The teacher tested.
Throughout the words of Job's friends many truths are to be found both accurately stated and beautifully illustrated; but in many cases—almost generally—a wrong application of them is made. The friends designing to be comforters do, through imperfect views of the mystery of human suffering, indeed become accusers, and make the burden heavier which they proposed to lighten. But the words now under consideration are perfectly true. He who had formerly been the instructor of many, and the strengthener of them of feeble knees, is now himself smitten, and he faints; he is touched and troubled. The lesson is therefore to the teacher who can pour out words of instruction to others, and to the comforter who aims at consoling the sorrowful. His principles will one day be tested in his own experience, and he will in his own life prove their truthfulness or their falsity. Eliphaz insinuates, if he does not actually affirm, Job's failure. "To be forewarned is to be forearmed;" and the wise teacher will become a learner in presence of these words. We may, then, say—
I. TRUTH MAKES ITS GREATEST DEMANDS ON ITS EXPOSITORS. They ally themselves with it. They proclaim it. They declare their faith in it. They vouch for it. The more really a man is a teacher the more is he a disciple. It is the perfect alliance of the teacher with the truth he teaches that gives him power over others in its exposition. Upon him, then, the greatest demand is made that the truth he has affirmed should find its highest illustration in his own life—that his life should not give the lie to his lips. It is thus that—
II. THE TEACHER OF TRUTH HAS THE BEST OPPORTUNITY OF BECOMING ITS MOST EFFECTUAL EXPOSITOR. Eliphaz could not yet see how Job, holding fast his integrity, would present a brilliant example of the truthfulness of his doctrine. To expound truth with the lips is possible to the simulator and hypocrite. He may say, and do not. He may declare the authority of a truth, and contradict that authority and his own saying by disobedience. Such were the Pharisees of our Lord's time. From them truth received the highest homage by verbal acknowledgment, but they proved themselves untrue and unfaithful disciples of truth by the discredit they threw upon it by their disobedience to its requirements. The teacher of truth, making the truth his own by a thorough embrace of it, and a real and unfeigned sympathy with it, teaches more by his life than by his lips; for the one men discredit, but the other is undeniable. Fidelity in the teacher is the highest proof of his faith in his doctrine, and by it he pays the utmost tribute to the doctrine that he is able to pay.
III. THE SUPREME DUTY OF THE TEACHER IS FIDELITY TO HIS DOCTRINE. By his faithfulness his scholars are confirmed in their belief and steadfastness. It is a black crime for a man to proclaim a truth or a teaching that affects the life and hope of his fellow-men, and yet prove a traitor to it by unfaithfulness. The foundations of the hope of many have been shaken and even uprooted by such conduct. By how much the truth a man proclaims is important, by so much is the responsibility of his own treatment of that truth great. Job was a bright example of fidelity, though severely tried.
IV. THE HONOURABLENESS OF A FAITHFUL ADHESION TO A GREAT TRUTH. He who links himself with great truths is exalted by them. They honour him who houours them. They bring him to glory and true renown.—R.G.