1. It miglifc be supposed at first that the simplest way of re- storing Job to peace would have been to reveal to him that his afflictions were not due to his sin, but were the trial of his righteousness, and in this way solve the problem that perplexed him. But the elements of blameworthiness in Job's conduct forbade this simple treatment. The disease had spread in his mind, and developed moral symptoms, which required a broader remedy. Besides, it is God who now speaks to Job ; and in His teaching of men He never moves in the region of the mere under- standing, but always in that of the religious life. He may re- move perplexities regarding His providence and ways from men's minds ; but He does not do so by the immediate communication of intellectual light, but by flushing all the channels of thought and life with a deeper sense of Himself. Under the flow of this fuller sense of God, perplexities disappear, just as rocks that raise an angry surf when the tide is low are covered and unknown when it is full. This is the meaning of God's manifestation to Job out of the storm. He brings Himself and His full glory near to Job, and fills his mind with such a sense of Him as he had never had before — " Now mine eye seeth thee." His former knowledge of God, though he had prided himself upon it, seems to him now only such a knowledge as one gets by hearsay, confused and defective. His present knowledge is that of eyesight, immediate and full.
^ I quite agree with you that such things as these — God's goodness and grace in the hearts He has made — are the true stars we have to look to in our night, and if some of them have set sooner, they did shine for us, and are shining still. Our small horizon is not His universe, I think this is a conviction that grows on us the more we dwell on it, and how thankful we should be when God has given us in our history realities of life to help us to rise to the realities of faith ! It is a way in which sight helps faith ; for surely something akin to this lies in the words of Christ, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father " — not merely
154 HEARSAY AND EXPERIENCE
that Christ is the imarje of God, but that a Divine life witnessed by us on earth is the evidence of a God. So that one may say, we can be as sure of God as if we had seen Him, and if we are sure of Him we are sure of everything}
^ How can a man, without clear vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head ? It is impossible ! ^
^ Job has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told, the refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.^
0 Master of my soul,
To whom the lives of men. That floated once upon Thy breath,
Shall yet return again.
Give me the eyes to see,
Give me the ears to hear, Give me the spiritual sense
To feel that Thou art near.
So, when this earthly mist
Fades in the azure sky. My soul shall still be close to Thee,
And in Thee cannot die.*
2, The revelation always comes as men are able to receive it. For ourselves — for us who have left far behind us that simple answer to the problems of life, which satisfied Job's friends, and nearly broke Job's heart — we too feel our darkness still. Life is still full of strange reverses, inexplicable wounds. Yet, as we too feel inclined to take our places by Job's side in his hour of doubt, we feel that we have light vouchsafed to us that was withheld from him. The light given in this book was dim and scanty. We see in it the dawn of one of those new and healing truths, fragments of which are flashed upon the human soul in hours of pain. But we see the dawn only. The whole revelation of the Christian life, of the life of Christ — the upward course of One who was despised, and humiliated, and scourged, and slain, who was
^ Letters of John Ker, 84. - Carlyle, Past and Present.
3 G. K. Chesterton. * Edwin Hatch.
JOB xLii. 5, 6 155
" made perfect through sufferings " — has brought a new idea into the world, one whose future fuhiess is only indicated and fore- shadowed in this book. But it was one which the age of Job could hardly have conceived, and which centuries later the Jewish nation steadfastly rejected. It has leavened race after race with the ennobling sense that, as this great tale, as this " flower of Old Testament poetry," has its root in sorrow, so the highest, the divinest life may be compatible with sorrow, may rest on pain and self-sacrifice. To how many sufferers has the lesson come like spring airs to a frozen soil — has taught them that the truest use of pain, sometimes even of spiritual pain, and racking doubts and disturbing questions, is not to paralyse but to strengthen the soul.