curse. Job's ingrntttude was all the more reprehensible that in hi11 case life had been crowned with mercies-with great material wealth, with true domestic enjoyment, with immense social influence, with rich spiritual grace, with palpable Divine favour. II. A SINFUL REGRET INnULGJl:D. That he had not been carried from the womb to the grave. "Oh that I bad given up the ghost, and no eye ha.cl seen me!" (ver. 18). Job's regret wa.s: 1. Sinful; inasmuch a.sit undervalued a Divine gift. 2. Unnatwrai, since it contradicted the instinct of love of life which the Creator has implanted in all . his creatures. 3. Foolish; for though Job might have thereby escaped bodily pain, he ' would also have missed much happiness and many opportunities of glorifying God by doing good and enduring affliction. 4. Mistaken; a,.q, though Job had been carried from the womb to the grave, his expectation," I should have been as though I had not been," would not have proved correct. The child who opens its eyes on earth simply to shut them again does not return to the wide worn b of nothir!gness when its tiny form is deposited in the dust. The fact of its being born into Adam's race con- stitutes it an immortal. The doctrine of annihilation, if not absolutely unphilosophical, is certainly unnatural and unscri ptural. III. A PASSIONATE E!i:'l'REATY OFFERED. For a brief respite in the midst of his sufferings. " Are not my days few ? cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little." 1. The prayer. "Let me alone." Job craved a momentary allevi- ation in his troubles. Few sufferers are without such interludes of ease. God mercifully mitigates human sorl'ow by granting brief periods of relief; otherwise men would be crushed, and the end of affliction defeated. 2. The purpose. "That I may be cheerful e. little." Job could not brighten up while tormented by incessant pain and haunted by continual fear (eh. ix. 27). Only the lifting of God's band would remove the load from his heart and the cloud from his brow. .And this he felt was desirable before he went to the under world. Most men will sympathize with Job in desiring a brief period of freedom from pain before passing into the eternal world, to enable them to calm their spirits, to collect their thoughts, to prepare their souls for the last conflict and, the great hereafter. 3. The plea. "Are not my days few?" Job thought him- self upon the brink of the grave. In this, however, he was mistaken. Most men deem themselves further from the unseen world than they really are (1 Sam. x.:x:. 3), but occasionally sufferers judge themselves nearer the close of life than they eventually prove to be. If the first is a sin of presumption, the second is an error caused by feeble faith. If the first is peculiar to youth and health, the second is not infrequent to suffering and age. IV. A DISMAL FUTURE DEPICTED. Hades. The melancholy region, into which Job anticipated almost instantaneous departure, was not the grave, which was, properly speaking, only the receptacle of the dead body; but Sheol, the abode of departed spirits. As conceived by Job and other Old Testament saints, this was not a place where the disembodied spirit either found annihilation or sank into unconsciousness, but a realm in which the spirit, existing apart from the body, retai □ ed its self-consciousness. Yet the gloom which overhung this silent and impenetrable land was such as to render it unattractive in the extreme. It was a land of: 1. Perpetual exile. "Before I go whence I shall not return''. (ver. 21); "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns" (' Hamlet,' act iii. sc. 1). 2. Thick darkness.. "A land of darkness, e.s darkness itself" (ver. 22). Four different terms are employed to depict the gloom of this dismal world; the first (used in Gen. i. 2) probably depicting a condition of things upon which light has not yet arisen; the second representing this lightless region as death's shade, i.e. the veil which death draws around the eyes of men; the third setting forth this darkness as that which covers up or encircles all things; and the fourth pointing to the complete shutting off of light, the deepest and thickest gloom. This horrible picture the poet finishes by adding, "and the light is a.s the thick darkness," meaning that in that doleful region the daylight or the noontide is like the midnight gloom of earth: "not light, but darkness visible" (Milton, 'Paradise Lost,' bk. i.). 3. Complete disorder. A land "without any order" (ver. 22); meaning either without form or outline, every object being so wrapt in gloom that it app~ars uevoid of shape, or without regular succession, as of dny and night; a realm without light, without beauty, without form, without order; a dark subterranee.n chaos filled with pale ghosts, waiting ln comparative inactivity during that "night in which no man can work;' for the 184 THE BOOK OF JOB. [on. x. 1-22.
dawning of tbe resurrection morn, Contrast with all this the Christian Paradise, where t.he spirits of just men made perfect a.re now for ever with the Lord; not a land of exile from which one shall no more return, but a better country, even an heavenly, from which one she.11 go no more out (Rev. iii. 12); not a region of darkness, but a bright ree.lm of light (Rev. xxi. 23); not a chaos of confusion, but a glorious cosmos of life, order, and beauty (Rev. xxi. 1). Learn : 1. The danger of unsanctified a.fEl.iction. 2. The power of Sa.tan over the human heart. 3. The short-sightedness of sense and reason. 4. The propriety of ever being ready for our d~parture !nto th~ unseen world. 5. The value of the gospel, which has brought life and 1mmort.a.hty to light. 6. The advantage possessed by those who live under the gospel dispensation. 7. The greater responsibility of those who enjoy ftM'Ater light than Job did.