"13. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.
"14. Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand?
"15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him."
In other words, I don't think this thing is right, and, though I tear my flesh with my teeth, and contemplate suicide, and though I may be slain for speaking, yet I will speak out, and maintain that God ought not to have done this thing; he ought not to have sent this horrible affliction on the earth--this fire from heaven, which burned up my cattle; this whirlwind which slew my children; this sand of the sea; this rush of floods; this darkness in noonday in which mankind grope helplessly; these arrows, this poison, this rush of waters, this sweeping away of mountains.
"If I hold my tongue," says Job, "I shall give up the ghost!"
Job believes--
"The grief that will not speak,
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."
"As the waters fail from the sea," says Job, (xiv, 11,) and the flood decayeth and drieth up:
"12. So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.
{p. 297}