ad before known that he was innocent; now he feels the
strength which lies in innocence, as if God were beginning to reveal
Himself within him, to prepare the way for the after outward
manifestation of Himself.

The friends, as before, repeat one another with but little difference;
the sameness being of course intentional, as showing that they were not
speaking for themselves, but as representatives of a prevailing opinion.
Eliphaz, again, gives the note which the others follow. Hear this
Calvinist of the old world: 'Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and thine
own lips testify against thee. What is man that he should be clean, and
he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, he
putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his
sight; how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh
iniquity like water.' Strange, that after all these thousands of years
we should still persist in this degrading confession, as a thing which
it is impious to deny and impious to attempt to render otherwise, when
Scripture itself, in language so emphatic, declares that it is a lie.
Job _is_ innocent, perfect, righteous. God Himself bears witness to it.
It is Job who is found at last to have spoken truth, and the friends to
have sinned in denying it. And he holds fast by his innocency, and with
a generous confidence thrusts away the misgivings which had begun to
cling to him. Among his complainings he had exclaimed, that God was
remembering upon him the sins of his youth--not denying them; knowing
well that he, like others, had gone astray before he had learnt to
control himself, but feeling that at least in an earthly father it is
unjust to visit the faults of childhood on the matured man; feeling that
he had long, long shaken them off from him, and they did not even impair
the probity of his after-life. But now these doubts, too, pass away in
the brave certainty that God is not less just than man. As the
denouncings grow louder and darker, he appeals from his narrow judges to
the Supreme Tribunal--calls on God to hear him and to try his cause--and
then, in the strength of this appeal the mist rises from before his
eyes. His sickness is mortal: he has no hope in life, and death is near;
but the intense feeling that justice must and will be done, holds to him
closer and closer. God may appear on earth for him; or if that be too
bold a hope, and death finds him as he is--what is death then? God will