reply justify God by blaming Job.
Doubtless you deserve it all: you must have done all manner of wrong, and
been a hypocrite to boot! That is all the comfort they give him. Dreary
and desolate he stands, no good in the present, no hope in the future.
"I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou
regardest me not. Thou art become cruel to me; with thy strong hand thou
opposest thyself against me. I know that thou wilt bring me to death,
and to the house appointed for all living."

Upon that gloom the curtain falls. "The words of Job are ended."

The later chapters of the book seem added by successive hands. They
introduce a fresh speaker, to help out the argument for God. They make
the Almighty speak in his own behalf. His answer is simply an appeal to
the wonders of physical nature. Look, vain man, at my works; consider
the war-horse, the behemoth, the leviathan; how can your petty mind judge
the creator of these? This strikes a note which is still heard in the
music of to-day, the awe and reverence before the grandeur of nature
which can sometimes soothe the restlessness of man and hush his
anxieties, as the harp of David brought peace to the moody Saul. Yet
such thoughts do not suffice for the man whose personal suffering is
keen. They silence rather than answer the question which presses upon
Job.

The story must be otherwise helped out, so some kindly champion of
orthodoxy put in a fairy-story climax,--Job got well of his boils, had
more sheep and oxen than ever, had other children born to him. And so
the difficulty is happily solved!

But the earlier and deeper words remain, with their unanswerable
challenge to the comfortable creed that God will always make the good man
happy. The book stands, the expression of a typical, a mournful but
sublime attitude of the human mind. It is a facing of truth when truth
looks darkest, rather than to take refuge in comfortable make-believe.
And it shows man falling back on his innermost stronghold of all. If God
himself fail me,--if the power of the universe be cruel or
indifferent,--yet "my righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go;
my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live."

The habitual weapon of the Prophets is denunciation. They pour out on
their opponents a wrath which is the hotter because it involves a moral
condemnation, and the heavier because it claims the sanction of Deity.
Among their exemplars are Samuel d