peeches follow
one another, rising and falling, in rise and fall magnificently
and deliberately eloquent. Not a limb is seen to move, unless it
be when job half rises from the dust in sudden scorn of their
conventions:

No doubt but _ye_ are the people,
And wisdom shall die with you!

or again

Will ye speak unrighteously for God,
And talk deceitfully for him?
Will _ye_ respect _his_ person?
Will _ye_ contend for God?

Yet--so great is this man, who has not renounced and will not
renounce God, that still and ever he clamours for more knowledge
of Him. Still getting no answer, he lifts up his hands and calls
the great Oath of Clearance; in effect 'If I have loved gold
overmuch, hated mine enemy, refused the stranger my tent,
truckled to public opinion':

If my land cry out against me,
And the furrows thereof weep together;
If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money,
Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life:
Let thistles grow instead of wheat,
And cockle instead of barley.

With a slow gesture he covers his face:

The words of Job are ended.

VII

They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems
to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been
loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and
delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the
same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the
others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants,
pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most
wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive
stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a
thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it
darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his
lips:

If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up.

It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord
speaks.

Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into
the mouth of God, we may say what may be said of all speeches put
by man into the mouth of God. We may say, as of the speeches of
the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and
argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to
make God talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism
at its very best in its effort to reach to God.

There is a hush. The storm clears away; and i