of
silence on the lips. Hear Job wail:

"Now my days are swifter than a post:
They are passed away as the swift ships,
As the eagle that swoopeth on the prey,
My soul is weary of my life."

"Thou shalt forget thy misery:
Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away."

"He poureth contempt upon princes,
And looseth the belt of the strong;
He discovereth deep things out of darkness,
And bringeth out to light the shadow of death."

This "bringeth out to light the shadow of death" appears to me as bold
and transfiguring a figure as is to be found in literature. It is
majesty itself.

"They grope in the dark without light,
And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man."

"Wilt thou harass a driven leaf,
And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?"

"I am like a garment that is moth-eaten."

"He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down;
He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not."

"He breaketh me with breach upon breach;
He runneth upon me like a giant."

"Aforetime I was as a tabret."

"His strength shall be hunger-bitten,
And calamity shall be ready at his side."

"My purposes are broken off."

"His remembrance shall perish from the earth,
And he shall have no name in the street."

"Ye break me in pieces with words."

How vigorously descriptive this is of what many a man has endured from
hammering speech of violent men!

"They waited for me as for the rain."

"He overturneth the mountains by the roots."

"Out of the north cometh golden splendor."

"God hath upon him terrible majesty."

"Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity;
And array thyself with honor and majesty."

Has not this putting all the strength and beauty of a Shakespearean
couplet? Shakespeare uses such figures as this often, and in them he
is his greater self. His is the splendor of imagination and clearness
of vision of a prince of poets. Time hastes. This task is decoying.
To cease is a hardship; for "Job" lends itself with such wealth to
these nobler passages as to urge on our quest. Whole chapters are
poems, rich as if carven on blocks of solid gold. They blaze with
splendor. But the drama bears on its way like an invading army, and
will not wait.

Disaster has overtaken a good man with its utter demolition; but, as
has been shown, the prologue of the drama settles the paternity of the
disaster. Evils come, but not necessar