revival of learning occurs, its light is intended but for one sex, not for humanity. Here and there, an audacious woman dares to assert her birthright. Vittoria Colonna, Isabella of Rosera, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wrenched, rather than were accorded, an ambiguous recognition, as splendid and monstrous exceptions. Meanwhile, the great muttering undertone of Christendom steadily denies woman's right to God's patrimony of knowledge; and this denial sleeps like an incubus on all her aspirations. Mary Astell submits to Bishop Burnett her plans for a Woman's College; but the prelate hurls upon them the charge of heresy, and they are crushed. "She that knoweth how to compound a pudding is more desirable than she who skillfully compoundeth a poem. A female poem I mislike." That is the grim verdict of the seventeenth century. Chemistry enough to keep the pot boiling, and geography enough to know the location of the different rooms in her house, are learning enough for a woman." That is the sardonic verdict of the eighteenth century. "A female astronomer has no other motive for looking at the moon than to see whether there be a man in it." That is the libertine verdict of the first half of the nineteenth century. But we shall hear no more of such despicable flings. From every living authority, in original thought and criticism, come words of cordial salutation to woman, gladly recognizing her capacity for knowledge and her contributions to the world's store of truth and right feeling. The meanness of masculine jealousy is being shamed out of the world. The day is breaking for woman. The chivalry of the soul is to commence its golden era-never to close. And of this, the rearing of these massive walls is one gladdening token. They will not, they cannot, be reared in vain. And this magnificent example will be contagious;-for, VOL. XXI. "Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repair, and in their urns draw golden light.” 49 ARTICLE V.-THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOB. It can hardly be denied that, to the great majority of readers, the book of Job is largely unintelligible and unedifying. Indeed, there are few, even among the most learned and scholarly students of it, who will venture to say that they have wholly grasped its meaning, and developed all the truth which it was meant to teach. In no other book does the Hebraist encounter such perplexities, and grope amid so many and such deep obscurities. In none other is the exegete so often baffled and at his wit's end. The theologian shuns it as of little use to him. The preacher hesitates to take his texts from it, knowing the uncertainties of even the best translations, and that over just the very passages which seem most evangelical, there has been most and sharpest controversy. The book is, to a very considerable extent, a closed book to most readers of it; and not all the explanations which recent biblical criticism has suggested, nor all the theories concerning it which modern scholarship has offered, have availed fully to open it. Of course, we are as far as possible from denying that the book has a real value, even to the most careless reader and to the most uninstructed student. Even to such a one, the simple power of the story and the majestic beauty of the poetry, will not fail to be apparent; and a devout reader, however unlearned, will, no doubt, receive from it impressions that will deepen his humility, his gratitude, his patience, and his trust. Unquestionably there are some passages of the book, of which the meaning is most unmistakable, which are bright and plain enough, even without the context to explain them, and apart from any comprehensive theory in regard to the whole poem,-passages which shine as very gems of inspired thought and utterance, and which have come to be like "household words" in the great amily and church of God. There are passages which, taken by themselves and standing on their own merits, are such fe licitous expressions of religious submission, trust, undying hope and patient love, that the inspiration of the Church through all the ages has not superseded them or equaled them, but they hold still the first place beneath the words of him who spake as "never man spake." They are almost like proverbs among all Christian men. Such, for instance, is the utterance of patient resignation when, crushed beneath his first affliction, the patriarch exclaims— The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, So, too, that cry of faith that goes up from such gloomy depths of anguish, "For I know that my Redeemer liveth," (we shall refer again to the passage), has not yet grown old, and will never cease to live upon the lips of holy men. Such passages as these, we say again, religious souls, in every age, have appropriated as most perfect utterances of their own emotions. But yet, they have none the less failed to perceive, except very dimly, the meaning of the book, to grasp the unity of it, and to understand the present value of it and the relation in which it stands to our full and glorious Christian revelation. Even now, there are those who read, with almost equal reverence and solemnity, the reiterated aphorisms and errors of Eliphaz and Bildad, the violent denunciations of Zophar and the agonized complaints and longing cries of Job,--and who are shocked and affronted by the suggestion that they do not all speak with full inspiration and express a sound theology. It is but a short time since we happened to observe, in a respectable religious paper, such a paragraph as this: "The Bible asserts that it (the Bible) is all of God: and before any man may assert that what Noah or Job or Elisha said, is not inspired, he must prove it to be uninspired, for the presumption is that it is the word of God until the contrary is shown. Otherwise our hope is vain and our preaching is vain."* This, too, notwithstanding Job himself is so continually crying out in acknowledged darkness, * N. Y. Observer of July 24th, 1862. and so tossed about and tortured by uncertainties and doubts, and so involved in constant self-contradictions: notwithstanding, also, the rebuke of Elihu and the awful words of majesty with which Jehovah himself silenced him and melted him to penitence and lowly, trustful love. It is evident enough that if, as the writer we have quoted intimates, what Job says must be taken as directly, and in all parts equally, inspired, we are likely to get into trouble. It is evident enough that if a claim so utterly impossible is thus seriously urged, it is high time that some pains were taken to clear up, if possible, the obscurities in which the book is buried, and remove the hindrances which impede its usefulness and lessen its attractiveness. It is surely not enough, then, to regard the book as merely a divinely given record of an historic example of patience-of pious submission under overwhelming affliction. It is vastly more than this. It is not enough to take it as merely the thundering rebuke of that presumption which expects, by "searching" to "find out the Almighty to perfection,"-a rebuke consisting in the assertion of his infinity and sovereignty. It is this, indeed, but it is more. Neither is it enough to say that it is a mere discussion of the inequalities in "the distribution of good and evil in the world,"-for, if it be such and nothing more, it is a discussion terminating only in uncertainty and mystery, and silenced indeed but not decided. Nor is it mere ly meant to prove the possibility of unselfish and disinterested piety.* Admitting that each of these lessons can be fairly taken from the book, and that they were all included in its grand design and purpose, has it not also a fresher and more present value to us? Is it not of any living meaning to us? Does it stand in no relation to the gospel of the Lord Jesus? Is there not a mean ing running all through it that, when once perceived, will make the whole book luminous and precious to us,-a meaning not dependent upon detached, obscure, uncertain passages, but involved in the very character of the book and inwrought in its very structure? To point out and develop such a meaning is the purpose of this Article. *See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Art. Job. There is much that we must take for granted at the outset, but nothing more than is admitted by the most careful scholars and substantially agreed in by the best authorities. The great antiquity of the book, for instance, which is now proved almost to a demonstration,-this we take for granted. That it was written or, at any rate, that the scene of it is laid in an age far back, almost in the dim twilight of the world's history, when patriarchism, on a very large and splendid scale, had not given way to any stronger and more artificial form of society,so much as this is evident from the very style and character of the book itself. If we should assert, even, that the age of Job was more remote than the age of Abraham, it could hardly be disproved. Clearly enough it antedates the revelation of God's character and will which He made through the law of Moses. It seems to us, the scene of the book is laid, most naturally, either in the age of the patriarch Abraham or in an age a little later. Indeed, anywhere in the period between Abraham and Moses the book can be placed without doing violence to the scenery, the coloring, or the spirit of it. Later than that it certainly cannot be; and so that it lies within that period, it does not greatly matter whether it be a little earlier or a little later. So, too, if there are in the book any traces of a knowledge of the Abrahamic covenant, and of the words of promise and of revelation which God spake to that chosen servant, they are very few and indistinct. It is very certain that there is no knowledge of the character and will of God as it appeared in the Mosaic revelation. It is hardly possible that, had the writer of this poem been familiar with that magnificent revelation, he would have been able entirely to divest himself of the influence of truths so mighty and so full of promise. The whole impression which the book makes is of an age when there was no religious light, except the light of nature and of dim tradition handed down from Adam, and from Noah, and from holy men to whom God spoke in those first days. The weary suf ferer, whose history the poem gives us with such simple pathos, is a "stranger from the covenants of promise." If such covenants between God and man have really been made, he cer |