one grim face relaxes. The man has made his last attempt. He is now
like a pressed animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why is the
author so rigorous in his picture of the friends? It is made to all
appearance quite inhuman, and cannot be so without design. By means of
this inhumanity Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from
whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet knows that not in man
is the help of the soul, that not in the sympathy of man, not in the
remembrance of man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing
tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence. From the
human judgment Job turned to God at first. From the Divine silence he
had well-nigh turned back to human pity. He finds what other sufferers
have found, that the silence is allowed to extend beneath him, between
him and his fellows, in order that he may finally and effectually
direct his hope and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to
Him from whom all came, in whose will and love alone the spirit of man
has its life, its hope. Yes, God is bringing home to Himself the man
whom He has approved for approval. The way is strange to the feet of
Job, as it often is to the weary half-blinded pilgrim. But it is the
one way to fulfil and transcend our longings. Neither corporate
sympathy nor posthumous immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul
instead of the true firm judgment of its life that waits within the
knowledge of God. If He is not for us, the epitaphs and memoirs of
time avail nothing. Man's place is in the eternal order or he does
indeed cry out of wrong and is not heard.
From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more
enduring, more public than the book--will this provide what is still
unfound?
"_Oh that now my words were written,
That they were inscribed in a book;
That with an iron stylus and with lead
They were graven in the rock for ever._"
As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a
parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and
preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes
to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in
the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the Emeer
of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accused by
men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befel him
unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there
in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding generations to read.
It would stand there till the ages had run their course. Kings represent
on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use
the same means of continuing his protest and his name.
Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good,--the story spread
northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost in Sheol? His protest is
against forms of death; his claim is for life. There is no life in the
sculptured stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on a
crumbling point, there must be yet one spring for safety and refuge.
Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on
tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those
anxious legacies of a world of men too well aware of man's
forgetfulness? "Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the
conqueror called Sargon, "destroys my constructions, pulls down the
walls which I have raised--may Asshur, Ninêb, Ramân and the great gods
who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit
bound at the feet of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner
was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and
knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of
broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the
perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a
Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave
hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be
fulfilled. Had he been exiled from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard
the voice that told of immortality and redemption.
* * * * *
We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now
seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this
little life. What has he seen?
First and always, Eloah. That name and what it represents do not fail
him. He has had terrible experiences, and all of them must have been
appointed by Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all
difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes with power
and wisdom. The power bewilders--the wisdom plans inconceivable
things--but beyond there is righteousness.
Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave,
through the gloom of the under-world. A man going down thither,--his
body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison
of shadows,--may not remain there. God is almighty--He has the key of
Sheol--a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the
under-world life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker,
must have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean?
Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life
abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The
wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal
history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who
guards the right of a man. Men scorn Job; but with tears he has prayed
to Eloah to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain.
A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this
point thought mounts upward. Eloah for ever faithful--Eloah able to
open the gate of Sheol--not angry for ever--Eloah keeping the tablet
of every life, indifferent to no point of right,--these are the steps
of progress in Job's thought and hope. And these are the gain of his
trial. In his prosperous time none of these things had been before
him. He had known the joy of God but not the secret, the peace not the
righteousness. Yet he is not aware how much he has gained. He is
coming half unconsciously to an inheritance prepared for him in
wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he trusts. A man needs for life
more than he himself can either sow or ripen.
And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot
tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the
desert. He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to
live.
"'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."
Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken
ejaculation, panting thought.
"_But I know it: my Redeemer liveth;
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And after my skin they destroy, even this,
And without my flesh shall I see Eloah,
Whom I shall see_ FOR ME,
_And mine eyes shall behold and not the stranger--
My reins are consumed in my bosom_."
The Goël or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to
arise, a living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and
dishonour. On the dust that covers death He will arise when the day
comes. The diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done
their work. In the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but
the spirit that has borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing
stranger shall be the vindication, but for Job himself. All that has
been so confounding shall be explained, for the Most High is the Goël;
He has the care of His suffering servant in His own hand and will not
fail to issue it in clear satisfying judgment.
For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had
sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to
be assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way,
and these have successively to be passed.
First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble
Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is
humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human
affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this
earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve
about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far
transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel
hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of
our little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the
small affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are
"moments in the being of the eternal silence." Can it matter to the
universe moving through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and
phases of creaturely life arising and running their course--can it
matter that one race should pass away having simply contributed its
struggle and desire to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of
a wise and good Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to
subserve. How do we know it is not ours?
This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion,
even of the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and
eternities; evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How
can we assure our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity
shall have fulfilment?
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To
enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or
I must make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are
of eternal importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very
narrow circle. He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have
been keen, but they are brief and limited. He has been held down,
scorned, afflicted. But after all why should God care? To adjust the
affairs of nations, to bring out the world's history in righteousness
may be God's concern. But suppose a man lives bravely, bears
patiently, preserves his life from evil, though he have to suffer and
even go down in darkness, may not the end of the righteous King be
gained by the weight his life casts into the scale of faith and
virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his energy
and look for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand anything
more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question whether the
disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms, clashing of
wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient? Can
we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it
concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds?
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How
is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and
consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human
story and be gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant"
of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the
faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite
the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, "I am the
resurrection and the life," even to Christians the vision is often
clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the
author of Job pass this barrier--in thought, or in hope? Are we
content to pass it only in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very
existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire
for it, the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to
us by others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man--the full
right, whatever that may involve.
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made
us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till
an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human
life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth
all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the
mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more
it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme
of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for
evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save
in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass
our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in
our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him;
it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect
holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater
than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that
gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in
thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us
very little if it has not banished the notion that the _small_ means
the _unimportant_, that minute things are of no moment in evolution.
For many years past science has been constructing for us the great
argument of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the
small details into the vast evolutionary design. The microscopist, the
biologist, the chemist, the astronomer, each and all are engaged in
building up this argument, forcing the confession that the universe is
one of inconceivably small things ordered throughout by law. Finish
and care would seem to be given everywhere to minutiæ as though, that
being done, the great would certainly evolve. Further, science even
when dealing with material things emphasises the importance of mind.
The truthfulness of nature at any point in the physical range is a
truthfulness of the Overnature to the mind of man, a correlation
established between physical and spiritual existence. Wherever order
and care are brought into view there is an exaltation of the human
reason which perceives and relates. All would be thrown into confusion
if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not extend to the mind
itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were not included in
the order of the universe. For the psychological student this is
established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in
the obscure phenomena of consciousness, sub-consciousness and habit.
Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have laws of
diffusion and combination, shall act according to those laws,
unvaryingly affecting vegetable and animal life? Unless those laws
wrought in constancy or equity at every moment all would be confusion.
Is it of importance that the bird, using its wings, shall be able to
soar into the atmosphere; that the wings adapted for flight shall find
an atmosphere in which their exercise produces movement? Here again is
an equity which enters into the very constitution of the cosmos, which
must be a form of the one supreme law of the cosmos. Once more, is it
of importance that the thinker shall find sequences and relations,
when once established, a sound basis for prediction and discovery,
that he shall be able to trust himself on lines of research and feel
certain that, at every point, for the instrument of inquiry there is
answering verity? Without this correspondence man would have no real
place in evolution, he would flutter an aimless unrelated
sensitiveness through a storm of physical incidents.
Advance to the most important facts of mind, the moral ideas which
enter into every department of thought, the inductions through which
we find our place in another range than the physical. Does the
fidelity already traced now cease? Is man at this point beyond the law
of faithfulness, beyond the invariable correlation of environment with
faculty? Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose but
enter, where, however, the cosmos fails him, the beating wing cannot
rise, the inquiring mind reaches no verity, and the consciousness does
flutter an inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A man has
it in his nature to seek justice. Peace for him there is none unless
he does what is right and can believe that right will be done. With
this high conviction in his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of
Job, by false men, overthrown by calamity, covered with harsh
judgment. Death approaches and he has to pass away from a world that
seems to have failed him. Shall he never see his right nor God's
righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as a man of good will
and high resolve? Has he been true to a cosmos which after all is
treacherous, to a rule of virtue which has no authority and no issue?
He believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his life,
small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading law of equity. Is
that his dream? Then any moment the whole system of the universe may
collapse like a bubble blown upon a marsh.
* * * * *
Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is
not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a
joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim?
But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in
dealing with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It
matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this
claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made
clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God
involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his
heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He must
live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it
all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast
doubt on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the
believer would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish
things men say, and we could not look for resurrection because our
fellow-creatures misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has
caused the perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the
dreadful disease; it is God who by many strange things in human
experience seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in
disease, God in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in
the sea and His path in the mighty waters--from this God, Job cries in
hope, in moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally
righteous One, Author of nature and Friend of man.
This life may terminate before the full revelation of right is made; it
may leave the good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the
believer may go down in shame and the atheist have the last word.
Therefore a future life with judgment in full must vindicate our
Creator; and every personality involved in the problems of time must go
forward to the opening of the seals and the fulfilment of the things
that are written in the volumes of God. This evolution being for the
earlier stage and discipline of life, it works out nothing, completes
nothing. What it does is to furnish the awaking spirit with material of
thought, opportunity for endeavour, the elements of life; with trial,
temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one who lives to any purpose or
thinks with any sincerity can miss in the course of his life one hour at
least in which he shares the tragical contest and adds the cry of his
own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of ages that are gone,
straining to see the Goël who undertakes for every servant of God.
"_I know it: my Redeemer liveth,
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And without my flesh I shall see Eloah._"
By slow cycles of change the vast scheme of Divine providence draws
toward a glorious consummation. The believer waits for it, seeing One
who has gone before him and will come after him, the Alpha and Omega of
all life. The fulness of time will at length arrive, the time
foreordained by God, foretold by Christ, when the throne shall be set,
the judgment shall be given, and the æons of manifestation shall begin.
And who in that day shall be the sons of God? Which of us can say that
he knows himself worthy of immortality? How imperfect is the noblest
human life, how often it falls away into the folly and evil of the
world! We need one to deliver us from the imperfection that gives to
all we are and do the character of evanescence, to set us free from
our entanglements and bring us into liberty. We are poor erring
creatures. Only if there is a Divine purpose of grace that extends to
the unworthy and the frail, only if there is redemption for the
earthly, only if a Divine Saviour has undertaken to justify our
existence as moral beings, can we look hopefully into the future. Job
looked for a Redeemer who would bring to light a righteousness he
claimed to possess. But our Redeemer must be able to awaken in us the
love of a righteousness we alone could never see and to clothe us in a
holiness we could never of ourselves attain. The problem of justice in
human life will be solved because our race has a Redeemer whose
judgment when it falls will fall in tenderest mercy, who bore our
injustice for our sakes and will vindicate for us that transcendent
righteousness which is for ever one with love.
XVII.
_IGNORANT CRITICISM OF LIFE._
ZOPHAR SPEAKS. CHAP. xx.
The great saying that quickens our faith and carries thought into a
higher world conveyed no Divine meaning to the man from Naamah. The
author must have intended to pour scorn on the hide-bound intelligence
and rude bigotry of Zophar, to show him dwarfed by self-content and
zeal not according to knowledge. When Job affirmed his sublime
confidence in a Divine Vindicator, Zophar caught only at the idea of
an avenger. What is this notion of a Goël on whose support a condemned
man dares to count, who shall do judgment for him? And his resentment
was increased by the closing words of Job:--
"_If ye say, How may we pursue him?
And that the cause of the matter is in me--
Then beware of the sword!
For hot are the punishments of the sword,
That ye may know there is judgment._"
If they went on declaring that the root of the matter, that is, the
real cause of his affliction, was to be found in his own bad life, let
them beware the avenging sword of Divine justice. He certainly
implies that his Goël may become their enemy if they continue to
persecute him with false charges. To Zophar the suggestion is
intolerable. With no little irritation and anger he begins:--
"_For this do my thoughts answer me,
And by reason of this there is haste in me--
I hear the reproof which puts me to shame,
And the spirit of my understanding gives me answer._"
He speaks more hotly than in his first address, because his pride is
touched, and that prevents him from distinguishing between a warning
and a personal threat. To a Zophar every man is blind who does not see
as he sees, and every word offensive that bids him take pause.
Believers of his kind have always liked to appropriate the defence of
truth, and they have seldom done anything but harm. Conceive the
dulness and obstinacy of one who heard an inspired utterance
altogether new to human thought, and straightway turned in resentment
on the man from whom it came. He is an example of the bigot in the
presence of genius, a little uncomfortable, a good deal affronted,
very sure that he knows the mind of God, and very determined to have
the last word. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees of our Lord's time,
most religious persons and zealous for what they considered sound
doctrine. His light shone in darkness, and their darkness comprehended
it not; they did Him to death with an accusation of impiety and
blasphemy--"He made Himself the Son of God," they said.