Job 1:7

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Whence contest thou?" Job 1:7

This, indeed, is the great puzzle of metaphysical and spiritual life. There is a certain degree of comfort in the fact that it was the Lord himself who put the question to our great enemy: "Satan, whence comest thou?" We know that it was not because he was ignorant of the origin and purposes of the enemy, but we may accommodate the question to express our own feeling and wonder in relation thereto. Who has not dwelt upon the origin of evil? How the question has taxed the resources of the philosopher and the theologian! The enemy himself refers to locality and action upon the surface of the earth, and thus even in his reply to God he would seem to evade the profoundest relations of the inquiry. We do not ask, Whence comest thou? as inquiring into the last place of visitation or the last instance of assault or seduction: we ask concerning the very origin of evil, the root and core, the very beginning, the genesis of all that is false, impure, corrupt. Let us be on our guard lest we press this inquiry too far. Undoubtedly it is an inquiry of profoundest interest, and may therefore profitably occupy reverential attention for a time. There is, however, a still greater question namely, how to get rid of evil. As a matter of mournful fact, evil is in the world, Satan is a great, dark, overshadowing figure in all our personal and social life: the question, therefore, is not so much whence he came as how to get rid of his personality and influence and destructive ministry. It is possible to be more anxious about the origin of evil than about its extinction. Practical men must direct attention to the means which have been set up according to revelation for the extirpation of the enemy and all his works. When he comes he does not necessarily come as a conqueror; we must not suppose that there is no answer to his seductions and no escape from his wiles: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you;" "Take unto you the whole armour of God." The question may be treated metaphysically, and dealt with on the broad grounds of human history and general experience; but let every man attack the question as related to his own heart: there the devil often sits: there he revels in triumph; there he seems to have everything his own way. Whatever may be said of demoniacal possession as revealed in the New Testament, there can be no doubt of it as to the fact of evil influences operating directly and disastrously in every human heart. Here we need all the resources of revelation, all the helps of pastoral encouragement and friendly sympathy, all that can be done by mutual Christian love. To dispossess one's soul of the devil is to bring that soul into light and liberty and prospect of eternal blessedness.