pirit cries out involuntarily, as if thrust through by
an angry sword, "How can these things be?" And this bitter cry, wrung
from the suffering good man, is theme for the drama of Job; and in this
stands solitary as it stands sublime.

A first quality of greatness in a literary production is, that it deals
with some universal truth. "How can good men suffer if God be good?"
How pressingly important and importunate this question is! "Does
goodness pay?" is the commercial putting of the question. Such being
the meaning of Job, how the poem thrusts home, and how modern and
personal is it become! When conceived as the drama of a good man's
life, every phase of the discussion becomes apparently just. Nothing
is omitted and nothing is out of place.

Job sits in the sunshine of prosperity. Not a cloud drifts across his
sky, when, without word of warning, a night of storm crushes along his
world, destroys herds and servants, reduces his habitations to ruins,
slays his children, leaves himself in poverty, a mourner at the funeral
of all he loved. Then his world begins to wonder at him; then distrust
him, as if he were evil; his glory is eclipsed, as it would seem,
forever; and, as if not content at the havoc of the man's hopes and
prosperity and joy, misfortune follows him with disease; grievous
plagues seize him, making days and nights one sleepless pain; and his
wife, who should have been his stay and help, as most women are,
became, instead of a solace and blessing, querulous, crying, like a
virago, shrilly, "Curse God, and die!" Job opens with tragedy; Lear,
and Julius Caesar, and Othello, and Macbeth, and Hamlet, close with
tragedy. Job's ruin is swift and immediate. He has had no time to
prepare him for the shock. He was listening for laughter, and he hears
a sob. You can fairly hear the ruin, crashing like falling towers
about this Prince of Uz; and you must hear, it you are not stone-deaf,
the pant of the bleeding runner, who half runs, half falls into his
master's presence, gasping, "Job, Prince Job, my master--ruin! ruin!
ruin! Thy--herds--and thy servants--ruin--alas! Thy herds are
taken--and thy servants slain--and--I--only--I--am--left;" and ere his
story is panted forth, another comes, weary with the race, and gasps,
"Thy flocks--are slain--with fire--from heaven--and thy servants--with
them--and I--alone--am--am--" when another breathless runner breaks
that story off, crying, "Thy sons--and daughte