feels that there is something there which inspires confidence and hope. Can you deny that in the long run the devil's service sets its mark on men, a mark which all men instinctively shrink from? The miser, the wanton, the drunkard, the idler, get a look which even the least observant note, and beware. I suppose, too, that even the most ardent votaries of pleasure will confess that its pursuit is its chief charm. The world's good cannot stand the test of possession. There is a burning thirst, an insatiate longing, with which it fills the soul; it cries ever, "Give, give, give." Nothing can stay the cry, nothing can stifle it, and least of all success. One world conquered, it moans restlessly for another. The larger the conquest, the larger the pain. No man can rest in acquisitions. To acquire is his instinct, and, as he heaps to himself worldly treasures and pleasures, and is insatiate still-still longing, still pining-the thought will steal on him, "I have made a grand mistake, the grand mistake. I have all I aimed at ; I have spent my life in the acquisition, and it profiteth me nothing—a great heartache is all that I have gained. I have aroused a thirst which a universe of possession cannot satisfy. My doom is the doom of Tantalus. The waters are round me, but when I stoop to drink, they vanish; the dry, hot sand occupies their room. The boughs loaded with

rich fruit are above me; but, when I lift my hand in the agony of my hunger, they sweep up beyond my reach. Is there any good? Is there anything that profiteth anywhere? Is there anything in the wide universe which a man can possess and be at rest?" The answer to the question is the Gospel. him, something which he spiring breath of God.

Man has an infinite in

caught from the inNothing with limits

can satisfy him finally; in God only can he find his end and be at rest. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness."

"Then

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

I have sketched the creed of the penitent. The confession of the penitent, and the answer of God, which is the penitent's Gospel, I shall handle in the next discourse.

"If any say I have sinned, I have perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light."

I

Sermon VI.

The Penitent's Gospel.

"He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, I have perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light."—JOB XXXIII. 27, 28.

HE first verse contains the penitent's creed; the second, the substance of the Gospel. "I have sinned, I have perverted that which was right, and it profited me not." It is the whole confession of human sin, its reality, its essence, its fruits. This book touches the depths the depth of man, the depth of God. Its writer had the longest plummet-line which the men of old time were able to drop into the abyss of the Divine counsels. He gauged the mystery, though he could not solve it: the key was not with him,

though he could instruct us where to look for it— in the daysman who should explain and justify, as the God-Man alone could explain and justify, the dark and far-reaching methods of the Fatherly discipline of God. I regard the cry for a mediator, with which the book of Job seems to me to be charged, as one of the chief of those "spiritual things" in the Old Testament Scripture, which, be the difficulties of these old records what they may, make the Old Testament one book with the New. We do not find it simply in an isolated passage in this ancient drama of sorrow; it runs through the whole of it, and is in some sort its key. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar-the sages charged with the hoary wisdom of the past the young and brilliant Elihu, full even to distention with the new wine of genius, and freighted with the eloquent wisdom of the present, offer themselves successively as God's expositors. But the sufferer will not hear them. His cry is "for God, for the living God," and this is the real essence of the book. On this, as the spinal column, the whole form depends; for books may be vertebrate as well as men. The cry grows more earnest as the pitiless mongers of orthodox platitudes are successively silenced, and it is answered at length by the appearing of the Lord himself. He came with lightning and tempest, and out of the whirlwind the awful challenge broke.