ng Job as if he were
ambassador for some potentate whom God held in high regard. God's
argument is the climax of sublimity reached in literature; is mountain
summit of sublime thought and utterance. What effect is wanting to
make this scene bewildering in sublimity? One? No. The auditor is
Job, sitting in the ruin of home and love, and friendships and
consequence among men, and good repute, and if, bending low, you will
hear him, you shall know he is sobbing for children that are not. One
lonely, distraught, mystified, sorely-beleagured, and still
surely-trusting man,--this is the audience. The scene is a tawny
desert, once sown to oases of flowers, and billowing grain, and stately
palm-tree, and olive-groves, now harvestless, flowerless, palmless.
Once a stately palace rose beside a fountain here, and from its open
doors ran genial hospitality, to greet the coming guest and the
wayfarer overtaken by the night and weariness; and from the windows
singing and laughter rose, like a chorus of youthful voices; and
now--where these things were are only ruins, havoc, disaster; and Job
sits amidst the desolation that once was home as if he were crowned
king of the realm of Calamity; and the desert, tawny as a tiger's skin,
stretches away to the horizon, barren as the sea, than which is nothing
more solitary or pregnant with melancholy and thought.

The sky is ample and open. Not a cloud flecks it with its foam. From
desert line to the blue zenith is only bewildering blue; when, black as
a stormy midnight, driving as if lightnings were its chariot steeds,
comes the whirlwind whereon the Almighty rides, and halts; and God
pitches his midnight pavilion in front of silent Job on the silent
desert, and from this tent, whose curtains are not drawn, there
trumpets a voice. God is come! And God speaks! "The Lord answered
Job out of the whirlwind." Eloquence like this on forum like this,
literature knows nothing of. Sublimity is come to its noon.

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?" is the
astounding introductory. No exordium is here. Into the thick of
argument, God leaps as a soldier might leap into the midst of furious
battle. "Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid
the corner-stones thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with
doors, when I made the cloud the garment thereof, and set bars and
doors,