hich, however large the exceptions, tends to
connect goodness and prosperity; or why obvious calamities, obviously
undeserved, should remain any more unremoved. Perhaps, too, a deeper
lesson still lies below his restoration--something perhaps of this kind.
Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the name
by which we designate that state in which life is to our own selves
pleasant and delightful, as long as they are sought or prized as things
essential, so far have a tendency to disennoble our nature, and are a
sign that we are still in servitude to selfishness. Only when they lie
outside us, as ornaments merely to be worn or laid aside as God
pleases--only then may such things be possessed with impunity. Job's
heart in early times had clung to them more than he knew, but now he was
purged clean, and they were restored because he had ceased to need them.

Such in outline is this wonderful poem. With the material of which it is
woven we have not here been concerned, although it is so rich and
pregnant that we might with little difficulty construct out of it a
complete picture of the world as then it was: its life, knowledge, arts,
habits, superstitions, hopes, and fears. The subject is the problem of
all mankind, and the composition embraces no less wide a range. But what
we are here most interested upon is the epoch which it marks in the
progress of mankind, as the first recorded struggle of a new experience
with an established orthodox belief. True, for hundreds of years,
perhaps for a thousand, the superstition against which it was directed
continued. When Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we
saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day.
But even those who retained their imperfect belief had received into
their canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, so
irresistible was the majesty of truth.

In days like these, when we hear so much of progress, it is worth while
to ask ourselves what advances we have made further in the same
direction? and once more, at the risk of some repetition, let us look at
the position in which this book leaves us. It had been assumed that man,
if he lived a just and upright life, had a right to expect to be happy.
Happiness, 'his being's end and aim,' was his legitimate and covenanted
reward. If God therefore was just, such a man would be happy; and
inasmuch as God was just, the man who was not happy had not deserv