I dare to say unto Thee, my God, Who hast made me to climb so high.
That I shall not crumble away with the clod ; -i I am Thine, and I cannot die !
^ There have been four typical notes of despair in the region of literature. The first and most intense is the voice of Omar Khayyam. It is despair absolute, despair of life all round, despair whose only relief is to drown itself in wine. The second is the Book of Ecclesiastes. I would call it despair of results. It does not deny that it is a pleasant thing to see the light of the sun ; it
JOB XIX. 25-27 89
does not dispute that there is a time to dance as well as a time to weep ; but it asks, What is the good of it ? does it not all end in vanity ? The third is the cry of Pascal. It is despair of every- thing finite — finite reason, finite love, finite pleasure; the only possible joy is joy in God. The fourth is that dramatic portraiture which we call the Book of Job. I would describe it as the despair of old theories. It is the least despondent of the group. It does not say that the world is bad ; it does not say that life is vanity ; it does not even say that finite things cannot bring joy. What it does say is that all the past theories to explain the evils of the universe have been utterly powerless to account for these evils, but none of them is fit to sustain the weight of human woes, and that all of them put together are inadequate to wipe the tear ^ from a single eye.^
3. Job turned from the God of providence to the God of his conscience. Job had no idea of a distinction in the Godhead, * such as we have. This was not yet revealed to him. And what he says of his Eedeemer, he says of God generally. A fuller revelation has taught us that God the Eedeemer is God mani- fested in His Son; and what Job says here of his Eedeemer standing on the dust is fulfilled in the Son. Yet this distinction, as already said, was not one known to Job. God is his Eedeemer. In the next verse he himself explains this to be his meaning: "I shall see God." He shall vindicate him against the wrongs which he suffers, against the suspicious of men, against the aspersions of Satan ; yes, and against another thing — against the hardships that have fallen upon him from the general providence of God, where evil and disease and death are now elements of the current of events.
One of the most singular positions into which Job is driven by the riddles of his history is this : he divides God into two. One God, the God of outer providence, who rules, and whom events obey, persecutes him, holds him guilty, and refuses, with ears obdurately closed, to listen to the appeals of His creature for a hearing and an adjudication : " Oh that I knew where I might find him ! that I might come unto his place ! I would fill my mouth with arguments. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and boldest me for thine enemy ? " But behind all this is a God who knows his innocence, a heart conscious of his rectitude: "My '' ^ George Matheson, The Jte]iresentative Men of the Bible, 350.
90 I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
witness is in heaven, and he who can bear testimony to me is on high." And the suffering saint appeals to the one against the other, from the providence of God to the heart of God, from the Euler of the universe to the gracious Eedeemer : " Mine eye poureth out tears unto God ; that he would maintain the right of a man with God, and of a son of man with his neighbour ! "
^ There are strange riddles in life, strange mysteries of providence, irreconcilable with our ideas of God — the miseries of the just, early deaths, earthquakes and shipwrecks swallowing up I innumerable lives. Our spirits are bounded by iron walls on every side, cabined and confined ; and we are mostly content to have it so. We are so familiar now with mystery that we are scarcely stirred by the most appalling occurrences ; we are so used to the inexplicable, and so absorbed in what is around us, that the narrow limits of our knowledge hardly trouble us. But to an eagle spirit like Job's this caging was unbearable ; and he spread his wings and dashed himself against the bars of his cage demand- ing knowledge — resolved to come even unto God's place, and pluck out the mystery from the darkness ; demanding that tbe events of God's providence should be made to correspond with this idea of God, and sure that if he know not now he shall know hereafter, when God will descend from the heavens, and stand upon the earth, to unravel the mysteries of his life here, and to proclaim his innocence and God-fearing way.^
^ Wherever a landscape-painter is placed, if he paints faithfully, he will have continually to paint effects of mist. Intense clearness, whether in the North after or before rain, or in some moments of twilight in the South, is always, as far as I am acquainted with natural phenomena, a notable thing. Mist of some sort, or mirage, or confusion of light, or of cloud, are the general facts ; the distance may vary in different climates at •|v^ which the effects of mist begin, but they are always present ; and therefore in all probability it is meant that we should enjoy them. Nor does it seem to me in any wise difficult to understand why they should be thus appointed for enjoyment. In former parts of this work we were able to trace a certain delightfulness in every visible feature of natural things which was typical of any great spiritual truth ; surely, therefore, we need not wonder now that mist and all its phenomena have been made delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend on our being content to accept only partial knowledge, even in those matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect intelligibility ^ A. B. Davidson, Waiting upon God, 86.