that innocence is its own protection, its own arms, he tells m of the wolf that fled from him all unarmed in the Sabine wood. The whole picture 96 THE BOOK OF JOB. [oH, V. 1-27,
is that of tbc quiet pasroral life which we love to associll.te with innocenoe and the protection of BeAven. There is comfort in bis t.ent; when he visits his pll.stures, no bead of cattle is missing (for this is perhaps the true meaning of the latter clause' of ver. 24). Children and children's children spring up around him; till he CODleB to his end crowned with silver hair, like the ripe sheaf carried home to the ga.rner. With this description compare the noble ninety-first psalm. Eliphaz emphatically dE"Clares (ver. 27) this t-0 have beon bis experience. It was a picture drawn from life. We cannot doubt that it w11s realized in numberless instances in those early conditions of life; nay, it is so still. It hardly comes within the scope of such poetry to recognize the actual or seeming exceptions. And if we do not see the universal truth of ·.the description of the good man's career, we must recollect that life is a far more, complicated and m1my-sided affair with us. It is fur more difficult to trace the connection of cause and effect in the various courses of men. And we have this: immense advantage over this early teacher-that we have a clearer view, a firmer belief of the extension of man's career into eternity. All that appears exceptional and opposed to the laws of life la.id down by Eliphaz, we doubt not, will be compensated and redressed in a future state.--J.