its impetuous lust of battle, is by far the grandest of all these animal "pieces." Probably there is no finer description of this noble creature in the whole range of literature, nor even any worthy to be compared with it as a whole, although in other ancient authors we meet with occasional touches resembling those employed here. Eschylus (Septem, 375), for example, describes the horse as "impatiently awaiting the blast of the trumpet " (Comp. Verses 24, 25); Pliny (viii. 42) has "presagiunt pugnam ;" and Virgil (Æn. v. 316), “corripiunt spatia," and (Georg. iii. 83):

Verse 26.-The Hebrew Netz includes, besides the Hawk proper, all the smaller raptorial birds; and among them Tinnunculus alaudarius, our own familiar Kestrel, which is very common throughout Syria. As this is "the only bird which the eagles appear to permit to live in close proximity to them," it may be that it is the Kestrel which is here intended, since here, as in Nature, we find it "in close proximity" to the Nesher, or Eagle.

Verses 27-30.--As this first gallery opens with a sketch of the king of beasts, so, appropriately enough, it closes with a picture of the king of birds, which is not unworthy of a place beside any, even the chief, of the master-pieces which have gone before it.

Suddenly the vessel let down to Job, "like a great sheet lowered by ropes at its four corners, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts and fowls of the air," is withdrawn, and from the cloud of the Divine Presence there issues the challenge (Chapter xl., Verses 1 and 2): “Is he who contended with the Almighty corrected? Let him who disputed with God reply." The challenge might be even more severely, and not less faithfully, rendered: "Is the censurer of the Almighty corrected? Let him that criticised God reply." And Job, who already sees in part what the Divine intention is, responds with an exclamation (Verses 3 and 4) of which it is difficult to give a satisfactory translation. Behold, I am

vile!" conveys too much, and, "Lo, I am weak!" too little. What he means is that he is too small, too light, too insignificant and feeble to contend with God, too unwise and unready to answer Him adequately, or even to put into words all that he has in his heart to say. Therefore he "lays his hand on his mouth" to keep it closed, forces and compels himself to silence, though he has still somewhat to urge "an if he would,” could he but give his thoughts words and run the hazard of speaking amiss. But that he no longer dares to do. Once, twice, an impulse had risen within him, prompting him to suggest some plea in his own defence or to indicate difficulties which, to his mind, were still unresolved. But he will no longer venture to criticise, much less censure, ways which he feels to be too wonderful for him, dark only through their very excess of light. Long since he had begged (Chap. xiii. 20–22) that, should God deign to enter into controversy with him, He would lay aside his majesty, lest, terrified and overwhelmed, he should be unable to answer Him a word. But so far from conceding that request, Jehovah has appeared to him arrayed in the full panoply of his glory, with pitiless and yet most pitiful severity abating no jot of his state, thus making Job more and more deeply conscious of his own insignificance and temerity, and of his inability to answer his Divine Adversary "one in a thousand." Hence all that he can do is to confess that, as compared with his Antagonist, he is but as dust on a balance, and to hint that he is being surprised, dazzled, overwhelmed, rather than answered and convinced.

He has yet to learn-or, at least, he has not yet fully learned that no logical and conclusive answer can be given, even by Jehovah Himself, to the questions of the inquisitive and sceptical intellect; or that no such answer can be rendered in terms which the intellect of man, while under its present conditions, can grasp: that, when all has been said which can be said, much must still be left to reverence, to faith, to love. Our "intellectual part" is but a part of our being, not the whole. And when we demand a simply intellectual solution of the mystery of the universe, we demand that which God would not indeed grudge to give us, but which we cannot take. It is not, as some divines have put it, that He resents

our "desire to be wise above that which is written;" for doubtless He would have us wise to the farthest limit of our power: but that when we ask to have the secret of the universe, and of his government of the universe, put into our hand, we ask more than our hand can grasp, more than our intellect, while working under its present limitations, is able to receive; more, too, than it would be good, even if it were possible, for us to have while our moral nature, which is of even greater moment than our intellectual part, is so imperfect, and needs the very training which only faith, only the ventures of a reverent and affectionate trust, can supply.

To know God is one thing; to know all about God, all that He knows of Himself and of all things, is another. And, happily, we may know God, and so know as to trust and love Him, without knowing all that He is and all that He knows. And when once we really know Him, we shall learn the enormous insolence of the demand we are so often tempted to make; viz., that the key to the whole course and aim of his Providence should be placed in our feeble and unready hands. This was the lesson Job had still to learn, and for the learning of which that deeper consciousness of his own "smallness," "lightness," "weakness,"-in one word, his own "limitations" -which we have heard him confess, was the best and inevitable preparation.

SECOND DIVINE REMONSTRANCE.

CHAPTERS XL. 6-XLII. 6.

How to know God without knowing all that He is and does, how to stay himself on a Being whose ways are past finding out, is the lesson Job has still to learn. And he learns this lesson in the most singular but approved way-learns it by being shewn that even when God reveals Himself to man, man cannot comprehend Him, nay, cannot so much as comprehend any one of the works, or acts, in which He manifests Himself.

The mystery which Modern Science recognizes in the more subtle and recondite forces of Nature-in Energy, in Life, in Consciousness was recognized by ancient thought in its more. obvious, its more magnificent and impressive, phenomena. But the mystery is the same wherever we find it. We may push back the dark line, or wall, at which our knowledge ends a little further; but, at the best, we soon reach it, and it is as impassable to us as to the world's grey fathers. There is not a single term we use, however simple and common, of which we can grasp all that it covers and connotes. Our wisest word veils more than it reveals. The more we know the more humbly we confess that we know nothing as it is in itself; our very wisdom, our very reverence, makes agnostics of us, and compels us to admit that every item in the whole range of our knowledge floats unsteadily on a great deep of mystery impenetrable. How, then, can we affect to know Him who is, of whom the whole universe with all that it contains, and the whole course of human history with all its changes, are but partial and imperfect manifestations?

Comprehend Him we cannot; but we may know Him, and know Him on precisely the same terms on which we know anything of the universe around us, or of our fellow-men. We do know much of the natural world, so much that, save in an idle play of fancy and speculation, we never doubt its existence, although every item of our knowledge soon runs up into mysteries we cannot fathom. And we know much of men, or of some men, although we frankly admit that we do not know even the man we know best altogether, much less interpret all that our neighbours are and do. While we confess that in their being and history there are profound mysteries which we shall never resolve, we nevertheless know that they are, and there are at least some of them whom we may reasonably and confidently honour and trust and love. As we know them, so also we may know God-know that He is; know that He reveals Himself to those who seek Him; know that He is worthy of our reverence, our trust, our supreme affection. The mystery which shrouds Him from us need not hide Him from us any more than the mysteries of our own being need hide us from ourselves, or our incapacity to know all that is in men

need hinder us from knowing them at all, or from committing ourselves to those who have shewn themselves worthy of our confidence and love. As many as care to know Him may find Him, as they find their fellows, in his works, his acts, his words.

It is to these revelations of Himself that He appealsreferring Job to them, referring us to them. In his Second Remonstrance Jehovah follows the very line of argument we have traced in the First. As yet the argument, or appeal, had not produced its due and full effect. It had rendered Job more sensible of his weakness, indeed, of his inability to comprehend all the ways of God, of his presumption in assuming to criticise and censure them. But, even when it is closed, he hints, as we have seen, that he is being overwhelmed by the majesty of God rather than receiving a reply to his doubts and fears. In fine, he has not yet learned his lesson. He is not sufficiently conscious of the limitations of his powers; he is not fully alive to his inability to grasp the mystery by which he is perplexed, or any adequate solution of it; nor is he, as yet, humbled to the very dust by the conviction of his own irreverence and insolence in presuming to censure a Providence he does not and cannot understand.

To this self-knowledge, since there is no other exit from his misery, he must be brought. And hence, in the Second Remonstrance, Jehovah does but iterate the appeal of the First, seeking by this benign iteration to drive him to a conclusion he ought already to have reached. Once more, therefore, He challenges the man who has impugned his justice to wield, if he can, those cosmical forces, the play and incidence of which enter so largely into the Providence he had impugned (Chap. xl. 7-14); and once more He invites him to consider the works (Chap. xl. 15-xli. 34) in which he saw the most marvellous exhibitions of the Divine Wisdom and Power: that he may thus come to know his own weakness more fully, and be more fully persuaded of the majesty and the beneficence of Him whose ways he had ventured to criticise and even to " condemn."

And, at last (Chap. xlii. 1-6), Job catches the Divine intention, responds to the Divine appeal; he confesses that he