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Job's complaint is that there was nothing new in his friends' pretentious harangues. All their pompous airs of superiority and authority did not deceive the patriarch, and prevent him from detecting the essentially commonplace character of their ideas.

I. MOST SAYINGS ARE TRITE. It is not often given to a man to discover a new truth. Even when a person makes a remark that is original in him, i.e. that he has not derived from any other man, the probability is that some one else has said something very like it before. Too often, when a man is pretentious of novelty, what is fresh is only the garb of his notion. The newest extravagances in religion are generally only old heresies exhumed and magnetized into a semblance of life. It is foolish to think of astounding the world with our ideal. Even in Job's day people were weary of the little stock of notions that was in circulation among the most intelligent classes.

II. THE FUSSY REPETITION OF TRITE SAYINGS CAN DO NO GOOD. Job's three friends only vexed the sorrowing man by repeating what he knew as well as they. The same mistake is often made in foolish attempts at administering consolation. No sayings are so trite as those that treat of suffering and its uses. The very commonness of the lot of suffering, and the very obviousness of some of its circumstances, have made the stock precepts of sorrow very familiar to all of us. It is useless to go to a person in trouble and repeat them once more. It would be better to be silent. Silence might affect him as a most original novelty.

III. TRITE SAYINGS MAY BE TRUE AND IMPORTANT.

1. True. It is not to be supposed that men are generally the victims of delusions. One reason why certain sayings have become trite is that they have been proved by experience to be true. Had they been false they would have been discarded long since. No doubt there are venerable errors. Job's friends' trite sayings were so one-sided that the truth of them was lost by perversion; but still most trite sayings must have a considerable amount of truth in them to stand the test of time.

2. Important. The triteness is generally a testimony to the importance; for if the sayings were of slight moment they would have been neglected. The current use of them presupposes some value attached to them. The gospel of Christ has become a trite saying to many. Yet it is as true and momentous as ever.

IV. PERSONAL APPLICATION AND SYMPATHY MAY REVIVE INTEREST IN TRITE SAYINGS.

1. Personal application. It is difficult to be in earnest with a trite saying. Such a saying tends to become a mere form of words. It wears like a coin that has lost its effigy and legend. "Truths," says Coleridge, "of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors." But he adds, "There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to the most commonplace maxims - that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being."

2. Sympathy. The three friends applied the trite sayings to Job, but he would not take them home to himself. He justly considered that they did not apply to him in the way his friends supposed. They applied them without sympathy, and therefore without understanding Job. We may repeat very familiar words, and yet if the ring of sincerity and the tone of sympathy be in them they will still awaken interest. - W.F.A.

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KJV: Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and understood it.

WEB: "Behold, my eye has seen all this. My ear has heard and understood it.