The Messianic voice is personified from the grave. The grave speaks the facts of history. “He hath put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolks have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They whom I loved are turned against me. Why do you persecute me as God?” In the nineteenth chapter Job has reached the resurrection. How changed the voice! “Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen, and lead in the rock forever.”
13. “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Ignorance is not satisfied with the report “that he is risen from the dead.” “The triumph of the wicked is short. Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, yet he shall perish forever. He shall fly away as a dream.” The days of apostolic teaching and suffering passed, Christianity debauched by a state religion, ignorance again put forth as a dying gasp, a few platitudes in defense of God and against piety. Chap. 20. Job answered by referring man’s conduct in life to a future judgment. Chap. 21. Reverence in tradition exhorted Piety to speedy repentance. Chaps. 23 and 24. Piety is searching directly for the true God.
14. Special Providence, ignoring law, boasteth of his secular strength. “Is there any numbers of his armies?” Here in the poem civilization reached the dawn of the Reformation. Chap. 26. It begins in the line of science. The rocks begin to speak. “Dead things are formed from under the waters.” The orbicular motion and the present pole-pointing of the Earth, according to the Copernican system, is seen. “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the Earth upon nothing.” How exactly in accordance with the history of scientific reform, that this knowledge should begin in small fragments of truth. A glimpse of the ancient pole-pointing is seen. “He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end”; or until the end of light begins with darkness. He saw the great “change of times and seasons” caused by the Noachian flood. “He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud. Lo these are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him! but the thunder of his power who can understand?”
15. Job enters upon the Reformation in science with a prophet’s view of the desperate efforts put forth, by scientists of our own period, to reach first causes by analytical deduction and hypothetical reasoning; and this unaided by any light claiming to come by inspiration of God. His harp seemed attuned in the most exquisite niceness of poetic finish, to that class of modern pretenders who talk of the fullness of nature’s laws, while they disbelieve in the existence of nature’s God. He opens the twenty-eighth chapter with certain admissions, as to points of knowledge obtainable from phenomena of nature, followed by questions suggestive of the paucity of all things seen to unfold a true and full cosmology. “Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.” Now beholding the futile efforts of Naturalists to reach first causes he exclaims, “There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. The lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing.” This and more is freely conceded as yielding a grand field for geological thought. “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living.” Right here, beholding the observations through heaven-pointed lenses, that man may read first causes in the stars, he gives the poetic reply of space. “The depth saith it is not in me.” Now beholding the kindled expectations in the student of the seas, as he traces her currents, measures her waves and tides, and reaches her deepest deposits, the sea is made to report, “It is not with me.” But may not wealth and position gain it from the schools? He answers: “It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it; and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.”
Disappointed in reading first causes in all these resources man still inquires: “Whence then cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.” Let now the dead fossil speak. May not the entombed life of forty millions of years open up this subject to man?
16. Destruction and death say, “We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heavens, to make the weight of the winds, and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then did he see it and declare it.” But how shall man gain this true wisdom of causes? “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” It is the voice of the Saviour, he who “walked in the garden.” Men must be drawn toward God before they can see him in his word. “And unto man he said, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” It cannot be doubted that more reverence for God, and less egotistical trust in self, would greatly aid the wisest thinker of the present day. We have had altogether too much of that feigned or real pity for the Bible, as unfortunate in its allusions to science, deserving to be ranked with the superstitions of the untutored masses of the unlettered ages. It is true that prophetic allusions to scientific subjects are usually poetic, but none the less specific and definite for this. These allusions embody a true objective view, leaving to science the task to subjectively work out the true condition of things presenting such phenomena. Thus prophecy poetized upon the “Place for light, and the home and house for darkness; and the path leading to the bounds between them.” Scientifically explained, one pole of the Earth must have pointed steadily to the sun, leaving half the globe in perpetual darkness.
17. Joshua is said to have commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, and they obeyed him. Subjectively rendered the sun went not down, during one night, which could have been objectively accomplished by a mirage. As this would answer the purpose for which the phenomena is reported, it is highly probable that this is all that is meant. Again, God made a firmament. But firmaments called heaven are not things made. Subjectively rendered, he made a globe, from which the visible expanse is seen. These figures of speech, and especially the one called metonymy, run all through prophetic sayings. The heart’s willingness to accept the truth is often necessary to the intellect’s perceiving it.
18. The Reformation has made some considerable progress, and Job’s three mistaken friends begin to see their errors, and acknowledge themselves silenced. Job’s renewed ability to speak, and the readiness with which he handles the subject of each passing event, shows that the darkness is passing away, and the teachings of these dismal ages are being counteracted.
19. A far more formidable enemy, in the person of Elihu, is about to arise. He represents Secular Education, in unbelief of the inspiration of God, or the existence of true piety. He reasons that all men are essentially alike, imperfect; that heredity, inclination, education and surrounding circumstances account for all the difference in men. That Job, having claimed upright intentions before God, has committed a grave offence. His God is one of cause. “I will fetch my knowledge from afar: he that is perfect in knowledge is with thee. My lips shall utter knowledge clearly. All flesh shall perish together.” What is this but infidel Deism? How different the expression of the wise man! “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?” The one is mortal, the other immortal. For some cause Job is silent, though again and again challenged to the combat. Let us apply a little history to the prophetic drama. French Atheists, in a convention in 1808, put forth eighty-three counts, any one of which was claimed sufficient to prove the Bible to be uninspired. Sir Charles Lyell, himself a Deist, wrote, “Of these counts, not one of them remains today. Science has laid them aside as untenable.”
20. We have three distinct views of prayer, represented in Bildad, Elihu and Job. Bildad’s view is, “If deserving, you can have all you ask for, without reference to law. All that you need is faith to perpetuate the line of miracles.” Elihu’s view was essentially expressed by the Professor who threw down the challenge, called the prayer gauge. Its substance was, “Prayer changes no effect following cause. It cannot mitigate the death rate in a hospital.” Job’s position is that prayer may be beneficial when in harmony with God’s laws. There are three realms, viz, physics, mind and spirit. Mind is higher than physics, and, within bounds, rules it; spirit is higher than either, and within bounds rules both: that prayer to God, ever subject to “Thy will be done, not mine,” may increase the power of the spirit in man over the lower realms of law, thus securing wonderful help from God, according to his expressed will in law. This does not necessarily involve miracle in the answer God gives. It is in harmony with the law of the spirit, that God within the spirit greatly increases its power over mind and matter. This was the secret of Job’s power over his contestants. This power Elihu denied. Secular Education will readily admit that God, by his direct power (which is Special Providence), created matter, again set it in motion, again gave life to portions of it, etc., and then deny that God would listen to the cry of his children for spiritual or material help. This modern Elihu has completely ignored the efforts of God to help the would-be scientists to phenomena and principles, which would link his knowledge of nature in happy relation with first causes. Hence in the end, like Elihu, he is destined to be completely confounded.