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while, throughout this Colloquy indeed; but the polemic life and fire have gone out of them. And now we are about to enter on a yet more tranquil scene. The voices we shall hear henceforth are not so shrill with passion nor so quick with agony. Even Job himself only once falls back into his old tone of piercing grief and passionate incrimination; for the most part he maintains a tone of pensive meditation and regret; and even from his single outburst of passion he quickly rises into his finest and most perfect self-delineation, into his firmest and most assured confidence.

The most lovely and winning sections of his Poem, for it grows in beauty, though not in dramatic interest, to the very end, still lie before us; but its more dramatic and tragic sections, as also its more difficult and argumentative, lie behind us. We shall have more to admire, less to puzzle over. We have crossed the troubled sea, and shall now sail up a broad and tranquil stream, not wholly unvexed with rapids and currents of its own indeed, but still rich in fair scenes and quiet havens of repose.

SECTION VI.

THE SOLILOQUY OF JOB.

CHAPTERS XXVII.-XXXI.

WE have followed the polemic of Job with the Friends to its close. We have seen how, as they grew more definite and personal in their charges and more vehement in their invective, he has grown more profoundly conscious of his innocence, and less vehement, though not less steadfast, in asserting it. And now the conflict is over. Job has silenced-silenced rather than convinced-his antagonists; and, as they sit dumb before him, he breaks into a Soliloquy so elevated and sustained, that almost all the critics regard it as one of the most lovely and exquisite sections of this great Poem. Godet, indeed, speaks of it as "a burst of poetry never surpassed," as "the most admirable section of the whole book," and maintains that, "although much the hardest to interpret, it is nevertheless the most accessible to the chastened spirit."

This Soliloquy, which extends from Chapter xxvii. to Chapter xxxi., is divided into two Monologues; the first embracing Chapters xxvii. and xxviii., and the second, Chapters xxix.-xxxi. Each of these Monologues is introduced with the phrase, "Job took up his strain," the Hebrew word for "strain "—which is sometimes translated by "oracle," and sometimes by "parable "- covering all discourse of an elevated, picturesque, or poetic tone; so that the Poet himself forewarns us that he is about to attempt a higher than his usual style, to stir and quicken our imagination with words and tropes that we shall not willingly let die.

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He has hardly made the promise before he begins to fulfil His mind takes a more reflective turn; his pencil is

dipped in richer hues: he calls a pause in the action of his drama, and utters a more "lyrical cry." As we listen to him we feel that the polemic storm has swept past; the air grows clearer; the birds break forth into singing: and if at times an occasional gust or ground-swell reminds us that the day has been one of wind and tempest, we are nevertheless aware that the storm will not return, that the wind-vexed day is settling into an evening-calm rich with the gorgeous yet tender and pathetic hues of sunset. Now and then, indeed, Job reverts, with a quick movement of indignation, to the charges alleged against him by the Friends; and once at least he cries out against the injustice of Heaven; but, for the most part, he bears himself with composure and maintains a contemplative mood.

It is easy to see that the Poet has thoroughly enjoyed this part of his work, and put his whole heart into it. He lingers over the themes, over the illustrations even of the themes, he handles; he elaborates the pictures he paints-as, for example, that of the Miner in Chapter xxviii., or that of the Aborigines in Chapter xxx.-adding line to line and touch to touch, as if he were loth to leave them. Contrasting his present with his previous mood, his meditative with his controversial mood, we are reminded of that exquisite and musical passage in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" in which Julia describes the course and changes of her passion :—

The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage:
But, when its fair course is not hinder'd,

He makes sweet music with the enameled stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.

We have seen him raging and chafing impatiently against the arguments of the Friends, and now we shall have to linger with him in many a winding nook-the inventory of gems, for instance, and the studied use of the various Hebrew names for "gold" in Chapter xxviii. Verses 15-19, or the elaborated image of a military siege in Chapter xxx. Verses 11-15; and to listen to the "sweet music" he makes as he sings, in

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Chapters xxix. and xxxi., of the happy days when God "kept" him, and by his light he walked through darkness.

But if the charm of the Soliloquy is very apparent, so also are the difficulties of which Godet speaks. Those Commentators who are nothing if they are not critical, and even those in whom the critical prevails over the expository function, are very busy in this section of the Poem, detecting inconsequences of thought, rearranging the order of the Verses, or even putting them into other mouths than those of Job; the "higher criticism" being here, as too often elsewhere, mainly a censure of the author it examines or of the editors and commentators who have gone before it. By simply accepting the Poem as it stands, and patiently studying the intention and relation of its parts we shall find, I hope, that no such heroic remedies, no such hazardous reconstructions, are required; that there is a truer order in the accepted form of this Soliloquy, and a finer meaning, than in any of the rearrangements of it by the critics whose "end" is too often "destruction," even when their aim is, as they phrase it, reconstructive.

Looking at the Soliloquy as a whole, with a view to ascertain its true place and function in the Poem, there are three points which call for remark: (1) its connection with the controversy which has preceded it; (2) its connection with the discourse of Elihu which follows it; and (3) the conclusion in which, unaided as yet by God or man, Job settles down at the close of the controversy with his Friends.

1. As the waves of strife subside and the voices of reproach are hushed, Job sinks-rises, rather-into a calmer, a more composed and reasonable, mood. Irritated by their "maxims of ashes," resolute to demolish their "strongholds of clay," (Chap. xiii. 12), he had done some injustice to the arguments of the Friends, and had pushed his own counterarguments to a point of excess at which they also grew to be untrue. But now that he has refuted and silenced them, now that he is sufficiently at leisure from himself to weigh the discussion fairly, he candidly admits both what had been true in their contention, and what had been untrue, because excessive, in his own. He still holds fast to his integrity

(Chap. xxvii. 1-6), and sets it forth, with exquisite pathos, in that lovely picture of his "autumn days" contained in Chapters xxix. and xxxi. So, too, the sense of his misery still abides with him; he gives a new and most moving description of it in Chapter xxx., depicting himself as the offscouring of all things, the scorn of men whom all men. scorned. And he still stands to it that he has done nothing to provoke or deserve his misery; that he has been grievously wronged he exclaims at his wrong (Chap. xxvii. 2; xxx. 20-26), and both demands and implores redress from the Almighty (Chap. xxxi. 35-37). But he admits that in the history and experience of man there are clear tokens of that Divine Providence, and especially of that Law of Retribution, which he had called in question; that, as a rule, the wicked do not thrive, and that, in the end, the righteous do. Even now he does not grant, what the Friends had contended for, that all good men have easy lives, while all bad men are instantly punished for their sins, and that therefore loss and suffering are always proofs and effects of the Divine displeasure. But he confesses that the real and ultimate doom of the wicked-their "doom from God," their "heritage from the Almighty," (Chap. xxvii. 13), i.e., the ideal doom to which their actual fate is always tending-is perdition; that they cannot for ever escape the pursuing Nemesis of their character and deeds, but must, sooner or later, be overtaken by it (Chap. xxvii. 8-23); and thus he paves the way for the admission that the exceptions to the retributive rule, which he had been tempted to rate as themselves the rule, are only exceptions to it, and that even these exceptions may be consistent with the Divine Justice and Goodness. He does not even yet see how they can consist with those attributes indeed; but what of that? Man, wise and inventive as he is on a lower plane, is utterly unable to comprehend and vindicate the ways of God; he may dig into the earth and detect its hidden stores, but he cannot climb into heaven and penetrate the very bosom of God. Wisdom belongs to Him alone; and man approaches wisdom only as he lives in the fear of God and hates the evil which He condemns (Chap. xxviii.). And so Job reaches,

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