"My purposes are broken off."
"His remembrance shall perish from the earth, And he shall have no name in the street."
"Ye break me in pieces with words."
How vigorously descriptive this is of what many a man has endured from hammering speech of violent men!
"They waited for me as for the rain."
"He overturneth the mountains by the roots."
"Out of the north cometh golden splendor."
"G.o.d hath upon him terrible majesty."
"Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity; And array thyself with honor and majesty."
Has not this putting all the strength and beauty of a Shakespearean couplet? Shakespeare uses such figures as this often, and in them he is his greater self. His is the splendor of imagination and clearness of vision of a prince of poets. Time hastes. This task is decoying.
To cease is a hardship; for "Job" lends itself with such wealth to these n.o.bler pa.s.sages as to urge on our quest. Whole chapters are poems, rich as if carven on blocks of solid gold. They blaze with splendor. But the drama bears on its way like an invading army, and will not wait.
Disaster has overtaken a good man with its utter demolition; but, as has been shown, the prologue of the drama settles the paternity of the disaster. Evils come, but not necessarily from G.o.d. In a complex moral system, G.o.d has found it good to administer by general rather than by special laws, and their operation does not work exact justice to either wickedness or purity. G.o.d"s administration being an eternal one, he dares take scope to bring rewards to goodness and to evil. G.o.d does not need to haste. He has eternity, and dares therefore be pacific and not perturbed. Haste savors of lack in time. G.o.d must not haste. That he could pour swift retribution on the head of offending men, we dare not doubt. That he does not is patent. Another scene is plainly the purpose of G.o.d. He has a scene behind a scene. If this world were an end, there is rank and unforgivable injustice done. Men have not been dealt fairly with, and may, with legitimacy, make acrimonious reply; but we are clearly taught that this world is a stage for the display of character, not for its reward, and the next scene will be for the reward of character, and not for its display. G.o.d will recompense, but we are not told G.o.d does recompense. Such is the lofty argument of the drama, and may be named as major theme.
Prince Job, smitten from his throne of prosperity and influence into a pit of ignominy, in his abas.e.m.e.nt cries, "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?" And in his conscious integrity he might well shrill a cry to his own breaking heart. Job is sure (some things calamity reveals) integrity is not awarded according to its character and worth, while his three friends see in Job"s downfall a disclosure of his wickedness. They urge him to repent. They think there can be no arguing against doom. G.o.d has smitten him for his sins,--this they all agree, and say no other thing. Poor Job! His friends consider his hypocrisy proven, and his wife has become foreigner to him in his day of disaster; disease climaxes his calamities, and he half says, half moans: "When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise and the night be gone? and I am full of turnings to and fro until the dawning of the day. My days are swifter than a weaver"s shuttle, and are spent without hope. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will confess the bitterness of my soul." Surely his affliction breaks like some desperate sea, and he is as a sailor hurled on jagged rocks, bleeding, half-drowned, shivering cold, and again the storm-waves leap like mad tigers at his throat, and the sailor scarce knows well how to beat one stroke more against the sea. This is Job.
He is bewildered. His first cry is as of one whose reason staggers.
His face, his voice, his words--all are unnatural. To hear, I would not know nor think this was Prince Job. Strangely, sadly, terribly changed he is when he cries: "Let the day perish wherein I was born.
Let that day be darkness. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it. Let it not be joined unto the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let that night be solitary; let no joyful voice come therein. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day." "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery; and life unto the bitter in soul, which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came." Alas, Prince Job, your voice is a-sob with tears; and we had not known it was he! But did grief ever tell its beads with deeper music? Has not this bankrupt prince given sorrow words forever? His pain and grief are unutterable in sadness, yet is he not alone.
Mult.i.tudes have taken up his lament. There is no pathos deeper than his, "digging for death more than for hid treasures." I fear Job"s grief unmans him, and he hath gone mad with Lear. Pray, think you he is not as pa.s.sionate, gray Lear, mad as the stormy night? It seems so, but is not so. He is baffled. He is a good man, but blinded for a moment, as a lightning-flash stupifies the sight. His cry is the cry wrung from the white lips of pain through the ages. We can not blame him, but only be pitiful to him. His disasters are so varied and so terrible; but we feel sure of him, and if he have lost footing and sight, "t will not be for long.
But there he sits in ashes, fit to make marble weep; and his three friends--stately, aged, gray, friends of many years--come to comfort him; for which service he has need, sore need. There are times when a heart is hungry for tenderness, when a word of love would be a gift of G.o.d, when a touch of some tender hand would be a consolation wide as heaven; and such a word and hand had melted Job to tears, and his tears would have done him good, as prayer does. Sometimes tears clear the throat and heart of sobs that choke. But these men were inquisitors rather than comforters; they were philosophers, when they ought to have been men. They sat in silence seven days, but should have maintained their quiet. These men lacked imagination, which is a fatal omission from character; for they who came to comfort, became polemic, pitiless, belligerent, and their voices sound metallic. If a child had crept toward the afflicted prince, and had reached out a pitiful hand, and, with childish treble, had said, "Poor Job; poor Job!" that word had salved his wounds, and helped him through his mora.s.s of pain and fear and doubt. But instead, his friend Eliphaz hectors his pain by saying, in stately fashion, "Thy words have upholden him that was failing, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees; but now it has come upon thee, and thou faintest." Shame, Eliphaz! What a bungler! A child had known better. What ails you? Do you not know this man needs tenderness, and not lectures and disquisitions in moralities? Can you not see his heart is breaking, and his eyes turn to you as if he were watching for the coming of some succor infinite? Have you no balm with fragrance? But he hears us not, or heeds us not, but measures out his periods as if he were orator at some state occasion: "Behold, happy is the man whom G.o.d correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. Lo, this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know thou it for thy good." Pray, is this friend mad, or foe, or fool, that he knows no better than to pour contempt on distress? Will not a foe, even, have pity on an enemy wounded and bleeding and prostrate in the dust? But this man thinks he has a mission to teach an overthrown prince a lesson, harsh, cold, unrelenting, lacking sentiment. Job"s pitiful affliction is enough to lift such a man into pity. No, no; he urges his lesson, like some dull schoolmaster who will instruct his pupil while he knows him dying.
Job"s broken voice calls, "O that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together. Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bra.s.s? I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life. I loathe it; I would not live alway; for my days are vanity. To him that is afflicted, pity should be shewn from his friend." And to this pitiful appeal for considerate judgment, and for a word or look of compa.s.sion, another friend finds answer, with cruelty like the touch of winter on an ill-clad child: "If thou wouldst seek unto G.o.d betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty; if thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous." What winter wind is bitter and biting as these words?
Job"s friends now are his worst calamities. They are thrusting into his naked and diseased flesh a cruel spear, and into his heart a sword.
Are these men clad in steel that they are so impervious to pity? And yet, if we pause to consider, this dramatist has not spoken rashly nor unnaturally; for we can recall that often, often, when the window-panes of a life are smoky with the breath of suffering, just such criticisms as these are offered voluminously. We are hard folks. There seems a strain of cruelty in our blood which sometimes gloats over suffering as at a carnival. Were these men vultures, that wait to watch with joy a wounded soldier die? Of what is our nature builded, that we are cruel as the unreasoning beasts? These harsh friends are voices from our own pitiless hearts, and ought to make us afraid.
There are three friends in number, but there is one voice and two echoes,--three men debating with one moaning sufferer, and each saying the same thing. Had only one of them been present, all the three said had been spoken. These men were poor in ideas; for amongst the three is only one thought, as if they had one sword among them, which betimes each one brandishes. Besides, they have a polemic"s pride; they are eager to make out a case, and thirst to prove poor Job a sinner. One of them (it might as well be any other of them) runs on: "The hypocrite"s hope shall perish: whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider"s web. Behold, G.o.d will not cast away a perfect man; but the dwelling-place of the wicked shall come to naught." This is savage cruelty, pouring nitric-acid into sword-gashes. Nothing moves your plain man; for he delights in making people wince. He is not angry, but natural, and his naturalness is something worse than the choleric man"s anger. He is saying: "Ah, Job, see now--comfort, comfort? Why the house of the wicked shall come to naught." And has not Job"s house been splintered by the tempest? And this friend of many years is saying, "Hypocrite!" But this word recalls Job to himself. He rises above his pain, scarcely feeling the twinges. His thought is drawn away from his physical calamity, and that is a good anodyne for torture. His character is attacked, and he must run to its succor as he would to the rescue of wife or child. Now Job ceases sobbing, and becomes attorney for himself. He pleads his cause with full knowledge of his own heart. He therefore speaks _ex cathedra_ so far. Job is on the defensive--not against G.o.d, but against men. His "tongue is as the pen of a ready writer." Job is himself again. His perturbation is pa.s.sed as a cloud swims across the sky.
Job is the misjudged man, than which few things are harder to bear.
That enemies misconstrue your motives and misjudge your conduct is to be expected, though even then the spirit is lacerated; but when friends misjudge us, our pain seems more than we can bear. This was Job"s case. His familiar friends become His accusers, rasping such words, "How much more abominable and filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water!" and Job"s cry crosses the centuries and reaches our ears this day, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of G.o.d hath touched me!" Old Lear"s cry, "Stay a little, Cordelia," is no more pitiful than this strong man reaching for a hand and finding none, and pleading for sympathy, and pleading in vain.
I see him sitting, with his gray beard blowing about him like a puff of fog; I hear him when his pitiful voice intones its grief as if it were a chant; I see the pleading in his eyes, and it fills my breast with heart-break. You who love great delineations of pa.s.sion, what think you of our dramatist"s vision of Job? You who count King Lear among the demiG.o.ds of creative art, what think you of this Lear"s older brother? His nature is so deep we can not fling plummet to its bottom.
Lear was weak and wrong; but Job, with all his grief upon him, like a cloud upon a mountain"s crest--Job has violated no propriety of man or G.o.d, so far as we have seen, and his cry fills the desert on whose verge he sits, and clamors like the winds on stormy, winter nights.
Job, misjudged, has the mercy of conscious integrity. Himself rises to his own vindication, a course just and compatible with sincerity and modesty. You will misjudge Job if you think him egotist. He is rather one who knows himself, and feels sure of his purity in motive; has self-respect therefore--a hard thing for a soul to have, and the possession of which is a benediction. To know we meant well, to be able to justify us to ourselves, is next in grace to being justified of G.o.d; for next to Him, self is the most exacting master and judge. He feels misjudged, knows these men have misinterpreted him, being deceived by his calamities, and he therefore is thrown on the defensive, and becomes his own attorney, pleading for his life. "Pray you, my friends, do not misjudge me," is his tearful plea, while they press their cruel conclusions as a phalanx of spears against his naked breast. This conception will clear Job of the blame of being self-righteous. I do not find that in his utterances; but do find st.u.r.dy self-respect, and a.s.sertion of pure motive and pure action; for his argument proceeds thus: "I know my heart; I know all my purposes; I meant right, and tried to do right. You think me hypocrite. I pray you rectify your judgment, since neither in intent nor yet in execution have I been other than I seemed, and who can bring accusations against my doings? G.o.d breaketh me with a tempest, yet will I cry to him, Do not condemn me: show me wherefore thou contendest with me. I call on G.o.d to vindicate me, who knoweth my life to the full. Will G.o.d break a leaf, driven to and fro by the wind? Though to you, my friends, I seem smitten of G.o.d, your logic is wrong. I am not vile. O that I knew where I might find Him! I would order my cause before him, seeing he knows the way that I take." Job is himself confounded by his calamity, so that he does not see clearly; finding no reason why G.o.d should afflict him, he being as he is and as he has been, just in purpose; for Job had yet to learn that lesson he has taught us all; namely, that not G.o.d, but Satan, sent his disaster. He thought G.o.d was sowing ruin, as the rest thought; whereas G.o.d was letting Satan work his evil way, while G.o.d was to vindicate his servant by an apocalypse of himself.
Job, though bewildered as to the meaning of his troubles, a.s.serts his innocency; and as he presents his case, his sky clears, and his voice strengthens, and his argument rises in its eloquence, sonorous as the sea: "Know now that G.o.d hath overthrown me. He hath fenced my way, that I can not pa.s.s. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight. I called my servant, and he gave me no answer. My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for my children"s sake of mine own body. Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me. All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh. Have pity upon me! Why do ye persecute me as G.o.d? Have pity upon me!" If in literature there is a more pa.s.sionate pa.s.sage to incarnate in words a life wholly bereft and utterly alone, I know not of it. Oedipus Coloneus had Antigone, and King Lear had the king"s fool and loyal Kent, and Prometheus had visitors betimes, who brought him balm of sympathy; but Job"s servants will not obey him, and little children make sport of him, and his wife turns away from him, and will not hear his sobbing words, nor hear him as he calls the names of their children whom he loved. Tragic Job! Not Samson, blind and jeered at by the Philistine populace in Dagon"s temple, is sadder to look upon than Job, Prince of Uz, in the solitude of his bereavement. This old dramatist, as I take it, had himself known some unutterable grief, and out of the wealth of his melancholy recollections has poured tears like rain. He has no master in pathos.
This lament of Job is one aspect, and but one; for as he rises toward G.o.d, his calamities seem slipping away from him as night"s shadows from the hills at dawn. G.o.d knows his case, and Job, conscious of his integrity, looks G.o.d in the face, and his voice lifts into triumph, pa.s.sing out of complaint and bemoaning into sublime utterances, which const.i.tute the sublimest oration man ever p.r.o.nounced, and is contained in those parts of the poem reaching from chapter xxvi to chapter x.x.xi, inclusive. I have read this oration, recalling the occasion which produced it, and noted the movement of this aged orator"s spirit, and have compared it with Marc Antony"s funeral oration over Caesar, given, by common consent, the chiefest place among orations in the English tongue. For that n.o.ble utterance my admiration is intense and glowing.
I answer to it as waters to the touch of violent winds; and in conclusion, from comparing the orator Marc Antony with the orator Job of Uz, I am compelled to confess that I love not Antony the less, but Job the more. Marc Antony"s oration was diplomatic, tragic, masterful, pathetic; but Job"s oration is spent in the realm of the pathetic and sublime. The theme is the appeal to G.o.d. He has turned from man and toward G.o.d. His thought swings in circles majestic as the circuits of the stars. He fronts himself toward the Eternal as if to certify, "To G.o.d I make my plea." His harshness is kinder than the kindness of man.
Job"s...o...b..t includes life. He runs out to G.o.d, but he runs to G.o.d.
Himself is point of departure on this long journey. This oration is an apology, a plea of a great soul, pleading for what is above life. The words have pathos, but they lift to sublime heights. Job sweeps on like a rising tide. His false comforters sit silent, perplexed, but silenced. His argument rises as a wind, which first blows lightly as a child"s breath on the cheek, then lifts and sways the branches of the trees, then trumpets like a battle troop, then roars like storm-waves beating on the rocks, until we hear naught but Job. What begins an apology, ends a paean. At first, he spoke as, "By your leave, sirs."
Later, he seizes the occasion; ma.s.ses his lifetime of experience and thought and faith and attempted service; deploys his argument to show how G.o.d"s wisdom fills the soul"s sky, as if all stars had coalesced to frame a regal sun; makes his argument certify his conscious integrity in motive and conduct, until he thunders like a tempest: "My desire is that the Almighty would answer me. I would declare unto him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him,"--and on a sudden his trumpet tones sink into softness, and his dilated frame stoops like a broken wall, and he murmurs, "The words of Job--are ended." Yet so potent his self-defense, that his three comforters sit silent as the hushed night. Their argument is broken and their lips are dry. The words of the comforters, like the words of Job, are ended.
Elihu, a youth, has been listening. Age has had its hour and argument, and age is silenced, when, like the rush of a steed whose master is smitten from the saddle, this impetuous youth speaks. At this point, genius is evidenced by this unknown dramatist. A young man speaks, but his are a young man"s words, hurried, fitful, tinctured with impertinence, headlong in statement and method; for he is youth, not experienced, not deliberate, and easily influenced by the aged argument, and taking strong ground, and is infallible in his own eyes; and in him are visible the swagger and audacity of a boy. He makes no contribution to the argument. His is a repet.i.tional statement, though himself does not know it. He thinks he is original. How delightful the audacity of his opening: "If thou canst answer me, set thy words in order before me. Stand up. Behold, I am according to thy wish in G.o.d"s stead." Clearly this is a young man speaking. A novice he, yet with all the a.s.surance of a man whose years have run more than fourscore. He is bursting with speech and impudence, not perceiving that to answer where old men have failed is a valorous task, to say the least; and to attempt answer to Job, who has unhorsed every opponent in the lists, is a strong man"s work; but beyond this, Elihu undertakes to answer for G.o.d. He will be in G.o.d"s stead. See in this a young man"s lack of reverence. What the old men hesitated to attempt, knowing the work lay beyond their united powers, this youth flings into as he would into a swelling stream, swollen by sudden rains among the uplands. His ears have been keen. Nothing has escaped him. All the words of everybody he has in mind, his memory being perfect, since he is young and no faculty impaired, and as the debate has proceeded and he has seen old men overborne by the old man Job, his impetuous youth has seen how he could answer. This is natural, as any one conversant with himself (not to go further in investigation) must know. We itch to reply, thinking we see the vulnerable joint in the harness. Job has spoken last, and silenced his adversaries, and Elihu recalls practically but one thought of Job"s reply; namely, that he was not unrighteous in intent, and gets, as most of us do, but a part of the afflicted man"s meaning, and concludes that Job is glaringly self-righteous, missing the true flavor of Job"s answer; for what Job was, was self-respecting. And so Elihu gives Job a piece of his mind; takes up the thread of argument where the old men had broken it, and drives on, with many words and few ideas, to prove Job is wrong and bad, and that G.o.d has simply meted out justice, no more. Elihu"s words fairly trample on each other"s heels, and though only giving a weakened statement of what had been said before, like a strong voice weakened by age, he thinks his is a sledgehammer argument, illuminative, convincing, unanswerable; yet because he thinks he speaks in G.o.d"s behalf and in G.o.d"s stead, he rises into eloquence withal, though his words are pitiless; for himself knows not suffering, nor can he compa.s.s Job"s calamity. Elihu mistakes the sight of his eyes for the truths of G.o.d, a blunder of not infrequent recurrence. He is not all wrong, nor is he all wrong in his desire to help to the truth, but is as a lad trying to lift a mountain, which, planted by G.o.d, requires G.o.d to uproot it.
So the drama sweeps on. Jobs sits silent, but not silenced. He makes no reply to Elihu"s invective. Here is a dignified silence more impressive than any speech. He has been shot at by all the volleys of the earth and sky; and, wounded in every part, he retains his faith in G.o.d; nay, his faith is burning brightly, like a newly-trimmed lamp: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. I am misconceived by man, but not by G.o.d;" and his face has a strange light, as if he had been with Moses on the mount; and when, in a whirlwind"s sweep, and above it, G.o.d"s voice is heard; and it is Job G.o.d answers, as if to say, "Yours is the argument." G.o.d has no controversy with Elihu, nor yet with the aged counselors. Them he ignores; them, by and by, he rebukes. Job, and not they, had been right. G.o.d is come as vindicator. If his voice thunders like tempestuous skies, there is to appear an unspeakable tenderness in it at the last. He is not come to ride Job down, like a charge of Bedouin cavalry. He is come to clear his sky. He is come to give him vision and to show him wisdom, of which, though Job has spoken, he has had none too much. In the drama, G.o.d speaks in discussion to two persons. In conversational tones, in the prologue to the drama, he talks with Satan when he leads Job to trial. Job"s calamities, instead of being a proof of his turpitude, are proof of the confidence G.o.d reposes in him.
What a revelation in character that is! If for a time G.o.d had, as object-lesson to the Jew and through him to the world, granted visible rewards and visible punishments, that was not the permanent scheme.
G.o.d"s administration is hid from vulgar eyes truly, but also from the eyes "of the wise and prudent." Man"s wisdom may not vaunt itself.
G.o.d"s moral system is no well-lit room in which all furnishings are visible; rather a twilight gloom, where men and women grope. We know enough. Virtue is made very evident, and vice very despicable, and G.o.d very apparent--and these be the sufficient data for the monograph of life. "All things work together for good to them that love G.o.d," is the far-away response to Job"s troubled cry. G.o.d converses with Satan long enough to deny the allegation that Job serves G.o.d as a matter of dollars and cents, that it is convenient--so runs the devil"s sneer--convenient for Job to be good; for he finds it profitable. But if G.o.d will lower his rate of profit in goodness, and if G.o.d will shipwreck all Job"s prosperity, and sting him with the serpent-touch of dire disease, then will Job become as others. Profit in goodness gone, his goodness will "fade as doth a leaf." This is evil"s pessimistic philosophy, and Job, on whom calamitous circ.u.mstances pile as Dagon"s temple on Samson"s head; Job, trusting where he can not see, and making his appeal to G.o.d, whose ways are hid,--is the lie given to Satan"s prophecies, and the vindication of G.o.d"s confidence in Job. Job has been as one sold into servitude for a month. Satan hath been a hard master, has thrust him exceeding sore, has given no intermission of peril or anguish, has crowded sorrow on sorrow, has s.n.a.t.c.hed away every flower from the field of this good man"s life, and watches, leering, to hear him say, "I will curse G.o.d and die;" but when, after arguments compounded of pain and tears and hope, Job returns to his silence, saying, "The words of Job are ended," Satan has witnessed the triumph of a good man, and disproof of his own sorry accusations, and the vindication of G.o.d"s estimate; and, as is fitting, he stays not to acknowledge defeat, but slips away as the whirlwind chariot of Jehovah dashes into sight. Satan, not Job, has been defeated.
And in the long years of a prosperous life, no confidence has been reposed in Job so worthy as this reposed in him of G.o.d, to put to silence the slanders of wickedness that goodness was a species of selfishness; so that what Job did not understand, and what his friends interpreted as the certain disfavor of G.o.d, was sign of the trust G.o.d reposed in him. Satan had done his worst on a good man, and had failed! What an apocalypse this was! The second person with whom G.o.d holds conversation is Job. Satan he talked with in conversational tones, with no state nor eloquence. Job he honors, coming in regal splendor, by thundering with his voice, by treating Job as if he were amba.s.sador for some potentate whom G.o.d held in high regard. G.o.d"s argument is the climax of sublimity reached in literature; is mountain summit of sublime thought and utterance. What effect is wanting to make this scene bewildering in sublimity? One? No. The auditor is Job, sitting in the ruin of home and love, and friendships and consequence among men, and good repute, and if, bending low, you will hear him, you shall know he is sobbing for children that are not. One lonely, distraught, mystified, sorely-beleagured, and still surely-trusting man,--this is the audience. The scene is a tawny desert, once sown to oases of flowers, and billowing grain, and stately palm-tree, and olive-groves, now harvestless, flowerless, palmless.
Once a stately palace rose beside a fountain here, and from its open doors ran genial hospitality, to greet the coming guest and the wayfarer overtaken by the night and weariness; and from the windows singing and laughter rose, like a chorus of youthful voices; and now--where these things were are only ruins, havoc, disaster; and Job sits amidst the desolation that once was home as if he were crowned king of the realm of Calamity; and the desert, tawny as a tiger"s skin, stretches away to the horizon, barren as the sea, than which is nothing more solitary or pregnant with melancholy and thought.
The sky is ample and open. Not a cloud flecks it with its foam. From desert line to the blue zenith is only bewildering blue; when, black as a stormy midnight, driving as if lightnings were its chariot steeds, comes the whirlwind whereon the Almighty rides, and halts; and G.o.d pitches his midnight pavilion in front of silent Job on the silent desert, and from this tent, whose curtains are not drawn, there trumpets a voice. G.o.d is come! And G.o.d speaks! "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." Eloquence like this on forum like this, literature knows nothing of. Sublimity is come to its noon.
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?" is the astounding introductory. No exordium is here. Into the thick of argument, G.o.d leaps as a soldier might leap into the midst of furious battle. "Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stones thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when I made the cloud the garment thereof, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; that it might take hold of the ends of the earth that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is changed as clay under the seal; and all things stand forth as a garment; and from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Where is the way where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? By what way is the light parted, or the east wind scattered upon the earth?
Who hath cleft a channel for the waterflood, or a way for the lightning of the thunder? Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Canst thou bind the cl.u.s.ter of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the signs of the zodiac in their seasons? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? Who provideth for the raven his food, when his young ones cry unto G.o.d, and wander for lack of meat? But seeing thou canst not understand these things, and they are too high for thee, canst thou understand some little things, and answer some trivial questions I will put to thee?
Knowest thou the secret of the wild goat or the wild a.s.s on the desert?
or the wild ox? or the ostrich that scorneth the horse and his rider?
or the horse, hast thou given him strength? for he paweth in the valley, and leaps as a locust, and rejoiceth in his strength, and goeth out to meet the armed men; he mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed, neither turneth his back from the sword; he smelleth the battle afar off. Doth the hawk soar by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? And behemoth, what of him? His limbs are like bars of iron; he is confident, though Jordan swell even to his mouth. Or leviathan, what canst thou do with him, and what knowest thou of him? In his neck abideth strength; his breath kindleth coals; his heart is as firm as a stone; he counteth iron as straw, and bra.s.s as rotten wood; and when he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid. Hast thou an arm like G.o.d?
and canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity, and array thyself with honor and majesty. Pour forth the overflowings of thy anger; and look upon every one that is proud, and abase him. Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked where they stand, and hide them in the dust together."
And Job called, so that his words sounded through the whirlwind"s curtains: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be restrained. Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." And Job has learned this salutary lesson, that no man can comprehend all the ways life leads, nor need to. G.o.d is above the ways of life:
"He leads us on by paths we do not know; Upward he leads us, though our steps be slow; Though oft we faint and falter by the way; Though clouds and darkness oft obscure the day, And still He leads us on."
Job has learned to rest his case with G.o.d.
"My G.o.d knows best! Through all my days This is my comfort and my rest; My trust, my peace, my solemn praise,-- That G.o.d knows all, and G.o.d knows best.
My G.o.d knows best! That is my chart-- That thought to me is always blest: It hallows and it soothes my heart; For all is well, and G.o.d knows best.
My G.o.d knows best! Then tears may fall: In his great heart I find my rest; For he, my G.o.d, is over all; And he is love, and he knows best."
G.o.d"s argument is burned into Job"s mind. How can man, who understands not the visible things of daily recurrence, think to penetrate the meaning of the moral universe, whose ways are hidden, like the caverns of the seas? Not Job, nor any one of those who have spoken, has found the clew to this maze. But Job is impregnable now in his trust in G.o.d, as if he were in a fortress whose approaches were guarded by the angels of heaven.
And G.o.d spake yet once more; and now a word of rebuke--not argument--to the old men, who trembled near the tent of G.o.d"s whirlwind: "My wrath is kindled against you: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. My servant Job shall pray for you; for him I will accept." And Job, what ails Job now? He thought he was rebuked of G.o.d in the Divine argument, and now he knows himself, at a word, vindicated, exalted; honor burnished, and not tarnished; himself, not accused of G.o.d, but beloved of him, and praised by him,--and Job is weeping like a little child; and lifting up his face, while the tears rain down his cheeks, his eyes and his heart and his face are like springtime in laughter, and his voice is as the singing of a psalm!
For "the Lord turned the captivity of Job."
How great an advent! Beauty this drama has; but beauty belongs to the rivulet and the twilights; but sublimity to the Niagaras, and the oceans, and the human heart, and the words of G.o.d. This drama is sublimity"s self. Theme, actors, movement, goal, pertinency to the deepest needs of soul and experience, and chiefly, G.o.d as protagonist, say that sublimity belongs to this drama as naturally as to the prodigious mountains or to the desert at night. "Surely, G.o.d is in this place, and we knew it not."
And Job ends as comedy, though it began as tragedy. Hamlet ends in tragedy. He has lost faith, and his arm is palsied. We hear the musicians of Fortinbras playing a funeral dirge. Hamlet was tragedy because G.o.d was not there. When G.o.d is near, no tragedy is possible.
G.o.d is out of Hamlet. Job had closed as Job began, with tragedy dire and utter, but that here a man refused to let go of G.o.d. Job believed.
He did not understand. He was sore pressed. His tears and his anguish blinded him for an hour; but where he could not see, he groped, and caught