'As soon as the intelligence of the seizure of their cattle reached the tribe of Fazarah, they all mounted, and hastened off in pursuit, to the number of five hundred. They went on until they overtook Antar, who, when he saw the horsemen and heard their shouts, turned upon them and met them, and in less than an hour he had slain numbers of them. Oorwah and his people also slew those who were destined to die that day, piercing their chests with the point of the spear. Extinction and perdition fell on the tribe of Fazarah. Antar smote off heads and skulls, and despatched the horsemen to the mansions of annihilation.'

The affliction of Job ended not with this catastrophe, which, from a man of surpassing wealth, made him a beggar. There was something dearer to him than all his substance; and that, too, he lost.

The next messenger came, pale with sorrow, to declare to the patriarch that all his children were dead-rent from him at one fell swoop. In the midst of their feast, 'a great wind from the wilderness came and smote the four corners of the house,' so that it fell, and destroyed all who were in it. This must have been a whirlwind, as it thus seemed to come from all points of the compass at once. Of the extreme violence and destructive effects of whirlwinds within the limited range in which they operate, in eastern and especially tropical countries, many instances are reported. But even in this country, where the sterner phenomena of nature are rarely witnessed in their strongest manifestations, whirlwinds have been observed fully adequate to produce the effect here recorded, especially when we bear in mind the comparatively frail construction of the houses which the people of Job's time and country appear to have inhabited.

The public prints of the time report that on May 12, 1811, at Hopton, in Derbyshire, a tremendous whirlwind began its destructive operations, and continued its course for the extent of five or six miles in length, and in a breadth of about four or five hundred yards. Its appearance was that of an immense cloud in the form of a balloon, whirled round with incredible

swiftness, in a circular direction, from S. by W. to N., having a kind of pipe or tail that reached to the ground. This irresistible tube darted up and down continually, tearing up plantations, levelling houses, walls, and miners' cots. It tore up large trees, carrying them twenty or even thirty yards; and it twisted the tops from the trunks of other trees, bearing them to the distance of fifty and a hundred yards. Cows were lifted from one field to another, and hay-stalks were moved to a considerable distance. In its progress it divided into two parts, one of which took a north-east, and the other a north-west direction; the consequence of which was, that Kirk-Ireton, part of Cowlow, and Hopton, were laid completely in a state of ruin.

Something similar occurred about two years before (July 1809), near Cirencester. On this occasion the whirlwind presented the appearance of a 'large conical hay-rick encompassed with smoke.' It moved slowly at first, but on nearing the town acquired a velocity almost incredible; and, making towards the basin of the canal, where it did considerable damage, skirted the town, and entering Lord Bathurst's park, there tore up from the very roots twelve trees measuring eight or ten feet in girth, while others were stripped of their branches or literally cut asunder. Eventually, after quitting the park, and doing serious damage to a neighbouring farm, it seemed gradually to dissolve into the air, and could no longer be traced by the eye.

The forays mentioned in the Book of Job, and other parts of Scripture, very closely resemble those which are still witnessed, year after year, in Western Asia. The Arab tribes pasture their flocks over a wide region, and extend their forays to a region wider still. I have seen a large troop of Shummâr Bedawîn from the neighbourhood of Babylon, sweeping away flocks from the gates of Hums. Scarcely a year passes during which the border of Syria is not ravaged by plundering parties from Mesopotamia, and sometimes even from the shores of the Persian Gulf. Distance seems to be nothing to the true Bedawy when the road is open, and when there is a fair prospect of rich booty. Bedawy raids are

now also, as they were in Job's days, sudden, rapid, and unexpected; and that portion of Syria which is at present more exposed to them than any other, is the traditional, and, I believe, the real country of Job. Every Mohammedan village in the Haurân pays heavy black mail to the Bedawîn to save flocks and crops. The Druzes refuse it, and consequently live in a state of unceasing watchfulness and warfare.

Third Week First Day.

THE HEAVIEST LOSS.-JOB I. 18, 19.

THE apostle assumes that we are not ignorant of Satan's devices (2 Cor. ii. 11); and among the sources of our knowledge respecting them, the history of Job and his trials is most conspicuous. An attentive consideration of the whole matter, in that point of view, would be most instructive. To track his various windings, wiles, and manoeuvres, for the purpose of circumventing Job, and of bringing peril upon his soul, might be made a study of surpassing interest and high edification.

Look, for instance, at his penetrating knowledge of man's heart, and his masterly generalship in working upon it, as evinced in the mere order and succession of his assaults upon Job. After having, as he supposed, weakened and dispirited this good man by his previous attacks, he comes with his most fierce and terrible charge last of all, confident that by this management, the last stroke must overwhelm and destroy him. This seems to be a favourite course of tactics with him-to come down upon us with his strongest assaults when he thinks we are at the weakest.

It is easy to perceive, that if Satan had suffered Job to hear first of the death of his children, all the rest would have been of small account to him. Little would he have cared for the loss of his cattle, after having heard that all his children had been crushed to death by the fall of the house. As, when some one great sorrow falls upon us, the heart can find no joy in the good that at other times bestows delight, so also does one great evil swallow up all sense and feeling of lesser troubles. Here, therefore, we behold the wiliness of Satan. Lest Job should lose any of the smart of the lesser afflictions, lest they should all have been swallowed up in the greater, he lays them out in

order, the lesser first, the greater last, that his victim may not lose one drop of the bitterness in the cup mixed by the lord of poisons for him. It reminds one of the continental executions of great criminals in the last age, when the condemned was tortured, maimed, and broken, before the coup de grace was given. Had this stroke been given at first, all else had been nothing. We observe in war,' says Caryl, but we cannot vouch for the exactness of his observation, 'that when once the great ordnance are discharged, the soldiers are not afraid of the muskets. So when a great battery is made by some thundering terrible judgment upon the soul, or upon the body or estate of any man, the noise and force of lesser evils are drowned and abated. Therefore, Satan keeps his greatest shot to the last, that the small might be heard and felt, and that the last, coming in greater strength, may find the least strength to resist it.'

The overwhelming intensity of this affliction beyond all the others, it needs no argument to show. Every heart feels it. A man's children are more to him than all else he has in the world-more than wealth, greatness, fame, or life. And these were all taken away from the patriarch of Uz at one stroke. To lose all one's children is surely as grievous as to lose an only child, which is described by the prophet as the highest and deepest sorrow known to man: "They shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son.' Zech. xii. 10. Further, all his children were lost to Job, under circumstances tending greatly to aggravate the deep distress which such a loss must have occasioned under any circumstances. They were all taken away suddenly. Had death sent them a summons by its usual messenger, sickness, even but a day or two before they departed, it had much sweetened the bitterness of this cup to the survivor. His mind would have been in some measure prepared, or rather not wholly unprepared, for the event; and he would have found comfort in the thought, that time to prepare their minds and his own for so great a change had not been altogether denied. But to hear that they were dead—all dead, before he knew that even one of them was sick-that they were dead when he deemed them to be rejoicing in the