folds the nature of God's providential government over
men. It is not simply retributive, as the three friends had maintained,
so that the measure of a man's outward sufferings is the measure of his
sins; nor is it simply incomprehensible, so that there can be no
reasoning about it; but it is disciplinary, in such a way that sorrow,
though always the fruit of sin, comes upon good men as well as upon the
wicked, being a fatherly chastisement intended for their benefit, and
which, if properly improved, will in the end conduct them to a higher
degree of holiness, and therefore of true prosperity and happiness. The
three friends were right in maintaining God's justice; but with respect
to the manner of its manifestation their error was fundamental. Job's
view was right, but inadequate. A disciplinary government, administered
over a world in which the wicked and the imperfectly good live together,
must be incomprehensible as it respects the particular distribution of
good and evil. Elihu was right in the main position, but he wanted
authority. The question was settled by God's interposition not _before_
the human discussion, nor _without_ it, but _after_ it; an interposition
in which the three friends were condemned, Job approved, and the
argument of Elihu left in its full force.

It has been the fashion with a certain class of critics to
disparage Elihu as a self-conceited young man, and to deny the
authenticity of his discourses. But thus the plan of the book is
fatally broken, as must be evident from the account given of it
above. It was not necessary that Elihu should be named in the
prologue. It is enough that he is described when he takes a part
in the argument. Why he is not named in the closing chapter has
been already indicated. There was nothing in his argument to be
censured. As to the attacks made on other parts of the book as
not authentic, for example, what is said of Behemoth and
Leviathan, they rest on no valid foundation. They are only
judgments of modern critics as to how and what the author of the
book before us ought to have written. The attempt to resolve
into disconnected parts a book so perfect in its plan, and which
has come down to us by the unanimous testimony of antiquity in
its present form, is a most uncritical procedure.

7. Job plainly belonged to the patriarchal period. This appears from his
longevity. He lived after his trial a