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THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. "Behold I stand!" Who standeth? Can it be

The Son of God, the Christ, the crucified, Whom thou hast all thy life contemned, denied,

And thrust asunder? Yea, 'tis even He. "Behold I stand and knock." Where

knocking? See

The closed door thick-set with thorns of pride,

And choked with idle weeds from side to side:

It is the door of thine impiety. "Behold I stand and knock. If any hear My voice and open" (Foolish soul, to thee He speaketh all night long. Dost thou not fear

To keep Him waiting there so wearily?) "I will come in." (O God, my God, how near!)

"Yea, and will sup with him, and he with Me."

EDWARD CRA CROFT LEFROY.

From The Quarterly Review. JOB AND THE "FAUST."1 There is a story told that Carlyle, having been asked to take the reading at family prayers during a short visit paid

to his friend the Provost of Kirkcaldy,

and, as chance would have it, opening the Bible at the first chapter of the Book of Job, read on and on to the end of the last chapter; then, closing the volume, he remarked, "That is a marvellous, life-like drama, only to be appreciated when read right through." If any of our readers have ever tried to perform this feat in their study, they will not be astonished at the consternation of the provost, nor will they wonder, with Carlyle, why it was that he was not asked again to assist at family prayers in that household. It will be to

own way gives expression to "the dissonance of faith and doubt" in the ancient and modern world, and both express the misgivings of noble minds in all ages, East and West, Semitic and Aryan, as each of them tries also to find

a solution of the riddle of life.

Since the appearance of Mr. Froude's remarkable essay on Job in the Westminster Review for October, 1853, no epoch-making work has appeared in this country or elsewhere on the subject. Renan and Reuss, Dillman and Delitzsch, S. Cox and Cheyne, Davidson, and quite lately Professor Dillon, have thrown light on the subject in their scholarly researches; but they cannot be said to have added much by way of new discovery, or striking originality of thought in their comments. The case stands differently with regard to Goethe's "Faust." Kuno Fischer, Scherer, Vischer, and other more or less eminent "Faust" scholars, making am

them still less a matter of surprise that the book should be the subject of such entrancing interest to the author of "Sartor Resartus," in which a similar field of inquiry is traversed in the mod-ple use of recent discoveries among the ern way of viewing the same problems. For in this “all men's book," as Carlyle

calls Job, we have, as he says, "the oldest statement of the never-ending problem,-man's destiny, and God's way with him here in this earth." It is mainly on account of this universality that we propose to treat here of the Book of Job, "the Oriental Faust," in connection with Goethe's "Faust," the outcome of the modern spirit and occidental modes of thought: for each in its

11. The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job Koheleth, Agur. With English Text translated for the first time from the primitive Hebrew as restored on the basis of recent Philological Discoveries. By E. J. Dillon, late Professor of Com parative Philology and Ancient Armenian at the Imperial University of Kharkoff, etc. London, 1895.

2. Goethes Faust nach seiner Entstehung, Idee und Composition. Von Kuno Fischer. Zweite neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. Stuttgart, 1887.

3. Die Erläuterungsarten des Goetheschen Faust. Von Kuno Fischer. Heidelberg, 1889.

4. Goethes Faust. Neue Beiträge zur Kritik des Gedichts. Von Friedrich Vischer. Stuttgart 1875.

5. Goethe in der Epoche seiner Vollendung (1805-1832). Versuch einer Darstellung seiner Denkweise und Weltbetrachtung. Von Dr. Otto Harnack. Leipzig, 1887.

papers of Goethe-especially that of the by Erich Schmidt in 1888-have done Urfaust in the Göchhausen copy edited

ties of "Faust," intentional and othermuch towards elucidating the obscuriwise, and have vastly enhanced the interest which attaches to the subject. But there is quite enough of attractive matter in the contemporaneous literature which concerns itself with either of these unique productions of the human mind to render a comparative study of them at this present juncture both interesting and instructive.

In the Book of Job, according to Quinet, we see scepticism lurking, like a serpent, in the Holy of Holies. This may be taken simply as a bold simile, and, as such, courting admiration without commanding unreserved acceptance on our part; yet it may be admitted that in this "psychological drama" of the Hebrews we have the highest form of religious doubt stated in startlingly bold language. Its special interest lies in the fact that it contains so much which is akin to modern thought, and that it so "truly and forcibly states the doubts and misgivings which harrow the souls of thinking men of all ages and nations." But the book does more than this. Here we not only catch a glimpse

of the darkness beyond our ken; its pages are also illumined by the faint rays of a faith partly, at least, dispelling the gloom, though the flickering flame more than once is threatened with complete extinction—a faith not only in righteousness as tending unto life, which is the main characteristic of Jewish thought, but faith, too, in the righteousness of God, spite of all appearance to the contrary.

It may be conceded that the work belongs to the "freeminded school of thought," just as the modern "Faust," also a drama of man's destiny, is profoundly influenced by the rationalistic doubt of the century. But in the prologue to the "Faust" in which Goethe acknowledges his indebtedness to the Book of Job, he also shows that both works have much higher aims than mere negative criticism of the current traditional views on ethics and religion. Coleridge went too far in calling the "Faust" the mouthpiece of the prevalent scepticism, and in saying that incredulus odi is its key-note throughout. The Book of Job is, indeed, an attempt to "humanize Judaism," and the "Faust" is the outcome of modern humanism. But then, one of the tasks humanism sets itself to accomplish is the positive attempt to indicate the process and to mark out the lines of development in the "ascent of man" from lower to higher things. For this reason these two masterpieces of the world's literature are not merely the expression of a Titanic revolt against theological dogmatism, or attacks on the glaring fallacies of theistic optimism. The "Melchizedek of Hebrew literature," as Delitzsch calls Job, on account of the mystery which surrounds its age and authorship, has this in common with the person of Melchizedek, that it furnishes sustenance to the faithful in their struggles. It could not do so if it were merely what some represent it to be, the product of eviscerated faith, although it graphically describes the temporary eclipse and revival of faith. So, too, the "Faust" is not only the expression of "that restless and corrosive doubt" which consumes souls like that of Amiel, who accordingly sees in it the spectre of his own conscience and the

gaost of his own torment; it is also the determined effort to conquer honest doubt and to struggle out of the darkness of desponding scepticism and moral pravity into the light of truth and high effort, under Divine guidance and the regenerative influences of Divine love. Both poems, in short, from the speculative side, may and ought to be regarded in the light of a "Théodicée," and from the practical point of view, as Froude puts it, are "dramas of the trial of man, with Almighty God and the angels as the spectators of it."

Both poems, then, contain a pulosophy of religion; and though each of them is the natural outcome of a pecu!iar period in the history of Eastern and Western thought respectively, they are alike eminently cosmopolitan in conception and treatment. "Why, Eliphaz talks like Helvetius or Saint Lambert, and Job is the antagonist of individualism," cries Pierre Leroux in his strange paraphrase of the Book of Job, and he regards Job as an anti-clerical Socialist,

an extreme instance to show that the ancient writer even now appeals still to the human heart. In the same way the herd of commonplace expositors in all ages, seeing in Job the type of an Eastern saint rather than a Western sage, held him up simply as a pattern of patient suffering, whilst such an lightened critic as Professor Cheyne speaks of him as

en

the first of those poet-theologians from whom we English have learned so much. and who are all the more impressive as

teachers because the truths which they teach are steeped in emotion, and have for their background a comprehensive view of the complex and many-colored universe.

Considering, then, the books for our present purpose simply in the light of literary productions, we may now proceed to point out the coincidences and contrasts between them in their statement of the problem of life, and in their attempts at finding a solution of the many moral difficulties which engage the attention of the sceptic, or seeker after truth in every age, and not least so in our own. Such are the origin of evil, the prevalence of injustice, the indefiniteness of moral standards, the uncer

tainty of man's final destiny. Job and "Farst" agree, that poetic justice is done in the end: on the whole they take up the optimistic standpoint, "All's well that ends well." The angels carry off the redeemed soul of Faust after his many sad lapses into error and sin. The epilogue of the Book of Job reinstates the hero in his prosperous position after a course of instruction in the sweet uses of adversity. The path and goal, however, are not the same in each. The Läuterungsprocess is utterly unlike.

In the Hebrew poem are presented the trials and triumphs of the righteous, who robustly vindicates his innocence to the last. In the German poem we see the mind struggling uneasily to break through its narrow boundaries of knowledge, like Homunculus in his phial, trying to gain freedom from confinement, passing thence through various experiences of moral degradation and mental humiliation, saved at last by honest effort after repeated failures in the attempt to reconcile the real with the ideal, supported and supplemented by Divine grace. In Job we see the human conscience standing questioningly before the shrine of eternal justice, demanding, at times too daringly, a full explanation of the discord between righteous conduct and the strange dealings with his faithful servant by a judge ex hypothesi righteous, but taught at last humble acquiescence in the inscrutable designs of a power whom finite reason cannot comprehend. In "Faust" there is no question about God's justice; it all turns on the possibility of man's triumph over adverse forces in nature, the artificialities and falsities of life, the limitations of scientinc knowledge, the impossibility of getting firm hold of artistic ideals, and the obstacles in the way of social amelioration and philanthropic effort. The final outcome is not success, but the hero is enabled to reach a higher level of purified existence after passing through the mire and mud of moral contamination with evil; and, after a sensuous submergence of his spiritual nature in material indulgence, attaining to higher conception of duty dutifully performed. Job falls from the high vantage-ground

of faith and patience. Faust falls from the pinnacle of intellectual contemplation and spiritual rapture, in which he would embrace the whole universe to quench his insatiable thirst for knowl edge and take all humanity to his bosom, his heart full of the sorrow of the world. Both, by an act of Divine mercy, are saved from final and irretrievable fall. They recover lost ground and reach a higher platform, after having been humbled and purified by the agonies of the struggling spirit. Both learn to confess, as Faust does, man's liability to error

Man errs the while he strives,

but also in the case of both is verified the Divine prediction of final victory for the good man groping for the right way.

A good man, through obscurest aspiration, Has still an instinct of the one true way. Faust arrives at the goal by a more circuitous path than Job, as the problems of life become more complicated in the nineteenth century. Job's bold selfassertion

My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go:

My

heart shall not reproach me as long as I live (xxvii. 6)—

is balanced by his touching resignation:

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him (xiii. 15.)

We see the spirit of submission taught in the more simple philosophy of Judaism as the only escape from the net of doubt. In Faust, too, resignation comes in as a condition of the higher life of man. Expectation is, by force of circumstances, far in advance of fulfilment, but it is not a voluntary submission to the unavoidable, as in the case of Job. The way of salvation, as expressed by the choir of angels at the close of "Faust," is contained in the following lines:

Whoe'er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming.

It is more in the manner of the West; it is the gospel of work peculiar to an industrial epoch. Job looks back on his past life of active benevolence regret

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