The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 258

the Seed of the wom11n, was untainted by hereditary cormptioa. Holy in hla birth (Luke i. 36), he conHnued throughout life "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from einnere" (Heb. vii. 26). The moral purity of Jesus was indispensable to hie mediator- ehip (Heh. vii. 27), 3. Man'a in/lJ'T'iority to the angels. Man occupies a lower place in the universe than the 11ngele who inhabit heaven (ver. 15). Yet even these bright intelligences appear to.rnlehecl in God's sight. How much less, then, can a claim of moral purity be made good for me.n? If God's holiness, the standard of all creature e:&'.ccllence, is so absolute that even the heavens with their holy inhabitants 3l'e not pure in his sight (ver. 15), it is sheer folly to expect that man can establish his moral cleanness before' the eyes .of the Omniscient One (cl. eh. iv, 17, 18, homiletics). On the contrary, man,.must.be-entlrely abominable in the estimation of a holy God, because wholly corrupt (ver. 16), sin being that abominable thing which God hates (Jer. xliv. 4), and which renders everything it infects hateful, because of changing its nature, and me.king sour, putrid, corrupt, disorganized, what God had at first pronounced fair, orderly, and very good. 4. Man's habitual practice. Thie the culminating proof of man's total and universal depravity. Wherever man exists he is found to drink up iniquity like water; i.e. to commit sin as regularly, eagerly, abundantly, easily, naturally, e.s the ox or the horse drinks up water. Learn : 1. Men often fail to see in themselves the faults they condemn in others. 2. The faculty of speech was given to every man to profit withal. 3. The tongue is badly used when it is employed to either afflict saints or encourage sinners. 4. "The fear of the Lord is the beginniog of wisdom." 5. Prayer is one of the natural instiocts of the human heart. 6. A man's creed is commonly e.n index to his character. 7. The man who condemns himself need not wonder if he be condemned by others. 8. The older a mab. grows the wiser should he become. 9. Divine consolation may be, but is not always, administered by man. 10. "Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh e. city." 11. The mouth should never be al.lowed to go without a bridle. 12. The doctrine of manls depravity is very old. Ver. 4.~Restraining prayer. Of the reasons leading men to either neglect or discon- tinue the exercise of prayer, these will be found to be the chief. I. 'l'IIERE IS NO Goo TO PRAY TO. This the reason of the atheist. But the exist- ence of a supreme First Cause, possessed of intelligence e.nd moral character, is to faith assured by: 1. The intuitions of the human mind, which may sometimes attempt to argue itself out of, but never needs to reason itself into, the belief in a Divine Being. 2. The witness of the creatures, which, by countless instances of special contrivance e.nd design, attest the eternal power and Godhead of their Artificer (Rom. i. 20). 3. The intimations of Scripture, which never deinonstrate, bui always assume, that a God exists, and man knows it. Hence, since there is a Supreme Being, the folly, as well as sin, of withholding from him that tribute of devotion which is his due. II. THERE IS NO EFFICACY IN PRAYER, The usual objections to the possibility of prayer may be here stated, such as that the whole universe having been placed under the dominion of fixed and invariable law, there can, properly speaking, be no room for the exercise of prayer; that the Bible itself, by representing all things as coming to pass in accordance with a prearranged plan, seems expressly to exclude the idea of prayer; that the multiplicity and even contradictoriness of human interests is so great e.s to reduce the whole business of praying to an absurdity; e.nd that, 1\8 no one pre- tends to be able to dispense with his own labours even while he prays, it seems hard to know precisely wherein lies the special virtue of devotion. Without replying to these eeriatim in this place, it may suffice to observe: 1. The exact import q/ the assertio" that there is no efficacy in prayer, which is that the individual so asserting has been able to place himself precisely where God stands in relation to the universe, to make e. survey of the en~ire compass of created thir:;gs, to sound the unfathomable depths of tbo Divine resources, and, as the result of his examination, to announce that prayer cannot be answered; in other words, such a confident dogmatist arrogates to himself the attributes of God. 2. The complete wOTthlessness of the assfJ'T'tion when set against the testimony of the human consciousness, especially when supported by the evidenco of incontrovertible fact that prayer can be, and has been, answered. Ill 'l'nE ABSENCE OD' A FELT NEED OF rRAYEB. This is the reason of the worldling.  TBE 'B001t O't .to1t (ott. x1. 1-sa.