ld not live alway; for my days are vanity. To him that is
afflicted, pity should be shewn from his friend." And to this pitiful
appeal for considerate judgment, and for a word or look of compassion,
another friend finds answer, with cruelty like the touch of winter on
an ill-clad child: "If thou wouldst seek unto God betimes, and make thy
supplication to the Almighty; if thou wert pure and upright; surely now
he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness
prosperous." What winter wind is bitter and biting as these words?

Job's friends now are his worst calamities. They are thrusting into
his naked and diseased flesh a cruel spear, and into his heart a sword.
Are these men clad in steel that they are so impervious to pity? And
yet, if we pause to consider, this dramatist has not spoken rashly nor
unnaturally; for we can recall that often, often, when the window-panes
of a life are smoky with the breath of suffering, just such criticisms
as these are offered voluminously. We are hard folks. There seems a
strain of cruelty in our blood which sometimes gloats over suffering as
at a carnival. Were these men vultures, that wait to watch with joy a
wounded soldier die? Of what is our nature builded, that we are cruel
as the unreasoning beasts? These harsh friends are voices from our own
pitiless hearts, and ought to make us afraid.

There are three friends in number, but there is one voice and two
echoes,--three men debating with one moaning sufferer, and each saying
the same thing. Had only one of them been present, all the three said
had been spoken. These men were poor in ideas; for amongst the three
is only one thought, as if they had one sword among them, which betimes
each one brandishes. Besides, they have a polemic's pride; they are
eager to make out a case, and thirst to prove poor Job a sinner. One
of them (it might as well be any other of them) runs on: "The
hypocrite's hope shall perish: whose hope shall be cut off, and whose
trust shall be a spider's web. Behold, God will not cast away a
perfect man; but the dwelling-place of the wicked shall come to
naught." This is savage cruelty, pouring nitric-acid into
sword-gashes. Nothing moves your plain man; for he delights in making
people wince. He is not angry, but natural, and his naturalness is
something worse than the choleric man's anger. He is saying: "Ah, Job,
see now--comfort, comfort? Why the house of the wicked shall