school of affliction, ye are the heirs of glory; though tried in the fiery furnace of adversity, ye shall come out purified and made perfect. One drop of your cup exceeds in value whole rivers of the world's joy. And when hell and the grave, sin and Satan, have done their worst, and spent all their malice and fury against you, the Everlasting arms shall for ever sustain thee. And in your last fiery conflict with the wicked one, call to mind the promise of God to his people, his peculiar people, his dear children: "I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."

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Sermon X.

THE UNSHAKEN FAITH OF JOB.

JOB XIX., 23, 27.

O that my words were now written! O that they were printed in a book!

That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever

For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.

It is impossible not to be struck with the majesty and sublimity with which the inspired Job introduces the sublimest of all subjects, viz: the general resurrection, and the triumphs of the Redeemer's kingdom. He is

about to utter the voice of inspiration to give birth to a sentence fit only to be recorded in the everlasting hills-"O that my words were now written! O that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!" I can only compare the sublimity of such an exordium to the solemn preparation, “the dread magnificence of heaven" which precedes the rising of the sun, when he is unloosing the barriers of the east, and preparing, as a giant, to run his course: a resemblance perhaps the more just and striking when it is considered that this splendid prediction of Job is among the earliest upon record, and points with no less than prophetic assurance, derived from special and immediate inspiration, to the final rising of the Sun of Righteousness, "glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength;" to the dawn of that eventful day, which is to crown all our hopes, banish all our fears, and when the Christian shall throw aside the sin-worn garments of mortality, and stand before God complete in his Redeemer's righteousness.

Such introductions, calculated as they are to arrest and command attention to what is to follow, are common in the sacred writings, and peculiar to those of the prophets. It is thus that

Isaiah introduces (for the purpose of especially impressing its enormity), the disobedience and ingratitude of God's peculiar people-"Hear, O heavens, and give ear O earth, for the Lord hath spoken-I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me!" Thus, in the book of Numbers, Balaam introduces a prophecy similar to that in the text, "I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh" Behold what?-he proceeds"There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth." Well may such a subject claim the additional grandeur of an introduction. Well may our utmost attention be aroused, the whole stretch of our faculties be directed to the peculiar solemnities of that day which is to usher in the second advent of the Lord to judgment"the day of vengeance, the year of his redeemed." Job was prior to, or at least contemporary with Moses. He worshipped the one true God, in sincerity and truth. And though his religious knowledge was in general such as might have been derived from the early patriarchs, still the positive declaration, the sublime assurance of a Redeemer and a future judgment, contained in the text, is, by most commentators, allowed to