Jehovah challenges Job to answer Him a few questions on the institutions of the universe. "Gird up now thy loins," said He; "and I will demand of thee a few responses. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who has fixt the measure thereof? Or who has stretched the line upon it? What are the foundations thereof? Who has laid the corner-stone thereof when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea with doors when it burst forth issuing from the womb of eternity--when I made a cloud its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band? I appointed its limits, saying, Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall the pride of thy waves be stayed. "Has the rain a father? Who has begotten the drops of the dew? Who was the mother of the ice? And the hoar-frost of heaven, who has begotten it? Can mortal man bind the bands of the Seven Stars, or loose the cords of Orion? Can he bring forth and commission the twelve signs of the Zodiac, or bind Arcturus with his seven sons? "Knowest thou, oh man, the missionaries of the starry heavens? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou command the lightnings, so that they may say to thee, Here we are? Who can number the clouds in wisdom? Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven upon the thirsty fields?" If such be a single page in the volume of God's physical missionaries, what must be its contents could we, by the telescope of an angel, survey one single province of the universe, of universes, which occupy topless, bottomless, boundless space! We have data in the Bible, and, in the phenomena of the material universe, sufficient to authorize the assumption that the missionary idea circumscribes and permeates the entire area of creations. Need we inquire into the meaning of a celestial title given to the tenantries of the heaven of heavens? But you all, my Christian brethren, know it. You anticipate me. The sweet poet of Israel told you long since, in his sixty-eighth ode, that the chariots of God are about twenty thousand of angels.[2] [2] This is an exact literal version of _Rebotayim alphey shenan_. The Targum says, "The chariots of God are two myriads--and two thousand angels draw them." A myriad is 10,000--two myriads 20,000. "To know this," Adam Clarke says, "we must die." And what is an angel but a messenger, a missionary? Hence the seven angels of the seven churches in Asia were seven missionaries, or messengers, sent to John in his exile; and by these John wrote letters to the seven congregations in Asia. Figuratively, God makes the winds and lightnings his angels, his messengers of wrath or of mercy, as the case may be.