The foot of Pride crushes these golden grains; Humility bends down, grasps them by faith, and carries them home in her bosom. "Learn of He, for I am meek and lowly," said the Lord of the harvest; and it is for the meek and lowly that the treasures of the harvest are laid up above.
[XVIII.]
Job's Sackcloth.
WHAT an aching, what a bursting heart throbbed under this, the garment of sorrow chosen by him who could once say, in the sincerity of his soul, "I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem."
To the history of Job, God's afflicted people have constantly turned in their hours of anguish. This sackcloth has, as it were, helped to dry up the tears of thousands; for who can say, "My sorrows have been greater than those of Job!" Whose have equalled his—and yet the Lord loved him through all, and out of all delivered him. So great was the variety of the afflictions of Job, that under almost any burden that presses down the spirit, we can look to Job in his sackcloth and say, "He also was crushed by the weight of this cross."
Is poverty our trial, and poverty rendered more painful by contrast with former prosperity? On Job it came with fearful suddenness, like successive shocks of an earthquake. He had been a wealthy man. He had multitudes of camels and oxen; the valleys were whitened with the thousands of his sheep. All his property was swept away from him, he was left poor and bare upon earth. Yet could the ruined man meekly say,—
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!"
Or are we weeping sorely for the loss of one who was to our eyes as the sunshine; are we in bitterness of soul because some sweet voice is silenced in our home, and there is a blank left in our aching hearts which we feel that time can never fill up? Job lost all his children at once! Those whose successive births had given him fresh joy, new precious ties to earth; those who had sported round him in childhood, and in youth received his counsels; those in whose happiness he had been happy;—all reft from him by one stroke! Not one left to soothe his anguish by sharing it! Is it not a marvel that reason endured it, that the patriarch's heart did not break indeed?