THE PROBLEM IN THE PROLOGUE.

161

seems now too miserable to be desirable, and his wife, agreeing with Satan, thinks he had better "say farewell to God and die." But the man, still blameless and upright, reproves her as one who speaks the language of the ungodly. "What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" And so the prologue ends, showing Job sitting patient in his grief, his three friends sitting silent around, a man who has not sinned with his lips.

3. Now, let us look at the problem as stated in the prologue, and almost solved in the stating. The good man is represented as dear to God, most precious in His sight. God has pleasure in him, knows his worship to be real, his obedience to be sincere and true. Evil may be potent in many, but it has no place in Job; religion may be in others disguised selfishness, in him it is the spontaneous service of the holiest will. While he lives men know that Satan is no god, that the best lives are the lives Jehovah inspires, that the elect of God are the salt of the earth. Now this approval of Jehovah the poet starts from and never forgets; it is to be remembered throughout the whole action of the drama, even where misery seems to touch the faith and quench the reverence of the sufferer. God loves him the more that he has to struggle with an anguish so awfully embittered by a false theology, that he has to bear his sorrow in the face of cruel accusations made. by good men who act as if they were judges deputed of God. Honest men who speak falsely of God must always deeply afflict those who truly know Him, most of all when those they speak to are deep in the sufferings that teach obedience. But even then the sympathy of God is deepest; He most loves the man He

Μ

tries when those who claim to be His people ply the man with theories that are nearer the doctrine of Satan than the comfort and truth of God.

That doctrine is here finely but briefly stated : "Doth Job fear God for nought?" This stands in remarkable, though far from complete, affinity to the theory of the three friends who appear in the drama. It is their notion of Providence, fitly stripped of its ethical elements, realized in the sphere of religion. If the ultimate truth as to the ways of God be as they state it, then Satan is in the right, religion is service for profit, and the most profitable of services. If the man who best obeys God enjoys the amplest prosperity, then the reward God gives is a motive man may well regard, and worship in view of what he gets. Job does not reach the doctrine of God, though he feels after it and catches sight of it as from afar; but the friends expound, though in most reverent, authoritative and splendid speech, the doctrine here placed in antithesis to the Divine. For as formulated by Satan it stands before us naked and unmasked, and here is what it means: "You think Job perfect, upright, sincere, one who serves God spontaneously, out of love and deepest reverence for truth. There you are altogether wrong; were I God he would serve me as zealously; could I reward as handsomely, his worship of me would be as devoted and unwearied. He fears you because you are the Almighty; were I the stronger and able to give larger rewards, he would fear me instead."

The theory of Providence that may be, however roughly, translated into such a doctrine of religion may be fitly described as devilish rather than Divine. In

THE DOCTRINES OF SATAN AND OF GOD. 163

stating his problem then, the author accentuates the antithesis of good and evil, the antagonism of God and Satan. God loves the man, means and determines his good; Satan does not love the man, distrusts, with the low cunning of the bad, his integrity, means and plots his ill. The beliefs represented in these scenes and interviews are of the noblest and truest order. Good is of God, and good only; evil exists by His permission, but comes from other wills than His, is allowed, for to prevent it He will not uncreate His own creation, but never so allowed as to take the universe or any of its units out of His control; even where evil reigns He so rules as to compel it to praise Him. If He permits evil to come to a good man in the only form in which it can come to him-calamity, loss, ruin, disease, the deepest of temporal sorrows aggravated by the cruelest of human wrongs, use of the name of God to create. doubt of the Divine truth, despair of the Divine goodness-He does so in order that He may make it a condition and means of higher good alike to the man and men. Satan has not absolute power over Job, may take away his goods and his health, but not his life, may try but not destroy him. Evil may cause suffering, but cannot compel disobedience; obedience amid suffering is the highest obedience possible. If the good suffer, it is that they may be tried; and the tried are the purified. But there is a higher standpoint still; a good man made better improves all men, raises the moral tone and temper of the world. It is good for Satan to find out that his doctrine is false, that the good man is better and stronger than he thought, that a devil turned almighty were no God, no being fit for a true man's love and worship; and

let us say that even he, discovering so much, will be the better for the discovery. It is well indeed that the devil be disillusioned; if it does not improve him, it will save the world some trouble and much unhappiness. Good men, too, of the narrow and uncharitable order, more pleased to exercise judgment than show mercy, may be made to see by a history like Job's that God's ways are larger than their thoughts. But issues like these evoke new elements in the notion, elements that seem to unite the sorrow of the good to the salvation of the world, saying in a dumb way, like a truth just struggling into articulate speech-"The good man must suffer that he may become the best man possible to him, and what makes him the best man he can be makes him of greatest service to humanity, one who helps to redeem it from ignorance and sin to truth and God."

If now in the light of these discussions we attempt to formulate the problem of the prologue, which is the problem of Job, we shall find it run somewhat thus: Grant that in a world which a righteous God governs good men suffer much, the best men most of all, may not this suffering be due to depraved wills, which, while depraved, are yet, as wills, free and responsible, able to act in opposition or disobedience to God; and may they not be allowed, in the Divine righteousness, so to act in order that the good man may be made. better, more fitted to do the beneficent will of God, to lessen the error, misery, and sin of the world, to create the conditions of greater holiness on earth and happiness in heaven? The problem so stated carries with it a suggestion of the conclusion, reposes on a richer and more gracious conception of God, implies

THE PROBLEM STATED.

165

higher and wider ideas of Providence, man, and sin than had hitherto reigned in Israel. But even as so

construed it has only helped us to approach the drama from the standpoint of the author. We are now in a position to read and interpret it with his problem, and the critical moment, with all its conflicts and issues, when it was conceived and formulated, standing clear before our minds.

2. THE DRAMA.

It extends from chap. iii. to chap. xlii. 6, out of which we may omit the speeches of Elihu, chaps. xxxii. to xxxvii. Chaps. iii. to xxxi. are occupied with the dialogue or speeches of Job and his three friends. Chaps. xxxviii. to xli., contain the answer of God to Job's repeated demand that He show and declare Himself. Chap. xlii. 1-6, explains the effect of the Divine interposition on Job, which ends the drama, the verses that follow forming the epilogue. In the speeches of the friends the ancient or traditional view of Providence is expounded. In the speeches of Job its utter inapplicability to his case and consequent unveracity is affirmed, while the conditions necessary to a truer doctrine are made manifest. In the response or speech of God, the relation of God to His works and His works to God is declared in order that Job may be forced to interpret his own particular case through the universal ways of Providence, and the conclusion shows us Job humbled and penitent by the speech and vision of God.

In the dialogue or dialectical speeches the poet does not mean us to regard the friends as altogether wrong