punishment of sin, the answer is that happiness as well as suffering is
punishment to him whose sin and the unbelief that accompanies it pervert
his view of truth, and blind him to the spiritual life and the will of
God. The pleasures of a wrong-doer who persistently denies obligation to
Divine authority and refuses obedience to the Divine law are no gain,
but loss. They dissipate and attenuate his life. His sensuous or sensual
enjoyment, his delight in selfish triumph and gratified ambition are
real, give at the time quite as much happiness as the good man has in
his obedience and virtue, perhaps a great deal more. But they are penal
and retributive nevertheless; and the conviction that they are so
becomes clear to the man whenever the light of truth is flashed upon his
spiritual state. We read Dante's pictures of the Inferno, and shudder
at the dreadful scenes with which he has filled the descending circles
of woe. He has omitted one that would have been the most striking of
all,--unless indeed an approach to it is to be found in the episode of
Paolo and Francesca,--the picture of souls self-doomed to seek happiness
and to enjoy, on whose life the keen light of eternity shines, revealing
the gradual wasting away of existence, the certain degeneration to which
they are condemned.
On the other hand, the pains and disasters which fall to the lot of
evil men, intended for their correction, if in perversity or in
blindness they are misunderstood, again become punishment; for they,
too, dissipate and attenuate life. The real good of existence slips
away while the mind is intent on the mere pain or vexation and how it
is to be got rid of. In Job we find a purpose to reconcile affliction
with the just government of God. The troubles into which the believing
man is brought urge him to think more deeply than he has ever thought,
become the means of that intellectual and moral education which lies
in discovery of the will and character of God. They also bring him by
this way into deeper humility, a fine tenderness of spiritual nature,
a most needful kinship with his fellows. See then the use of
suffering. The impenitent, unbelieving man has no such gains. He is
absorbed in the distressing experience, and that absorption narrows
and debases the activity of the soul. The treatment of this matter
here is necessarily brief. It is hoped, however, that the principle
has been made clear.
Does it require any adaptation or under-reading of the language of
Scripture to prove the harmony of its teaching with the view just
given of happiness and suffering as related to punishment? Throughout
the greater part of the Old Testament the doctrine of suffering is
that old doctrine which the author of Job found perplexing. Not
infrequently in the New Testament there is a certain formal return to
it; for even under the light of revelation the meaning of Divine
providence is learnt slowly. But the emphasis rests on _life_ rather
than happiness, and on _death_ rather than suffering in the gospels;
and the whole teaching of Christ, pointed to the truth. This world and
our discipline here, the trials of men, the doctrine of the cross, the
fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, are not fitted to introduce us
into a state of existence in which mere enjoyment, the gratification
of personal tastes and desires, shall be the main experience. They are
fitted to educate the spiritual nature for life, fulness of life.
Immortality becomes credible when it is seen as progress in vigour,
progress towards that profound compassion, that fidelity, that
unquenchable devotion to the glory of God the Father which marked the
life of the Divine Son in this world.
Observe, it is not denied that joy is and will be desired, that
suffering and pain are and will remain experiences from which human
nature must recoil. The desire and the aversion are wrought into our
constitution; and just because we feel them our whole mortal
discipline has its value. In the experience of them lies the condition
of progress. On the one hand pain urges, on the other joy attracts. It
is in the line of desire for joy of a finer and higher kind that
civilisation realises itself, and even religion lays hold of us and
lures us on. But the conditions of progress are not to be mistaken for
the end of it. Joy assumes sorrow as a possibility. Pleasure can only
exist as alternative to the experience of pain. And the life that
expands and reaches finer power and exaltation in the course of this
struggle is the main thing. The struggle ceases to be acute in the
higher ranges of life; it becomes massive, sustained, and is carried
on in the perfect peace of the soul. Therefore the future state of the
redeemed is a state of blessedness. But the blessedness accompanying
the life is not the glory. The glory of the perfected is life itself.
The heaven of the redeemed appears a region of existence in which the
exaltation, enlargement, and deepening of life shall constantly and
consciously go on. Conversely the hell of evil-doers will not be
simply the pain, the suffering, the defeat to which they have doomed
themselves, but the constant attenuation of their life, the miserable
wasting of which they shall be aware, though they find some pitiful
pleasure, as Milton imagined his evil angels finding theirs, in futile
schemes of revenge against the Highest.
Pain is not in itself an evil. But our nature recoils from suffering
and seeks life in brightness and power, beyond the keen pangs of
mortal existence. The creation hopes that itself "shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption." The finer life is, the more sensible
it must be of association with a body doomed to decay, the more
sensible also of that gross human injustice and wrong which dare to
pervert God's ordinance of pain and His sacrament of death, usurping
His holy prerogative for the most unholy ends. And so we are brought
to the Cross of Christ. When He "bore our sins in His own body to the
tree," when He "suffered for sins once, the Righteous for the
unrighteous," the sacrifice was real, awful, immeasurably profound.
Yet, could death be in any sense degrading or debasing to Him? Could
evil touch His soul? Over its most insolent assumption of the right
to injure and destroy He stood, spiritually victorious in the presence
of His enemies, and rose, untouched in soul, when His body was broken
on the cross. His sacrifice was great because He bore the sins of men
and died as God's atonement. His sublime devotion to the Father whose
holy law was trampled under foot, His horror and endurance of human
iniquity which culminated in His death, made the experience profoundly
terrible. Thus the spiritual dignity and power He gained provided new
life for the world.
* * * * *
It is now possible to understand the trials of Job. So far as the
sufferer is concerned, they are no less beneficent than His joys; for
they provide that necessary element of probation by which life of a
deeper and stronger kind is to be reached, the opportunity of
becoming, as a man and a servant of the Almighty, what he had never
been, what otherwise he could not become. The purpose of God is
entirely good; but it will remain with the sufferer himself to enter
by the fiery way into full spiritual vigour. He will have the
protection and grace of the Divine Spirit in his time of sore
bewilderment and anguish. Yet his own faith must be vindicated while
the shadow of God's hand rests upon his life.
And now the forces of nature and the wild tribes of the desert gather
about the happy settlement of the man of Uz. With dramatic suddenness
and cumulative terror stroke after stroke descends. Job is seen before
the door of his dwelling. The morning broke calm and cloudless, the
bright sunshine of Arabia filling with brilliant colour the far
horizon. The day has been peaceful, gracious, another of God's gifts.
Perhaps, in the early hours, the father, as priest of his family,
offered the burnt-offerings of atonement lest his sons should have
renounced God in their hearts; and now, in the evening, he is sitting
calm and glad, hearing the appeals of those who need his help and
dispensing alms with a generous hand. But one comes in haste,
breathless with running, scarcely able to tell his tale. Out in the
fields the oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding. Suddenly a great
band of Sabeans fell upon them, swept them away, slew the servants
with the edge of the sword: this man alone has escaped with his life.
Rapidly has he spoken; and before he has done another appears, a
shepherd from the more distant pastures, to announce a second
calamity. "The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up
the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped
to tell thee." They scarcely dare to look on the face of Job, and he
has no time to speak, for here is a third messenger, a camel-driver,
swarthy and naked to the loins, crying wildly as he runs, The
Chaldæans made three bands--fell upon the camels--swept them away--the
servants are slain--I only am left. Nor is this the last. A fourth,
with every mark of horror in his face, comes slowly and brings the
most terrible message of all. The sons and daughters of Job were
feasting in their eldest brother's house; there came a great wind from
the wilderness and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell.
The young men and women are all dead. One only has escaped, he who
tells the dreadful tale.
A certain idealism appears in the causes of the different calamities
and their simultaneous, or almost simultaneous, occurrence. Nothing,
indeed, is assumed which is not possible in the north of Arabia. A
raid from the south, of Sabeans, the lawless part of a nation
otherwise engaged in traffic; an organised attack by Chaldæans from
the east, again the lawless fringe of the population of the Euphrates
valley, those who, inhabiting the margin of the desert, had taken to
desert ways; then, of natural causes, the lightning or the fearful hot
wind which coming suddenly stifles and kills, and the whirlwind,
possible enough after a thunderstorm or simoom,--all of these belong
to the region in which Job lived. But the grouping of the disasters
and the invariable escape of one only from each belong to the dramatic
setting, and are intended to have a cumulative effect. A sense of the
mysterious is produced, of supernatural power, discharging bolt after
bolt in some inscrutable mood of antagonism. Job is a mark for the
arrows of the Unseen. And when the last messenger has spoken, we turn
in dismay and pity to look on the rich man made poor, the proud and
happy father made childless, the fearer of God on whom the enemy seems
to have wrought his will.
In the stately Oriental way, as a man who bows to fate or the
irresistible will of the Most High, Job seeks to realise his sudden
and awful deprivations. We watch him with silent awe as first he rends
his mantle, the acknowledged sign of mourning and of the
disorganisation of life, then shaves his head, renouncing in his grief
even the natural ornament of the hair, that the sense of loss and
resignation may be indicated. This done, in deep humiliation he bows
and falls prone on the earth and worships, the fit words falling in a
kind of solemn chant from his lips: "Naked came I forth from my
mother's womb, and naked I return thereto. Jehovah gave, and Jehovah
hath taken away. Let Jehovah's name be blessed." The silence of grief
and of death has fallen about him. No more shall be heard the bustle
of the homestead to which, when the evening shadows were about to
fall, a constant stream of servants and laden oxen used to come, where
the noise of cattle and asses and the shouts of camel-drivers made the
music of prosperity. His wife and the few who remain, with bowed
heads, dumb and aimless, stand around. Swiftly the sun goes down, and
darkness falls upon the desolate dwelling.
Losses like these are apt to leave men distracted. When everything is
swept away, with the riches those who were to inherit them, when a man
is left, as Job says, naked, bereft of all that labour had won and the
bounty of God had given, expressions of despair do not surprise us,
nor even wild accusations of the Most High. But the faith of this
sufferer does not yield. He is resigned, submissive. The strong trust
that has grown in the course of a religious life withstands the shock,
and carries the soul through the crisis. Neither did Job accuse God
nor did he sin, though his grief was great. So far he is master of his
soul, unbroken though desolated. The first great round of trial has
left the man a believer still.
V.
_THE DILEMMA OF FAITH._
CHAP. ii.
As the drama proceeds to unfold the conflict between Divine grace in the
human soul and those chaotic influences which hold the mind in doubt or
drag it back into denial, Job becomes a type of the righteous sufferer,
the servant of God in the hot furnace of affliction. All true poetry
runs thus into the typical. The interest of the movement depends on the
representative character of the life, passionate in jealousy,
indignation, grief, or ambition, pressing on exultantly to unheard-of
success, borne down into the deepest circles of woe. Here it is not
simply a man's constancy that has to be established, but God's truth
against the Adversary's lie, the "everlasting yea" against the negations
that make all life and virtue seem the mere blossoming of dust. Job has
to pass through profoundest trouble, that the drama may exhaust the
possibilities of doubt, and lead the faith of man towards liberty.
Yet the typical is based on the real; and the conflict here described
has gone on first in the experience of the author. Not from the
outside, but from his own life has he painted the sorrows and
struggles of a soul urged to the brink of that precipice beyond which
lies the blank darkness of the abyss. There are men in whom the
sorrows of a whole people and of a whole age seem to concentrate. They
suffer with their fellow-men that all may find a way of hope. Not
unconsciously, but with the most vivid sense of duty, a Divine
necessity brought to their door, they must undergo all the anguish and
hew a track through the dense forest to the light beyond. Such a man
in his age was the writer of this book. And when he now proceeds to
the second stage of Job's affliction every touch appears to show
that, not merely in imagination, but substantially he endured the
trials which he paints. It is his passion that strives and cries, his
sorrowful soul that longs for death. Imaginary, is this work of his?
Nothing so true, vehement, earnest, can be imaginary. "Sublime
sorrow," says Carlyle, "sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody
as of the heart of mankind." But it shows more than "the seeing eye
and the mildly understanding heart." It reveals the spirit battling
with terrible enemies, doubts that spring out of the darkness of
error, brood of the primæval chaos. The man was one who "in this wild
element of a life had to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep abased;
and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, rise again,
struggle again, still onwards." Not to this writer, any more than to
the author of "Sartor Resartus," did anything come in his dreams.
A second scene in heaven is presented to our view. The Satan appears
as before with the "sons of the Elohim," is asked by the Most High
whence he has come, and replies in the language previously used. Again
he has been abroad amongst men in his restless search for evil. The
challenge of God to the Adversary regarding Job is also repeated; but
now it has an addition: "Still he holdeth fast his integrity, although
thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." The
expression "although thou movedst me against him" is startling. Is it
an admission after all that the Almighty can be moved by any
consideration less than pure right, or to act in any way to the
disadvantage or hurt of His servant? Such an interpretation would
exclude the idea of supreme power, wisdom, and righteousness which
unquestionably governs the book from first to last. The words really
imply a charge against the Adversary of malicious untruth. The saying
of the Almighty is ironical, as Schultens points out: "Although thou,
forsooth, didst incite Me against him." He who flings sharp javelins
of detraction is pierced with a sharper javelin of judgment. Yet he
goes on with his attempt to ruin Job, and prove his own penetration
the keenest in the universe.
And now he pleads that it is the way of men to care more for
themselves, their own health and comfort, than for anything else.
Bereavement and poverty may be like arrows that glance off from
polished armour. Let disease and bodily pain attack himself, and a man
will show what is really in his heart. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a
man hath will he give for himself. But put forth Thine hand now, and
touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce Thee openly."
The proverb put into Satan's mouth carries a plain enough meaning, and
yet is not literally easy to interpret. The sense will be clear if we
translate it "Hide for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for
himself." The hide of an animal, lion or sheep, which a man wears for
clothing will be given up to save his own body. A valued article of
property often, it will be promptly renounced when life is in danger
the man will flee away naked. In like manner all possessions will be
abandoned to keep one's self unharmed. True enough in a sense, true
enough to be used as a proverb, for proverbs often express a
generalisation of the earthly prudence not of the higher ideal, the
saying, nevertheless, is in Satan's use of it a lie--that is, if he
includes the children when he says, "all that a man hath will he give
for himself." Job would have died for his children. Many a father and
mother, with far less pride in their children than Job had in his,
would die for them. Possessions indeed, mere worldly gear, find their
real value or worthlessness when weighed against life, and human love
has Divine depths which a sneering devil cannot see. The portraiture
of soulless human beings is one of the recent experiments in
fictitious literature, and it may have some justification. When the
design is to show the dreadful issue of unmitigated selfishness, a
distinctly moral purpose. If, on the other hand, "art for art's sake"
is the plea, and the writer's skill in painting the vacant ribs of
death is used with a sinister reflection on human nature as a whole,
the approach to Satan's temper marks the degradation of literature.
Christian faith clings to the hope that Divine grace may create a soul
in the ghastly skeleton. The Adversary gloats over the lifeless
picture of his own imagining and affirms that man can never be
animated by the love of God. The problem which the Satan of Job long
ago presented haunts the mind of our age. It is one of those ominous
symptoms that point to times of trial in which the experience of
humanity may resemble the typical affliction and desperate struggle of
the man of Uz.
A grim possibility of truth lies in the taunt of Satan that, if Job's
flesh and bone are touched, he will renounce God openly. The test of
sore disease is more trying than loss of wealth at least. And,
besides, bodily affliction, added to the rest, will carry Job into yet
another region of vital experience. Therefore it is the will of God to
send it. Again Satan is the instrument, and the permission is given,
"Behold, he is in thine hand: only save his life--imperil not his
life." Here, as before, when causes are to be brought into operation
that are obscure and may appear to involve harshness, the Adversary is
the intermediary agent. On the face of the drama a certain formal
deference is paid to the opinion that God cannot inflict pain on those
whom He loves. But for a short time only is the responsibility, so to
speak, of afflicting Job partly removed from the Almighty to Satan. At
this point the Adversary disappears; and henceforth God is
acknowledged to have sent the disease as well as all the other
afflictions to His servant. It is only in a poetic sense that Satan is
represented as wielding natural forces and sowing the seeds of
disease; the writer has no theory and needs no theory of malignant
activity. He knows that "all is of God."
Time has passed sufficient for the realisation by Job of his poverty
and bereavement. The sense of desolation has settled on his soul as
morning after morning dawned, week after week went by, emptied of the
loving voices he used to hear, and the delightful and honourable tasks
that used to engage him. In sympathy with the exhausted mind, the body
has become languid, and the change from sufficiency of the best food
to something like starvation gives the germs of disease an easy hold.
He is stricken with elephantiasis, one of the most terrible forms of
leprosy, a tedious malady attended with intolerable irritation and
loathsome ulcers. The disfigured face, the blackened body, soon reveal
the nature of the infection; and he is forthwith carried out according
to the invariable custom and laid on the heap of refuse, chiefly burnt
litter, which has accumulated near his dwelling. In Arab villages this
_mezbele_ is often a mound of considerable size, where, if any breath
of wind is blowing, the full benefit of its coolness can be enjoyed.
It is the common playground of the children, "and there the outcast,
who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and is not allowed
to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down, begging an alms of
the passers-by, by day, and by night sheltering himself among the
ashes which the heat of the sun has warmed." At the beginning Job was
seen in the full stateliness of Oriental life; now the contrasting
misery of it appears, the abjectness into which it may rapidly fall.
Without proper medical skill or appliances, the houses no way adapted
for a case of disease like Job's, the wealthiest pass like the poorest
into what appears the nadir of existence. Now at length the trial of
faithfulness is in the way of being perfected. If the helplessness,
the torment of disease, the misery of this abject state do not move
his mind from its trust in God, he will indeed be a bulwark of
religion against the atheism of the world.
But in what form does the question of Job's continued fidelity present
itself now to the mind of the writer? Singularly, as a question
regarding his integrity. From the general wreck one life has been
spared, that of Job's wife. To her it appears that the wrath of the
Almighty has been launched against her husband, and all that prevents
him from finding refuge in death from the horrors of lingering disease
is his integrity. If he maintains the pious resignation he showed
under the first afflictions and during the early stages of his malady,
he will have to suffer on. But it will be better to die at once.
"Why," she asks, "dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? Renounce
God, and die." It is a different note from that which runs through the
controversy between Job and his friends. Always on his integrity he
takes his stand; against his right to affirm it they direct their
arguments. They do not insist on the duty of a man under all
circumstances to believe in God and submit to His will. Their sole
concern is to prove that Job has not been sincere and faithful and
deserving of acceptance before God. But his wife knows him to have
been righteous and pious; and that, she thinks, will serve him no
longer. Let him abandon his integrity; renounce God. On two sides the
sufferer is plied. But he does not waver. Between the two he stands, a
man who has integrity and will keep it till he die.