Section THE BOOK OF JOB THE POETIC PORTION VERSIFIED, WITH DUE REGARD TO THE LANGUAGE OF THE AUTHORIZED VER- SION. A CLOSER ADHERENCE TO THE SENSE OF THE REVISED VERSIONS, AND A MORE LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW ORIGINAL WITH AN INTRODUCTORY El^AY ADVANCING NEW VIEWI AND EXPLANATORY NOTES QUOTINQ MANY EMINENT AUTHORITIES HOMER B. SPRAGUE, Ph.D. rORMEnLY PROFESSOR IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY, AFTERWARDS PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA AND LECTURER IN DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, EDITOR OF MANY ANNOTATED MASTERPIECES OF CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE, MILTON, GOLDSMITH, SCOTT, IRVING, CARLYLE, ETC. BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1913 COPYEIGHT, 1913 Sherman, French & Company TO THE ALUMNI OP THE UNIVERSITIES OP YALE, CORNELL, and NORTH DAKOTA, IN WHICH, RESPECTIVELY, THE AUTHOR WAS STUDENT. PROFESSOR, AND PRESIDENT; TO THE MANY HUNDREDS OF HIS SURVIVING PUPILS, AND TO ALL WHO LOVE LOFTY POETRY, THIS VERSION OF THE GREAT HEBREW MASTERPIECE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED CONTENTS PAGE Preface 1 The Poetic Structure 7 Introductory Essay 11 The Persons , . • . .55 The Prologue . . . t.; . .. .... 57 The Poetic Text ......:.. 63 The Epilogue ....:..... 160 Abbreviations ........ . 162 Explanatory Notes 165 Bibliography 231 Index of Words and Phrases ...... 234 iPREFACE In the preparation of this work, as of all the mas- terpieces he has annotated, the editor's aim has been to popularize a portion of the world's greatest litera- ture. Such literature ought not to be merely the luxury of a few, but should become, if possible, a joy and an inspiration to the many. Perhaps on a much larger scale than we are wont to imagine, high thinking may coexist with plain liv- ing. Into this particular structure, the Book of Job, admittedly the finest literary creation of Semitic genius, the average man and woman should be en- couraged to enter. Especially should it be made the subject of study in every Bible class, and equally with the master- pieces of Shakespeare and Milton in all the higher seminaries of learning. How to make it instantly and permanently attractive is the problem. To this end it is quite important to show both to eye and ear that here is a true poem. Within the last hundred years several translations have with more or less skill presented to the reader something of the ancient form. Recently the prin- ter's art has been still more utilized to make visible the curious parallelisms of lines and groups of lines and the symmetry of the whole. 1 2 THE BOOK OF JOB Mere form, however, is not suflSxjient. A principal basis of most poetry, as of all music, is in sound. To begin each line with a capital, and then utterly dis- regard metre, is a mockery. It " keeps the word of promise to the '' eye, and " breaks it to the " ear and thence to the soul. Instead of floating sympa- thetically on rhythmic undulations, the reader is too often made to feel himself balked, jolted, staggered, or even upset, by prosiest discords. Kecognizing with Cowper that " There is in souls a sympathy with sounds," "we hope to be looked upon leniently for this attempt, however imperfect, to render into responsive verse, on a somewhat new plan, each line for the most part exactly corresponding to the original, the wisdom, pathos, beauty, and sublimity of this masterpiece. It should be gratifying to all, if some hand, more skilful than ours, should build better on this founda- tion. In the present state of Semitic scholarship we can- not hope to ascertain with certainty the exact metri- cal value of all the Hebrew letters, vowel points, accents, music signs, etc.; and, if we could, it were even then questionable whether a satisfactory result would be gained by any attempt to reproduce it. In this direction Professor George H. Gilbert, in his The Poetry of Job, has displayed much learning and skill; but his attempts, however ingenious, to reproduce the original tones, metres, or quantities, sometimes result in a sort of " hop-skip-and-jump " PEEFACE 3 movement seemingly at variance with grace, dignity, and power. A more serious fault has characterized some of the essays at turning the body of the book into verse. In the King James version especially, there are familiar passages to which we cling lovingly for their sweet and noble diction. But the versifier, in spite of himself, is liable to drift away from the choice phraseology and sometimes from the real thought, transmuting elegant prose into indifferent or irrele- vant verse. Professor E. W. Eaymond's scholarly translation, perhaps the most felicitous in rhyme, re- minds us of Bentley^s oft-quoted comment on Pope's masterly paraphrase of the Iliad, " A pretty poem, Mr. Pope ; but you must not call it Homer ! '' The editor has commonly adhered to the interpre- tations given in the recent Ee vised Versions (Eng- lish 1881-1885, and American 1897-1901), pre- ferring, however, if the sense is in substance the same, the language of the Authorized Version (1611). But in all these versions there is a good deal of padding! Accordingly he has often ventured upon a closer translation, making much use of the alterna- tive marginal readings, rejecting all superfluous words, and relying on the great lexicons of Gesenius and B. Davidson. He has found extremely valuable the masterly translation and notes of Dr. T. J. Conant in the Eevised Version of the American Bible Union, containing in parallel columns on each page the Authorized Version, the original Hebrew text, and Conant's translation. Very valuable too has 4 THE BOOK OF JOB been the standard work of Dr. A. B. Davidson in The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1889) ; also the learned, interesting, and instructive notes of Dr. F. 0. Cook, Canon of Exeter, in the Bible Commentary (1886) ; the slashing critical notes and multitudinous emendations of Professor C. Sieg- fried of the University of Jena in the so-called "' Polychrome Edition'' (Leipzig, 1893). Dr. John F. Genung's "The Epic of the Inner Life,'' does credit to his head and heart. Dr. J. T. Marshall's notes on Job in The American Commentary on the Old Testament (1904) have been found worthy of careful consideration. Professor A. ,S. Peake's notes on Job in The New Century Bible (1905) should be studied. Last but not least is the compact and scholarly work of Dr. S. E. Driver, Professor of He- brew at Oxford (1906). The splendid work of Dr. Albert Barnes in two volumes (1881) should not pass unmentioned, nor the translation and notes of Dr. George E. Noyes (1827). To all of these and to some other publications the editor is much indebted. See the appended Bibliography.^ As the Hebrew original is wonderfully concise and therefore pungent and powerful, the editor has clung closely to it, sometimes at the risk of obscurity; and 1 Since writing the foregoing', two important works have issued from the English press; The Dramatic Poem of Job by W. Jennings, M.A., and Job and the Problem of Suffering by T. F. Royds, B.D, Jennings aims to render with exactness the substance of the orig- inal poetic text, each line commonly with four rhythmic beats or accents and ending with a trochee. The same objection lies to this as to Gilbert's above mentioned. The fact is that as a rule, there is no adequate substitute for the stately English heroic verse. Royds' work, The Problem of Suffering, is also masterly. Both are "up to date" (1912). PREFACE 5 60 in numerous instances has effected a very desirable condensation. As a means of gaining a true metrical form, and also to conform to Pope's rule, " The sound should seem an echo to the sense," a simple transposition of words has often sufficed. Iambics have been made the basis but, as in some of the best English poems, the verse glides easily into trochaic, or even into dactylic or anapestic. There has been no attempt to restrict the verses to pentam- eter. To -avoid the common fault of making tame by dilution, some of the ellipses and abrupt ejaculations of the original text have been reproduced. In a few instances, notably in the celebrated passage, chapter xix, 25, 26, 27, the exact order of the words in the Hebrew has been reproduced. Into the discussion of many interesting problems raised by the book, we do not care to enter here. Such among others is the question of its authorship, its date, its original unity; of suspected later addi- tions, as the speeches of Elihu, the description of behemoth and leviathan; the question of the missing third speech of Zophar, and the possible dislocation of passages. We may be pardoned for boldness in making repeatedly a new suggestion explanatory of Job's manifest inconsistencies and audacities as the text stands in the usual versions. It is this: that in the midst of his terrible torture his disease affects his brain, his reason gives way, dark aberrations e THE BOOK OF JOB alternate with lucid intervals. In one of the latter he utters the great discourse on Wisdom in chapter xxviii and the lovely reminiscences of chapter ixix. To Professor Eobert W. Rogers, D.D., Theodore T. Hunger, D.D., Robert Stuart MacArthur, D.D., William R. Huntington, D.D., and to the editor's learned classmate, Jacob Cooper, D.D., among others, thanks are due for valuable suggestions. The preparation of this work has been a labor of love, bringing day by day at intervals for many years its "exceeding great reward.'' If its publication shall contribute in even a small degree to make this masterpiece more extensively read and more highly appreciated, the editor will be well content. Newton, Mass. THE POETIC STRUCTURE Substantially following some of the most recent au- thorities, we have endeavored to exhibit much of the parallelism of the poem. Into any analysis or discussion of the poetic sys- tem in the Hebrew original, we deem it needless to enter here. The most superficial reader, however, may discern a certain fitness of the varying forms — bimembral, stanza-like, strophic or antistrophic, logical or rhetorical — to express w4th concinnity the changing thought, imagery, sentiment, or emotion. Objection is sometimes made to an alleged arti- ficiality with which the book as a whole and in every part has been constructed, as if art were inconsistent with inspiration. But inasmuch as speech, if not thought itself, in its higher moods is rhythmical, and Art often serves Nature most faithfully when it utters the soul in measured sound, it can hardly savor of irreverence to claim this poet as an artist. Those church hymns and anthems which lift us highest on the wings of song are often products of the most painstaking skill. Artificiality is no more chargeable here than in the exquisite symmetry of a fern or a feather. We would serve especially the average reader; but fortunate are the few who can command the time, 7 8 THE BOOK OF JOB the taste, the learning, and the sensibility, to make a scientific study of Hebrew poetry, and to appreci- ate the reasons for rhythmic, rhetorical, or logical variation in the structure. Such will find it not unprofitable to discriminate and classify parallel lines as similar or dissimilar; parallelisms as echo-like, antithetic, cumulative, etc.; parallel groups as stanzas (couplets, tercets, quatrains, quintets, sestets, septets, etc.) ; strophes, antistrophes, climaxes, inversions, introversions, du- plications, interlacings, refrains, etc. ; and, in them all, to point out the reasons for the marvelous corre- spondences, " thought- rh^nnes,'^ that underlie the vis- ible resemblances and differences. The effort, too, if long continued, would give a fine discipline both in logic and in esthetics. (See the Preface.) For such, the material is abundant and easily ac- cessible. More or less, for a century and a half, the technique has been discussed by eminent scholars, beginning not later than the interesting " Lectures on the Poetry of the Hebrews ^' by Bishop Lowth (1753), and coming down to the views of the gifted Professors Genung, Gilbert, Moulton, Jennings, and other scholars of recent date. I call the Book of Jobj apart from all the- ories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarian- ism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never- ending Problem, — man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free fitDwing outlines; grand in its sin- cerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the see- ing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spir- itual : the Horse, — " hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? " — he " laughs at the shaking of the spear ! " Such living likenesses were never since drawTi. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; old- est choral melody as of the heart of mankind; — so soft and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. — Caelyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, 1840. la INTRODUCTOEY ESSAY THE BOOK OF JOB: HISTORY OR ALLEGORY? No important literary production is involved in more obscurity. Notwithstanding thorough investi- gations by many scholars extending through cen- turies, its author is unknown, his nationality 18 doubtful, his period undetermined, even his purpose conjectural. At first glance the great central figure seems full of contradictions. He passes suddenly from hope to despair, from meekness to audacity, from narrowest introspection to widest observation, from intense subjectivity to most realistic word- painting. Even the literary classification of the work is mat- ter of dispute. In view of its progressively vehe- ment dialogue, though it has little of the spectacular, less of movement, and with slight exception nothing of character development, most critics have chosen to call it a drama. Without visible action on a scale of world-wide or national interest, the versified portion, more than nine tenths of the whole, has been termed by a scholarly translator ^ The Epic of the Inner Life. Abounding in complex structure and lofty sentiment — interspersed passages of feeling so 1 John F. Genung, D.D. 11 12 THE BOOK OF JOB highly wrought, and workmanship so elaborate and artistic, as to be plausibly denominated strophes, antistrophes, sonnets, hymns, or even odes — yet as a whole it would hardly be characterized as simply lyric. Set in a framework of startling events it has numerous pictures, faithful pen-drawings, some of them highly colored, yet it is not mainly descriptive. Maugre its scenic beginning and ending and its vary- ing moods, it is lacking in incident as a whole, and therefore not classed as narrative. Unquestionably it is for the most part a religious discussion, yet so imaginative and surcharged with emotion that no one would style it a didactic treatise. Its personal experiences, punctuated by volcanic outbursts of pas- sion, with solemn appeals, bitter irony, eloquent moralizing, delightful reminiscences, pathetic mean- ings, stern imprecation, all tell a story of unparal- leled sufferings by an innocent victim of a seemingly merciless inquisitor; yet we hesitate to name it a biography, or, as Luther did, a real history. But it is not important to label correctly the out- ward form of this sevenfold blending of elements dramatic, epic, lyric, descriptive, narrative, didactic, and biographical. More fruitful it may be, as we read the surface story, to endeavor to discover, look- ing deeper into the composite whole, a series of personifications of final causes and titanic forces, symbolisms of world movements, of stupendous phys- ical changes, all converging on man to be perfected as the end in view in the vast processes of our spe- cial universe. HISTORY OE ALLEGORY? 13 Apparently the author lived five or six hundred years before the Christian era; the chief character, Job, perhaps a thousand years earlier. The scene is mainly laid in Uz, supposed to have been a pastoral tract in Arabia Deserta, some sixty or seventy miles in length by ten to twenty in width. It is an Arcadian land. Life there is simple, quiet, uneventful. The traditions, customs, views, and principles are those of generations of patriarchs. Save for monotheism and the inherited rites of a pure faith like that of the mysterious Melchisedek, they have only the rudiments of theology. Of course, with no literature, no recorded history, no studied philosophy, and little or nothing of science, clouds of superstition must dim the faint rays from above. They see not far in space, time, or spirit. No Shekinah has ever shone here; no pillar of cloud or flame has guided a migration hitherward; no fire- touched lips are sounding in their ears a " Thus saith the Lord/' A faint tradition may have reached them of an auroral Eden or a universal cataclysm, but no prophetic pencil has painted the glow of a millennial dawn. Centuries are to elapse before a Star of Bethlehem or Sun of Righteousness shall rise. Yet they are conscious of no lack. Nature is genial. A kindly Deity is believed to be ever pres- ent, ever active. His hand they think they recognize in every event. Near them are the silent deserts, and far off the nations forget them and are forgotten. Our oriental poet begins with a charming vision. In this fair Arabian district, luminous by " the light that never was on sea or land,'' a splendid personage 14 THE BOOK OF JOB appears, " greatest of all the children of the East." His residence is a lordly villa. " Seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses, and a very great house- hold" attest his wealth. Now in the Indian Sum- mer of his days, at the summit of prosperity, at peace with God and man and his own conscience, possessing almost regal power and using it ever to promote righteousness, his crowning glory to comfort the sor- rowing (Chap, xxix, 25), he can look back with satis- faction upon many a deed of beneficence, and forward with confidence to a well-earned leisure, " And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." Most precious perhaps of his earthly blessings, seven sons and three daughters are near him all in health and comfort, and a continuous succession of birth- day festivities makes life a holiday. The scene suddenly shifts ; our eyes open upon the world of spirits ; we are in the skies. ** On such a day As heaven's great year brings forth," some of the chief personages of the universe, " Sons of God," come to present themselves before Jehovah. He calls attention to the princely patriarch. " Hast thou considered my servant Job; for there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one that feareth God and turneth away from evil?" HISTORY OE ALLEGORY? 15 This speech is addressed to a singular being desig- nated as "the .Satan ^' (adversary), who has come among the " Sons of God/' Whether we recognize him as " the Evil One/' embodiment of hate, chief of malignant spirits, enemy of all good; styled by Shakespeare " the eternal devil," the " lordly mon- arch of the north," by the Persians Ahriman, by the Egyptians Typhon, by the Scandinavians Loki; alias Dante's Lucifer, Milton's Satan, Luther's Devil, Bunyan's Beelzebub and Diabolus, Goethe's Mephis- topheles; or whether we regard him as a personifi- cation of that phase of physical evolution which knows no vis medicatrix naturae, overlooks no error, and brooks no deviation; rigid, all-embracing law; this *' accusing spirit " instantly challenges the truth of Jehovah's assertion. He more than insinuates that the man, alleged to be " blameless and upright," is at heart mercenary. He exclaims, " Doth Job fear God for nought? . . . Put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face." " And the Lord said unto the Adver- sary, ^ Behold, all that he hath is in thy power ; only upon himself put not forth thy hand.' " So the " Spirit that denies " departs with full per- mission to try the experiment, for experiment it cer- tainly is, to ascertain whether he or the Omniscient is mistaken ! Thus runneth the story. Can this be history ? If so, why did not Jehovah's positive declaration settle the matter? silence the au- dacious Adversary? establish past all doubt the fact of the perfect integrity of our hero? Must there 16 THE BOOK OF JOB not be an underlying meaning? May it not all be better explained as figurative? It may aid in answering this question if we bear in mind the assumption which, taken literally, the story of such a trial implies; viz., that man, even the best of men, has no rights which the inquisitor is bound to respect, except safety of body. Ethics — justice, kindness, mercy, sympathy — are not to be in evidence. Xeither angel nor man shall interfere to stop the strange business, " Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, 'Hold, hold! '" The test proceeds; the curtain falls and rises: events follow as in illusions " At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time." In swift succession Sabean and Chaldean marauders, alternating with lightning and cyclone, sweep away the victim's property and kill all his sons. Now if this is not allegoric, s^-mbolical of unavoid- able occurrences in the general movement of the physical Creation — if the disasters are to be re- garded as the premeditated effect of the intervention of a supernatural being, thwarting, directing, con- trolling, or suspending the operation of natural law • — is not the attack on Job somewhat astounding, and still more so the divine permission to make it and so cause the calamities? Who is this merciless inquisitor?. Dr. A. B. Davidson in his admirable commentary HISTORY OR ALLEGORY? 17 takes him to be "a sifting providence" (an inspec- tor, examiner, like the so-called '' Advocatus Dia- holi" in ecclesiastical Rome). The distinguished Professor Moulton in his valuable Modern Reader s Bible heartily concurs, deems him the " minister of God's trying providence," " nothing if not critical " ; not bad at all, only very particular! The professor goes further : he even dares to allege, " As other sons of God may have one or other of the morning stars in their guardianship, so the Adversary is the Guard- ian Spirit of the earth " ! ^ Can this be he of whom the great Founder of Christianity said {Luke x, 18), "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven"? and whom he termed " a murderer from the beginning ... a liar and the father of it" (John viii, 44) ? and whom Paul char- acterized as ^^ the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedi- ence " (Ephesians ii, 2) ? Job as yet firmly believes that God is his friend, but that He has for some unknown reason become the immediate author of all these distresses; and ac- cordingly with unquestioning submission he acqui- esces, sins not. " The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord ! " Touching and beautiful this resignation : but does it alter the ethical quality of the action of him who di- rectly caused the havoc and the slaughter? The ordeal is severe, but the Adversary does not ^ Professor Moulton is even Ijolder than Milton, who entitles the archangel Uriel "Regent of the Sun " (Par. Lost, iii, 690). See Rev. xix, 17. But is not the professor mistaken when (M. R. B., Book of Job, Introduction, p. xvi) he interprets all as literal fact? 18 THE BOOK OF JOB seem satisfied that the test is crucial. He still ap- parently holds God to be untruthful or mistaken, and Job a time-server. Again our ancient dreamer sees heaven opened and the " Sons of God '' assembled. Again we hear the All-wise affirm the man's perfect integrity, and again the Satan challenges Him to the proof. " Put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face ! '^ More surprisingly than before, permission is given the bold Adversary to do his worst; only life is to be spared ! Bodily pain unspeakable now supervenes. The remorseless inspector, celestial or infernal, "smote him with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown.^' The suiferer, as before, imputes his misery to the direct action of his Maker. His wife, perhaps surmising that his very faithfulness keeps him alive, and that it were better for him to die at once and so end the agony, exclaims, as if frenzied, " Eenounce God and die ! '^ He sharply answers, " Thou speakest as one of the foolish women. What I shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil ? '^ If we take all this for actuality rather than im- agery, its ethical quality again confronts and puzzles. With what feelings must we regard the '' Advocatus DiahoW who suggests and conducts the process? or the " Sons of God '^ who coolly watch the inquest, while no " Advocatus Dei" interposes? One would suppose that the " direful spectacle " should have " touched the very virtue of compassion " in a worse HISTOEY OR ALLEGORY? 19 than Torquemada. If the proceeding is not para- bolic, how does it differ from diabolic? It is no brief pang. Night and day for weeks, perhaps months, the disease grows more terrible. " The living dead," banished with loathing from his palatial mansion, is a leper on an ash-heap outside. His surviving relatives and old-time friends stand aloof with horror. But they do not see the worst: there is to be an added torture, a vivisection of soul. " Now I saw in my dream,'' as Bunyan would say, three learned friends approaching. " They made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.'' Beholding him at some dis- tance so changed as to be unrecognizable, " They lifted up their voice and wept." They drew near. " They sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him ; for they saw that his grief was very great." Their hearts at first are tender; but they are doctors of ancient divinity, not of modern medicine. They know something of theology, nothing of therapeutics : the}^ bring theories, not auEesthetics ; caustics for the soul, not cataplasms for the body : they rely on allop- athy, not water-cure; remorse such as killed Judas, not ablutions such as cured Naaman. At length the long-suppressed agony finds voice : — PERISH THE DAY! —in it I was born! And THE night! — it was said, A man's conceived! Be that day darkness! God from above regard it not, 20 THE BOOK OF JOB Nor light upon it shine! Darkness and Death-shade claim it theirs! Oloud on it dwell: Affright it darkenings of the day! ill, 3-5. >Why died I not from birth? Come forth from mother and expire? Why were knees ready for me? Or why the breasts that I should suck? iii, 11, 12. The oldest and ablest of the three, Dr. Eliphaa of Tema, thinks he recognizes the malady as a case of moral blood-poisoning, leprosy of body resulting from leprosy of soul, " the outward visible sign of an inward spiritual " disgrace. In this diagnosis the rest concur. He begins gently, recommending spiritual purga- tion. Unable to specify overt sins, he suggests in- herent depravity. He dwells upon it with a confi- dence and an unction that would have delighted John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards. He has had a remark- able vision. Now stealthily a word was brought me, And thereof caught mine ear a whisper. In thoughts distract, from visions of the night. In falling of deep sleep on men, A Terror met me, and a trembling. Which made my many bones to shake. Glided a Spirit then before my face! Bristled the hair of my flesh ! — It stood, but I could not discern its form: Before mine eyes an apparition! — HISTOEY OE ALLEGOEY? 21 Silence ! — and I heard a voice — Mortal before Grod, just? Man, pure before his Maker? Lo, in His servants putteth He no trust. And to His angels He imputeth frailty! How much more them that in clay houses dwell! Who, their foundation in the dust. Are crushed before the moth: 'Twixt morn and eve t. ey're beaten down ; For aye they perish, no one heeding." iv, 12-20. His speech is a masterpiece. With solemn warnings to Job against passionate impatience and inconsid- erate anger at being chastised for his sins, he pre- scribes penitence and prayer, and holds out high hopes of restoration to God's favor and great worldly prosperity, if he will mend his ways! Bildad and Zophar are less charitable. Job complains of their lack of sympathy; indig- nantly denies that he is depraved. His protesta- tions they deem brazen effrontery. From hints they pass to angry expostulations. With increasing em- phasis they reiterate their conviction that his misery is conclusive proof of desperate wickedness. They recommend sheer spiritual evisceration. In vain have they tried entreaties and promises. With cruel threats they bid him repent, confess, beg forgiveness, forsake his sins. But what shall he repent of? what confess? for what ask pardon? what forsake? With the best of intentions for the good of Job and the justification of God, Eliphaz takes upon him- self to enlighten him, drawing upon his imagination 22 THE BOOK OF JOB for facts and inventing untruths, to bolster up their precious theory. Not great thy wickedness? Nor end to thy iniquities? For thou a pledge for nought hast taken from thy brother, And stripped the naked of their clothing: Water to drink thou hast not given the weary, And bread thou hast withholden from the hungry. But the Man-of-Arm ! — to him the land ! And the Lifted-up-of-Face sat down in it. Widows away thou sentest empty-handed, And broken have been the orphans' arms. xxii, 5-9. Over and over, Job has energetically averred such accusations to be false, and at last he asseverates his innocence with a solemn oath. This brings up the oft-recurring question, then perhaps discussed at length for the first time in lofty literature, and still a topic of almost universal in- terest — for this man, stretched like poor old Lear " upon the rack of this tough world,^' may well be a type of all who experience inexplicable misery — the baffling problem, SUFFERING, SEVERE AND LONG, YET UNDESERVED WHENCE AND WHY? We may dismiss from consideration for the pres- ent the cases of those who, like Socrates, voluntarily endure distress, to set an example of perfect obedi- ence even to an unjust law; or of those who, like " the noble army of martyrs,^^ cheerfully die for a truth more precious than life; or those who sacrifice UNSOLVED MYSTERY 23 themselves vicariously, as we read of One "wounded for our transgressions," and " bruised for our iniqui- ties." Nor need we urge at this moment the obvious fact that apparent evil, however incurred, may often have an educative value, affording a fruitful field for scientific research, or furnishing needed discipline, or a stimulus to strenuous exertion, or inspiration to bravery and fortitude, or in some other way trans- forming a stumbling-block into a stepping-stone. Passing by these, let us glance at several widely ac- cepted solutions of the mystery, particularly those commented upon by Professor Moulton in The Mod- ern Reader's Bible. I. To one who accepts the surface story, not as allegory but as literal verity, there is no need of looking further. The torture purposely inflicted by "the Satan" is asserted to be merely a "test of saintship," a trial planned to discover whether Job's obedience to God is free from taint of selfishness, or on the contrary is inspired by hope of reward; in other words. Which was mistaken, Jehovah or "the Satan"? In confirmation of the view that the torture was so designed, the learned professor remarks, "If it be objected that the idea of a scientific experiment is out of harmony with the situation, I would ask what else is implied in ' a state of probation ' ? " It appears therefore that a " state of probation " is in his opinion correctly assumed, and that consequently the infliction of unspeakable suffering was very proper, a well-planned ordeal ! ^ 1 Modern Reader's Bible, pp. xvi, xvii. — The flippant Mephis- 24: THE BOOK OF JOB This, then, is solution number one. Pleased with it, he touches lightly on the objec- tion which a tender heart or sensitive conscience might make to the robberies, the massacre of the in- nocent, the hurled lightnings, the death-dealing cy- clone, the bodily and mental anguish. To justify the good " Adversary,'^ he urges that it is important to establish a belief in the perfectibility of human nature. He remarks : " This much may safely be said : so vast is the disproportion between the suffering of the individual and the question of the possibility of earthly per- fection, that Job himself, could he have assisted at that session of heaven^s court, would have gladly as- sented to the test of the ' Adversary.^ '' Perhaps so. Yes, the victim, utterly ignorant of the impending horrors, might have assented. But would that assent have excused the savagery? May we " To do a great right, do a little wrong"? All but ancient theologians would be likely to an- Bwer with Portia, " It must not be." " A little wrong ! " — this accumulation of agonies purposely heaped upon the best of men! to try an " experiment,'^ forsooth ! an extemporized clinic, un- speakable torture prolonged for months, not to make topheles is not impressed to solemnity. He turns the whole into a wager! He says to the Lord, " Was wettet ihr? " Goethe's Faust (42d line after Prolog im Himmel). UNSOLVED MYSTERY 25 a sick man well, but to find out whether a seemingly well man is not really sick ! Had he consented, conscious that he was watched all the while by the " Sons of God," of what psy- chological value could such a trial have been? espe- cially had he foreseen, like the chained Prometheus, that he would come off victorious ? Would his acqui- escence, whether it helped the test or spoiled it, have made the business right and proper? Eather would not meek submission have intensified the injustice? Assent or dissent — what could that have proved ? Or if, in extreme agony, he had recanted after assent- ing — what then? " You speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything," says the greatest of Shakespeare's female characters. Can we in any event shut our eyes to the ethical objection ? Let us not be misunderstood. We are not argu- ing that there was no test, but that the test did not so originate. We admit the phenomena, deny the hypothesis. A great truth doubtless underlies all; but let us not mistake shadow for substance, a nat- ural automatic progress for an artificial planned pro- cedure. One of the ablest of recent commentators boldly denies that pain is an evil. He justifies the grue- some cruelty on the ground that pain sometimes tends to perfect character.^ But this was not the end sought. It was not to 1 Dr. Robert A. Watson in The Expositor's Bible, article on Job. 26 THE BOOK OF JOB render Job perfect, but to discover and demonstrate whether he was or was not already perfect. Grant that the result, the truth made manifest, is interesting; nay, even, as in this case, elevating and inspiring. It is eloquently stated by Genung : " There is a service of God which is not work for reward : it is a heart loyalty, a hunger after God's presence, which survives loss and chastisement: which, in spite of contradictory seeming, cleaves to what is God-like as the needle seeks the pole; and which reaches out of the darkness and hardness of this life to the light and love beyond." ^ Yes, the end is divine, but the means — Satanic ! If the infliction of horrible, long-protracted agony upon an innocent man, to try an " experiment," is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Thus much for the plausible but happily obsoles- cent theory of "probation," not disciplinary but ex- perimental ! II. But, as already stated, our three doctrinaires, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have come forward with a ready explanation of the Mystery. It is designated THE second offered SOLUTION. It is this : " Misery is wed to guilt,'' happiness to innocence: wealth, prosperity, enjoyment, imply merit; poverty, misfortune, pain, imply demerit: physical well-being and physical evil measure desert: success is Heaven's smile, adversity its frown. Therefore worldly condition is a pretty fair gauge of moral character; the greatest of sufferers is prob- 1 Genung' 8 Epic of the Inner Life (p. 20 of his Introductory /Study). UNSOLVED MYSTERY 27 ably the greatest of sinners; the greatest of sinners should be the least prosperous of mortals : Job must have brought these woes upon himself by his iniquities ! Q. e. d. ! Through eight or ten discourses, Job replying sep- arately to each — three successive rounds, each speak- ing in regular order (Zophar, however, failing to speak a third time?), — these prehistoric schoolmen reiterate their dogma. If the facts controvert it, so much the worse for the facts. Their speeches ended, Job in several chapters of great beauty and power states his case. Down to the hour of his sorest distress, he had probably held the same tenet with them. But now his eyes are open to its utter falsity as applied to himself, for he knows he does not deserve such suffering; its utter falsity as applied to many others; for he has seen villains, worthiest of punishment, enjoying an apparently blissful existence even to old age. With deep pathos he contrasts his past with his present. He closes with solemn asseverations of his entire innocence, and with imprecations of divine vengeance upon him- self if guilty in thought, word, or deed. The three are silenced. III. Hereupon a young enthusiast, Elihu, not named before nor afterwards, interjects a long speech. He blames Job for audacious language, reiterates the dogma of earthly gains or losses as proofs of integ- rity or depravity, and couples with it as a sort of corollary what he deems a further reason for the mysterious affliction. It has been designated the THIRD SOLUTION". 28 THE BOOK OF JOB It is this : Suffering is not simply a punishment ; it is also a warning; corrective as well as vindictive. Moulton states the doctrine succinctly, " Suffering is judgment warning the sinner by repentance to es- cape heavier judgment." Most moralists will concede that an important truth underlies these blended theories of retribution and admonition: transgression will be punished, and punishment should be disciplinary. Emerson argues that a wrong-doer never escapes. Cicero asserts that he who disobeys the " higher law '' "incurs, by the wrong done to his own nature, the heaviest penalty.'^ But our protagonist is not depraved, Jehovah's word for it. " There is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil." He needs no warning. So the " Third Solution," like the second, solves nothing. Against the multiplied reiterations of the perni- cious doctrine that worldly prosperity or its opposite is a criterion of moral character, every experience of martyr, prophet, or evangelist, with few excep- tions, is an unmistakable protest. In many an age, if not now, Lowell's bitter complaint has been too true, " Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne! " The fact that the poetic portion of the book is largely occupied with the statement and the refuta- tion of that once prevalent belief seems to show how UNSOLVED MYSTERY 29 important the author felt the task to be of anni- hilating the delusion and establishing the reality. The effort was well worth the pains; for no poison was ever more subtle, more seductive, more widely diffused, more persistent, or more mischievous ; in the long run deadening all recognition of the universal divine Fatherhood, all sense of the universal human Brotherhood. To this day, who is not liable to be infected? What pious millionaire is not tempted to fancy himself a " beauty rose ^' made superlatively fair by an overruling hand, which for his goodness has plucked off myriads of ordinary buds to give him preeminent bloom? If the book had ended with the last discourse of Job, though it had thrown little or no light on the world problem of the origin of evil, it had done something far more useful. For nearly the first time in history, and with an emphasis never surpassed, it had stated, illustrated, clearly demonstrated a truth of vital moment ; a truth almost always ignored then, as it often is now, but which can never be effectively gainsaid; namely. Whatever be the cause of extreme and unde- served SUFFERING IN THE ORDINARY COURSE OF NA- TURE — ^whether vicariousness, like that of " the serv- ant of Jehovah " in Isaiah, or loyal obedience, like that of Socrates, or religious martyrdom, or accident, or heredity, or penalty, or ignorance, or chastisement, or warning, or " scientific experiment," or malicious attack, or aught else — external adversity is no PROOF OF PERSONAL GUILT ; nor, vice versa, is worldly prosperity any evidence of personal innocence. 30 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. What many have confidently accounted an ex- planation of the mystery is sought in the " Voice from the \Yhirlwind/^ The Almighty is supposed to speak audibly in the Hebrew tongue to this effect: " The whole universe is an unfathomed mys- tery, AND THE EVIL IN IT IS NOT MORE MYSTERIOUS THAN THE GOOD AND THE GREAT/^ The editor of the Modern Reader's Bible is more than satisfied with this : he waxes eloquent : he terms it THE FOURTH SOLUTION. But is it any elucidation of an enigma to show that other enigmas are equally dark? any solution to conclude as he does, " The mystery is not to be solved within the limits of human knowledge'^? And is it true that the good is as mysterious as the evil? The question is of final causes. Who ever doubted that of good? Who has not doubted that of evil? The Voice seems to the professor to say that on the whole the face of Nature is fair, and, as Paley taught over a hundred years ago, the keynote of the universe is joy. Is such information calculated to mitigate Job's anguish? Must he not all the more sigh with Whit- tier's Andrew Eykman, " For myself alone I doubt ; All is well, I know, without: I alone the beauty mar; I alone the music jar"? In assuming to find in the utterance from the tempest a clearing up of the baffling mystery, are we UNSOLVED MYSTEEY 31 not in danger of missing altogether the real signifi- cance ? Of what kind is this theophany ? What is THIS VOICE? While Elihn is summing up the case against Job, heavy clouds are gathering. Soon thick darkness mantles all; a storm with blinding lightning and deafening thunder bursts upon them : from the bosom of the cyclone words of rebuke are heard — Who ? — THIS ! — a-darkening counsel By words without intelligence? Gird up thy loins now like a man; And I will ask of thee, and do thou make me know! When I laid Earth's foundations, where wast tliouf Declare, if thou hast understanding: Its measures who determined, if thou knowest? Or who upon it stretched the line ? Whereon were its foundations sunk? Or who did lay its corner stone. When sang the morning stars together, And shouted all the sons of God for joy? Or shut the sea with doors, When it burst forth, issued new-born? When I the mist its mantle made, And the dark cloud its swaddling-band, And brake for it my boundary, And set up bars and doors; And said. Thus far shalt come; but further, no! And here thy Rollers' pride be stayed! xxxviii, 8-14. In a sense Jehovah's voice, but under limitations; words spoken through the lips of the physical crea- 32 THE BOOK OF JOB tion. What in that age could the tongue of ex- ternal Nature tell of the attributes of the Infinite One? or of His relations to man? Well might Job exclaim in one of his lucid intervals, How small a whisper of a word hear we of Him! And who can comprehend the thunder of His power? xxvi, 14. For hours the battle of argument has been waged, and the disputants silently await a decision. But on the questions they have been discussing — the guilt or innocence of the tortured victim, the ulti- mate cause of his suffering, the moral government of the .Supreme Euler — the majestic speaker seems dumb; to all appeals, deaf; to the spectacles of rob- bery, massacre, and ruin, agony of body and soul, blind! This attitude is significant. Does it not appar- ently suggest that, of many things which man is most anxious to know, the Power that makes the ma- terial world its only mouthpiece, reveals thereby no care or even cognizance? Of the vindication the slandered one longed for, of the reason w^hy the tor- ture was permitted, of the hearing he so sought, of a life beyond the grave, of tender love from his Cre- ator, of spirits interested in human beings, of the immunity of the greatest villains — of any of these things, not a syllable ! Is it not a fair inference that, in the opinion of our author, upon such matters, there is nothing that a Voice which only speaks out from whirlwind and thunder can say? We have thus arrived at a result totally unex- UNSOLVED MYSTERY 33 pected, yet so unmistakable and so important that we may perhaps account it one of the great teachings of the book. It seems to have been strangely misunderstood. Professor Moulton and other able commentators be- lieve they find in this Voice " a divine intervention denying the possibility of Job's reading the meaning of God's visitation." That, surely, is not a balm to his wounded soul. But, more than most readers, the professor thinks to find in the tempest roar some- thing both affirmative and grandly comforting. He declares, " Here we have an infinite sympathy. . . . What is made prominent is an all-pervasive sym- pathy . . . joyous sympathy with the infinities (sic) of great and small throughout the universe." ^ Mar- shall, Eoyds and others concur. But let us not mistake our ardent admiration for supernal sympathy, human exultation for divine condescension. In our joyous wonder at the sublim- ities, — at omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence ; at the mysteries of creation; stars, ocean, darkness, light, snow, hail, rain, clouds, lightning; at the wild goat, wild ass, wild ox; the lion, raven, ostrich, war- horse, hawk, eagle, behemoth, leviathan, — do we not miss what we most crave, some assurance of a fel- low-feeling FROM ABOVE? " All-pervasive sympathy " ! Sympathy with man- kind? w4th feeble victims of the unsympathetic strong? with him whose need is sorest? with heroic sufferers in loneliness and agony ? Where is this lov- ^ Mod. Bead. Bible, Introduction, pp. xxxv, xxxviii. 34 THE BOOK OF JOB ing-kindiiess expressed or implied? Show us in this magnificent discourse of a hundred and fifty lines one clear expression, nay one distant hint, of fellow- ship, pity, condolence, or tender love. Our gifted professor considers any such expression needless. He adds as follows : " For the hopeless sufl'ering in which there is nothing of guilt, what treatment can be better than to lose the individual pain in sympathetic wonder over nature in her inexhaustible variety ? ^^ ^ " To lose the individual pain " ! How ? " He jests at scars that never felt a wound." Imagine the consolation : " Unhappy saint ! Seated on thy ash-heap all alone, scraping thyself with a potsherd, forget thy failure to receive vindi- cation and relief from Father above or man below. Lament not the loss of precious reputation and de- served respect. Think not of the derision, con- tumely, slanders heaped upon thee blameless. Mourn not thy vanished riches, thy lost companions ; friends, home, and joys forever gone; wife estranged, chil- dren slain. Never mind thy impending death, thy loathsome incurable disease, thy excruciating pain! Contemplate the wonders of nature — and be con- tent!'' Sympathetic? This sphinx propounds riddles, never solves them. Here are seventy sharp ques- tions, each calculated to make any one feel himself worthless, utterly insignificant. Can Job in his an- guish philosophize over the vast and multitudinous 1 Idem, xxxviii. UNSOLVED MYSTERY 35 phenomena of sky, earth, and sea ? Is it possible that he should find inspiration, uplift, or cheer, in being told again that the unknown Power is immeasurable and eternal, he ephemeral and infinitesimal? or in being taunted with ignorance in the presence of Omniscience, or with feebleness of body in compari- son with gigantic brutes ? Says the commentator, '^ The individual experience now seems a small thing in the range of all nature's ways/' Yes: but are the two commensurable? Is there not in man a nobility, a grandeur, of which the sublime Speaker apparently has no conception ? " For though the giant ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will ; Though world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the sotjl ? " Tennyson. Interest is expressed in the appetite of the lion's whelps, the eaglets and the young ravens; but no no- tice is taken of the spiritual cravings of man; his hunger for God, freedom, light, forgiveness, immor- tality; no recognition of the soul's possibilities, nor even of its existence! Justice too, ^^the everlasting, unchanging will to give to each his right." . . . What has External Na- ture, speaking in the trumpet tones of the tornado, to say of that? Is it promised? Nay, while there is no word of censure for Job's slanderers, there sounds 36 THE BOOK OF JOB no note of encouragement, but rather continual dis- approbation, for him I Of course the visible punishment of scoundrels may be waived. Infinite compassion may pass it by. But can we resist the conviction that the highest virtue earth can boast, ought not to perish visibly and forever in hopeless defeat and unspeakable mis- ery? Are we not forced to feel it should survive, be recognized, be rewarded; else there is no moral gov- ernment; life is not worth living? " If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottemiess, And earth's base built on stubble." Milton, What of justice or injustice? Nothing! The word duty is not in its vocabulary. Nor love to God, nor love to man. Force, physical, intel- lectual, animal, reigns. Life is a '^ struggle for ex- istence,^^ often " a survival of the '' unfittest, if ethi- cal quality can be predicated: but there is no ethics here! Vain, too, the hope that the material universe will communicate the highest wisdom. Deep saith, " Not it in me " ! And Sea saith, " Not with me " ! xxviii, 14. Let us not, then, mistake creation for Creator, vesture for Wearer, web for Weaver, nor for a mo- ment conceive the ever-changing aggregate of matter to contain or represent the whole of Deity. UNSOLVED MYSTERY 37 To such a being, vague as the Earth- Spirit in Faust, only revealed as the Genius of the Physical Universe mistaken for Jehovah, our great sufferer might very naturally exclaim, when all his piteous appeals were unanswered, I cry to thee, and thou me answerest not; I stand up, and thou — lookest at me ! xxx, 20. For aught that Nature could do, he might as well have prayed to Behemoth or Leviathan. Cruel seems this silent disregard, but cruder the thunderous rebukes, iterating to the last, Who ? — THIS ? — a-darkening counsel With words of knowledge void! Gird up thy loins now like a man! And I will ask thee: make me know. xl, 7; xlii, 4. Chider contend with the Almighty? Of God a chider ! — Let him answer it. xl, 2. Was the Voice from the Whirlwind, then, the full voice of Jehovah ? .Shall we say that the Universe is a phonograph, reproducing the vox divina, w^hile to- tally lacking the vox huinana f Suppose the Book had ended here, leaving our be- loved and blameless sufferer disappointed, humiliated, self-abhorrent, dying in dust and ashes. Was sadder picture ever painted? Surely our author will not leave him so. To such as Job there must be a future. He had hoped for it. How pathetic his longing ! 38 THE BOOK OF JOB Oh that in Sheol thou wouldst hide me! Wouldst keep me secret till thy wrath be past; A set time wouldst appoint me, and remember me! If man die, may he live again ? — All my war-service days I'd wait Till my discharge should come. — Thou'dst call, and I should answer thee: Thou'dst have a yearning toward thy handiwork. xiv, 13-15. He had confidently expected it. He exclaims as if with the voice of inspiration, Oh that my words were written now! Oh that they were recorded in the book! That with an iron pen and lead They were forever graven in the rock! But I, I know my Vindicator liveth. And, later, on the dust shall stand; And, after skin of me they've shattered, this: That, FROM my flesh, shall I see God! xix, 23-26. V. Hence the visions in the Epilogue? The first sentence supplies to the vivid imagination of our gifted professor what he terms a fifth solution of THE MYSTERY. It consists, he thinks, in ''The Eight Attitude to this Mystery; that the bold faith of Job, which could appeal to God against the justice of God's own visi- tation, was more acceptable to Him than the servile adoration of the Friends, who had sought to distort the facts in order to magnify God.'' Undoubtedly the truth needed to be emphasized UNSOLVED MYSTERY 39 that audacity is better far than blind servility. But what light does that throw on the final cause of un- deserved suffering.^ More relevant is the natural effect of such afflic- tion in softening the heart of a good man toward the wretched. Dr. Theodore T. Munger calls attention to the fact that before Job was stricken, his prayers appear limited to his own family; but, as we see in the Epilogue, when keen distress had done its work, he prayed for those who had cruelly wronged him. " And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his ^ Friends.^ '^ The Talmud makes this lesson proverbial. If we may interpret thus literally, these two re- sults may be steps toward an explanation. So too the rich blessings lavishly bestowed upon the man in this strange sequel. But if his past unspeakable miseries were unnec- sarily and deliberately inflicted and so were real atrocities, and if his heart had always been extraor- dinarily tender, and if his audacity was as admirable as Abraham's splendid challenge, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ^' then what need of those almost inconceivable sessions of Heaven's Council at the first, or the artificial, crude, impossi- ble squaring of accounts at the last? Surely, in our gropings for a clearing up of the mystery, such literal interpretation affords " No light, but rather darkness visible." 1 Dr. Marshall appears to agree substantially with Moulton in these five so-called Solutions; but, recollecting the Prologue and the language of St. Paul (2 Corinth, xii, 7), he suggests a sixth, ; " a messenger of Satan to buffet me." 40 THE BOOK OF JOB If, rather, the ending, like the beginning, be re- garded as symbolical; then, discarding bald forms; looking beneath surface minutiae; omitting mystical names (Keziah, Jemimah, Keren-Happuch), ritual- istic ceremonies (sacrifices, burnt ofi'erings, prayers), sacred numbers (two, three, four, seven, forty, one hundred, one thousand, two thousand, six thousand, fourteen thousand); — thus relegating to the back- ground details that serve but to set the outlines in relief and produce verisimilitude; — may not our Arabian seer by these devices broadly allegorize the belief that there shall be an "all-hail here- after^'? that sometime, somehow, somewhere, all darkness shall be dispelled, the abused vindicated, the lost restored, the wrongers converted, happiness out- weighing all past wretchedness be enjoyed, even the vanished sons and daughters made to reappear? May there not, then, be found in this book a world-long significance? the threefold division, yes- terday, to-day, forever? in the Prologue, emblematic pictures veiling yet suggesting the past eternity? in the Poem, vivid realities with baffling mysteries of the passing hour ? in the Epilogue, a prefigured con- summation of all material and spiritual blessings endlessly progressive in the geons yet to be? Is this History ? Prologue and Epilogue, a succession of visions by some prehistoric Piers Plowman half revealing some of the deepest truths of the universe; the body of the poem a day-dream by some ancient Bunyan shat- tering great shams in ante-Christian theology; did LIGHT OF EVOLUTION" 41 not the author build better than he knew? May we not call it all Allegory? VI. We venture to suggest for consideration a pos- sible SIXTH SOLUTION". From the earliest Eg3'ptian priestly myth of a primal egg from which all things come, and after Pythagoras down to the present time, philosophers have been making shrewd guesses as to the origin, the constitution, and the successive stages of the universe. Some of the greatest have thought they apprehended a Mind of the L^niverse, a Spirit With- in, an Over-soul, an " Infinite and Eternal Energy, out of which all things proceed." ^ Poets have dreamed of communion with it as a Being endowed with instinct or even intelligence; a Power self- conscious, rejoicing in strength, beauty, swiftness; with tongues innumerable telling of ceaseless change and multitudinous life; an eternal Force, all-orig- inating, all-pervading; perhaps self-directing, cer- tainly working automatically toward higher condi- tions. But, theories aside, and descending to the prosaic level of everyday experience and observation, what to common apprehension is this half visible, half invisible Creation, but a stupendous machine, with- out memory, foresight, or choice? a colossal engine, incapable of immobility, irresistible, irresponsible, re- morseless? seemingly an embodiment of force, vital- ity, appetency, something like instinctive tendency, !£!. g., see Plato's Laws (Book x, 899, 900); Vergil's ^neid (vi, 724-727), Georgics (iv, 221-227); Pope's Essay on Man (l, iii, lines 9-22); Thomson's Castle of Indolence (ii, 47); Words- worth's Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey; Bryant's Thanatopsis ; Emerson's Essays, The Over-soul; Herbert Spencer, passim; etc. 43 THE BOOK OF JOB yet never rising to personality, much less to kinship, friendship, or fellowship? a mysterious agent that knows no difference between man and brute, indiffer- ent to ethics, religion, philosophy, teleology? iPerhaps the first of modern authors to propound a full-fledged theory of evolution was John Milton. It was nearly two hundred and fifty years ago in the fifth book of his Paradise Lost, — the sublime lan- guage of the archangel Raphael to Adam. Adam, one Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to Him returnj If not depraved from good, created all Such to perfection; one first matter all, Endued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and, in things that live, of life; But more refined, more spiritous and pure. As nearer to Him placed or nearer tending Each in their several active spheres assigned. Till body up to spirit work, in bounds Proportioned to each kind! So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk; from thence the leaves More aery; last the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes. Etc. Paradise Lost, v, 468-480. This, of course, is the special evolution of man, yet incomplete ; " unorthodox and unphilosophical," says Dr. Thomas Xewton, though some such idea w^as en- tertained by able divines and primitive fathers of the church. The transformation of Chaos into Cosmos, described in the seventh book, is not by development but by miraculous creations. But long before Milton, and antedating by eighteen LIGHT OF EVOLUTION 43 hundred years, more or less, the theories of Lamarck, Wallace, Darwin, Huxle}^, Spencer, and the rest. Saint Paul had propounded something like the mod- ern doctrine, some phase of which is now accepted by all. He may have got a distant hint from Psalm cxxxix, 13, 14, 15, 16. Not unlikely, as he was writ- ing to the Eomans, he may have been familiar with the elegant verses (724-727) of the sixth book of their greatest poem, or read like Vergil those Pla- tonic conceptions in the original Greek. Very startling and wondrously like inspiration is his description of some of the processes of Evolu- tion, the earliest clear statement in literature of its comprehensiveness and transforming power. The language of the Eevised Versions, English and Amer- ican (1885 and 1901), of the 19th and following verses of the eighth of Romans, though of course not intended for a scientific formula, brings out certain great features; thus: " For the earnest expectation (tlie * eager look- ing forward,' or more exactly, the ' watching with outstretched head') of the Creation {i. e. of all * created things,' the material world and all of every kind therein, the universe) wait- eth for the revealing ('looketh' or watcheth for the ' uncovering,' unveiling, unfolding, evolving) of the sons of God (of the 'born offspring' of God), Rom. viii, 19. (What is waited for is evidently the consummation of spiritual development in the manifest realiza- tion of the divine Fatherhood with all which that implies.) "44 THE BOOK OF JOB From this seeming recognition of the existence of a world-wide instinctive yearning, if not conscious movement, for a higher stage of being, the apostle next glances at the origin of this universal inclina- tion, a tendency not self-promjoted but in obedience to a higher Power. " For the Creation (created universe) was sub- jected ('arranged under,' made subordinate) to vanity (to * unsubstantiality,' evanescence, vicissitude, transitoriness) not of its own will (not from any wish, choice, or purpose of its own), but by reason of Him (through the action of Him, or on account of Him) icho subjected it (brought it under the arrange- ment), etc. In language sublimely simple in the next (21st) verse he states why the Maker of heaven and earth has impressed this longing upon the world. If we regard him as uninspired, we may well wonder that he dared to say of Jehovah, " Who subjected it in hope (who subjected the universe in confident expectation and trust) that the Creation itself (created things, ani- mate and inanimate) also (as well as we) shall be delivered from the bondage of corrup- tion (shall be freed from enslavement to mor- tality, subjection to decay and death) into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (into the freedom and splendor, of the Sons of God, an emancipation like that of saints freed from this corruptible flesh and adopted LIGHT OF EVOLUTION" 45 into the shining incorruption of the family on high). But this man looks deeper yet, deeper than any before him, into the mysterious processes of all the earth. Was ever more truth compressed into a few words than in the next verse ? It surely is a flash of inspiration. "For ice know th