with heat" (and falleth off me), that is, it falls from me in blackened shreds.

Ver. 31." My harp also is

turned to mourning, and my organ [lute] into the voice of them that weep." Cries and groans are my only music.

HOMILETICS.-Here Job depicts in bold and terrible colours his great MENTAL ANGUISH. Mental suffering is greater than bodily. The former is but the suffering of the animal; the latter is the suffering of a man. "A wounded spirit, who can bear?" The greatest bodily pains may be deadened, relieved, and all but borne away entirely by the mind, if the mind pursues a high train of thought, and feels the inspiration of holy love and celestial hope. But the body has scarcely power to relieve the mind. If the mind is smitten the man is down, and there is no human force to lift him up. We think that we can discover in these verses four elements of mental distress.

I. A sense of DIVINE SEVERITY. "I cry unto Thee, and Thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and Thou regardest me not. Thou art become cruel to me: with Thy strong hand Thou opposest Thyself against me. Thou liftest me up to the wind; Thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance." As if he had said: I feel that Thou art not only indifferent to me, and hearest me not when I cry unto Thee in my anguish, but that Thou art cruel. Thy strong hand is against me; Thou dashest me about as chaff in the whirlwind. What state of mind can be more distressing than this? What feeling can carry greater anguish into the centre of the soul than the feeling that God is against it? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" But, if He is against us, who can be for us? We offer two remarks on this state of mind

First: It is a delusion of sin. The Great Father of humanity is not indifferent to His children, still less cruel. Never does He lift up His hand against them, but the reverse. He is always for them in His sympathies, purposes, and works. He loved them with an everlasting love. He watches over them with a tenderness that is infinite, and a love that is unbounded and unconquerable. The feeling that He is against us is a delusion of sin. The truth is

the soul is against Him, not He against it. A consciousness of guilt invests the Infinite Father with the attributes of a tyrant and a foe, attributes that are foreign to His nature. The man whom you have regarded as a friend up to the present moment, you will deem an enemy to-morrow if you commit a crime against him; though he may remain unchanged, having towards you the same loving heart as ever. It is your mind that has changed towards him. So with God. It was the man who buried his one talent, and thus violated his responsibility, that said to his lord: "I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed." The man whose optic nerve is intensely inflamed, calls the sunbeam agony. The man whose brain is in a state of high irritation denounces the waves of sweetest music floating around him as torturing sounds. So the man with the guilty conscience regards Infinite Love as wrath. Another remark we offer is

Secondly: That it is a state to which every impenitent sinner must be reduced. All the souls that populate hell, feel that God is against them. The smiles of His countenance are to them like scorching fire: the tones of His love are to them terrific thunder. They feel that He is against them and the universe is against them, and thus they are friendless and lost. Oh terrible delusion, this delusion of sin! God deliver us from this state of mind! Another element of mental distress which we discover in these verses, is

II. A sense of HOPELESSNESS. "For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living. Howbeit He will not stretch out His hand to the grave, though they cry in His destruction." His feeling seems to have been, I shall never find relief, but go down to the common grave of all mankind, from whose terrible abyss God would not "stretch out His hand" to deliver me. When the soul loses hope, all its light goes out, its powers collapse, it sinks into midnight. Despair is misery. Despair is misery. The loss of hope is as the giving up of the ghost. It is the separation of the soul from all in existence that is worth having. To such despair sin reduces the soul. Without hope! Is there

a greater calamity than this?

Sooner let me be without property, health, friends, life itself, than without hope.

"It is sad

To see the light of beauty wane away;

Know eyes are dimming, bosom shrivelling, feet
Losing their spring, and limbs their lily roundness.
But it is worse to feel one heart-spring gone;
To lose hope, care not for the coming thing,
And feel all things go to decay with us,

As 'twere our life's eleventh month."-Bailey.

Another element of mental distress which we discover in these verses is

"Did not I weep for

III. A sense of DISAPPOINTMENT. him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor? When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, then came darkness." The idea here is, that the compassion which was always paid towards the poor and distressed, led him to expect different treatment. He looked for good and waited for light, instead of which there came evil and darkness. Whilst a man should never do good from the hope of reward, it is quite natural to expect good as the result of a useful life. Job had been so generous in his dealings with mankind, so tender in his sympathies for the distressed, so ready at all times to render help to the needy and the destitute, that he was warranted in expecting a future more free from adversity and more full of enjoyment than those who lived regardless alike of the needs of men and the claims of God. But here he was sadly disappointed. Sufferings came upon him more severe, overwhelming, and crushing than perhaps upon any of his contemporaries. He was bereft of his property, his children, his health, his social status and influence, and reduced to the utmost destitution and distress. Here was disappointment. And disappointment is a leading element in mental distress. It breaks many hearts; as in the case of Job, makes the "bowels" boil; that is, all the fountains of sensibilities surge and scald like boiling waters. It is the tendency of sin to disappoint men, to break their purposes and frustrate their hopes. The sinner is ever expecting what he will never have. He looks for good, but evil

comes; he waits for light, but dense darkness spreads over him. He will be compelled to say with Goldsmith

"Impelled with steps unceasing to pursue

Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view,
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies."

Another element of mental distress which we discover in these verses is

IV. A sense of DESOLATION. "I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep: He felt himself like the jackal and the ostrich in the wilderness, utterly desolate, and with his desolation his "harp turned to mourning," and his "organ into the voice of them that weep. "All that had been joyous with him had fled. His honour was taken away; his friends were gone; they who had treated him with reverence now stood at a distance, or treated him with contempt; his health was departed, and his former appearance, indicating a state of affluence, was changed for the dark complexion produced by disease; and the instruments of joyfulness now gave forth only notes of sorrow."

CONCLUSION.-How can the mind be freed from these elements of distress? This is one of the great problems of the world. How can it be relieved from the sense of Divine severity, hopelessness, disappointment, desolation? There is one way, and only one, that is, deliverance from sin. Sin is the cause of all mental misery. It is the root of that upas tree, the taste of whose fruit is a rankling virus; the fountain of all the bitter streams that flow through human hearts. But who shall free humanity from sin? There is One, and but One-the man Christ Jesus. "He came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."