before which they sail is shedding its soft penetrating warmth upon you (Verses 16, 17)? Can you explain this mystery which is at once so near to you and yet so far from you? Or know you how it is that the thin vaporous expanse of the firmament is yet so strong that it retains its form and beauty notwithstanding all the storms which rage through it, and shines forth with new lustre the instant they have passed by (Verse 18)? If not, if even these familiar marvels and mysteries lie beyond your reach, how should you comprehend, how affect or claim to comprehend, the more recondite mysteries of human life and of the Providence which orders it? You cannot see the way God takes with you, or the end He has in view? O, wait! wait patiently for Him, and you shall see. A breath from Him will clear all mysteries from your life, just as a wind from Him sweeps the darkness from the sky (Verses 21, 22), and suffuses it with streams of golden light. And, meantime, bow with reverence before the awful majesty of Him whom you cannot find out for yourself, and hold fast to the conviction that He whom you cannot comprehend is nevertheless just and good and kind (Verse 23). All this is in the very tone of Jehovah when He looks out upon Job from the retreating tempest, and speaks to the man who has so long yearned for Him and listened for his voice. And if Elihu here speaks for Jehovah, he also speaks for Job. He sets him an example of reverence and humility. He himself takes toward God the very attitude he wants Job to take, and which Job is compelled to take when he hears Jehovah speak instead of hearing others speak of Him (Comp. Chaps. xl. 3, 4; xlii. 1-6). It is not simply that Elihu, through the whole passage, bows before the mysteries which Job resents, and on the sharp edges of which he rends and tears his heart. In Verses 19 and 20, and again in Verses 22 and 23, we have the words of one who feels that in the immediate Presence of God man must not dare to speak; one of a spirit so modest and reverential that he does not so much as expect to comprehend the ways of Him whom at the best we can but know in part, but is content to rely on his absolute wisdom and justice and love. Nor is the final touch, the last sentence (Verse 24), of this admirable homily or discourse less admirable than the many pregnant sentences and noble images and thoughts which have preceded it. Job had set all his hopes on seeing God face to face, not suspecting what the vision of the Divine Majesty and Holiness must involve for sinful man beneath the sky. And the moment before that awful but long-desired vision breaks upon him, Elihu warns him that not even "the wise in heart " can endure to behold the God whom he has so often challenged to appear. The feeling and the significance of these final words are finely rendered in one of our most familiar hymns: Eternal Light! Eternal Light! How pure the soul must be, It shrinks not, but, with calm delight, The whole argument of the Poem is now before us, for though, in the approaching theophany, Jehovah deigns to speak, He does not deign to argue. Probably the Poet felt that it would be an offence against good taste, a violation of all dramatic propriety, to put arguments into the mouth of the Almighty, and represent Him as bandying logic with his creatures. Still more probably he had himself passed through the deep spiritual struggle which he so nobly describes, and knew from his own experience that it is not by force of logic that the dark and trembling shadows of doubt are at last swept from the soul. What can be done by argument, moreover, he has already done, and done with a force and completeness of which even yet we may have but an imperfect conception. Charmed by the varied beauty or the sustained sublimity of those sections of the Poem we have already studied, we may have failed to bring together into a single and complete view the several arguments by which he has vindicated the ways of God with men. With his usual tact he puts all these arguments into the lips of men. We hear them from Elihu, from Job himself, or even from the Friends. And it will be worth while, I think, before we pass on to the final section of the Poem and listen to Jehovah as He answers Job out of the tempest, to gather up these scattered and halfconcealed arguments in a few brief sentences, that we may see how they sustain each other and run up into a consistent and comprehensive whole. For one of these arguments we are indebted chiefly to the Friends. Their main contention was that, even here and now, it fares well with the good and goes ill with the wicked. And though they stated the fact somewhat too coarsely, and applied it much too universally and too peremptorily, yet who can deny that their statement contains a truth of the gravest importance when once it is detached-as in the course of their controversy with Job it is detached-from the bitter dogmatic exaggerations that turn it into a lie, and affords a very helpful clue to the mystery which encompasses our life? Elihu, again, makes a most valuable contribution to this great argument in his fundamental assumption, received, as he believes, by immediate inspiration from on high; viz., that the afflictions which men are called to endure, even when they are provoked by their own sins, are disciplinary and remedial in their intention rather than damnatory and punitive; a conviction which, so far as the practical conduct of life is concerned, goes far to solve the problem by which Job was perplexed. While Job himself, by his noble prevision of a judgment and a life to come, in which all the wrongs of time shall be redressed, and good shall come at last to all who have loved goodness and pursued it, throws the light of a great and most supporting hope into all the darknesses of earth and time. If we weave these three lines of thought into a single argument, it may be doubted whether, even now that we hold the added thought and experience of some thirty centuries at our service, the most searching and inquisitive intellect can make any real addition to this ancient solution of the great problem of human life and thought. For when we have said that under the just and kindly providence of God good comes to the good and ill to the evil and unthankful; that the very sufferings imposed on men, whether they be the natural results of their own transgression or the strokes of a merciful and fruitful discipline, are intended for their instruction, correction, and redemption; and that whatever wrongs are not remedied here shall be remedied hereafter, and whatever undeserved sufferings produce no present fruit of happiness shall bear a richer harvest in the world to come; when we have said all this, what more or better has even the wisest of us to say? SECTION VIII. THE THEOPHANY. CHAPTERS XXXVIII.-XLII. 6. Ar last the invisible Opponent who stood behind Job's visible antagonists, and who had remained obstinately dumb to challenge, invective, expostulation, entreaty, opens his mouth and answers him out of the tempest which Elihu has so graphically described. And what does He say? The answer to that question has astonished and perplexed every candid and thoughtful student of this great Poem. For when God deigns to speak, we expect to be satisfied, if not convinced; when He replies, we expect his answer to be final, conclusive, complete. And yet his reply to Job is no reply. He does not answer one of the questions Job has asked, nor solve one of the problems he has started. So far as logic is concerned, or a real penetrative insight into the mysteries of Providence and of human life, we learn far more from Elihu, from Job himself, and even from the very Friends, than from the Maker and Teacher of them all.2 Driven from the peace of faith by the stings and scourges of calamity, Job passes through all the agonies of doubt and fear, of wounded trust and love. In his agony he gives the most varied and impressive expression to the fluctuating passions of a heart torn from its rest, to the questions which we all ask in our turn but cannot answer, to the great moral problems which we all start but cannot solve, when we are brought face to face with the mysteries which at once darken and ennoble our lives. His friends give him no help, but 1 See introduction to Chapters iv.-xiv., pp. 73, 74 |