"His remembrance shall perish from the earth,
And he shall have no name in the street."
"Ye break me in pieces with words."
How vigorously descriptive this is of what many a man has endured from hammering speech of violent men!
"They waited for me as for the rain."
"He overturneth the mountains by the roots."
"Out of the north cometh golden splendor."
"God hath upon him terrible majesty."
"Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity;
And array thyself with honor and majesty."
Has not this putting all the strength and beauty of a Shakespearean couplet? Shakespeare uses such figures as this often, and in them he is his greater self. His is the splendor of imagination and clearness of vision of a prince of poets. Time hastes. This task is decoying. To cease is a hardship; for "Job" lends itself with such wealth to these nobler passages as to urge on our quest. Whole chapters are poems, rich as if carven on blocks of solid gold. They blaze with splendor. But the drama bears on its way like an invading army, and will not wait.
Disaster has overtaken a good man with its utter demolition; but, as has been shown, the prologue of the drama settles the paternity of the disaster. Evils come, but not necessarily from God. In a complex moral system, God has found it good to administer by general rather than by special laws, and their operation does not work exact justice to either wickedness or purity. God's administration being an eternal one, he dares take scope to bring rewards to goodness and to evil. God does not need to haste. He has eternity, and dares therefore be pacific and not perturbed. Haste savors of lack in time. God must not haste. That he could pour swift retribution on the head of offending men, we dare not doubt. That he does not is patent. Another scene is plainly the purpose of God. He has a scene behind a scene. If this world were an end, there is rank and unforgivable injustice done. Men have not been dealt fairly with, and may, with legitimacy, make acrimonious reply; but we are clearly taught that this world is a stage for the display of character, not for its reward, and the next scene will be for the reward of character, and not for its display. God will recompense, but we are not told God does recompense. Such is the lofty argument of the drama, and may be named as major theme.