e
of this passage, and endeavour to make Job acknowledge what he is
steadfastly denying.) Well, and what then? What will he care? 'Will his
own eye see his own fall? Will he drink the wrath of the Almighty? What
are the fortunes of his house to him if the number of his own months is
fulfilled?' One man is good and another wicked, one is happy and another
is miserable. In the great indifference of nature they share alike in
the common lot. 'They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover
them.'

Ewald, and many other critics, suppose that Job was hurried away by his
feelings to say all this; and that in his calmer moments he must have
felt that it was untrue. It is a point on which we must decline
accepting even Ewald's high authority. Even then, in those old times, it
was beginning to be terribly true. Even then the current theory was
obliged to bend to large exceptions; and what Job saw as exceptions we
see round us everywhere. It was true then, it is infinitely more true
now, that what is called virtue in the common sense of the word, still
more that nobleness, godliness, or heroism of character in any form
whatsoever, have nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or
even happiness. The thoroughly vicious man is no doubt wretched enough;
but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses,
which he understands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with a
conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called
respectability,--such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness
disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he be
the basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness.
Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him obey the laws under
which prosperity is obtainable, and he will obtain it, let him never
fear. He will obtain it, be he base or noble. Nature is indifferent; the
famine and the earthquake, and the blight or the accident, will not
discriminate to strike him. He may insure himself against casualties in
these days of ours, with the money perhaps which a better man would have
given away, and he will have his reward. He need not doubt it.

And, again, it is not true, as optimists would persuade us, that such
prosperity brings no real pleasure. A man with no high aspirations, who
thrives, and makes money, and envelops himself in comforts, is as happy
as such a nature can be. If unbroken satisfaction be the most blessed
stat