^ Here are two men, who both seem to have deserved success ; both have worked hard, and one to-day is rich and the other is poor. All the chances came to the one, and all the hindrances to the other. There is something obviously unfair and unjust in all this. So the world thinks. 0 world, so swift to judge, so slow to understand ! I know that some get that which they never worked for, and some work for that which they never get ; and if money were the real end of existence and the real standard of success, then your plaint about inequality would be a true one. But it is not. You say all the chances came to one. Not so. There were some chances that came to them both, the chance to be honest
JOB-PS. XXX. — 8
ii4 SONGS IN THE NIGHT
and meek and merciful and pure in heart, and these are the things that fit men to enter into and possess the true success, the kingdom of heaven ; and finding that is finding happiness. So, then, human happiness depends on our relation to God>
2. No one can deny that, if we look upon the earth merely as it is, the exhibition is one whose darkness it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. But when we seek to gather from the condition of the world the character of its Governor, we are bound to consider, not what the world is, but what it would be if all that that Governor has done on its behalf were allowed to produce its legitimate effect. And when we set ourselves to compute the amount of what may be called unavoidable misery — that misery which must still remain even if Christianity possessed unlimited sway — we should find no cause for wonder that God has left the earth burdened with so great a weight of sorrow, but only of praise that He has provided so amply for men's happi- ness.
^ Elihu, in seeking to justify God's ways with man, pressed his argument unduly in the context, and made it appear that God is so high and great that the guilt or innocence of a petty human being is of no moment to Him. So now he proceeds to alter his course, and to feel his way to some higher explanation of the unredressed miseries of life. His words deserve full attention. " True," he says, " a voice of wailing goes up from earth, a groan of suffering under injustice and oppression. But it is a mere cry of pain, not a turning to God, man's Maker, to Him who giveth songs in the night, brings, i.e., a joyful sense of sudden deUverance in the very darkest hour of tribulation. God would have men cry to Him with something more worthy of those whom He has made in His own image than the mere inarticulate cries of the heast of the earth, the fowls of heaven. He has taught us more than the one, He has made us wiser than the other. Empty moans, empty cries, will not reach His ear. Thy passionate words give thee no claim, Job," he seems to say, " on God ; and thy prayers to Him, have not risen above mere childish brute-like cries of pain." *
3. Though for wise ends a certain portion of suffering has been made unavoidable, the Divine dealings with man are, in the
^ P. C. Ainsworth, The Blessed Life, 54. » G. G. Bradley, The Book of Job, 296.
JOB XXXV. lo 115
largest sense, those of tenderness and love, so that, if the great majority of our race were not determined to be wretched, enough has been done to ensure their being happy. And when we come to give the reasons why so much wretchedness is found in the world, we cannot assign it to the will of God ; we must charge the whole of it on man's forgetfulness of God, on his contempt or neglect of remedies divinely provided ; in short, we must offer in explanation the words of our text, " None saith, Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night ? "
^ The note of praise once reached, its office is, even humanly speaking, no less serviceable than that of prayer. It is the attitude of mind that gives courage for the attack of things difficult. The healthy soul cannot accept the view, taken by many of the devout, that our mortal state is so sunk and wretched that, should we look closely into it, we must remain for ever inconsolable. By no man have such as these been reproached more than by Dante, who had had himself much cause for sadness. To the sorrowful he assigns the shades of the fourth circle of hell, and out of their darkness they cry unto him —
Tristi fummo Nel aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra, Portando dentro accidioso fummo ; Or ci attristiam nella belletta negra.
Fretful were we in the sweet air which is gladdened by the sun, bearing within us a smoke of Accidie; now we are fretting ourselves in the black mire.^
My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves. So dark that men cry out against the Heavens. Who knows but that the darkness is in man ? The doors of Night may be the gates of Light; For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then Suddenly heal'd, how would'st thou glory in all The splendours and the voices of the world ! And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore Await the last and largest sense to make The phantom walls of this illusion fade. And show us that the world is wholly fair.^