h it
describes sufferings more awful than mortal flesh can know, causing
the soul to shudder at the simple reading of it, it takes on no
quickened pulse, no feverish rush of added speech.

In a few colorless lines it recounts the creation of the heavens and
the earth. In language utterly barren of excitement it describes the
most exciting and soul-moving event that can occupy the imagination
--that moment when the heavens shall be on fire, the elements melted
with fervent heat, the earth and the works therein burned up, and a
new heaven and a new earth brought into view.

It is a book of prose and yet a book of sublimest poetry.

The book of Job is a poem by the side of which the hexameters of
Horace, the drama of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, are not
to be compared.

In all literature the book of Job alone introduces a spirit into the
scene and reports its speech without utterly breaking down into the
disaster of the commonplace.

Listen to the account which Eliphaz the Temanite gives. He says:

"In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth
on men, Fear came upon me, and trembling which made all my bones to
shake."

Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up;
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image
was before mine eyes; there was silence, and I heard a voice,
saying, "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more
pure than his Maker?"

Here is the threshold of the unseen. Before he sees or hears
anything, the Temanite has the sense of fear--the fear of something
more than human. The unknown weighs upon him and presses him down,
all the life and energy in him are at low ebb--he feels as though
the tides of life were running out. A spirit passes before his face.
It is like a breath of scarcely moving air out of the night. The
hair of his flesh (mark the psychological and physiological fact),
the hair of his flesh stood up. It was as if a current of
electricity had passed through him. Then the spirit stands still. It
is as though this breath of air out of the night were no longer
moving. He cannot discern any form. There is nothing fixed or stable
enough for him to perceive. An image is before his eyes. He makes no
vulgar attempt to describe it--it is indescribable. There is a great
silence; then, as the margin has it, he heard a still small voice--
not a loud and jarring voice--but a voice low, soft, still; and yet!