(Continued from page 208)

This testimony of Jehovah may be divided into two main parts, marked by Job's response to each.

1. The attributes of God seen in the universe (chaps. 38-40:5).

2. His control over His creatures (chaps. 40:6- 41:34).

Each portion has a character peculiar to itself, while both are closely linked together. The first dwells largely upon Jehovah's power, wisdom and goodness as displayed in the works of creation and providence; the second shows His control over those untameable beasts which defy man's power. The entire address is largely in the form of questions. Job had presumed to sit in judgment upon Jehovah and His ways; his competence for this is tested:what does he know? What can he do? Shall the creature-so puny in power, so ignorant, and withal so filled with vain pride,-presume to instruct God as to His duties, to point out to Him His failures, in fact to usurp His prerogatives ? The effect upon Job is seen in his two answers:he abases himself and lays his hand upon his mouth, in the first reply. In the second, he makes full confession of his sinful pride, and abhors himself, thus preparing the way for the outward recovery and restoration to prosperity.

We may say that the second part of the Lord's address is devoted to the humbling of Job's pride, by setting before him the creatures in which this pride is exhibited, in a typical way. The divine purpose can be seen throughout, and the effects are most blessed and complete.

Part I is devoted to the unfolding of the divine attributes of power, wisdom and goodness, in contrast to Job's weakness and ignorance. He is constrained to acknowledge his own lack of goodness in his confession-" I am vile." This portion falls into four sections.

1.God's call to Job (ch. 38:1-3).

2.Questions as to the works of creation (vers. 4-38).

3. The manifestation of His care over His creatures (chs. 38:39-39:30).

4. The effect upon Job (ch. 40:1-5).

I. God's Call to Job.

Out of that whirlwind, or golden storm-cloud (ch. 37:22), Jehovah replies to the vain questionings and lamentations of Job. It is sufficient to notice that it is not a reply to Elihu, which effectually disposes of the thought that the darkening of counsel was by him. Elihu had been God's spokesman, leading up to the divine manifestation which is now upon us. As Elihu had addressed Job throughout, so Jehovah follows up the words of His servant. "My desire is that the Almighty would answer me," was Job's closing word (ch. 31:35). He is now to have his wish granted; but how different the effect! "As a prince would I go near unto Him" (ver. 37), he had declared. " I am vile" is what he has to say when he hears His voice. Jehovah asks, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel," that hides the purposes of God and the truth, " bywords without knowledge ?" Job had poured out a flood of words-lamentations, protestations, accusations. There was much that was true and excellent, but all was vitiated, so far as God's purposes were concerned, by the exaltation of his own righteousness at the expense of Jehovah's. Instead of light, the clear flame of divine truth, all was a lurid smoke-cloud of unbelief which darkened the sun in the heavens. Who is this ? Is it some divine being, Jehovah's equal, who was calling in question the other's acts ? Was it some mighty angel, gifted with heavenly wisdom, that dared lay a charge against his Maker ? No, it was a man, frail, ignorant, sinful. The Lord's question turns Job's thought from all his fancied wrongs to himself. The psalmist, as he beholds the heavenly creation (Ps. 8), asks, " What is man ?" Abraham, in God's presence, had declared he was but "dust and ashes" (Gen. 18:27). Paul closes the opposer's mouth by asking, " Nay but, Oman, who art thou, that repliest against God ?" (Rom. 9:20). Man-the finite, fallible, fallen creature-shall he be more just than his Maker ?

This is God's question to all the vain words of men. They may be the cries of fancied wrong, or the empty attempts of human reason to explain the condition of the world about us, and of the human family in particular; but whatever form they take, they do but darken true wisdom. Over the doorway to all libraries, filled with volumes of human science, history and philosophy, wilfully or ignorantly excluding the revelation of God, may be written this divine question.

And yet Jehovah is not seeking to crush Job, but rather to bring him to a true knowledge of himself and of God. Let him gird up his loins like a man. God will not ask questions which a man cannot understand. If his loins are "girt about with truth," he can answer-as indeed he does-these questions. The very fact that Jehovah thus addresses Job shows His purposes of mercy for him. His appeal is to reason, and thus to conscience. He leads Job through the vast, and yet familiar, scenes of creation. Can he solve one of ten thousand of its riddles ? Can he open the hidden secrets of nature ? If not, why does he attempt to declare God's counsels, and intrude into the purposes of One who giveth not account to any of His matters; of whom the worshiping apostle declares, "How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! " (Rom. ii:33).

2. Questions as to the Works of Creation (chap. 38:4-38).

We come now to these questions as to God's creation, which give us a complete cycle of divine truth as exhibited in His works, fittingly grouped in seven parts.

(1) The foundations of the earth (vers. 4-7),

(2) The bounds of the sea (vers. 8-11).

(3) Day and night (vers. 12-15).

(4) Unknown depths (vers. 16-21).

(5) The elements (vers. 22-30).

(6) The heavenly bodies (vers. 31-33).
(7) The clouds and their control (vers. 34-38).

There is in one sense a simplicity in these questions that might lead to ready, though superficial, answers. We can imagine the youthful college student, with a smattering of geology, physical geography and astronomy, sitting down with complacence to such an "examination paper."

And yet let not modern science proclaim its ability to answer as Job could not. Advancement in outward knowledge there has been; discoveries of great laws and principles of nature; but can the scientist of the present day give more true and satisfying replies to these divine questions than could the patriarch of old ? What after all is human knowledge but a knowledge, as Socrates said, of our ignorance ? Job's own noble words (chap. 28) show that he had glimpses of this great fact, when for the moment he was at leisure from his own troubles. What is the key to all these questions ? It is God, the true knowledge of Himself. Knowing Him, we know the Author and Source of all knowledge. Leave Him out of account, and the sum of all science is a blank wall, beyond which still lies the hidden truth.

(1) Jehovah begins with the earth, the abode of man. Does Job know the history of his own dwelling place ? Where was he when the great Architect laid its foundations, sunk, not in the shifting sands, or upon the lasting rock, but in the empty space of apparent nothingness ?

"When hung amid the empty space,
The earth was balanced well."

Present day knowledge can talk learnedly of nebulose and the solar system, of attraction and the laws of gravitation, and explain that the reciprocal action of these laws has given the earth its form and stable relation with heavenly bodies. It can explain that by the laws of cohesion and of chemical affinity the particles of the earth cleave together.

But law means a Law-giver. Who has established these laws ? How do they act unfailingly ? Revelation, and that alone, gives the answer-"By Him all things consist" (Col. i:17). Where was Job, where was man, when the Lord established and set in motion these laws and principles ? The form of the question met Job's knowledge at that time; it equally meets man's advanced knowledge at the present. Indeed, its form was calculated to lead on his thought to wider fields of truth.

Who, Jehovah further asks, has laid down the measures of this great fabric and set His line upon it? The question suggests the possibility of another Presence, of One who was associated with Him, was His agent in laying down and carrying out the whole vast plan. Who was this ? "The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old . . .Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth" (Prov. 8:22,25). Or in the language of the New Testament, "All things were made (came into being, egeneto) by Him" (Jno. i:3). Here was a truth more wondrous even than creation; it tells of the divine Associate who, while putting into being His Father's plans, and delighting in them, had His eyes upon other objects:" My delights were with the sons of men." God in nature, as in all else, is ever saying, "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him."

The corner stone, the foundation of the earth, who laid it ? Where is it ? What is the basic law of physics or of chemistry ? Does science know now, any more than Job did then ? Atoms, ions, are grouped together, clasped and unclasped, as other great laws are brought to bear upon them. Where is the foundation law ? " Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (i Cor. 3:11). To be brought to God, to know Him, is the object of all facts, and nature is only in harmony with the great mediatorial law when it thus leads us to Himself. Only as seen thus do we hear the morning stars sing together. Only thus do the sons of God shout aloud for joy.

Most beautiful are these words describing the joy accompanying the establishment of the first creation. All nature was in harmony, and the heavens declared His glory.

" Forever singing as they shine,
The Hand that made us is divine."

If discord has come in it is not in any failure on His part to uphold all things by the word of His power. So too the heavenly intelligences, "the principalities and powers in the heavenly places," shouted in exultant joy as the marvelous panorama of nature opened out before them.

Who can limit the beauty of this wondrous creation? Our limited senses grasp some of its perfections; but their interlacing one with another, their heights and depths, who can fathom ? Who can say, were we as keen of sight and hearing as those "ethereal virtues," but that we too might catch " the music of the spheres?" If light and heat and sound are vibrations, who shall say that color has
not a music all its own, that music has not a fragrance answering to the sweet melody ?

How easily we pass beyond our finite knowledge! Even of this wondrous first creation we are profoundly ignorant. What we know but makes us realize the vast ocean of what we do not know. The light we have exposes the intensity of the surrounding darkness.

But this stable earth, with its unknown or partially known laws, is but the ante-chamber of God's moral universe. The physical is typical of the moral and the spiritual. Laws of gravitation, of numerical proportion and chemical properties are types of deeper things. That two and two make four, always and everywhere, declares the unvarying righteousness of Him who has established that basic fact. Combustion, in all its various stages, is a reminder of that all-devouring holiness of "our God," who is "a consuming fire." As we dwell upon these attributes of God's moral universe, we must again be overwhelmed not only with the sense of our ignorance, but of our unlikeness to His established order.

If we pass on in thought to the new creation, how grand, varied and infinitely perfect is all that passes before us. The stable earth, with its great laws, is a shadow of that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness-of that new abode of truth and love into which sin can never come. God hath revealed to us these things by His Spirit; but "we know in part," and that knowledge will produce in us true humility, breathing forth its worship and praise.

For, blessed be God, He has given us to know Himself in the person of His beloved Son. This is life eternal, which links us with the coming glories which shall never fade. Can we not in fuller, higher way, join in the melody of the " sons of the morning"-for we are children of the day- and shout aloud with and beyond "the sons of God?"
No need to ask those whose eyes and hearts have thus been opened what part they have contributed to all this greatness, goodness and love. We hide our faces, and ascribe all the glory unto the Lamb.

Such in some feeble measure is the great truth involved in Jehovah's first question. When that question shall have been fully answered as to man and as to God, we can join in the language of the Psalm :

"Praise ye Jehovah. Praise ye Jehovah from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights. Praise ye Him, all His angels:Praise ye Him, all His hosts. Praise ye Him, sun and moon:Praise Him, all ye stars of light" (Ps. 148).

' 'And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever" (Rev. 5:13).

(2) Jehovah passes from the earth to "that great and wide sea," which is described not in its original creation, as part of the heavens and the earth, but as gushing forth from its mother's womb. It covered the whole face of the world, and "darkness was upon the face of the deep." Left to itself it
would have enveloped all; but its Maker was its Master, and set bounds to it, breaking as it were into the great mountain chains and forming a place barred and closed to all egress. Its storms and fury in His almighty hands are but the wailings of a newborn babe; He wraps it in the swaddling clothes of clouds and thick darkness, and hushes it to rest.

"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea" (Ps. 93:3,4).

Thus at the beginning, and again when in judgment He permitted it to engulf the earth, God has restrained this restless mighty ocean. Man gazes upon it with awe, but cannot control its power. His "thousand fleets sweep over it in vain;" he "marks the earth with ruin," but his control stops with the shore.

How fittingly does this mighty ocean teach man his helplessness and ignorance! What secrets do its hidden depths hold! God alone has controlled it; His word holds back its proud waves.

So too in the ocean of evil-the pride of Satan which burst forth in rebellion against God, when the angels kept not their first estate-God's restraining hand holds all in check. The wicked, like the foaming sea, seem to rise higher and higher in their violence and pride, but God says to them, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." Thus His restraining power over evil is seen. As Job witnessed iniquity seemingly triumphant, as he looked into the dark surging of his own self-willed
heart, he might well have been appalled; who but God can control evil ?

We look forward to the time when this control shall be absolute in that new heavens and new earth, when "there shall be no more sea." In anticipation of that day, when evil shall be banished to its eternal abode away from God's redeemed creation, we can own Him as supreme alone. S. R.

(To be continued.)