“Be Hate that fruit, or Love that fruit,
It forwards the general deed of Man;
And each of the many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan,
Each living his own, to boot.”
SILENT SYMPATHY.
Job ii. 13.
Job’s friends have long since been a sort of bye-word. But be it not forgotten that the friendship of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, to the ruined and desolate man of Uz, evidences itself as very genuine in one or two salient points, before it came to be, what it is apt to be now exclusively considered, all talk. Before the talk there was prolonged silence; and before the silence there was lamentation of undoubted earnest. Coming from afar to mourn with him, and to comfort him, from afar off they caught sight of him, but so altered—heu, quantum mutatus!—that they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent each one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven. And then they “sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great.”
The sonnet of a Quaker poet has thus far vindicated the sincerity of their friendship, and on the ground of their silent sympathy: