een invented?
We have no such geniuses now as this writer must have been, who by the
pure force of imagination could have created that tableau. Milton had
Job to go to. Simplicity is proof presumptive in favour of the plain
inspiration of such passages: for the plastic mind which could conceive
so just a sketch, would never have rested satisfied, without having
painted and adorned it picturesquely. Such rare flights of fancy are
always made the most of.

One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last give
way, was only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another
fall; albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named among God's
chosen three, "Noah, Daniel, and Job:" and worthy that the Lord should
bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point I wish to touch
on; the great compensation which God gave to Job.

Children can never be regarded as other than individualities: and
notwithstanding Eastern feelings about increase in quantity, its quality
is, after all, the question for the heart. I mean that many children to
be born, is but an inadequate return for many children dying. If a
father loses a well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching
void that he gets another. For this reason of the affections, and
because I suppose that thinkers have sympathized with me in the
difficulty, I wish to say a word about Job's children, lost and found.
It will clear away what is to some minds a moral and affectionate
objection. Now, this is the state of the case.

The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels, and
oxen, and so forth; and ten children. All these are represented to him
by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his
great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents and
purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from
different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses
had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience
follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or
false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the
good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by
the double of every thing once lost--his children remain the same in
number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor
children, really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, and
schemed it; and the singly-