Heaven be praised for the help of silent people in times of sorrow! When we read those last words in the prologue of the drama of Job, we think always of what might have been. Here was a rich man suddenly stripped of all his property by a series of calamities! His ten children-seven sons and three daughters-were all killed in a cyclone when they were feasting together in their eldest brother's house. His own health was destroyed by some malignant disease which covered him with sores from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. His own wife turned away from him in the hour of his pain with words of bitterness and contempt. He sat down on the ash heap outside the city wall and cried out: "Oh that my grief was laid in the balance and weighed! It would be heavier than the sand of the sea."

Then silently across the desert in the darkness of the night, there came three men from a far country. "When Job's three friends heard of all that had befallen him, they came every one from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him

and to comfort him. But when they lifted up their eyes afar off and saw him, they knew him not. They rent their garments, sprinkled dust upon their heads, and lifted up their voices and wept. Then they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great."

The tender, silent sympathy of true friends, a solid week of it! How wonderful it was! If they had only kept it up, those three men would have made themselves immortal. It was only when they got their mouths open and began to talk that they ruined their reputations for all time. They poured out upon that sufferer such a stream of hard, unfeeling, theological discussion that any man who reads their words feels almost ready to swear. Thank God for those true friends who can draw near in the hour of grief, and feel and understand and keep still!

We are beginning to see why Jesus wanted this silent man in the inner circle. When he stood at the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, when he entered the death-chamber in the house of Jairus, when he moved down into the darkness of Gethsem

ane, he wanted to have near him this silent man whose heart was warm, whose eyes were full of sympathy, but whose lips were silent. "He took with him Peter and James and John!" The office of James, the man of silence, was honorable and precious.

In the second place, what did he do? He did some things which were not to his credit. We need not be surprised. How many of us have never done anything which was to our discredit? Don't all speak at once! It will be more impressive if we take turns! We have all done things

which we ought not to undone things which we could have done. We have all erred and strayed from the way like lost sheep. Let us be humbly grateful that some good influence has brought us back!

have done and have left

This man who was one of the Twelve stood ready to burn up a Samaritan village when it refused entertainment over night to his Master because he was a Jew. "Shall we call down fire?"

James and John said.

James was one of the two who asked for the best

places in the kingdom which they believed Jesus was about to set up at Jerusalem. James and John made the request that they might sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left of their Lord in his kingdom. It was asking a good deal.

In both cases, however, there is something to be said by way of excuse. This man who said little felt deeply, as such people often do. He could not bear the thought of having an insult offered to his Master by those Samaritans in Gopher Prairie. "Unwilling to have him sleep in your town because he is a Jew?" He was ready to burn up the place, even though the men of that small town might turn around and burn him up before morning. When the Master explained that he had not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them, James went along with him to another village which would receive them. He was young then in his Christian life. We never read of another such an outburst of temper.

His desire to take a prominent place in the Master's kingdom may not have been all selfish ambition. In the setting up of that kingdom, the right hand of the leader in such a revolt would be

a place of danger as well as of honor. When the request was made Jesus reminded them of that fact. Had they counted the cost? "Can ye drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with my baptism?"

"We can," they said. They had counted the cost. They were ready to pay the price of preferment even at the peril of their lives by standing close to Him in the setting up of that new kingdom. We shall see later that when the hour struck, James did drink the cup of suffering to the very dregs.

This quiet man did not say much, but he had certain convictions which he was ready to stand up and be cut in two for, if need be. When the time came, he did stand up and he was cut in two for being a Christian. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

He was there at Jerusalem when there came the bitter persecution of the early church. He was a leader among the Jewish Christians. He was undoubtedly present when Stephen was arrested and taken before the high priest to be tried for