0 Lord of Light, steep Thou our souls in Thee!
That when the daylight trembles into shade,
And falls the silence of mortality,
And all is done, we shall not be afraid,
But pass from light to light; from earth's dull gleam
Into the very heart and heaven of our dream.^
3. Job looks for a vindication of his character, when this Eedeemer standing upon his dust takes up his cause. It can scarcely be that Job has any hope of deliverance in this life. He regards himself as already on the verge of the grave : every temporal prospect has vanished. Besides, if this were his expec- tation, he would be abandoning his own position, and adopting that of his friends. Job then looks for a vindication beyond the grave. Does he mean that apart from his body, stripped of flesh, he will see God ; or that, clothed in a new body, looking out from restored flesh, he will yet see God ? The expression " from my flesh," " out of my flesh," is ambiguous ; and we can judge of Job's thought only from the context and general scope of the book. But when we look at these, we conclude that what Job has in view is a real spiritual vision and not a resurrection of the flesh.
This corresponds best to the whole tone and movement of his thought. For obviously, he is expecting a Divine vindication of his integrity only after he lies in the dust ; and it is not likely that, with this great hope suddenly invading his mind and taking instant but full possession of it, he would at once begin to specu- late on whether or not, when he had shuffled off" the mortal coil in which he was entangled, he should be clothed upon with " flesh " in some new and higher form. Such a speculation would have been well-nigh impossible at such a time. That Job, rising from his long agony, his long inquest, to a sudden recognition of a great light of hope burning behind the dark curtains of death, and so far streaming through them as to give him courage to
^ R. Watson Gilder.
JOB XIX. 25-27 81
sustain a burden otherwise intolerable, should instantly fall into a curious speculation about " in the body," or " out of the body," would be contrary to all the laws which, as experience proves, govern the human mind at a crisis such as tliat at which he had arrived. Most probably he neither knew when, or in what form, the great deliverance for which he hoped would be vouchsafed him, nor did he curiously inquire how, or in what form, it would find him when it came. All he knew was that, somehow, after his mortal body had been destroyed, God would redeem him ; but whether he would then be in a body or out of a body, he cannot tell and does not speculate.
^ " Why does He not," as Carlyle said in his blind agony, " Why does He not do more ? " Why does He not turn back the rolling seas of wickedness, construct a world without earthquakes, states without injustice 'and oppression, cities without knavery, villages without poverty and disease, homes without envy and disorder, and churches without selfishness and impurity — that is to say, why does not God make a world of puppets, and arrange everything on the principles of mechanics, making men perforce good and pure and true, as a well-made and properly-regulated watch is constructed to keep time with the sun ; instead of creating man on the basis of a sovereignly free and dignifying choice, the necessity of personal virtue, the supremacy of law, the discipline of experience, and the evolution of the riches of character by trial ? " Take for an example of suffering and patience, the prophets who spake in the name of the Lord. Behold, we call them blessed which endured ; ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is full of pity and merciful." Eesist the diabolical sophistry which identifies a cloudless sky with an existing sun, affirms the unseen to be the non-existent, and the unhappy to be the unholy. God is love. That is His nature, the essence of His being ; not an accident, an occasional emotion, or a passing mood ; and therefore, He is, as Job saw and felt, the Eedeemer and Vindicator of all souls that sincerely seek Him and diligently serve Him; the guarantee that defeated and humiliated and oppressed man will be set free, and exalted to behold the triumph of eternal righteousness ; and the witness that man is at present, and here in this world, scarred and defaced with evil though it be, the object of God's pitiful sympathy, redeeming care, and constant protection.^
^ J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, 317. jOB-rs. XXX. — 6
82 1 KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
Why should I wish to see God better than this day? ^
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and
each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own
face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is