Fredericton. April 8, 1880.

My dear Mrs. Ewing,

I will not let the mail go out without proving that I am not a bad correspondent, and without thanking you for your delightful letter. Oh! why don't you squeeze yourself sometimes into that funny little house opposite Miss Bailey's, and let me take a cup of tea off the cushions, or some other place where the books would allow it to be put? And why don't you allow me to stumble over my German? And why doesn't Rex, Esq. (for Rex is too familiar even for a Bishop) correct my musical efforts? How terrible this word past is! The past is at all events real, but the future is so shadowy, and like the ghosts of Ulysses it entirely eludes one's grasp. I speak of course of things that belong to this life. It was (I assure you) a treat to lay hold of you and your letters, and (a minor consideration) to find that even your handwriting had not degenerated, and had not become like spiders' legs dipped in ink and crawling on the paper, as is the case of some nameless correspondents. There was only one word I could not make out. In personal appearance the letters stood thus, υς. It looks like "us," or like the Greek υν, which being interpreted is "pig." But M——, who is far cleverer than I am, at once oracularly pronounced it "very," and I believe her and you too....

I was greatly tickled in your getting amusement out of "Job," the last book where one would have expected to find it; but stop—I recollect it is out of me, not the patriarch, that you find something to smile at, and no doubt you are right, for no doubt I say ridiculous things sometimes. Au sérieux, it pleases me much that you enter into my little book, and evidently have read it, for I have had complimentary letters from people who plainly had not read a word, and to the best of my belief never will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet one admires his word-painting while one longs to kick him! I am glad to see the Church Times agrees with me in the early character of the book. There is not a trace in it of later Jewish history or feeling. The argument on the other side is derived from Aramaic words only, which words are not unsuitable to a writer who either lived, or had lived out of Palestine, and scholars agree now that they may belong either to a very late or a very early time, and are used by people familiar with the cognate languages of the East.

A word about your very natural feeling on the subject of Satan. I suppose that Inspiration does not interfere with the character of mind belonging to the inspired person. The writer thinks Orientally, within the range of thought common to the age, and patriarchal knowledge, so that he could neither think nor write as S. Paul or S. John, even though inspired. We criticize his writing (when we do criticize it) from the standpoint of the nineteenth century, i.e. from the accumulated knowledge, successive revelations, and refined civilization of several thousand years.

Its extreme simplicity of description may appear to us trivial. But is not the fact indubitable that God tries us as He did Job, though by different methods? And is not our Lord's expression, "whom Satan hath bound, lo! these eighteen years," and S. Paul's, "to deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," analogous to the account in Job? One has only to try to transfer oneself to the patriarchal age, when there was no Bible, no Lord Jesus come in the flesh, but when at intervals divine revelations were given by personal manifestations and then withdrawn, and to take out of oneself all one has known about God from a child, to view the account as an Oriental would look at it, not as a Western Christian. The "experiment" (so to speak) involves one of the grandest questions in the world—Is religion only a refined selfishness, or is there such a thing as real faith and love of God, apart from any temporal reward? The devil asserts the negative and so (observe) do Job's so-called friends; but Job proves the affirmative, and hence amidst certain unadvised expressions he (in the main) speaks of God the thing that is right.

I do not know that there is in the early chapters anything that can be called "petty," more than in the speech of the devils to our Lord, and His suffering them to go into the swine.

We must, however, beware that we do not, when we say "petty," merely mean at bottom what is altogether different from our ordinary notions, formed by daily and general experience of life, as we ourselves find it.

All this long yarn, and not a word about your health, which is shameful. We both do heartily rejoice that you are better, and only hope for everybody's sake and your own, you will nurse and husband your strength....

Your affectionate old friend,