ce weakened by
age, he thinks his is a sledgehammer argument, illuminative,
convincing, unanswerable; yet because he thinks he speaks in God's
behalf and in God's stead, he rises into eloquence withal, though his
words are pitiless; for himself knows not suffering, nor can he compass
Job's calamity. Elihu mistakes the sight of his eyes for the truths of
God, a blunder of not infrequent recurrence. He is not all wrong, nor
is he all wrong in his desire to help to the truth, but is as a lad
trying to lift a mountain, which, planted by God, requires God to
uproot it.

So the drama sweeps on. Jobs sits silent, but not silenced. He makes
no reply to Elihu's invective. Here is a dignified silence more
impressive than any speech. He has been shot at by all the volleys of
the earth and sky; and, wounded in every part, he retains his faith in
God; nay, his faith is burning brightly, like a newly-trimmed lamp:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. I am misconceived by man,
but not by God;" and his face has a strange light, as if he had been
with Moses on the mount; and when, in a whirlwind's sweep, and above
it, God's voice is heard; and it is Job God answers, as if to say,
"Yours is the argument." God has no controversy with Elihu, nor yet
with the aged counselors. Them he ignores; them, by and by, he
rebukes. Job, and not they, had been right. God is come as
vindicator. If his voice thunders like tempestuous skies, there is to
appear an unspeakable tenderness in it at the last. He is not come to
ride Job down, like a charge of Bedouin cavalry. He is come to clear
his sky. He is come to give him vision and to show him wisdom, of
which, though Job has spoken, he has had none too much. In the drama,
God speaks in discussion to two persons. In conversational tones, in
the prologue to the drama, he talks with Satan when he leads Job to
trial. Job's calamities, instead of being a proof of his turpitude,
are proof of the confidence God reposes in him.

What a revelation in character that is! If for a time God had, as
object-lesson to the Jew and through him to the world, granted visible
rewards and visible punishments, that was not the permanent scheme.
God's administration is hid from vulgar eyes truly, but also from the
eyes "of the wise and prudent." Man's wisdom may not vaunt itself.
God's moral system is no well-lit room in which all furnishings are
visible; rather a twilight gloom, where men and women g