winds; and in
conclusion, from comparing the orator Marc Antony with the orator Job
of Uz, I am compelled to confess that I love not Antony the less, but
Job the more. Marc Antony's oration was diplomatic, tragic, masterful,
pathetic; but Job's oration is spent in the realm of the pathetic and
sublime. The theme is the appeal to God. He has turned from man and
toward God. His thought swings in circles majestic as the circuits of
the stars. He fronts himself toward the Eternal as if to certify, "To
God I make my plea." His harshness is kinder than the kindness of man.
Job's orbit includes life. He runs out to God, but he runs to God.
Himself is point of departure on this long journey. This oration is an
apology, a plea of a great soul, pleading for what is above life. The
words have pathos, but they lift to sublime heights. Job sweeps on
like a rising tide. His false comforters sit silent, perplexed, but
silenced. His argument rises as a wind, which first blows lightly as a
child's breath on the cheek, then lifts and sways the branches of the
trees, then trumpets like a battle troop, then roars like storm-waves
beating on the rocks, until we hear naught but Job. What begins an
apology, ends a paean. At first, he spoke as, "By your leave, sirs."
Later, he seizes the occasion; masses his lifetime of experience and
thought and faith and attempted service; deploys his argument to show
how God's wisdom fills the soul's sky, as if all stars had coalesced to
frame a regal sun; makes his argument certify his conscious integrity
in motive and conduct, until he thunders like a tempest: "My desire is
that the Almighty would answer me. I would declare unto him the number
of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him,"--and on a sudden
his trumpet tones sink into softness, and his dilated frame stoops like
a broken wall, and he murmurs, "The words of Job--are ended." Yet so
potent his self-defense, that his three comforters sit silent as the
hushed night. Their argument is broken and their lips are dry. The
words of the comforters, like the words of Job, are ended.

Elihu, a youth, has been listening. Age has had its hour and argument,
and age is silenced, when, like the rush of a steed whose master is
smitten from the saddle, this impetuous youth speaks. At this point,
genius is evidenced by this unknown dramatist. A young man speaks, but
his are a young man's words, hurried, fitful, tinctured with
impertine