The future life.
"If a man die, shall he live again?" The true answer to this solemn question is the only sufficient response to the sad wail of the previous verses. "There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,… but man dieth, and wasteth away." The answer cometh from afar. It is difficult to determine the measure of light that Job had on the question of the future life. Read in the light of our New Testament teaching, some of his phrases are full of hope; but we may have put the hope there. Generally it is the language of inquiry, and often of inquiry unsatisfied. Sometimes faith bursts through all doubt and gloom, and the confidence of a strong and assured hope takes the place of tremulous fear. Still the question rings in every breast; still the longing for a fuller life in which the ideals of the present may be reached prevails; still men go to the side of the dark river and look into the gloom, and hoping and half fearing ask, "If a man die, shall he live again?" The only satisfactory answer to this comes to us from the lips of the Redeemer, and that is wholly and entirely satisfactory. We mark—
I. THE EAGER, UNSATISFIED CRY OF MEN APART FROM DIVINE REVELATION.
II. THE PARTIAL UNFOLDING OF THE TRUTH IN THE EARLIER REVELATIONS.
III. THE PERFECT AND UNEQUIVOCAL REVELATION MADE BY JESUS CHRIST Of this last we may notice.
1. Christ's teachings all proceed on the assumption that there is a future life.
2. His teachings are constantly supported by an appeal to the future conditions of reward and punishment.
3. Very much of his teaching would be unmeaning and inexplicable in the absence of such future.
4. But he crowns all his teaching by himself becoming the Disputant, and affirming and demonstrating the future life. "But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the place concerning the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him."
5. He crowns all by the raising of the dead to life, and by the example of his own triumph over death. But Job had not this consolation, and he still abides in gloom, as must all who have not the perfect revelation of God.—R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
The flower and the shadow.
I. WHERE IS A COMMON CHARACTER IN ALL HUMAN LIFE. Job seems to be suffering from exceptional troubles. Yet he regards his condition as typical of that of mankind generally. He turns from himself to "man that is born of a woman." We differ in external circumstances, possessions, honours; in bodily, mental, and moral characteristics. But in our fundamental constitution we are alike. The points of resemblance are more numerous than the points of difference.
1. All born of women come in the common descent from the first parents.
2. All are frail and short-lived.
3. All suffer from the troubles of lit e.
4. All sin.
5. All have Christ for their brother, able and willing to be also their Saviour.
6. All may enter the eternal life and dwell for ever in the love of God, on the same conditions of repentance and faith.
II. MAN SHARES THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATURE. Job sees in nature types of human life. We are a part of nature, and the laws of nature apply to us. This fact should save us from amazement when trouble comes upon us. It is just in the course of nature. We have not been singled out for a miracle of judgment. It is not that God is writing bitter things against us in particular. Oars is part of the general experience of all nature. Our greatest evil, however, is not that which befalls us in the course of nature, but that which we bring upon ourselves unnaturally. There is something monstrous about sin. We feel a gentle pathos in natural sorrow, but we recognize a terrible tragedy, a dark and dreadful curse, in our self made sorrow of sin. That is infinitely worse than the lading of flowers and the fleeing of shadows.
III. NATURE SETS FORTH THE SAD SIDE OF LIFE.
1. Brevity. Man is "of few days." The age of nature is maintained by succession, not by continuance. The race goes on, the individual passes.
2. Trouble. "Full of trouble." "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together" (Romans 8:22). The advance of nature is through conflict and struggle.
3. Frailty. Man is born of a woman, "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7). The flower, which is the most beautiful thing in nature, is the most fragile. Crushed by a careless step, or nipped by frost, or withered by the very sun that drew out its life and painted its loveliness, it is yet the type of human life. The most exquisite flowers may be the most delicate, and the finest souls the most sensitive. The hot Southern sun quickly turns a garden into a desert. The same fate is found among the most cultivated and valued lives. The flowers are not saved by their beauty and fragrance. Some of the most precious lives are cut down in their prime. The scythe that mows the meadows cuts off the summer flowers in the height of their short-lived beauty. The rough, common fate of man is indiscriminate, laying low the best of men together with their less-valued companions.
4. Unreality. A mere shadow! and a moving shadow! What could be more unsubstantial and transient? Yet the frailty and changefulness of life make our human existence appear no more real.
CONCLUSION. Observe another side of the scene. The very melancholy of the picture suggests that it does not cover the whole field. Nature is not dissatisfied with her changefulness. The flowers do not bewail their untimely end. Man alone looks with sorrow on his fate. The reason is that he is made for something greater. The Divine instinct of immortality is in him. lie is more than a part of nature. A child of God, he is called to share a larger life than that of the natural world. The Christian who is cut down as a frail flower on earth will yet bloom as an immortal flower in Paradise.—W.F.A.