VII
JOB--GROPING
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"Oh that I knew where I might find Him! that I might
come even to His seat."--Job xxiii. 3.
THE Book of Job is a most marvellous composition.
Who composed it, when it was composed, or where--nobody
knows. Dante has told us that the composition
of the Divine Comedy had made him lean
for many a year. And the author of the Book of
Job must have been Dante's fellow both in labour
and in sorrow and in sin, and in all else that always
goes to the conception, and the composition, and
the comprehension of such immortal works as the
Book of Job and the Divina Commedia.
The worst of it was that job could not find out,
with all he could do, why it was that God had so
forsaken him. Job had a good and honest heart,
and a conscience void of offence both toward God
and toward man. With the whole of the Book of
Job in our hands, we know what neither Job, nor
Eliphaz, nor Bildad, nor Zophar, nor Elihu knew.
We have the key of the whole mystery, and the
clue of the whole labyrinth, in our hands all the
time we read. We see the end from the beginning.
We see that Job, in all his terrible trials, was being
made a spectacle unto the world, and unto angels,
and unto men: a splendid spectacle as it turned
out, of patience, and endurance, and humility, and
resignation, and faith, and love. But what Job
knew not then he knows now, as he stands on the
sea of glass, having a harp of God in his hand.
"And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of
God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and
marvellous are Thy Works, Lord God Almighty;
just and true are Thy Ways, Thou King of Saints."
The captivity of Job arose out of God's pure and
unchallengeable sovereignty, as we say. God
deserted and forsook Job for reasons that were
sufficient to Himself, and in which He had no
counsellor. It was to silence the scoffs and sneers
of Satan: it was to produce a shining example of
submission and resignation, and trust in God, that
would stand out to the end of time: and it was to
perfect all these, and many other graces, in the
great patriarch himself that Job was so forsaken
of God, and had his faith and his trust in God put
to such a terrible test. That was Job's case. But
if we are in any such darkness to-day, the likelihood
is that our case is not such a mystery: our case is
not so deep and unfathomable to us as Job's case
was to him. To take a too common case. One
here will have lost God, just by "neglecting" Him.
In his inward relations with the soul, God, so to
speak, does not thrust Himself upon the soul. He--so
we must speak of such things--He sometimes
stands aside, and apart, while persons and things
take that possession of the soul which rightly belongs
to Him. And, then, after a time, the silly soul
comes to itself, and wakens up to see and to feel its
bitter loss. "I have neglected Thee," cries out
one who has taught many of us how to keep up a
close walk with God. "God," says John Donne
also, in a great sermon on the same subject, "God
is like us in this also, that He takes it worse to be
slighted, to be neglected, to be left out, than to be
actually injured. Our inconsideration, our not
thinking of God in our actions, offends Him more
than our sins." "Pardon," cries Bishop Wilson,
in his
Sacra Privata, "pardon, that I have passed
so many days without acknowledging and confessing
Thy wonderful goodness to the most unworthy
of Thy servants. Preserve in my soul, O God, such
a constant and clear sense of my obligations to Thee,
that upon every new receipt of Thy favour I may
immediately turn my eyes to Him from whom
cometh my salvation." Another in his evening
prayer in his family says this: "We have fled
from Thee seeking us: we have neglected Thee
loving us: we have stopped our ears to Thee speaking
to us: we have forgotten Thee doing good to us:
we have despised Thee correcting us." Thus
confess before God Andrewes and Donne and Wilson.
Only,--these are quite exceptional men. And their
God has a sensitiveness, and a sensibility, so to call
it, toward such men,--a sensitiveness and a tenderness
that He cannot have toward the common run
of His people. God comes far nearer to some men
than to others: and, then, on their neglect of Him,
He goes much farther away from them, and stays
away much longer. God's dealings with the
commonalty of His people are much more commonplace,
conventional, and uneventful than they are
with His electest and choicest saints. His relations
with them are exquisitely intimate, tender, easily
offended, and easily injured. But an example, and
an illustration from real life, and that too, among
ourselves, will be far more to the purpose than the
name of any great saint of other days, and far
more worth than any amount of generalisation and
description. Conversing the other day with one
of my own people, about the life of God in the soul,
he took me aside, and told me this. I have his
permission to tell it to anyone to whom it may be a
blessing to hear it. It was last summer, when our
congregation was scattered about, up and down the
country, and when some of the home restraints were
sitting somewhat loose on some of our people. The
first three weeks of his holiday--he gave me the
exact names and dates--he never had such a close
walk with God during all the thirty years--off and
on--that he has known God. But he had an invitation
to spend ten days with one of ourselves: and
he set out, so he told me, to keep his engagement,
with some misgivings of heart that the visit would
be too much for him. But, as it happened, it turned
out far worse for him than anything he had anticipated.
Such was the company of which the house
was full; such were the conversations that were
permitted, and encouraged; such were the books
that were read, and that were never read; such
was the eating and the drinking; and such was the
keeping of the Sabbath, that, what with one thing
and what with another, he told me that he had read
little else but the penitential Psalms and the Book
of Job ever since, so exactly does that Book describe
his desolate estate to-day. Now, whether it was
his too great complaisancy with the secular-minded
company; or, whether it was the part he took, or
did not take in the conversations; or whether it
was the talk about their absent friends, and the
fault-finding, and the detraction, of which that
house is notoriously full; or whether it was that he
had come away and left at home his books and
papers, his habits in secret that so help him to keep
up his communion with God; or whether it was his
miskeeping of the two Sabbaths that he was there,--he
did not particularise to tell me: and his soul
was too much in hell already for me to ask. Only,
he came and he went; and no one in that crowded
house knew any more what was passing in that man's
soul, than Job's four friends knew the secret of the
Lord with His chastened servant. In ways like
these--in ways that nobody would believe--men
among ourselves also are crying to God night and
day in agony: "
Oh that I knew where I might find
Him! That I might come even to His seat!"
Now, when we set out to seek for anything that
we have lost, we do not go gaping about anywhere
and everywhere. We go straight to the place where
we lost it. We retrace our steps to the exact spot
where we wakened up to miss the thing we now
value and miss so much. Go back, then, to that sad
house where God, in His anger at you, forsook you.
On what day? at what hour? On what occasion
was it? Was it when you were sitting at table, and
forgetting yourself? Was it during that ever-to-be
lamented and never-to-be-recalled conversation?
Was it at that moment when the golden rule leapt
too late into your mind? You would not have
believed it beforehand that Almighty God would
have descended to take notice of such trifles. That
He would have taken a passing indiscretion in eating,
and drinking, and conversation, so much to
heart! and would have kept it up so long against
you,--you would not have believed it, if you had
not yourself experienced it. No! But He has
taken you this time out of all men's hands into His
own hands. And, on your own admission, He is
teaching you a lesson, this time, that you will not
soon forget. He will teach you that there is nothing
He takes so mighty ill at your hand as just the way
you transgress against your brother, and let other
men transgress against him when you are his only
friend. A new commandment,--He has said to you
at a hundred communion tables,--that you do to
others as you would they did to you. But God
does not cast off for ever: all God's people will
testify and tell you. No. But you will have to
seek Him with many bitter complaints against
yourself this time, and with very determined intentions
and resolutions for the time to come.
Would you know, then, where you may have any
hope to find Him? Would you come this day to
His seat? Would you have it again, between Him
and you, as it was in months past, and as it was in
the days when God preserved you? Well,--come
this way. Try this door. I do not say that you
will find Him at your first approach and prayer.
You may, or you may not. God is not mocked.
God is not to be set aside, and His holy law, just
when it suits you and your company. But that
being admitted, try this. Deny yourself. "Mortify
your members, which are on the earth." Take up
your cross daily in that thing concerning which God
has had a controversy with you in your conscience
secretly ever since. Was it in eating or drinking?
Was it in bad temper? Was it in envy and ill-will?
Was it in that sweet conversation in which you sat
and spoke such unanimous things to the depreciation
and damage of your brother? If it was, try
this. I have known this work well. I have known
it work an immediate miracle. Go straight to your
brother to-day: or take pen and ink, and tell him
that you have not had a dog's life with God ever
since. "
When I kept silence, my bones waxed old
through my roaring all the day long. For day and
night Thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture
is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged
my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I
not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions
unto the Lord: and Thou forgavest the iniquity
of my sin."
Is it "even to His seat," then, that you would
fain come? Is your cause ready to be "ordered
before Him"? And is your mouth "filled with
arguments," if you could only come to His seat?
Well, know you not where His seat really and truly
is? What! Know you not that His seat is within
you,--even within your heart? "When I was
a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child." It was when Israel was a
child that God came down, and sat upon a mercy-seat
of pure gold: two cubits and a half was the
length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of
it, with the cherubim stretching forth their wings
on high. It was when Israel was still a child that
he went up, now to this mountain of Samaria and
now to that mountain of Jerusalem, saying, as he
went up: "Oh that I knew where I might find
Him! That I might come even to His seat!"
But, finding fault with those childish days, God has
now said, "Know ye not that
ye are the temple
of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in
you?
Know ye not that
your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, and which ye have of
God?" And again,--for ever since the fulness of
time our New Testament is full of it,--"Say not in
thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that
is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall
descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ
again from the dead.) But what saith it? The
word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy
heart."
At the same time, it is the last thing we are able
and willing to do,--to cease to be children, and to
grow up to be men, in the things of God. To learn
and know that God is a spirit, and that He dwells
not in temples made with hands; but that His
true and only temple is the temple of the penitent,
contrite, holy and loving heart,--we are old, and
near our end before we learn that. My brethren,
be no longer children in understanding; but in
understanding be men. Think, my brethren,
think. Think your greatest and your best, your
most magnificent, your most deep, and inward, and
spiritual, about God, and about man, made in the
image of God. Think, with all your soul, and heart,
and strength, and mind about the Divine Nature.
Say of the Divine Nature, - "Essence beyond
essence, essence within essence, essence everywhere,
and wholly everywhere." Think and say,--
Maker, Nourisher, Guardian, Governor, Benefactor,
and Perfecter of all men and all things. God and
Father: King and Lord: Fountain of Life and
Immortality. Blessed be the glory of the Lord out
of His place. Glory be to Him for His Godhead,
His mysteriousness, His height, His depth, His
sovereignty, His almightiness, His eternity, His
omnipresence, and His grace! Yes, His
omnipresence,
everywhere present, and wholly present
everywhere; but, most of all, and best of all, in
the heart of man. It is in the heart of man that
God establishes His temple. His high throne is
prepared and set up in the heart of man. His holy
altars are builded and kindled in the heart of man.
The sacrifices that alone please God are offered
continually in the heart of man. There, the Holy
Ghost ministers in prayer and praise without
ceasing, making intercession within us with groanings
that cannot be uttered. There also is the
golden mercy-seat with the two cherubim above it.
And there the Great High Priest speaketh peace,
and pronounceth His great Benediction, because
He continueth there for ever. Seek thy God, then,
in thyself! Oh, ye sons and daughters of captive
Job, seek Him whom ye have lost, and seek Him in
your own hearts. Come, O prodigal son, come to
thyself. Enter into thyself. Enter deep enough
into thyself, and thou shalt come unto His seat.
For He still sits there, waiting to be gracious there to
thee. Oh, what glory! Oh, what grace! Oh, what
a God! Oh, what a heart! To have thy God in
thine own heart, and to have Him
wholly there.
Wholly, and not in part; and wholly there for
thee. His whole almightiness, His whole grace and
truth, His whole redemption, His whole salvation!
Arise, then, and enter into God's holy temple.
Order your cause before Him there, and fill your
mouth with your best arguments there. Till you
fall down before Him in your own heart, and say,
"I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear:
but now mine eye seeth Thee!"
Are you, then,--by the long-suffering and the
grace of God,--are you one of those who are this
day saying, "Even to-day is my complaint bitter:
my stroke is heavier than my groaning. Oh that
I knew where I might find Him: that I might
come even to His seat!" Then seek Him where
Job sought Him and at last found Him. Seek Him
in a humble, broken, believing heart. Go on seeking
Him in a still more, and a still more, humble,
broken, believing heart. Seek Him deep enough,
and long enough: seek Him with your whole
heart; and sooner, or later, you too will find Him.
Seek Him like David, seven times a day. Like
David also, prevent the night watches and the
dawning of the day seeking Him. If need be, die,
still seeking Him. And die; saying to Him that,
even if He should cast you into your bed in hell,--
warn Him that you will wander about in the outer
darkness for ever seeking Him, and saying: Oh
that I knew where I might find Him: that I might
come even to His seat ! Behold, we count them
happy which endure.
Ye have heard of the patience of job.
"And the Lord turned the captivity of Job: . . .
and the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more
than his beginning . . . . So Job died, being old and
full of days."
