Volume XII.

Number 5.

THE BOOK OF JOB.

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east. And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day, and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.

And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

CHAPTER I.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them; and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away, yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said: The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and

hath burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

THE characters and incidents so far treated

in this series of great chapters have been those of Hebrew history. The books of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Kings, and so on, are records of the traditional events in the development of the Jewish nation; and so the characters of Moses, David, Solomon, are the heroes of real history, as Alfred, William the Conqueror, and Charles Stuart are of English history.

But with the chapter before us to-day we are taken at once to an entirely different realm. Preserved for us here, among these Hebrew histories, and put in so prominent a place in our Old Testament, before even the Psalms or Proverbs or the Prophets, this book of Job is unique. It has been said that it has no classification with anything else in literature, that it is in itself, its construction and conception, unlike anything else that has ever been written. The book is extremely simple, direct, and entirely free from the least allusion to any prophecy or any sympathy with creeds or rituals or ceremonial.

The riddle of its origin, however, has

never been solved. We have to deal with a work which we shall be compelled to judge solely by what it contains. For we have absolutely no idea where it came from, who wrote it, or when.

It has defied all scholarship and all research. "It is a point," says Davidson, "on which even this omniscient age must be content to remain in doubt." However, that it is one of the greatest masterpieces of the world's literature no one denies. It has been called the greatest poem in the world. The clearest thinkers in every age, the keenest critics, the wisest teachers, have one and all agreed that this "Drama of Job" is a work of such sublime grandeur that it has never been equalled in its special sphere. The opening words, "There was a man in the land of Uz," have the effect of putting the scene far away from the reader's associations, just as "Once upon a time there dwelt in the far East," or some such phrase, may be popularly used for the same purpose.

"Whose name was Job." Job means "made distressed," "harassed." Then follows, in a few strong, artistic touches, a living picture of the man, "whole-souled, upright, avoiding evil"; of large property, "a very great estate." This is emphasized not only in cattle, travelling camels, and working oxen, but in the luxuriousness of many servants and a great household. His fine religious earnestness is vividly brought out by a touch of local coloring: it is said that every seventh day he had all his children meet him at sunrise and hold a little family service of purification. "It may be," he says, "that some of my sons have sinned, or departed from God in their hearts." So he makes a little prayer to God for each one.

Then (for we must remember this is not the story itself, it is but the introduction) the scene we cannot say changes, but dissolves, as if we had two views thrown upon a large screen by a powerful duplex lantern; and three times during this brief prologue the one scene melts into the other. Now it is the halls of heaven.

Like an Oriental emperor, Jehovah holds his court. About the gleaming throne, wrapped in supernatural tints of divine color, grouped upon the jewelled floor of beaten gold, we are to behold the "Sons of God,"-beings of superhuman form, messengers and ministers of the Most High; among

them Satan, the "opposer." Jehovah asks him, as he says he has recently returned "from going to and fro in the earth," what he thinks of a man like Job.

"Oh," Satan quickly replies, "doth Job serve God for naught? You have given him so entirely everything that a man can possibly desire, that of course he is upright. It is easy to be virtuous on a handsome income, with every luxury."

What Satan distinctly implies is that there is no such thing as goodness simply for itself. From the point of view of Jehovah and his court the test question is, "Can a man remain perfectly pious and true and upright, when he has absolutely nothing to be good for?"

It is curious to notice that this is not the question which Job feels any interest in. Job's view is exactly the reverse side of the shield. It is not whether a man can keep his integrity, he never doubts that, but this: "Can God inflict suffering upon a man who is never wicked?"

Of this, however, the prologue says nothing. That is Job's side. The introduction, with which we are now dealing, discovers to us only the view of the contest as it is to be witnessed from heaven.

"Very well," says Jehovah, "we will see. Go, Satan, and test Job, take from him the things you speak of." Satan goes.

Immediately the clouds gather for the storm. The first heavy drops fall. The Sabeans make a raid and carry off Job's oxen and a herd of sheep and kill a great number of his servants.

While yet the messenger is announcing this disaster to Job, lightning strikes his barns, and, as they were full, all his stores are consumed, everything is burnt up. Another breathless messenger rushes in to say that the Chaldeans have fallen upon and captured the bands of camels, slaying the guard with the edge of the sword; and, while he is yet speaking, comes another, crying, "Thy sons and daughters were feasting together, and there arose a great wind and smote the four corners of the house, so that it fell; and I alone am escaped to tell thee."

The rich man is beggared, the father is childless. Here is rapid catastrophe! Here is overwhelming affliction and trial! Will human strength stagger? human courage

give way? religious faith perish? and the upright man sink?

No. Job rends his mantle in mourning for his children, bows himself, and cries:

"Naked came I into the world, naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

And the author tells us in a pregnant line, "Through it all Job did not charge God with doing wrong.”

This would seem like a glorious justification of human integrity, a glorious test of human nature; but the author of the book of Job describes Satan as not at all satisfied, and so Jehovah is made to give him power to try Job still further. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he was smitten with pain, so that he forsook his home and crept to the corner of a vacant lot, covered with ashes.

There his wife comes and makes her one brief speech. It is intended, doubtless, as the last drop of agony to fill full poor Job's deep cup of bitterness. "Stop crying to your Jehovah," she says. "He takes no notice. Leave him and die." Indeed, it seems to poor Job too true God does not hear him, or heed him, or care for him. Still, he reproves his wife for speaking just as the ungodly speak. Satan here seems to be satisfied. At all events, he retires and does not appear again.

So far, we have been dealing with the prologue, or introduction. This is only the beginning of the drama itself.

(To be continued.)

A CLEARER VISION.

There is a view from some celestial height,

Beyond the haze that earthly fear has spread, Where darkness is transfused with liquid light, That through the clouds of doubt its beams does shed.

There can the source of all this mystery

Be seen; and all that now bewilders men, In what comes in our earthly history,

Shall be revealed unto our clearer ken.
Oh for a vision from that eminence
That thrusts its crest from out the transient
vales

Into the region where lies permanence,
Into th' Eternal Light that never fails!

ARTHUR E. LOCKE.

TWO ARTIST-DAUGHTERS OF ITALY.

Elisabetta Sirani-Rosalba Carriera.

Owen Meredith, in one of the most exquisite of his shorter poems, has given us the dying words of the young artist, Elisabetta Sirani, summing up her brief, beautiful career, dwelling with modest joy upon her triumphs, and lamenting her own early doom rather from the standpoint of the ambitious painter, cut short amid earnest labors, than of the young girl so suddenly called away.

Tragic and mysterious as was her death, by many ascribed to poison administered by some jealous rival,—the span of Elisabetta's life, numbering, as her countrymen would say, only "five lustres," comprised, in its quarter of a century, as rich a dower of artistic talents and achievements as may be found even upon the long roll of Italian celebrities of her time, united to a noble and attractive personality. Her contemporaries wrote of her with enthusiasm. She has been called a complete artist, combining originality and fertility of invention with a minute knowledge of drawing, and all the technique of her profession. One of her countrymen calls her "the heroine among artists." While another, after praising her skill and her incessant industry, speaks of her quiet domestic virtues, her habit of rising at daybreak in order to perform household duties and gain time for her studies in music and poetry, her cheerfulness of disposition, and her modesty in dress. After making all due allowance for the touch of extravagance apt to be found in Italian eulogiums, there still remains to us the image of a lovely and brilliant young creature, well deserving of honor, even among the great names of her land and century, a worthy daughter of Bologna, so famed among Italian cities for its record of art and learning, and a worthy pupil of Guido Reni, near whom she lies buried in the church of San Domenico.

Elisabetta Sirani was born at Bologna about 1640, and, like so many artists afterwards distinguished, was the daughter of a painter, who, discovering her great ability, had her enrolled among Guido's pupils. Her progress in art was so rapid, and she executed with such quickness, that those

who envied her her rising fame did not scruple to assert that her father passed off works of his own as hers. Admitting visitors to her studio, she is mentioned as drawing and shading a series of subjects chosen by some guests of high rank while they looked on; and, at the age of twenty, she had hardly received the commission for a large picture of the baptism of Jesus before she had completely sketched an outline of the whole. In addition to her skill as a painter, she excelled in modelling and in engraving on copper. It was in 1655, when she can have been scarcely more than fifteen, that her first public work was executed; and the list of her productions in oils, during the remaining decade of her life, amounts to one hundred and fifty carefully finished pictures and portraits, many of them of large size. Her instruction was sought by women eager to study art, and her two sisters were among her pupils. Bologna, in the seventeenth century, numbered more women of talent among her artists than any other town in Italy; and "la Sirani" may be classed in the front rank of her gifted daughters.

The sketches given us of the short career of this brilliant girl present a bright picture of successful striving and of well-earned triumphs against the quiet background of a simple burgher household. It is stated by one of Elisabetta's biographers that her whole soul was absorbed by art, to the exclusion of all thoughts of marriage; while another declares that she had been strongly attached to a young painter, of whom her father did not approve. As much confusion and contradiction exist regarding this subject as upon the mystery of her sudden death. Some say that she died of a violent fever; while the majority, as already mentioned, did not hesitate to aver that she had been foully poisoned, either by an unworthy suitor, whom she had sparned, or by some jealous rival, or some great personage whose service she had declined to enter, or even by some celebrity who was said to have been offended by a caricature, and to have hired a servant-girl to put poison into her food. It is easy to understand how the effects of death from virulent disease may have given rise to the belief that the beautiful face upon which her fellow-citizens flocked to look as she lay in state may have