o beat one stroke more against the sea. This is Job.
He is bewildered. His first cry is as of one whose reason staggers.
His face, his voice, his words--all are unnatural. To hear, I would
not know nor think this was Prince Job. Strangely, sadly, terribly
changed he is when he cries: "Let the day perish wherein I was born.
Let that day be darkness. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain
it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let
darkness seize upon it. Let it not be joined unto the days of the
year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let that
night be solitary; let no joyful voice come therein. Let the stars of
the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none;
neither let it see the dawning of the day." "Wherefore is light given
to him that is in misery; and life unto the bitter in soul, which long
for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid
treasures; which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find
the grave? For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me. I
was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble
came." Alas, Prince Job, your voice is a-sob with tears; and we had
not known it was he! But did grief ever tell its beads with deeper
music? Has not this bankrupt prince given sorrow words forever? His
pain and grief are unutterable in sadness, yet is he not alone.
Multitudes have taken up his lament. There is no pathos deeper than
his, "digging for death more than for hid treasures." I fear Job's
grief unmans him, and he hath gone mad with Lear. Pray, think you he
is not as passionate, gray Lear, mad as the stormy night? It seems so,
but is not so. He is baffled. He is a good man, but blinded for a
moment, as a lightning-flash stupifies the sight. His cry is the cry
wrung from the white lips of pain through the ages. We can not blame
him, but only be pitiful to him. His disasters are so varied and so
terrible; but we feel sure of him, and if he have lost footing and
sight, 't will not be for long.

But there he sits in ashes, fit to make marble weep; and his three
friends--stately, aged, gray, friends of many years--come to comfort
him; for which service he has need, sore need. There are times when a
heart is hungry for tenderness, when a word of love would be a gift of
God, when a touch of some tender hand would be a consolation wide as
heaven; and such a word and h