"perfect and an upright man, fearing God and eschewing evil.” One remarkably characteristic feature of his religious life is mentioned in particular. It seems his sons were in the habit of holding festive gatherings periodically at each other's houses. There could have been no harm, no impropriety, in the festivals, for their sisters were always invited to join them. But when the feast-days were over, Job offered up sacrifices on behalf of his children. "It may be," he said to himself, "that my sons have abandoned God in their hearts." He was afraid that they might have been led by their very happiness into forgetfulness of God. In a word, for prosperity he was the "greatest man in all the East," and for goodness "there was none like him on the earth."

Now it was such a man as this that, according to the old tradition, had once fallen into the direst affliction with which ever mortal was afflicted. Tradition gave the facts, but it was puzzled by them; for up to the time when this book was written, suffering was regarded as invariably retributive. The poet wishes to intimate at the outset that suffering may have a far higher -viz., a didactic-purpose. It may teach lessons which the world has no other means of learning. Job's sufferings, for example, and the way in

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which he bears them, may prove that there is in human nature a capacity of unselfishness. With a view of suggesting to us the didactic use of suffering, the poet introduces us into the court of heaven. The Ministers of State" the sons of God," as they are here called-are represented as coming to report themselves, and with them comes a being called in Hebrew the Adversary, and in our authorised version Satan. Herder, Eichhorn and others say that he is intended for a divinely commissioned recording angel. seems pretty evident, however, that he had not received his commission like the rest from the hands of the Lord, for he is asked, "Whence comest thou?" His is a self-appointed task. He goes about misrepresenting goodness, and trying to make out that it is merely a form of evil. He is the impersonation of cynicism. We do not, unfortunately, need to go out of the world to find his like. Literature abounds in definitions like the following: Pity is the consciousness that we ourselves might be in the like predicament. Love is our belief that we need the beloved object. Liberality is the vanity of giving. Friendship is a mere traffic, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer. Gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come.

Virtue is doing right, according to the will of God, for the sake of happiness. All these definitions imply that human beings, during their progress from the cradle to the grave, are incapable of a single unselfish thought or generous emotion, that the best of men are but hypocrites skilfully acting a part—

"Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty,

Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves."

On the same principle, Satan, when Job is mentioned to him as a man whom even he would be unable to traduce, throws out the suggestion that the person in question was religious only because he found it paid, that he served God merely for what was to be got out of Him. "Do you think so?" says Jehovah; “try him and see.” And he tries him. The arch - cynic is here represented as being almost omnipotent for mischief. On one day Job loses all his property and all his children, but he does not curse God as Satan had predicted. He falls on his face and worships. "The Lord gave," he said, "and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

The Adversary, however, does not consider himself beaten. With diabolical evil-minded

ness, he suggests that the loss of Job's children was nothing to him so long as his own health was spared let that be touched, and he would appear in his true colours,-selfish to the core. Again Jehovah replies, "Try him and see;" and now the ruined, childless man is struck with elephantiasis, the worst form of leprosy, the loathsomeness of which no words it is possible for me here to use would in the faintest degree describe. Job, when he feels himself smitten, goes and sits down on the mezbeleashes" as we have it in our version.

among the This was

a heap of refuse lying outside a town or village. It was usually burnt once a-month, and so became a firm, compact mass. It was the regular resort of the homeless and destitute, and of those afflicted with any contagious disease that prevented their being admitted into the society of their fellows.

His wife finds him in this position, the greatest man of the East sitting beside outcast beggars! Poor woman! she could bear it no longer. She had not uttered a complaint at their loss of property; she had been silent when her children died; but this more immediately concerned her husband, and therefore, like a true woman, she felt it more acutely. She, for her

may

part, now comes to the conclusion that religion is a mistake. "Curse God, and die," she says. "It will be a relief to curse Him. He can but kill you for your pains; and then, at any rate, you will have done with this terrible enemy." Or she have meant to be even more sarcastic in her expostulation; for, curiously enough, in Hebrew the same word, derived from a root meaning to kneel, signified both to curse and to bless. She may therefore have intended to say, "Bless Him again, and you can only expect to lose your life. You blessed Him once, and you received from Him ruin; you blessed Him a second time, and He gave you the worst of all possible diseases; try it once more, and He will kill you for your pains."

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But Job holds on his way unmoved. God whom he had loved was even yet dearer to him than aught beside. He could have said with Xavier :