yoUs final position. 267



misery, and as closing man's short and random destiny by Lecture
a death which leaves no hope of redress or change. No- ^•
where in the whole range of literature have such charges '^
against the government or misgovernment of the world
been urged in a more passionate or more unflinching in-
dictment. It is no wonder that Christian commentators
have refused to accept his words — verging on, to say the
least, or if taken by themselves, passing the verge of actual
impiety — in the sense, or any approach to the sense, in
which they were plainly uttered ; or that Jewish sages have
more frankly written on them such comments as, ' here dust
should have filled the mouth of Job,' ' here Job denied
the resurrection of the dead,' 'here Job commences to
blaspheme.'

Yet, running like a golden thread through all this vehement
and passionate language, we have seen a vein of thought
which has given this half rebellious questioner a claim upon
our sjfmpathy; and which even had the book ended here,
would have prevented thoughtful men from joining his oppo-
nents, and from abandoning the solitary and tortured sufferer
to the reproaches of his friends, and to the condemnation of the
future readers of this great controversy. His soul, ripened
by the hot blast of cruel affliction, is being prepared for a
step, a long step forward, in that progressive revelation of
Himself to man, given to us by God in Holy Scripture
He sickens at the sight and sense of wrong, and clinging
to the conviction that, in spite of all appearances, God must
be just — juster than his friends, or his own creed, or his own
experience have declared Him to be — he struggles to be true
at once to himself, to his conscience, and his God. He yearns
for a clearer sight of, and a nearer approach to, the Divine



268 The Book of Job. Chapter XXXI.
