by his rod, they appeal to Him for pity and help? To this natural and reasonable inquiry Elihu replies in his second argument (Verses 9-13); and if his first argument was somewhat scholastic in its tone and remote from the common facts of life, the second is concrete enough for the most practical of For he now argues that, if God does not hear the afflicted when they call upon him, it is not because He does not care to hear, or is loth to answer, but because they ask amiss, because they ask to be released before the moral ends for which they are afflicted have been secured.

men.

One secret of the power of this great Poem is that it gives life, animation, variety, to its single but many-sided argument, which under less noble treatment would soon have become monotonous and wearisome, by conveying its general principles, the thoughts on which the polemic rests and turns, in particular and selected instances; not by abstract reasoning or logical formulæ, but by drawing pictures of human life which suggest more than they say, by embodying its truths in tales. Elihu is true to the picturesque manner of the Book here. He selects his instance, tells his tale, an ancient tale of wrong. In his day-as to this day, especially in the East—a tyrannical abuse of power was one of the commonest sources of human suffering. Subjects groaned under "the multitude of oppressions," and cried out under the heavy and cruel "arm" of men dressed in a little brief authority, an authority used the more cruelly because it was brief (Verse 9). They cried out; yet there was none to answer them nor any that regarded: no voice from heaven responded to their cry; no "bolt from the blue" struck down their oppressors. Why? Simply, asserts Elihu, because their cry was one of mere pain and fear, not one of trust; not prayer at all, but mere instinctive noise such as they had learned, or might have learned, from "the beasts of the earth" or from "the birds of the air" (Verse 11). The lions roar for food unto God (Psalm civ. 21); the cattle low to Him in their thirst (Joel i. 20); the young ravens cry to Him from their deserted nest (Psalm cxlvii. 9): and God hears them, and feeds them, since they can do no more than roar and But men are not brutes merely, and should not cry out, like the brutes, simply because they are hungry or hurt.

scream.

As God "teaches them more than the beasts of the earth," they ought to be "wiser than the birds of the air," although to these the ancients ascribed a special and oracular wisdom. It is to raise them out of a merely brutal or animal condition that they are smitten of God and afflicted. They should have learned-before they can escape tribulation they must learnto trust in "God their Maker," and even to trust in Him as "Giver of songs in the night" (Verse 10). It becomes men to look through the shadows of discipline to the light that lies beyond it; to believe in the dawn of a better day even when the day of ease and happy conditions darkens into a night of loss and grief and pain. Men have not risen to their full moral stature till they can make God's statutes their songs in the house of their bondage as well as in " the house of their pilgrimage," and even though they have been brought into bondage by their very obedience to his statutes. This is the end God has in view when He chastens and afflicts the sons of men to raise them to their full moral stature, to train them to their full moral strength: and, till this end be reached, how can He listen to their cries for deliverance?

Too often it is the mere tyranny of the wicked against which they cry out, not the wickedness of it (Verse 12): their cries are vain (Verse 13)—“ vanities," merely muscular contortions of writhing lips, not sacred inward realities, not the sighings of a contrite and chastened spirit. Till these are replaced by prayers, and prayers inspired by a sincere trust in the Goodness which chastens men only for their good, the Almighty cannot and will not "regard" them.

Let Job ponder this illustration of the Divine ways till he reaches the principle which underlies it, and conclude that if God has not heard him, it is simply because the gracious moral ends for which God has afflicted him have not even yet been secured.

But-and this is Elihu's third argument-is Job quite sure that God has not heard him, that he has cried to Heaven in vain? He was not a mere animal man, pinched by want and pain till he exclaimed at his wrong. Let him be assured, then, that God had heard him; that his "cause," or suit, though he deemed it passed by, was being tried and weighed; and

that the Divine Judge was ready to pronounce a verdict, was only withheld from pronouncing it indeed by his consideration for the suitor who, if he had cried out to Him, had also cried out against Him (Verse 14). It was Job who was unprepared to hear, not God who was unprepared to speak. Obviously God's end in afflicting him had not yet been reached; or how should Job have charged Him so foolishly? Did he want the Almighty to pronounce a final verdict upon him while he was arguing and complaining "like the wicked," while he was multiplying vain and senseless words against a God who, ignoring many of his faults, had refrained from inflicting the heavier and severer strokes of his wrath (Verses 15, 16)? Would it not be wise of Job both to rest in God and to wait patiently for Him? Was not the very delay of which he complained a merciful delay? Was it not gracious of God, and not ungracious, to postpone sentence upon him until it could be one of cordial and complete approval?

These I take to be the arguments adduced by Elihu in this Chapter. And, whatever may be their defects, they surely must have been very convincing and welcome to the men to whom he spoke; while even to us they are hardly less welcome, since they remind us of truths most surely believed among us. It is impossible, I think, to consider them fairly without being afresh impressed with the sagacity of the Son of Barachel, with his penetrating insight and quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. When he argues that our moral actions must have issue on earth if not in heaven, must produce results on men if not on God, and concludes that they tell only on man and extend only to the earth, we may correct his inference, since we know that they also reach to heaven and tell on God, bringing Him the one sole "gain" which He desires or can receive. But when Elihu argues that the moral ends of human life are its supreme ends, and that to secure these it is well for us to patiently and hopefully endure any suffering by which they may be secured; when he argues that, if the Divine Ruler of men delay to interpose on our behalf, and to end the conflict and agony to which we are called, it is only that He may inure us by conflict for service

and make us perfect by the things we suffer, then he speaks to our very hearts, and reminds us of truths as precious to us and as consolatory as they evidently were to him.

FOURTH DISCOURSE.

CHAPTERS XXXVI. AND XXXVII.

Among the many charges which Job had launched against the Almighty was the complaint that He hid Himself from men in a darkness which even the righteous could not penetrate, that He made his providence an inscrutable mystery which it was as impossible to vindicate as it was to apprehend (e.g., Chap. xxiii. 3-9). It is to this charge that Elihu replies in his fourth and last Discourse. He contends that though men must not hope to solve all the mysteries of the Divine Character and Government, yet the providence of God is not so inscrutable as Job had affirmed it to be; that the very sufferings and calamities which seem to obscure it are really designed to open the eyes of men on the rules by which their life is governed, and to make them aware of the modes in which, often unconsciously, they violate them. For all practical, ie, for all moral, purposes, he maintains the design of Providence to be sufficiently evident. Practically, all the difficulties which encompass it spring from its darker aspect, from the miseries, undeserved or inexplicable, which it inflicts on the children of men. But if these miseries are intended, as he is sure that they are, to teach men that they have sinned, or to purge them from their sins and defects, we know enough to reconcile us to the tribulations we are called to endure; enough, therefore, to explain and vindicate the way God takes with us. In short, Elihu once more falls back on his fundamental idea-his main contribution to the argument of the Poem-viz., the didactic and disciplinary function of Suffering.

This idea, after a characteristic introductory phrase or two (Chap. xxxvi. Verses 2-4) Elihu proceeds to develop and adapt to his present purpose.

He argues the Divine Providence

to be both intelligible and just, (a) because God obviously renders "justice" to the distressed, and "will not let the wicked live" (Verses 5-7); (3) because the very distresses of men are intended to illuminate their minds, quicken their conscience, and reform their lives (Verses 8-10); and (y) because if they hearken and repent, they "complete their days in good;" while if they will not hearken, they perish in their sins (Verses 11–15).

Having thus thrown his little beam of light into the darkness which vexed and obscured Job's thoughts, Elihu makes a personal application of his argument. He assures him (Verses 16-25) that the intention of God in afflicting him is both intelligible and just, since his afflictions are designed to lead him through strait and narrow into broader and happier conditions, per angusta ad augusta; warns him of the inevitable results of his impatience of the Divine corrections; and begs him not to yield to the despair which moves him to loathe his very life, but to repent of the sins his afflictions were intended to correct and to lay to heart the lessons they were intended to teach.

As his Discourse draws to a close, Elihu becomes aware of a tropical storm which is labouring up through the disordered sky-fit emblem of the tempest which had swept across the soul of Job, blotting out all the lights of hope. With exquisite tact the Poet prepares us for the next and closing section of this great poem by setting him to describe the tempest out of which Jehovah is about to speak, and so to describe it as both to suggest to Job that God had been in that very storm of calamity which had obscured his vision of the Almighty, and to give us a glimpse, a forecast, of that sun of prosperity and favour which is yet to "come forth in gold," to shine on Job with dazzling and enriching lustre, when the bitter wind of adversity has blown by, and the clouds that have so long overshadowed him have been swept away.

The mere description, viewed simply as a work of art, has, I suppose, never been equalled, much less surpassed; not even by David, although in Psalm xxix. he makes us hear peal after peal of thunder breaking on seas and mountains and woods as the storm comes nearer and nearer still, from the first crash