rope. We know
enough. Virtue is made very evident, and vice very despicable, and God
very apparent--and these be the sufficient data for the monograph of
life. "All things work together for good to them that love God," is
the far-away response to Job's troubled cry. God converses with Satan
long enough to deny the allegation that Job serves God as a matter of
dollars and cents, that it is convenient--so runs the devil's
sneer--convenient for Job to be good; for he finds it profitable. But
if God will lower his rate of profit in goodness, and if God will
shipwreck all Job's prosperity, and sting him with the serpent-touch of
dire disease, then will Job become as others. Profit in goodness gone,
his goodness will "fade as doth a leaf." This is evil's pessimistic
philosophy, and Job, on whom calamitous circumstances pile as Dagon's
temple on Samson's head; Job, trusting where he can not see, and making
his appeal to God, whose ways are hid,--is the lie given to Satan's
prophecies, and the vindication of God's confidence in Job. Job has
been as one sold into servitude for a month. Satan hath been a hard
master, has thrust him exceeding sore, has given no intermission of
peril or anguish, has crowded sorrow on sorrow, has snatched away every
flower from the field of this good man's life, and watches, leering, to
hear him say, "I will curse God and die;" but when, after arguments
compounded of pain and tears and hope, Job returns to his silence,
saying, "The words of Job are ended," Satan has witnessed the triumph
of a good man, and disproof of his own sorry accusations, and the
vindication of God's estimate; and, as is fitting, he stays not to
acknowledge defeat, but slips away as the whirlwind chariot of Jehovah
dashes into sight. Satan, not Job, has been defeated.

And in the long years of a prosperous life, no confidence has been
reposed in Job so worthy as this reposed in him of God, to put to
silence the slanders of wickedness that goodness was a species of
selfishness; so that what Job did not understand, and what his friends
interpreted as the certain disfavor of God, was sign of the trust God
reposed in him. Satan had done his worst on a good man, and had
failed! What an apocalypse this was! The second person with whom God
holds conversation is Job. Satan he talked with in conversational
tones, with no state nor eloquence. Job he honors, coming in regal
splendor, by thundering with his voice, by treati