e; the
anterior probability that human life in patriarchal times should have
been very much prolonged, was obvious; from consideration of--1, the
benevolence of God; 2, the inexperience of man; and 3, the claim so
young a world would hold upon each of its inhabitants: whilst Holy Writ
itself has prepared an answer to the probable objection, that the years
were lunar years, or months; by recording that Arphaxad and Salah and
Eber and Peleg and Reu and Serug and Nahor, descendants of Shem, each
had children at the average age of two-and-thirty, and yet the lives of
all varied in duration from a hundred and fifty years to five hundred.
And many similar credibilities might be alluded to: what shall I say of
Abraham's sacrifice, of Moses and the burning bush, of Jonah also, and
Elisha, and of the prophets? for the time would fail me to tell how
probable and simple in each instance is its deep and marvellous history.
There is food for philosophic thought in every page of ancient Jewish
Scripture scarcely less than in those of primitive Christianity: here,
after our fashion, we have only touched upon a sample.

The opening scene to the book of Job has vexed the faith of many very
needlessly: to my mind, nothing was more likely to have literally and
really happened. It is one of those few places where we get an insight
into what is going on elsewhere: it is a lifting off the curtain of
eternity for once, revealing the magnificent simplicities constantly
presented in the halls of heaven. And I am moved to speak about it
here, because I think a plain statement of its sublime probabilities
will be acceptable to many: especially if they have been harassed by the
doubts of learned men respecting the authorship of that rare history. It
signifies nothing who recorded the circumstances and conversations, so
long as they were true, and really happened: given power, opportunity,
and honesty, a life of Dr. Johnson would be just as fair in fact, if
written by Smollett, as by Boswell, or himself. Whether then Job, the
wealthy prince of Uz, or Abraham, or Moses, or Elisha, or Eliphaz, or
whoever else, have placed the words on record, there they stand, true;
and the whole book in all its points was anteriorly likely to have been
decreed a component part of revelation. Without it, there would have
been wanting some evidence of a godly worship among men through the long
and dreary interval of several hundred years: there would never have
been g