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CHAPTER  7

 

JOB AT THE CROSS-ROADS

Job in Expostulation,

Appeal,

Agony and

Faith

 

A SHORT REVIEW

Already there is a volume on Job in this site. However, the case is so remarkable, so enlightening, so deep that it seems good to add even to this, as we ponder the patriarch's squirmings, squanderings, swivellings, assertions, contempts; and watch for the faith of Job as it is exhibited.

The devil was keen to bedevil Job, and show him insincere, a prospering recipient of rewards sufficient to secure his adherence to the Lord, who so blessed him. GIven licence to sicken, but not kill Job, the devil sets about his diabolical task to break down, or ostensibly, show up Job! (Job 1).

What follows is a pageant of glorious perception, denting traditions, insisting on clarity, facing issues without restriction. But what of Job himself ? As he case moves from disaster to disaster, 'friends' comes with voluminous, sharp suggestions, often tedious, rarely true, and so test his spirit simultaneously! If you are going to have a test, then much needs to be exposed. Here, so it was!

As one reads, this book becomes almost like a journalistic account via a monologue, the 'friends' eliciting, the results revealing basics in spiritual life. That its time seems before Moses, is a point makes it far more enlightening yet: thus man has long has the sophistication, spirituality and substance of mind and spirit that can move, from ancient times, with the mighty of any day, assessing with the sensitive and proceeding to the grounds of life.

This, it is upward towards their Maker, a matter not only of direction, but of destiny, an alignment not only of interest, but of realism, with a power not only of hope, but of God.

It is indeed not 'forwards' to unknown paths with Gillard, as in the Australian political situation, or advance, as with Rudd, or have something new and different from tedious seeming Washington, as with Obama, or something yet more radical, as seen from the lips of Cameron, in conjunction with his associate, in Britain. It is upwards that one needs to go, to find perspective from the source, and direction from the deity, and desire from the valuable, so that man might not founder in his own self-righteousness, and hideous intrigues.

You need not only direction, but destiny; not alone movement, but a sound end in views; and not vibrancy which becomes mere vibration, but virtue and everlasting truth, to escape the void of being an adventuring wanderer.  It is necessary, in short, to know where one is going, and not just to mvoe this wy or that, even if innovation sets forth, like Cleopatra, her charms, whether for one or all.

Indeed, far apart from the apparatus of pseudo-sublime, chattering scholarship, Job leaves most of the philosophers, by comparison, almost as decaying meat that is far from meet, ready to be thrown out, shallow and seditious without rhyme or reason.

Not only is Job able at so distant a date so to speak with such pith and point, purpose and discernment, but such is always the case with man, when closely investigated. Thus evidence comes, as at Ebla, of remarkable achievement from the third millenium B.C.,  when man settles long enough to show and pile up evidence of his works that can be identified and checked (cf. SMR pp. 1026-1027 ): for man's plight is not defective intellect but deficient faith.

 

AN EARLY CHARACTERISATION

With Job, there is an excruciating mordancy combined with a child-like assurance concerning the wisdom, judicial uniqueness and incorruptibility of God, leading to the blessed démarche, that WHATEVER the appearance, the bitterness and the gall, God is just, wise, incorruptible and alone has the knowledge and ineffable truth to meet and show reality to man.  At times, almost ready to mask this temporarily, is the spirit of disquiet, the arousal in his mind of contrast to his estate in the past, a seemly and spiritually savoury one, with that in the present, in anguished enquiry. In the process, it is in terms of his prior actions, which indeed were remarkable in virtue, that Job alas becomes notable in the far less pleasant realm of self-righteousness (Job 32:1).

He was stung by this contrast: between the time when cream was on his steps, as for so long, and that which at last came to plague him,  when local hoodlums could cry in contempt at him. It was a gross change, where those trifling with reality could openly scorn one whose life had been remarkable for sensitive, spiritual perception and grand visions for good to others! Was it sham, was it a cover for hidden sin ? such were the derisive suggestions! One almost feels the initial lust of Satan, determined to show Job a fraud, and to attest in his malignancy, that no sincerity so much as existed on the face of the earth. Such a spirit is seen  in Job 1, where the  the coming trial of Job is initiated for time!

Further, Job was deeply inundated with sorrows at his contemptible seeming situation, abased, rejected, scorned, his righteousness seemingly seduced by intractable demotions, his very experience clouded by tempestuous scenes, his life in sprawling scenarios without apparent meaning, point, purpose or even goodness such as he had unremittingly experienced for so long at the gracious interposition, co-operation and closeness of the Almighty.

He then, in amazed confusion and upset,  mixed direct attribution of unrighteousness to God, for said he, if HE is not the One doing the things that vex the righteous and adorn the complacency of the corrupt, enabling or allowing the wealth of the wicked: then WHO IS! (Job 9:24).

Look for example at Job 9:16-22.

"If I had called, and He had answered me;
yet would I not believe that He had hearkened to my voice.
For He breaks me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
He will not suffer me to take my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

"If I speak of strength, look, He is strong:
and if of judgment, who appoint  my day in court ?
If I justify myself, mine own mouth will condemn me:
if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.
Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my life.

 

"This is one thing, therefore I said, 

'He destroys the perfect and the wicked.'  

"If the scourge slay suddenly, He will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked:

He covers the faces of its judges; if not, where, and who is he?
 

"Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good.
They are passed away as the swiftf ships: as the eagle that hastens to the prey.

"If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness, and comfort myself:'
I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that You wilt not hold me innocent.

"If I be wicked, why then do I labour in vain?

"If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
yet You will  plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes will loathe me.
For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him,
and we should come together in judgment. 
Neither is there any daysman between us,
who might lay his hand upon us both. 
Let him take his rod away from me,
and let not His fear terrify me:
Then would I speak, and not fear him; but it is not so with me."

What an admixture of desolation, numbed self-abhorrence, confusion, reverence, irreverence and detached realism is here. His pangs anoint his tongue with acid, his feelings surge to the point of effrontery, he confuses celestial permission for judgment with divine indifference, and man in splendid terms, with the fact, that much is askew almost past all belief, with this wayward product of God, whose very munificent gift of freedom is merely made a base for belligerence, indifference or licence: like the Gaza strip, given to Palestinians by Israel!
 

UNBECOMING CONFUSIONS CLOUD ISSUES

Certainly, initially man was gifted with pleasant equipment, but it has been involved in a smash of spirit. For all that, in Job's sense of dereliction, he for a moment passes over these things, so that it is almost as if the wayward heart of man were a vacancy, and denial or wanton disregard of one's living source were a bagatelle, compared with the results of it. Yet is severance from an infinite source, a thing of nothing indeed!

At his least tractable, in Job's speech, it is almost  as if these vital defects of unredeemed humanity would be, or even should be, magnificently ignored, as if a car left in the snow repeatedly and never given the correct oil was merely in slight disarray, slightly astray. Why then, he is asking, do such things go wrong, is there such injustice, are there such bloated opportunists: as if God had to answer for the breaches of his pre-built beauty, wrought by his own will, and for the CONSEQUENCES. Is it in fact not enough for the young one to smash the family car, without blaming dad for the bruises!

So is Job grieved. To be sure, he knows that it is not so in the end, for God DOES as Job insists, put the record straight when the finale is reached, even in the interim, allowing  the opening for various vicissitudes for the wicked, however flourishing they may be, on the way. In his time of travail, however,  Job is stuck in the start of the chapter, that of life, and does not look to the end as he does for example in Job 12:14ff., 21:7-34. esp. 21:22.

In Job 9, this ancient prophet, then,  duly acknowledges that in principle, it is ludicrous and impossible to establish himself before God, and that His divine judgment is absolute; yet he yearns for the opportunity to argue his case, for all that, and to have some sort of overall, just judgment, to determine what is going on and why. He longs for an advocate, one to act for Him (Job 9:32-35). In this of course he is pointing to the Redeemer foreshadowed in Genesis 3:15 and shown in John 3:16, as if the numeral were to go up one notch arithmetically, in moving from the Old Testament to the New!

This, the Redeemer to come,  he reveres with incandescent and even flamboyant and yet rock-solid faith, as triumphantly and desperately, grandly and gratefully attested  in Job 19:23-28.

At times, however, he is apparently gravely pre-occupied with his grief which turns from time to time into acidulous, questing grievance, and even soaring-seeming self-assertion (as in 29:7ff.). Certainly, it was not based on nothing, this sense of revulsion; for his record is remarkable. Yet equally, it was not founded in the foundry of faith, but confounded in the manufacturing premises of self-righteousness, as indicated in Job 32:1.

bullet Groping, he needs stability;
bullet assured, he needs to make application without exceptions;
bullet tormented, he needs to seek the source not of the pain merely, but of the program.

Like Peter as in Matthew 16, suddenly by the Father given such inspiration that he knew the Son, Jesus, so here in Job 19, Job is given the basis for all realisation, and the remedy for all pain, not in any meretricious or factitious escape from suffering, but in seeing that it has plan, that such may be very deep, and indeed not necessarily so hard to understand. It is indeed often easier to understand in principle the source of pain, than to withstand its false intuitive influences; for pain can become a special sort of temptation, to lure the soul to its pangs, just as can pleasure to its lusts, as if to render oblivious what is real, to conceal reality and make for dreams that becoming justly nightmares, end in sham and shame, if not shambles and sedition.

Not so is it however for the saint, and Job though at times stressed into careless speech, returns s the bee to its hive, to reality, sometimes with the very penetration of faith.

 

CLASH AND CONTRAST: TO BE RESOLVED

We return to the earlier sweeping thrust, the acute exclamations of his troubled soul. Job moves, he quests, he invests his righteousness, he withdraws in confusion (Job 9:11-21). He can find no evil in himself, but in the presence of calamity, has to acknowledge this, "I am blameless, yet I do not know myself!" (9:21). He admits that he is altogether inadequate to determine justice and judgment, as if he were God, serene, unblighted, knowledgeable, above reproach; and yet he is equally troubled by the smell of a de facto perfection with which he seems to reek, to his own nostrils.

Yet again, even in that realm, there is nothing INTRINSIC about this, for though he washed in snow, yet he would be unclean. He is in the eyes of God alone to be correctly assessed, and facts will never scurry away; but he feels sometimes in confusion, often in woe, at times in meditative reflection, that he is being wronged, so that even amidst argument that not only is God the only POSSIBLE just judgment, from whom nothing is hidden, but the ACTUAL source of righteousness, indeed its source. He comes out with sounds, like mud squelching between the feet and toes as one walks in some moist wilderness, that even reach the realm of the strident.

Thus he declares this, "As God lives, who has taken away my justice ... " in Job 27:2, and he even goes further, making it clear that HE will NOT decline into HE will "not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit."

Yet though one might have hoped that this would be prelude to one of his righteous revelations of the entire integrity of the Lord, yet it is merely a buttress to insist that he will NOT pretend to be a sinner in substance since he KNOWS that his works are entirely to the contrary, and while he would not presume to act as if the most knowledgeable God, and wisdom has its place with the Lord, and not with him - indeed he does not even know himself - yet he does, to his mind, in all straightforwardness in the face of evil leers or jeers or sneers from his 'friends' make it clear. HE WILL NOT budge, for HE IS NOT what they allege, insinuate or assert.

Thus we come to an impasse. They DO falsely taunt him, if not with this purpose, but rather to follow their intellectual program that the good have it made on earth and the wicked are unmade on earth - and he IS correctly negating such things. Yet the obviously moral things about types of outward conduct are NOT all! Pride and self-trust can lead to self-defeat and confusion, even delusion as in Romans 10, as seen where Paul is speaking of the same thrust in the Jews who reject Christ's gift of peace in HIS own ACTUALLY perfect righteousness.

But is Job so very confused ? At least some things appear to remain clear. God is just and righteous, he is saying, but is overlooking the merits of his own case, and so in this point, though it is admittedly unsustainable logically, He is being unjust. Certainly, Job makes it clear that the plans of God are high beyond the reach of mere mortal mind, and moreover, that He has been not only just but merciful and mighty, ready to help and co-operative in the ways of grace and truth, as Job sought to follow in them. That was in the past. The Lord, it is manifest from Job through many soliloquies as they almost are, or declarations,  WILL be shown right in the end; but Job is sure that he himself will be too: though admittedly, Job unable to find out just how this could be!

He is adamant, as he speaks in protest. He WILL not falsify his record in order to appease the wrath of friends who constantly assume his troubles are from sinful input of a rather gross or obvious kind; and he CANNOT assault God, though in word he does on occasion, send out rather rebellious looking rockets. This is seen, for example, in 34:5, 19:6 - where he claims this, "God has wronged me."

 

CONVICTION ARISES IN FORCE: NOT FOR EVIL BUT OF GOOD

In fact,  he is so sure, underneath it all, of the righteousness of God that he asserts this:
"Even He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold," 23:10. This is because "He knows the way I take." Adequate knowledge and integrity for correct judgment is NOT in doubt, only the incomprehensible SEEMING alliance between his own treatment and deserts, in the mind of Job. Further, in that beautiful chapter 28, on the place of wisdom, he makes it overwhelmingly clear that wisdom, that choice, that gloriously wonderful, that equipping force, that imbuing presence, that ground for understanding: it is not found like metals in the mines of this earth, but it is known by the primary forces of life and death.

It is in GOD Himself, that it is found, not mined, but minded.

"When He made a law for the rain, and path for the thunderbolt,
then He saw wisdom and declared it: He prepared itl
Indeed, He searched it out, and to man, He said,
'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to depart from evil is understanding.'"

The Jobs and the Solomons come, in the end,  to the same conclusion, for it is this conclusion, in its reality, which was the beginning and in the beginning, He acted (Proverbs 8).

Job after all, has no doubts about the reality and spirituality, the godliness and wisdom, the righteousness and singular reality of God, and it is to Him that he looks as in Job 19, as his own Redeemer. He has come through, acquitted himself clearly in the face of the diabolical challenge which is rebutted; and if, in the process, he is exposed as having had rather too strong an opinion of himself, or of his impact, or to have valued it too highly, yet in this, if pride had begun its fateful course, the reality back of it, faithful and believing communion and co-operation with God whose righteousness he overwhelmingly loved, was not only there, but vindicated.

There has to be some sorting out of the reality and the superficiality; of the reluctance of Job to present himself willingly for work with the Lord in His apparent spiritual absence, amid the extraordinary presence of multiplied calamities, calumnies and adversative counterpoint. Yet with his back up, his heart remains open, and amid the creaks of his bones and the machinations of his distressed mind, the fundamentals remain unreproved, and his insistent desire for a mediator is simply a prelude to His arrival, of which Job was given preliminary vision, just as Peter had vision of the reality of that same Messiah, as recorded in Matthew 16! If then an element of self-righteousness got in the way, Job was willing to be reproved and have it removed when the time came, as seen in Job 40:4, when the issues are drawn. Thus he declares:

"Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You ?
I lay my hand over my mouth.
Once I have spoken, but I will not answer;
Yes twice, but I will proceed no further."

This of course brings up the same point, notable when the Lord speaks as in Job 38, that in reality the entire conduct of his own case is in trouble because it is not JOB who is appointed redeemer for himself, let alone for man,  as he himself comes in a lucid flash of faith to find (Job 19:23ff.); but the Redeemer who is appointed, who will come to this earth and whom he, Job will see with his own eyes! He is in this, at once, a sinner.

He haD jumped to conclusionS which, if only episodic and passing, are impossible on his own basis of belief, and thought, though pushed in upon his suffering soul. It was so forced by what seemed a form of torture of the most exquisite, as if his own Rock hit him! In fact, he was being tested for a purpose outside his own domain, one using him as an example of integrity and NOT self-seeking for the saint. If Job became too pre-occupied with his own amazing charity and graciousness, yet it WAS after all, to the love of God in His own righteousness and glory that he was attracted, and if he had been too superficial in understanding, yet it was his error, not his life which after all had been with the Lord, which was repudiated.

He was not therefore brought from darkness to light, from evil to good, but from verdigris to brilliant shine, from overlay to the underlying! Thus he spoke:

"Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
that they were engraved with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!

"For I know that my Redeemer is living,
and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another;
How my heart yearns within me."

This response in Job 19, therefore, was of vast significance, his life redeemed by the confidence in the Redeemer who would and that surely, remove his very death from the sights, and cover for him in all things. It was the blatant NEED for such cover that had been growing too remote in Job; and while this was not the major point of the divine exercise, it was a consequential item. Being corrected while tested, he yet came to the point of it all, that not only would he trust God though He should slay him (Job 13:15), but that it was only in the Redeemer that the pith, purpose and performance of life could be found. It was now broadcast that it was ENTIRELY in the Redeemer that he would find refuge, relief, resurrection and restoration. This was to be preserved for ever, together with the terrestrial appointment for that Redeemer, so that all such as Job, who suffer, whether in test or at their own failure, could find rest, if they would, where HE is.

That is where the place of wisdom is to be found, in God, in His Redeemer, in the concourse and consummation of it all in Him, in the faith in His power and glory, redemption in the most intimate, personal and yet profoundly vital sense: something that could be and was propositionalised, and notably performed.

As to that manifestation of the Redeemer (Job 19), it was to be, as it has been, not only in heaven, but on this earth; and not merely in a manifestation on this earth, but in a corporeal, an incarnate presence; and this, it was not only to reassure and receive, but as for the vital Redeemer, it was to find consolation by the payment from His own celestial part. THERE then was not only wisdom but redemption, that sinners might find peace where it is, and where alone: it was in Him as Saviour, a barrister not to confirm one's perfect sanctity, but to pay for the slippage, whether of soul, spirit, mind, body, of heart, or folly or weakness, self-assertion or self-deformation, or as not least with Job, through lack of information leading to presumption. What a barrister is this who not only does not charge for the service (I John 2:2), but effects payment on behalf of his spiritually bankrupt client!

Moreover, we find in Job, distress not primarily for his own fault, but as an emissary of light, to  show meaning in suffering and attest service for others, in bearing woes. Despite Job's own shortcoming, he comes as a definite type of Christ in several dimensions. The very language at times almost reeks of the tortures of Christ. They are not necessarily said in the same way, but have resemblance for all that. Consider these exposures from the lips of Job:

          "If I cry out concerning wrong, I am not heard"- 19:7;

"He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head..." - 19:9;

"He counts me as one of His enemies" (cf. Psalm 22:1);

"My bone clings to my skin, and to my flesh..." - 19:20;

"They gape at me with their mouth, they strike me reproach fully on the cheek..."- 16:10,

"He pours out my gall on the ground.
He breaks me with wound upon wound..." - 16:14.

 

THE IMMENSE INTENSITY OF THE CASE

How much Job had to suffer to become clarified. In that great IF chapter of Job 31, he is seen assigning himself mining rights for his own territory, in which he asserts in effect, that only precious metal could be found IF one investigated what he had done with his life. Ironically, this becomes one of his greatest stumbling blocks; for it tends to show unreasonable pre-occupation with his performances, not due care of his spirit and its attitudes. IF you can find I did this, or did not do that, he intones, then! but now what is to be found ? He is to say no more, most self-assured.

As we all can or could know with children, the ATTITUDE is often far more important and obvious, than the deeds; and far more final! Job's failure is perhaps never seen more clearly than in this, when he exclaims in this way:

"That my Prosecutor had written a book!
Surely I would carry it on my shoulder,
and bind it on me like a crown:
I would declare to Him the number of my steps,
like prince I would approach Him."

He would take a CROWN of his own works and like a prince amble, saunter or stride into the presence of the just Judge of all things! Small wonder even an Elihu could reproach him. Would he judge the Lord by himself! The Lord was unimpressed with this self-centred affirmation (Job 40:8):

"Would you condemn Me that you might be justified ?"

When you see the actual test and reason for it, for the service to God and man which Job was being PRIVILEGED to provide, then the monstrosity of Job's presumption, though only occasionally direct, and then with more or less contrition, contradicted by himself, is to be seen most simply. What God meant for good, he, Job had interpreted as a removal of justice. It WAS a removal of the perquisites of privilege, but not of their basis; of easy contentment, but not of its ground; of a one-to-one match of goodness and glory, in favour of a test of the ground and basis of that, and all goodness in man! Yet for ANYONE who PROFESSES to love God and his fellow man, who could rightly and reasonably object!

If God condescends to USE you to ILLUSTRATE that all life is not superficial cynicism, but that this is itself what is superficial, while love and reality in spirit are fundamentals soaring above all the sneering leers of the dispossessed, the degraded, the doomed, then what is the objection ? Of course, one does not always KNOW what the good Lord is doing, and when this occurs, that can be test indeed. Faith with Job (in his thrust toward the Lord with it), must at last say: Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him.

Let us have our own IF approach, to match that of Job as noted above, but for a very different purpose.

bullet If you are without limit,
so long as you stay with your Lord in His appointed place as one of His children,
FOR the Lord;
 
bullet if you are not putting any border to the desire to glorify,
serve and please Him in His wisdom, work and ways:
 
bullet why then complain is He programs a situation
where you can serve Him BEST and even markedly!
 
bullet Why complain EVEN IF it hurts vanity, profile, prestige, importance or impact,
so long as the joint purpose to bring out the truth in the love of God for the purposes
of the profundities of His wisdom and the overcoming of the darkness that broods
over man, is achieved!
 
bullet Oh that we might embrace our God-given tasks, and
trust Him utterly without yielding an inch to the seditions of the evil one,
seeking to invade with his worthless trivia.

Two things are of great joy, yes three in all of this. Firstly, Job not only repeatedly returned to explicit or implicit voicing of God as ONLY just judge, and righteous assessor, only possible one indeed (Job 12-13); but in flaming faith, though taunted by men and tried by God, he was given the grace to see that redemption, not righteousness, is the GROUND for ANY blessing from God. From there he found that righteousness is the result, not the cause of man's blessing, and that is that of God made available through redemption. If he sensed it before, now he savoured it; if it touched him before, now it founded him overtly.

To be sure, righteous and merciful deeds reflect this, as Paul makes so clear in Titus 3; but they can never replace it, for who is perfect and where is the unfallen man, the sinless prodigy of humility, who yet does NOT need redemption: for that is a mere impostor, self-deceived (I John 1:7)! Job came through with a faith that like lightning lit up the heavens as in Job 19, and he made it clear that it was THIS which was the kernel and criterion of it all, at the same time.

The third delightful thing is this, that Job's  friends, sin-insinuating (in a way not really relevant, Job's faults lay deeper in the end), were exposed, and this even to the point that Job was asked by God to make a sacrifice for them!

What had been the cry of the tormented Job ? It was this:
"My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself.

" I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God,

'Do not condemn me; show me why You contend with me.
Is it good to you that You should oppress, that You should despise the work of Your hands, and shine on the counsel of the wicked ?
Do You have eyes of flesh? or see as man sees ?
Are Your  days as the days of man? are your years as man’s days,
that You enquire after mine iniquity, and search after my sin?
You know that I am not wicked; and there is none who can deliver out of Your hand.
 Your hands have made me and fashioned me together round about;
yet You destroy me.'"

Nevertheless, out of this passion of one almost in refugee status from his appointed trial, Job came forth at length as gold: surely it needed firing to make it shine, but gold it was, and God it was who made it so. Blessed be God who ALWAYS knows what He is doing, whether in allowing a spiritual soldier in the faith to be tested as Job was, as a form of testimony of truth which penetrates the horniest heart, as if that of a rhinoceros,  or in the very process, as here, exercises an elegant refining process inspiring to all Ages. It is as if Job authored a book, though in fact it is the hand of the Lord who wrote it, and in this he is able to speak to many generations, with an expanded ministry that has never closed, though the millenia have passed.

Was his prayer not answered, that this his conclusion should be written in a book, as with an iron pen on a rock, that it might stay and have its say! Thus let those who mind the mind of God and love the heart of the Lord, ever be ready to relate in joy, and to testify in truth, though tempests rages, and water-spouts surge within the turbulent oceans of passage.

How the Lord blessed him at the last, making him, even before he went direct to his Maker, almost a living stadium of faith, a statue to Redemption, as one of the redeemed, awakened to life, before the final time should come, as one with a trumpet, that blows as does Old Faithful in its own lair, to sound out the realities forever. If his last years so served, what of the years then to come ? Even now that he is gone, the book remains, as if written in iron on rock.