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Job's friends were physicians of no value. They came to heal, but they only aggravated his complaint.

I. CONSIDER WHERE WE MEET WITH PHYSICIANS OF No VALUE.

1. In dealing with sorrow. How rare is a truly helpful friend in a time of great sorrow! Many wellwishers try their hand at consolation, but most of them bungle painfully. We endure their visits of condolence because we do not wish to be ungrateful and disagreeable, but we are relieved when they have left us alone with our grief.

2. In treating sin. No human being can cure sin. Men may blame sin, but they cannot cast it out. Here is a disease that no medicine of man's can touch. But there is room for some action of ours. We ought to be able to bring the Divine remedy. Yet how often we fail to do so! How conscious we must be that our efforts are not reaching the sinner and really helping him!

3. In meeting social trouble. There are plenty of wild theorists, but none of them have been able to set right the disorganized state of society. Philanthropists too often show more zeal than judgment.

II. INQUIRE WHY THE PHYSICIANS ARK OF NO VALUE.

1. Ignorance of the state of the patient. If the doctor has not rightly diagnosed his case he is not likely to be successful in his treatment of it. We must understand those whom we would benefit.

2. Lack of skill in the use of remedies. The doctor must understand his drugs, or he will poison his patients. If we would benefit men we must first know them; then we must know the Divine medicine. They who do not apprehend the gospel of Christ themselves cannot be physicians of value to others. We must study truth as well as men; and we must go further, and be familiar ourselves with those great saving ideas which we would apply to others.

3. Absence of sympathy. Here was the secret of Job's friends' failure, although at first they seemed to have evinced the deepest sympathy. We can never help the miserable till we sympathize with them. The first essential to success in a mission among the poor is brotherliness. If this is wanting, the mission must fail though any amount of energy and money may be expended on it.

III. REMEMBER THAT THERE IS ONE PHYSICIAN OF INESTIMABLE VALUE. Christ fulfils all the requisite conditions. He knows us, for he is one of ourselves - tempted in all respects as we are, though without sin. He is familiar with the needed remedy, for he is one with God, and is perfectly at home among those great spiritual facts from which the cure of the world's evil must come. He, too, is full of sympathy. Of old he cured the sick because he was "moved with compassion." The great, tender heart of Christ beats in warm sympathy for all his brother-men. Now we have to see in experience that our good Physician is able to do what the physicians of no value have failed to accomplish. Christ is the Friend to help in sorrow; he alone can cure sin. Christ in the world brings the kingdom of heaven, and so corrects the social troubles. Christ as a living Saviour, as an active Physician now in our midst, can heal, and we know this because we see he does heal wherever he is trusted to do so. - W.F.A.

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KJV: But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.

WEB: But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.