r that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly
written and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the value of
natural history, and its power on the human heart. I cannot pass by it
without pointing out the evidences of the beauty of the country that Job
inhabited.[30] Observe, first, it was an arable country. "The oxen were
plowing and the asses feeding beside them." It was a pastoral country:
his substance, besides camels and asses, was 7,000 sheep. It was a
mountain country, fed by streams descending from the high snows. "My
brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks
they pass away; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the
snow is hid: What time they wax warm they vanish: when it is hot they
are consumed out of their place." Again: "If I wash myself with snow
water, and make my hands never so clean." Again: "Drought and heat
consume the snow waters." It was a rocky country, with forests and
verdure rooted in the rocks. "His branch shooteth forth in his garden;
his roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones."
Again: "Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field." It was a
place visited, like the valleys of Switzerland, by convulsions and falls
of mountains. "Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the
rock is removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones; thou
washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth." "He
removeth the mountains and they know not: he overturneth them in his
anger." "He putteth forth his hand upon the rock: he overturneth the
mountains by the roots: he cutteth out rivers among the rocks." I have
not time to go farther into this; but you see Job's country was one like
your own, full of pleasant brooks and rivers, rushing among the rocks,
and of all other sweet and noble elements of landscape. The magnificent
allusions to natural scenery throughout the book are therefore
calculated to touch the heart to the end of time.

[Footnote 30: This passage, respecting the book of Job, was omitted in
the delivery of the Lecture, for want of time.]

80. Then at the central point of Jewish prosperity, you have the first
great naturalist the world ever saw, Solomon; not permitted, indeed, to
anticipate, in writing, the discoveries of modern times, but so gifted
as to show us that heavenly wisdom is manifested as much in the
knowledge of the hyssop that springeth out of the wall as in po