world weeps with thy woe"; but Job says-" Evil is, but ought not to be. Sorrow is a discipline meant to bring thee, and through thee thy kind, out of it." The faith that is in Buddha paralyzes, turns its very virtue into vice, its benevolence into a selfish search after the best way out of troubled life into quiet Nirvana; but the faith in the moral Deity of Job invigorates, inspires man with moral purpose, penetrates him with humanest strength, helps him to feel that life is all the nobler for being a battle against evil, all the worthier to be lived, that its Maker has designed that it at once educate and redeem through suffering. By the pessimism of Buddha evil is deified and man sacrificed to the deity, but by this Book of Job moral good is made the sovereign of the universe, and the dark background of its evil is brightened by the glorious arch of promise which spans it. That radiant arch has never since faded from the eye of man, and as his successive generations have continued to march towards it it has brightened and expanded, cheering them with the hope that He who has woven by His own light out of our dark those hues of brilliant promise, will yet change our passing night into His own eternal day. 2. But these discussions have brought us to the threshold of another; which, unhappily, we can barely glance at. The problem and solution of Job mark a new stage in the development of Israel, new elements and ideas enter into his mind, his faith essays a higher flight, his hopes take a wider range. This movement is specially seen in the place given in prophecy to the person and work of the Perfect Man, and in the belief in the universal reign and kingdom God has determined to establish through Him among men. I do not intend JOB AND THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 187 to argue, with certain modern scholars, that Job is the original or prototype of the suffering Servant of God in Deutero-Isaiah,-on the contrary, the critical and exegetical difficulties in the way of such a notion seem to me insuperable. But this I do mean to say, the Deutero-Isaiah carries forward the movement which begins with Job, expounds his problems, develops his truths, incarnates his idea in an ideal person who does in suffering and unto sacrifice the will of God, and so works out the redemption of His people. The solution of Job's problem becomes here the solution of man's, the Servant of Jehovah, His Elect in whom His soul delighteth, is "the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He is to be "despised and rejected of men," esteemed "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted," but He is not to fail or be discouraged till He has set His law in the earth and the isles wait for His word. Although He should have done no violence, nor had any deceit in His mouth, yet Jehovah was to be pleased to bruise Him, His soul was to be an offering for sin. By His knowledge was the righteous One, Jehovah's Servant, to make the many righteous, and of their iniquities He was to take up the load. In all this we have the fundamental truth of Job as to the function and work of suffering accepted and enlarged, made the bearer of a diviner promise and a still more splendid hope. The righteous Servant of God is made so perfect through sufferings as to become the Captain of our salvation. He comes so gently as not to break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax, yet comes with the Spirit of Jehovah upon Him, "anointed to preach good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to comfort all that But while the disciplinary and redemptive action of the suffering that becomes in the Perfect Man the bearing the sins of the many, is thus recognised and declared, the corresponding truth as to the aim and scope of the Divine working is no less clearly developed and proclaimed. The truth does not in the Deutero-Isaiah, as in Job, come through the vision of the creative energies in nature, but in what is a form still higher and more agreeable to the idea and mission of the righteous Servant-the vision of the remedial and recreative action of God in man and history. There are no such splendid pictures anywhere of the golden age, of the kingdom of righteousness which is to be the realized beatitude or supreme good of man. Violence is no more to be heard, wasting and destruction are to be unknown, man is to dwell in a city whose walls are Salvation and whose gates are Praise. The sun is no more to go down, nor the moon to withdraw herself; Jehovah is to be our everlasting light, and our God our glory. And then bringing the truths of the perfect sufferer and the reign of God into relations that had been dimly felt after rather than found in Job, the prophet sees that it is through the righteous Servant that the kingdom is to come, that "Jehovah shall cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." "2 And so out of the darkest mystery of Providence, sent to trouble that it might teach His people, came the new idea of God and the new conception of suffering that blossomed into the truest and 1 Isaiah xlii. 1-3; liii. 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11; lxi. 1-2. Isaiah lx. 18-22; lxi. 1-3, 11. JOB, ISAIAH, CHRIST. 189 sublimest of the prophecies, came, too, the last and highest phase of the preparation in Israel for the advent of the King. After these prophecies much was to be said, but no higher truth was to be spoken till "the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father" came forth "to declare Him." III. MAN AND GOD. "The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms."-Deut. xxxiii. 27. THESE words, while almost the last, are also among the most memorable in the Psalm so fitly described as "the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before his death." They express one of the sublimest truths of faith-a truth Moses himself had realized in the court of Pharaoh, on the peak of Sinai, in the hurry of flight, and in the calm and glory of the Divine face. He had finished his work, the law was given, the wilderness traversed, the goodly land in sight, and now he had but to be led by the hand of God to the top of Nebo, and thence into great eternity. The voice he knew and loved so well had said to him, “Get thee up into Mount Nebo, and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people." That was a very sweet and soothing command to the weary soul of the old His had been a long day; and now, travel-sick, toil-worn, in its mellow autumn twilight, he was to man. set "As sets the morning star, which goes not down |