It is also significant that Elihu not only reproduces expressions of Eliphaz (xxxiii, 14-16, and xxxiv, 7-9), but imitates a large portion of the Theophany (not yet supposed to have been spoken). The artistic inconsistency is glaring; and the opening words of the Lord's speech, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge," are quite inappropriate, if addressed to the man who has just been forestalling the Lord's own utterance.

At all events so superfluous and so inferior does Elihu's discourse appear to me, that I have ventured to place it in an Appendix, believing that the original writer of the poem could not have done otherwise than carry on the dramatic situation, created by Job's passionate challenge to heaven, by immediately introducing the divine response. The young man's speeches have always been a stumbling-block to the critics, who seem to have searched in vain for a lever of sufficient excuse to remove them. The reinforcement they needed was perhaps a strong enough appreciation of literary proportion.

Let us imagine, then, that as soon as Job has concluded his Oath, a sudden storm arises, as storms often do in the East. The heavens become dark and a whirlwind comes up, accompanied, perhaps, by thunder and lightning. The approach of divinity is thus announced according to ancient tradition, just as the arrival of Hermes in Prometheus Bound is heralded by an earthquake.

It must be confessed that the divine utterance, though magnificent in its imagery and impressive descriptions of Nature, contributes nothing to the solution of the problem of suffering. Professor Moulton thinks that its teaching is “that the evil in the universe is not more mysterious than the good and great." But if so, all is mystery and there is no elucidation; not an encouraging conclusion for the seekers after a knowledge of God's ways, of whom Job himself was a typical example. But "to justify the ways of God to men is perhaps as impossible for mortals as to justify the ways of men to God, and, after all, we must remember that a mortal wrote the Theophany. Still it is permissible to ask, what was the poet's idea? Why did he think it a fitting close to the subtle reasoning of the Colloquies to crush it, as it were, by an appeal to the power of God as exhibited in Nature? I can think of only one, and that is, that quiet does often come to the hearts of men by contemplation of the force and beauty and wonder of the Earth and the Sky. No one can say why, but such influences from without will often calm the turbulence within. Job had really got what he desired; what mattered it to him, if God's message was not what he expected? The fact remained that it was a divine communication and that Job had by persistence and insistence, undeterred by the denunciations of his would-be teachers, called God out of heaven to comfort him. He is satisfied, at all events, that he

is not forsaken, and he submits himself, like a child, to be included in that dispensation of the universe which he feels he can never comprehend, because he is himself a part of it.

Possibly the poet did not completely adjust his work to the ancient frame of the story in which he set it. At all events, the Lord of the Prologue is God in a very different aspect from the Lord of the Divine Intervention; for though Job regains repose of spirit from the influence of Nature, he is not disappointed of his hope that his Witness was in heaven, that his Vindicator lived. He had refused to twist facts or gloss them over in order to flatter God's providence; but when the Lord of the Prologue sums up in the Epilogue the result of Job's trial and temptation, it is not to rebuke the Patriarch's fearless honesty, but expressly to commend it; while, on the other hand, his wrath is kindled against the Friends, because they had spoken of him with time-serving servility, and, from fear of his disfavour, had represented his governance of the world as other than their understanding taught them it was; in other words, they pictured the Deity as they supposed he wished to be pictured. Job's heresy is therefore commended, while the Friends' orthodoxy is condemned, and the Spirit of Man is for ever delivered from the thraldom of believing that "God dwelleth in a temple made with hands."

THE PROLOGUE

THERE was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was i, 1—iii, 1. Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the children of the east. And his sons went and held a teast in the house of each one upon his day; and they sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feastings were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, It may be that sinned, and renounced God in their hearts. continually.

my sons have

Thus did Job

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.