Such was Job’s character as given by God. He asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him” (v. 8). Satan, in reply, says in effect, “Strip him, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.”

Satan sought Job’s fall; God sought his blessing. Satan gets leave from God to strip Job. With malignant energy he sets to work, and in one day he brings the greatest man in all the East into abject poverty and visits him with sore bereavement. Blow after blow of such a crushing nature and with such rapidity falls upon Job that one marvels at the testimony of the Holy Ghost that: “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (v. 22). What a triumph for God! What a defeat for Satan!

“But these strange ashes, Lord? This nothingness, This baffling sense of loss?”

“Son, was the anguish of My stripping less Upon the torturing Cross? “Was I not brought into the dust of death, A worm, and no man I; Yea, turned to ashes by the vehement breath Of fire, on Calvary?

“O Son beloved, this is thy heart’s desire: This and no other thing Follows the fall of the consuming fire On the burnt offering.

“Go on and taste the joy set high afar, No joy like that for thee; See how it lights thy way like some great star! Come now, and follow Me!”

A. W. C.

We ourselves also were sometime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.—Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Job answered the Lord , and said, Behold, I am vile: what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.—The Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.—David . . . to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.

I obtained mercy, . . . who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.