Questions of this kind are among the many spheres in which we need that virtue on which St. James here insists with such simple earnestness--patience. When certainty has not been attained, and perhaps is not attainable, let us learn to wait patiently in uncertainty. Was there ever such a person as Job? Who wrote the Book of Job? What is its date? Does inspiration produce infallibility? and if so, what are the limits to such infallibility? There are men to whom uncertainty on such questions as these seems intolerable. They cannot "learn to labour and to wait;" they cannot work patiently, and wait patiently, until a complete solution is found. And hence they hurry to a definite conclusion, support it by evidence that is not relevant, and affirm that it is demonstrated by what is perhaps relevant, but is far short of proof. Intellectual probation is part of our moral probation in this life, and it is a discipline much needed in an age of great mental activity. Impatience of the intellect is a common blemish, and it is disastrous both to him who allows himself to be conquered by it and to the cause of truth. He does good service both to himself and to others, who cultivates a dread of jumping to unproved conclusions, and who in speaking and writing watchfully distinguishes what is certain from what is only probable, and what is probable from what is only not known to be untrue.
_The_ great example of patience is not given by St. James, although we can read it into his words. In a sense not meant by him there is the Husbandman, who waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, until it receive the early and the latter rain. There is that precious harvest of human souls which must receive and welcome the dew of God's grace before it is ready for His garner. On some it has never yet fallen; on some it has fallen, but as yet in vain; and meanwhile the Husbandman waiteth, "being patient over it," until it receive the one thing needful. Through long, long centuries He has been waiting, and He continues so doing. St. Augustine tells us why. God is "patient, because He is eternal" (_patiens quia æternus_). He who is "from everlasting to everlasting" can afford to wait. He waits patiently for us, generation after generation. Can we not wait for Him one hour? Let us patiently abide until "the end of the Lord" comes, the end which He has prepared for us, and towards which all things under His guiding hand are working. When we have seen it we shall once more see "that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful."[91]
[86] As already pointed out, this metaphor is perhaps a reminiscence of the Book of Job, to which St. James alludes in the passage before us. He was evidently fond of the sapiential writings, to which Job is akin. "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more" (Job vii. 6, 9). See [footnote 84].
[87] The Rhemish Version distinguishes the words--"be patient" and "patience" for the one, "suffer" and "sufferance" for the other, the Vulgate having _patientia_ and _sufferentia_.
[88] _Reges._ "So Job's friends are here called, because they were princes in their respective territories." Note in the Douay Version, from which the translation of the passage is taken.
[89] See _The Pastoral Epistles_, in this series, pp. 379-84 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1888).
[90] That the Book of Job is not pure history is plain from (1) the dialogue between Jehovah and Satan, and the addresses ascribed to the Almighty in the body of the poem; (2) the dramatic character of Job's calamities, man and nature alternately inflicting blows at him, and in each case just one messenger escaping; (3) the dramatic character of his compensation, his goods being exactly doubled, and his family being made exactly what it was before; (4) the elaboration of the dialogue between Job and his friends. On the other hand, it is not likely that it is pure invention. We have no evidence of literary power equal to such invention at the early date to which the Book of Job must be assigned, viz. before the Return from the Captivity; and the writer's object would be better attained if he took an historical person, than if he invented one, as his centre.