s with a plough on the sward of
monotonous usage." And _Hunt's Magazine_, New York, commends "this
reasoning with the sceptical, showing that if they consider
probabilities simply, then all the great doctrines of our faith might
reasonably be expected."

* * * * *

An extract from the book itself, as out of print, may be acceptable, the
more so that it takes a new and true view (as I apprehend) of Job and
his restored prosperity:--

"One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last give
way was only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another
fall, albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named among God's
chosen three, 'Noah, Daniel, and Job,' and worthy that the Lord should
bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point I wish to touch
on,--the great compensation which God gave to Job. Children can never be
regarded as other than individualities, and notwithstanding Eastern
feelings about increase in quantity, its quality is, after all, the
question for the heart. I mean that many children to be born is but an
inadequate return for many children dying. If a father loses a
well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching void that he
gets another. For this reason of the affections, and because I suppose
that thinkers have sympathised with me in the difficulty, I wish to say
a word about Job's children lost and found. It will clear away what is
to some minds a moral and affectionate objection. Now this is the state
of the case.

"The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels and
oxen, and so forth, and ten children. All these are represented to him
by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his
great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents and
purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from
different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses
had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience
follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or
false.

"Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man
of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double
of everything once lost--his children remain the same in number, ten. It
seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor children,
really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, and schemed it;
and