Pisistratus; so, I suspect, the story of Job was passed from lip to lip among the Abrahamides, and from memory to memory, growing in volume and in beauty as it went, till, in the literary age of Solomon, the Poet arose who gave it its final and most perfect form, and wrote it down for the edification and delight of all who should come after him.

As for the Scene of the Story, history and tradition combine with all the indications contained in the Poem itself to place it in the Hauran. On the east of the Jordan, in that strange, lovely, and fertile volcanic region which stretches down from Syria to Idumea, there is every reason to believe that Job dwelt, and suffered, and died, and in the upper part of it, north of Edom, north even of Moab, within easy reach of Damascus itself. The Arabs who live in this district to-day claim it as "the land of Job." The whole district, moreover, is full of sites and ruins which Tradition connects with his name. And it fulfils all the conditions of the Poem. The personages of the Story, for example, are admitted to be without exception descendants of Abraham-not through Isaac and Jacob, but through Ishmael, or Esau, or the sons of Keturah; and it was in this great belt of volcanic land, stretching down from Damascus to Idumea, that most of these Abrahamides found their homes. On the east, too, the Hauran is bordered by "the desert," out of which came the great wind which smote the four corners of the house of Job's firstborn. To this day it is rich in the very kinds of wealth of which Job was possessed, and is exposed to raids similar to those which deprived him of his wealth as in a moment. It presents, moreover, both the same natural features, being especially "for miles together a complete network of deep gorges,' ,”—the wadys, or valleys, whose treacherous streams the Poet describes, 1 and the same singular combination of civic and rural life which is assumed throughout the Book. Even the fact that the robber-bands, which fell upon the ploughing oxen of Job and smote the ploughmen with the edge of the sword, came from the distant rocks of Petra, and that the bands which carried off his camels came from the distant plains of 1 Cf. Chap. vi. 15-20.

1

Chaldea, point to the same conclusion. For, probably, Job had entered into compacts with the nearer tribes of the marauders, as the chiefs of the Hauran do to this day, paying them an annual tax, or mail, to buy off their raids, and was surprised by those more remote freebooters just as to this day the Hauranites are often pillaged by freebooting tribes from the neighbourhood of Babylon.

I take it, then, that we may with much reason conceive of Job as living, during the remote patriarchal age, amid the fertile plains of the Hauran-so fertile that even now its wheat ("Batanæan wheat," as it is called) "is always at least twenty-five per cent. higher in price than other kinds,"-with its deep wadys and perfidious streams, the volcanic mountains rising on the horizon, and the wide sandy desert lying beyond them.

The Problem of the Book is not one, but manifold, and is not, therefore, easy to determine. No doubt, the Poet intended to vindicate the ways of God with men. No doubt, therefore, he had passed through and beyond that early stage of religious faith in which the heart simply and calmly assumes the perfect goodness of God, and had become aware that some justification of the Divine ways was demanded by the doubt and anguish of the human heart. The heavy and the weary weight of the mystery which shrouds the providence of God, the burden of this unintelligible world, was obviously making itself profoundly felt. There are many indications in the Poem itself that the age in which it took form was one of transition, one of growing scepticism; that the current beliefs were being called in question, that men could no longer be content with the moral and theological conceptions which had satisfied the world's grey fathers. More than once, when he is passionately challenging the orthodox assertions of the Friends, Job seems to be giving utterance to misgivings which had struck coldly into his heart even while he still sunned himself in the unclouded favour of God. From the attitude assumed by Elihu, moreover, we may infer that the younger men of the time had already thought-or rather, perhaps, felt-out for themselves a broader

and more generous theology than that of their elders, and were not a little puzzled how to state it without giving them offence. And yet, though it proceeds on the lines just indicated, the popular conception of the Problem of this Book is not an adequate one; it fails to satisfy some of the leading conditions of the Story. That conception, which Mr. Froude, in his "Essay on Job," has eloquently expressed, is, that both Job and his Friends had assumed prosperity to be the invariable concomitant, or result, of righteousness, and adversity to be the no less invariable consequence of sin; and that Job was afflicted, although his righteousness was attested by God Himself, in order to shew that this interpretation of the Providential mystery was inadequate and partial, that it did not cover, and could not be stretched to cover, all the facts of human life. Those who have read Mr. Froude's charming Essay will not easily forget the force and humour with which he describes the endeavour of the Friends to stretch the old formula and make it cover the new fact, until it cracked and broke in their hands, and, in its rebound, smote them to the earth. And there is much truth in this conception, though not the whole truth. Unquestionably the Book of Job does shew, in the most tragic and pathetic way, that good, no less than wicked, men lie open to the most cruel losses and sorrows; that these losses and sorrows are not always signs of the Divine anger against sin; that they are intended to correct and perfect the righteousness of the righteous,—or, in our Lord's figure, that they are designed to purge the trees which already bear good fruit, in order that they may bring forth more fruit.

But, after all, can it be the main and ruling intention of the Book to teach us that noble lesson? When we follow the Story to its close, do we not see that "the Lord gave to Job twice as much as he had before"? And, might we not fairly infer from the Story, as a whole, that the formula of Job's Friends was not so much too narrow as it is commonly held to be? that it might very easily be stretched till it covered the

1 I must not be understood to imply, however, that Mr. Froude adopts the popular conception. He is far too acute a critic to miss the true Problem of this great Poem.

new fact? that where they were wrong was in assuming that happy outward conditions are the immediate result of obeying the Divine Law, and miserable outward conditions the immediate result of violating that Law? that, had they only affirmed that in the long run righteousness always conducts a man to prosperity and sin to adversity, they would have been sufficiently near the mark?

Even in our own day, Mr. Matthew Arnold-not a bigot surely, nor at all disposed to stand up for theological dogmas against verified facts-has affirmed and argued for this very conception: he has affirined and re-affirmed it to be well-nigh impossible to escape the conviction that "the stream of tendency" is in favour of those who do well and adverse to those who do ill. And though some of us might word the proposition differently, yet he would betray a singular dulness or hardihood who should venture to question the main tenour and drift of it. The facts of history, experience, consciousness, compel us to believe that, in the long run,-though we may admit that the run is often very long, and that we do not see the end of it here-happy and auspicious conditions are vouchsafed to men, or to nations, who follow after righteousness, while those who walk in unrighteousness are overtaken by miserable and inauspicious conditions. Job was righteous. Did he suffer for his righteousness? Nay, but rather he suffered that he might be made more righteous; that he might learn to trust in God when all things were against him, when even God Himself seemed to be against him, as well as when all things went to his mind; he suffered in order that he might learn that his very righteousness was not his own in any sense which would warrant him in claiming it and in taking his stand upon it as against God: and, when he was thus stablished and perfected in righteousness, the stream of prosperity flowed back upon him in double tide.

We cannot, therefore, accept the popular conception of the meaning and intention of this great Poem as adequate and satisfactory. There is a higher and a far more gracious meaning in it, which rules and over-rules this lower meaning: and this higher intention is expressly stated in the Prologue. When the Poem opens, Job stands before us "perfect," i.e.

single-hearted and sincere, without duplicity or hypocrisyand "upright," fearing God and eschewing evil. He is an Arab sheikh, or chieftain, of immense wealth, the richest as well as the best and wisest man of his race:

A creature such

As to seek through the regions of the earth

For one his like, there would be something failing

In him that should compare. I do not think
So fair an outward and such stuff within
Endows a man but he.

He is the priest of his family, if not of his clan. Unconscious of iniquity in himself, fearing nothing for his sons but that in the gaiety of their hearts they may have momentarily forgotten God, he nevertheless offers a weekly sacrifice in atonement of their possible sins. Over and around this good man, standing full in the sunshine, the dark clouds gather and roll; the lightnings leap out and strike down all that he has, all that he loves for many days neither sun nor stars appear; the tempest beats him down till all hope that he will be saved seems taken away: but, at last, the clouds clear off, the sun shines forth with redoubled splendour, and we leave him a wealthier, better, wiser man than he was even at the first.

Now if we could see nothing but the earth on which he stood, and the sky which alternately frowned and smiled above his head, we might be unable to seize the moral and intention of the scene; we might reasonably doubt whether the Poem was designed to teach us more than that, as righteousness conducts men to prosperity, so a tried and constant righteousness conducts them to a more stable and a more ample prosperity. But a door is opened into Heaven, and we are permitted to enter and "assist" at a celestial divan, a council to which God summons all the ministers of his kingly state. The King sits on the throne; his ministers gather round him and sit in session: among them appears a spirit, here simply named the "Adversary," or the "Accuser," whose function is to scrutinize the actions of men, to present them in their worst aspect, that they may be thoroughly sifted and explored. He himself has sunk into an evil condition, for he delights in making even good men seem bad, in fitting good deeds with