But in order to bring the Book of Job nearer to the modern Western mind, we must not only study it from the point of view of form, but also compare its scope and range with those of the loftiest modern Western poems of similar import; only then shall we discover the points in which it is distinctively ancient, Oriental, Semitic.—The greatest English work of kindred moral and religious import is Paradise Lost. Like Job, it is a theodicy, though of a more complex character, and aims
... (to) assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.
And the author of Paradise Lost, though not to be equalled with the founders of Biblical religion, is still distinguished from all modern poets (except Dante and Bunyan) by his singularly intense faith in the operations of the Divine Spirit. That prayer of his, beginning ‘And chiefly Thou, O Spirit,’ and a well-known parallel passage in his Reason of Church Government, prove conclusively that he held no contracted views as to the limits of Inspiration. This, in addition to his natural gifts, explains the overpowering impression of reality produced by the visions of Milton, and perhaps in a still greater degree by those of our Puritan prose-poet, John Bunyan. A similar faith in the divine Spirit, but more original and less affected by logical theories, was one great characteristic of the author of Job. He felt, like all the religious ‘wise men’ (of whom more presently), that true wisdom was beyond mortal ken, and could only be obtained by an influence from above. In the strength of this confidence he ventured, like Milton, on untrodden paths, and presumed to chronicle, in symbolic form, transactions of the spiritual world. Whether or not he believed in the Satan of the Prologue, as a Sunday School child might, we need not decide; that he used popular beliefs in a wide, symbolic sense, has been pointed out elsewhere. Probably both Milton and he, if questioned on the subject, would have replied in the spirit of those words of our Lord, ‘If ye will receive it,’ and ‘All men cannot receive this saying.’ It is not to be forgotten that the author of Job distinctly places the Satan in a somewhat humorous light, and though Milton is far from doing the same, yet we know from Comus that the conception of a symbol was as familiar to him as to Lord Bacon. Notice, in conclusion, that Milton’s Satan, though unlike the Satan of his predecessor in some points,[[130]] resembles him in this striking particular, that he is not yet (in spite of Milton’s attempt to represent him as such) the absolutely evil being.
Faust has in some respects a better right to be compared with Job than Paradise Lost. Not so much indeed in the Prologue, though Goethe deserves credit for detecting the humorous element in the Hebrew poet’s Satan, an element which he has transferred, though with much exaggeration, to his own Mephistopheles. Neither the Satan nor Mephistopheles (a remote descendant of the Hebrew[[131]] mastema, from the root satam=satan) is the Origin of Evil in a personal form,[[132]] but the Hebrew poet would never have accepted the description in Faust of the peculiar work of the ‘denying spirit.’ But in the body of the poem there is this marked similarity to the Book of Job—that the problem treated of is a purely moral and spiritual one; the hero first loses and then recovers his peace of mind; it is the counterpart in pantheistic humanism of what St. Paul terms working out one’s own salvation. Still there are great and most instructive divergences between the two writers. Observe, first, the complete want of sympathy with positive religion—with the religion from which Faust wanders—on the part of the modern poet. Next, a striking difference in the characteristics of Job and Faust respectively. Faust succumbs to his boundless love of knowledge, alternating with an unbridled sensual lust; Job is on the verge of spiritual ruin through his demand for such an absolute correspondence of circumstances to character as can only be realised in another world. The greatness of Faust lies in his intellect; that of Job (who in chap. xxviii. directly discourages speculation) in his virtue. Hence, finally, Faust requires (even from a pantheistic point of view) to be pardoned, while Job stands so high in the divine favour that others are pardoned on his account.
A third great poem which deserves to be compared with Job is the Divina Commedia. Dante has the same purpose of edification as the author of Job and even of Faust, though he has not been able to fuse the didactic and narrative elements with such complete success as Goethe. Nor is he so intensely autobiographical as either Goethe or the author of Job; his own story is almost inextricably interlaced with the fictions which he frames as the representative of the human race. He allows us to see that he has had doubts (Parad. iv. 129), and that they have yielded to the convincing power of Christianity (Purgat. iii. 34-39), but it was not a part of his plan to disclose, like the author of Job, the vicissitudes of his mental history. In two points, however—the width of his religious sympathies (which even permits him to borrow from the rich legendary material of heathendom[[133]]) and the morning freshness of his descriptions of nature—he comes nearer to the author of Job than either Goethe or Milton, while in the absoluteness and fervour of his faith Milton is in modern times his only rival.
The preceding comparison will, it is hoped, leave the reader with a sense of our great literary as well as religious debt to the author of Job. His gifts were varied, but in one department his originality is nothing less than Homeric; his Colloquies are the fountain-head from which the great river of philosophic poetry took its origin. He is the first of those poet-theologians from whom we English have learned so much, and who are all the more impressive as teachers because the truths which they teach are steeped in emotion, and have for their background a comprehensive view of the complex and many-coloured universe.
NOTE ON JOB AND THE MODERN POETS.
Job, like Spenser, should be the poet of poets; but though Goethe has imitated him in royal fashion, and here and there other poets such as Dante may offer allusions, yet Milton is the only poet who seems to have absorbed Job. Paradise Regained is in both form and contents a free imitation of the Book of Job, the story of which is described in i. 368-370, 424-6, iii. 64-67. The following are the principal allusions in Paradise Lost:—i. 63, comp. Job x. 22; ii. 266, comp. Job iv. 16; ii. 603, comp. Job xxiv. 19 Vulg.; iv. 999, comp. Job xxviii. 25; vii. 253-4 (Hymn on the Nativity, st. 12), comp. Job xxxviii. 4-7; vii. 373-5, comp. Job xxxviii. 31; vii. 102, comp. Job xxxviii. 5. Shelley, too, is said to have delighted in Job; I must leave others to trace this in his works. I conclude with Thomas Carlyle. The words—‘Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion’[[134]]—are at once a paraphrase of the questions of Eliphaz, ‘Art thou the first man that was born?... Didst thou hearken in the council of Eloah?’ (xv. 7, 8), and a suggestive statement of the problem of Job as a challenge to limited human ‘experience’ to prove its capacity for criticising God’s ways.