believing Job, he
had spoken the truth; he at least had spoken facts, and
they had been defending a transient theory as an
everlasting truth.

"And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these
words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, my
wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends;
for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my
servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now seven
bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job; and
offer for yourselves a burnt-offering. And my servant Job
shall pray for you, and him will I accept. Lest I deal with
you after your folly, for that ye have not spoken of me the
thing which is right, like my servant Job."

One act of justice remains. Knowing as we do, the
cause of Job's sufferings, and that as soon as his trial
was over, it was no longer operative, our sense of fitness
could not be satisfied unless he were indemnified outwardly
for his outward sufferings. Satan is defeated,
and his integrity proved; and there is no reason why
the general law should be interfered with, which makes
good men happy; or why obvious calamities, obviously
undeserved, should remain any more unremoved. Perhaps,
too, a deeper lesson still lies below his restoration
--something perhaps of this kind. Prosperity, enjoyment,
happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the name
by which we designate that state in which life is to our
own selves pleasant and delightful, as long as they are
sought or prized as things essential, so far have a
tendency to disennoble our nature, and are a sign that
we are still in servitude and selfishness. Only when
they lie outside us, as ornaments merely to be worn or
laid aside as God pleases, only then may such things
be possessed with impunity. Job's heart in early times
had clung to them more than he knew, but now he was
purged clean, and they were restored because he had
ceased to need them.

Such in outline is this wonderful poem. With the
material of which it is woven we have not here been
concerned, although it is so rich and pregnant, that we
might with little difficulty construct out of it a
complete picture of the world as then it was: its life,
knowledge, arts, habits, superstitions, hopes, and fears.
The subject is the problem of all mankind, and the
composition embraces no less wide a range. But what we are
here most interested upon, is the epoch which it marks
in the progress of mankind, as the first recorded str