^ The place both of the past and future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us ; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected to an influence from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life ; and along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities ; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates.^
(3) There is still another effect to be remarked of this want
of belief in unselfishness — the failure of any real hold on a God. —
^ Autobiography of Sir William Butler, 235.
^ Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture ( Works, viii. 246).
JOB I. 9 7
It was so with the great spirit of evil. He could not deny God's existence. This was too plainly forced in upon him and felt by him, but he had no just views of a God of truth and purity and goodness, else he had never continued so to resist Him. He had a belief that made him tremble, but that never stirred him up to lay hold on God, because he saw only heartless power seated on the throne of the universe. It is within the sphere of every spirit to make and maintain its own world and its own God, and the God it makes bears the character of its world.
^ The sneerers and scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children of nature, but are the excrescences of overwrought refinement, and though their baneful influence has indeed penetrated to the country and corrupted many there, the fountain-head was amongst crowded houses where nature is scarcely known. I am not one of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population of any country ; perfection is not to be found amongst the children of the Tall, be their abode where it may ; but until the heart disbelieve the existence of a God, there is still hope for the possessor, however stained with crime he may be, for even Simon the Magician was converted. But when the heart is once steeled with infidelity, infidelity confirmed by carnal reasoning, an exuberance of the grace of God is required to melt it, which is seldom or never manifested ; for we read in the blessed Book that the Pharisee and the Wizard became recep- tacles of grace, but where is mention made of the conversion of the sneering Sadducee ? and is the modern infidel aught but a Sadducee of later date ? ^
^ What In Memoriam did for us was to impress on us the ineffaceable and ineradicable conviction that humanity will not and cannot acquiesce in a godless world : the " man in men " will not do this, whatever individual men may do, whatever they may tem porarily feel themselves driven to do, by following methods which they cannot abandon to the conclusions to which these methods at present seem to lead.^
II.
The Accusation.
The accusation is put in the form of a question ; and a question may be more incisive than a statement. There are few forms of
1 George Borrow, Letters to the Bible Society, 128.
* Professor Henry Sidgwick, in Memoir of Tennyson, i. 302.
8 UNSELFISHNESS OF TRUE RELIGION
speech which can be so suggestive as the interrogatory. This is a commonplace in the Satanic art of suggesting evil. It is also a convenient cover for cowardice ; although it was not so in this case, as it is supplemented by a bold and specific assertion. The literal and perhaps the most forcible rendering of this question is " Doth Job serve God gratis V This is the exact significance of the Septuagint translation. It is the form, too, in which the irony of the Hebrew is best expressed. The suggestion is that in the case of Job there was no disinterested goodness, no unselfish piety.
1. It is an insinuation, not only against Joh, tut against all men. — The view embodied in Satan's words is one which we have heard whispered, or loudly spoken, or taken for granted, now and here, as there and then. There is no such thing, we are told, as a love of goodness for its own sake. There is always some ulterior aim, some selfish motive. Even religion, we hear, even the religion of Christ, is a mere matter of selfish interest. It is nothing more, even when sincere, than a selfish device to escape from pain, and enjoy happiness hereafter. " Doth Job fear God for nought ? " You see how far the words extend. They cover a wider range than that of the character of one child of Adam, They go down to the very springs of human nature ; down to the very essence and even the existence of goodness itself. " Can men and women care for goodness and mercy, or for truth, or for righteousness, for their own sake ? "