life in league with the very stones of the field, that can laugh at destruction and dearth; a life of substance increasing in the land, that there may be no lack of relief for the distressed and hospitality to force upon the stranger: for what use is there in wealth but this? While the wicked are snatched away before their time, their own life is to reach its end with the stateliness of a shock of corn carried in in its season. Only with this last hope can they stave off the one thing inevitable, dark horizon bounding the light of their life—the thought of Sheol, into which every man must at last go down to return no more, a land of darkness without order, where in secret isolation he must abide, half consciously wasting from flesh to shade, stranger to all that has succeeded to his place, enduring to himself what pain there may be of flesh, what mourning of spirit.

Life in this land of Uz is a life of poetry; but it is poetry without books. Not a hint is to be found of named poets or quoted works. Job speaks of writing in a book in the same breath with writing on the rock; for inscriptions, or the indictment of an adversary, writing may be appropriate, but it never occurs to the speakers in this story to associate it with poetry. The floating literature of oral speech, in which the foundations of the world's poetry were gradually fashioned, is here seen in full sway. Moreover the people of our story are in close touch with the fountain of poetry-external nature. Violent things of nature have been within their experience: lightning

bolts that destroy Job's whole wealth of sheep in a moment, winds from the wilderness laying low a hall of feasting, earthquakes, monsters of sea and land, to that remotest monster on the horizon of the imagination — the swift, whirling serpent that whirls round the earth and at times invades it, or darkens the sun in eclipse till pierced by the might of God himself. And the things of everyday nature make imagery for the poem: the rush, the flag, the spider leaning on his web, the flower cut down, the fallen tree, the landslip, the water wearing the stones. Nay, so saturated are the speakers with nature sympathies that they seem to pass beyond imagery; it is more than a fashion of speech when Job says that his steps are washed with butter and the rock pours him out rivers of oil, that his root is spread out on the waters, that God in his anger lifteth him up to the wind, and causeth him to ride upon it, and dissolveth him in the storm.

Above all, the life of the patriarchs is a life filled with God. Though the language of the poem is Hebrew, and the God worshipped is the God of the Hebrews revealed under his various names, yet we have not here the Hebrew religion as we know it in the rest of the Old Testament. Whatever the land of Uz' may be in geography, in essence its people are the worshippers of the invisible God from whom originally Abraham went forth, first of missionaries, charged with the work of founding a people who should uphold the worship of the unseen God against

nations of idolators, until in his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed. Meanwhile, the patriarchs have maintained the worship of the invisible God at home. Throughout the whole work there is no mention of idols; the only false religion the most daring impiety can conceive is to offer homage to the fairest works of the Creator in the lights of heaven. Like Melchisedek, who gave his blessing to Abraham while the chosen people was yet unborn, like Balaam testifying from without Jehovah's care over his own, so these patriarchs worship Israel's God outside the ranks of Israel; if Abraham was the Friend of God, Job is before the hosts of heaven pronounced God's Servant on earth. Here then we see the religion of the Bible as a religion without a Law, without a Temple, with no national ritual, with nothing in which the modern mind can recognise a Church. The only revelation these patriarchs know is the vision vouchsafed to the individual worshipper; or rarely, at long intervals, "an angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand" raised up to tell the meaning of some strange experience. Their creed, as rehearsed in heaven, is to fear God and eschew evil. Their sense of God is as deep seated as their very consciousness: when Job's wife, in momentary distraction, bids him renounce God, it comes as an impulse to suicide. Their elementary feelings are fresh, and the religious sense in them is overpowering awe. It makes their whole life one of hallowed restraint: the besetting God numbers their

steps, they "make a covenant with their eyes," they dread lest they may for a moment walk with vanity; with more than the sensitive conscience of a Greek chorus they will not curse an enemy, lest they may be asking for his life. Divine providence they conceive as an enlargement of their own ideals, redressing the wrongs of the poor, taking the crafty in their counsels; mercy too mingles with judgment, and he who maketh sore bindeth up. Sickness, earthquake, and every human event is fraught with meaning. The Divine presence fills the universe, from the council of the holy ones on high down to the shades shivering beneath the seas; while in the nature that comes between it is the Divine hand alone that stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. And at times there is a more awful sense of his

nearness:

Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not:

He passeth on also, but I perceive him not.

For the Tempest is the Presence passing through the startled earth, shrouded in the clouds with which he closeth in the face of his throne and the thick darkness cast under his feet. The craving to enter into that Presence is for Job religious ecstasy.

In such an atmosphere as this the story is to move, which shall first exhibit human suffering that is unique,

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and then concentrate upon this suffering light from successive points of view.

The Prologue introduces us to the Court of Heaven, and presents the Lord surrounded by his council of holy ones. Two days of the Lord are represented, days of ceremony and ritual observance, - so it would seem from the recurrence of formal phrases. The sons of God pass in review before the throne, and are questioned as to the provinces of the universe which they have in charge. Among them comes the Satan.' Most unfortunately, the omission in English versions of the article has led the popular mind astray on this incident. Unquestionably in this passage, and the precisely similar passage in Zechariah, the word is the title of an office, not the name of an individual. The margin of the Revised Version gives 'the Adversary'; the word expresses that he is the adversary of the saints in the same way that an inspector or examiner may be considered as adverse to those he inspects or examines. It is easy to understand how such a title should pass over to form the name of an individual - the Adversary of God, Satan the prince of Evil. In the present case he describes his office as the inspection of earth: "going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it": he uses just the language applied in Zechariah to the ministering Spirits who carry out the divine decrees in our world. He appears on the scene among the sons of God; and there is nothing to distinguish his