And we Englishmen, who remember how, and with what
great results, he found a deeper meaning in words heard
in a Roman slave market ', though we would approach the
book on which he built up his great work in a profoundly
different attitude, shall not be surprised to find great thoughts
and noble lessons side by side with a mode of interpretation,
once universal, that seems to us to belong to a world of
thought that has passed away ; passed away, never, we may
feel sure, to return in the form which once it wore. I have
spoken to you of one who lived between the early and the
middle ages of the Church. Let us pass on, at a single step,
to the very last century. To Bishop Warburton* the book
is a historical parable of a very different kind. Job is the
Jewish people, released from their Captivity, and for the
first time living the ordinary life of other nations. Up to
the Captivity, he supposes them, indeed the theory lies at the

' See note at the end of this Lecture, p. I S3.
^ For a passage in which Gregory somewhat modifies this view, see
note to p. 97.
^ See the story as told in Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury , or Bright's
Eai-ly English Church.
