GOODNESS AND PROSPERITY

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them to be the just law of God. In the code of the Retrospect and elsewhere we found the frequent phrase and thought: 'Do right, and it will be well with thee'; and even this: 'Do right that it may be well with thee.' The belief that happiness' will follow rectitude naturally led to the suggestion to make the result a motive for the deed. In other words, good fortune became the motive or stimulus of virtue-a perilous order of things for the purity of virtue. In the same way it was believed that adversity and suffering were the results of sin. Now in these beliefs there lay much truth. In the long run thrift and sobriety and integrity will bring about health, success and prosperity, while sloth, dishonesty and drunkenness will cause misery and ruin. It would be a worse and not a better world than it is if honesty, in the long run, were not the best policy both for individuals and states. Professor Driver says truly, Society being organized as it is, the habits which go to constitute righteousness are such as to win a man respect from his fellow-men, and to command success; on the other hand, wickedness paralyzes the moral energies, blinds an individual and a nation alike to the real conditions upon which prosperity depends, and often over-reaches itself.'

Thus to old Hebrew thought, if God be the ruler of the world, and the perpetual cause and upholder of its moral order, then it is he and he alone who is ultimately responsible for the due fulfilment of the moral sequence-prosperity to the righteous, adversity to the wicked. The one is reward, the other punishment. The more the thought of God filled his mind, the more the pious Hebrew tended to believe that all human fortunes, and more especially all sudden and startling exhibitions of misery or of success, were directly due to the will of God, acting on the one single and simple rule of punishment and of reward. 'The doctrine,' to quote Professor Driver once more, 'was deeply impressed on the ancient Hebrew mind; and all exceptions were a source of great perplexity to it. The perplexity was the greater because the Hebrews had an imperfect conception of general laws, whether in nature or in society; they were keenly sensible of God's omniscience, and pictured him as interposing actively in the course of the world: hence virtue overtaken by calamity, or vice flourishing unrebuked, seemed to them to cast a direct slur upon the justice of God's government of the world.'

If goodness produced prosperity, and if sin produced adversity, it was also possible to invert the order. One might not only say, This man is prosperous, therefore he is good; but what was far more dangerous and cruel, This man is stricken by calamity, there

fore he is a sinner. So the way was prepared for many errors and perplexities, for we know that sorrows and troubles come alike to good and bad, and are often wholly independent of the sufferer's actions and character. That sin ultimately brings calamity to some one is probably a universal truth. But there may be sorrows not caused by sin, while outward prosperity is often the 'reward' (Plato, as we shall hear, would say the 'punishment') of the wicked. For the theory of retribution or tit for tat fails to observe that outward prosperity is one thing, while inward or spiritual happiness is another. It also fails to realize that many outward prosperities are not always and necessarily good.

So like other half truths regarded as whole truths, the doctrine brought many difficulties and evils in its train. (1) If a sudden calamity befall me, I shall judge myself a sinner.' Yet I may not be conscious of any grave transgression. My conscience is needlessly alarmed. What secret sin have I committed? What is my unknown guilt? To say nothing of its gnawing pain, such imaginary anguish of conscience is almost as bad for the moral character as a baseless self-righteousness. (2) Conversely my prosperity may make me proud. It is not (I may proudly imagine) the free gift of God, but the due guerdon of my rectitude. (3) In a similar way I may misjudge my neighbour, and in the place of pity, condemn. (4) The value of outward prosperity' is heightened, and its place in human life misunderstood, if it be regarded as the reward of God. (5) Similarly adversity is often misinterpreted if it be only regarded as a divine punishment. (6) If the facts of life are in too glaring contradiction to the theory, then doubts arise concerning the righteousness of God.

Some modifications or developments were gradually introduced into the theory. One famous development we have already noticed. If the good suffer, it is because of their parents' sins. We saw how this development was rebuked and denied by Ezekiel. Or again, it was said that the prosperity of the bad is only temporary. Their end will be trouble. Sudden death awaits them. We have to remember that throughout the period when these views were held and these difficulties expressed (right down in fact to the era in which the Book of Job was written), the scene of reward and of punishment, of prosperity and of adversity, was the earthly life and that alone. The shadowy life of Sheol was neither good nor bad; it was the same for all. The whole conception of suffering and prosperity was utterly changed by the introduction of a belief in the immortality of the soul. This we shall clearly realize when we come to read the last production of that class of literature to which Job belongs, The Wisdom of Solomon.

'THE PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN'

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§ 5. The prologue and its plot.-To understand the Book of Job the better, it is expedient to give here an outline of its plot. The author desires to make his argument broadly human. For though the doubts suggested by the calamities of the righteous were specially Jewish (since they could only be felt in all their keenness by men who believed in one, all-potent, and all-righteous God), yet the problem which they raise is quite general. Therefore our author takes for his hero no Israelite, but 'a man in the land of Uz,' a land situated (as we are probably to suppose) on the borders of Edom and Arabia. This man is both very good and very prosperous. His condition, therefore, presents no difficulty either to himself or to others. But suddenly overwhelming calamities befall him. Now in order that the reader might fully appreciate and sympathize with the doubts and arguments that were to follow, it was absolutely necessary for him to feel quite certain that Job's righteousness was really above suspicion. It must be pure righteousness and not mercenary. To effect this preliminary requisite our author makes the righteousness of Job acknowledged by God himself.

He first gives a short, vivid picture of Job's goodness and piety. Then the scene shifts to heaven. God is represented as a kind of monarch, holding his court with the angels, his ministers, around him. Among them is one called 'the Satan,' which means the opponent, the assailant, the adversary. God asks him whence he comes, and he replies, 'From the earth,' for this angel's duty apparently was to sift and oppose man's pretensions to virtue, and in this office he seems to take a certain malignant satisfaction. God asks him whether he has noticed Job, a man of blameless virtue and of spotless integrity. The adversary admits the goodness of Job, but says it is only skin deep. It is merely mercantile. Job does not fear God for nought.' His virtue is rooted in his prosperity. To prove that Job's piety is sincere and unalloyed, God permits the adversary to overwhelm him with affliction, first by robbing him of all his property and his children, and then by inflicting upon him a loathsome and painful disease-a disease, moreover, which was popularly regarded as a sure indication of God's wrath and a certain evidence of sin.

Here it may be remarked (1) that after the knot has thus been tied, the purpose for which the figure of the adversary has been introduced is accomplished. He does not therefore reappear. (2) The explanation of Job's suffering given in the prologue is not meant to be a contribution to the general problem. It is merely a dramatic way of making the reader convinced that Job was really good, that his piety was as great as his affliction. To prove this

incontrovertibly, to show that God was right and the Satan wrong, the insinuations of the latter are made to fail. Job maintains his piety in the midst of his misery. His wife suggests that he shall curse God and die,' that is, either commit suicide or, by cursing God, draw down upon his head the immediate and final exhibition of God's wrath. But far from falling in with this advice, Job utters the two famous apophthegms of pious resignation

'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'

'Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not also receive evil?'

Thus the extent and purity of Job's goodness are proved, (1) by his past life; (2) by the witness of God; (3) by his conduct under dire affliction. So now the poem proper, on the undeserved calamities of the righteous in relation to the justice of God, can begin. But the introduction, by proving that there is such a thing as undeserved suffering, has also shown that there is such a thing as disinterested goodness, and to assert and establish both these propositions was in itself a triumph for the cause and the development of morality and of religion. Thus the introduction, though only a prologue to the true drama, has yet a singular greatness and importance of its own.

§ 6. The speeches of the drama and the character of Job.-To supply the speakers for the orations which are now to follow, three friends of Job are represented as having heard of his calamities, and as determining to come to mourn with him, and to comfort him.' Naturally some time must be supposed to have elapsed between the beginning of Job's afflictions and the arrival. of his friends. During this long interval we may assume that the wasting and painful disease had made much progress, so that Job's silent patience and uncomplaining resignation were gradually becoming worn out under the strain and stress of physical suffering. The three friends find Job, as was and is the wont of lepers and outcasts in Arabia, sitting outside his own house, on the rubbish heap of ashes and dung. For 'seven days and seven nights' none speaks a word. It is seen that his agony is too sore for speech. Then Job himself breaks the silence by a burst of impassioned complaint. After this each friend speaks in turn, and to each friend Job replies. There are three rounds' or cycles of these speeches and replies, though in the last 'round,' according to the present Hebrew text, the third friend does not venture to renew the argument. The speeches of the friends tend to become shorter, those of Job longer, and at last he ends, as he had begun, by a soliloquy.

6

THE CHARACTER OF JOB

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The friends represent the old-fashioned views of suffering hitherto held. This we shall see more clearly when we come to read their speeches. To them calamity implies sin. At the best, if it is not a punishment for wrongdoing, it is a discipline and a warning. In each cycle the tendency of the friends is to become more violent and abusive. Job's persistent assertion of his innocence compels them to regard him as a hardened sinner, a man who must have actually committed many iniquitous deeds. But we are not to suppose that the friends are never meant to utter a single word that is true. It would show that the poet was a feeble artist if all the right were on the side of Job, and all the wrong on the side of his friends. That God is righteous, and that he can have no interest or satisfaction in human suffering, the author would have us believe as warmly as the friends assert it. The passionlessness and self-sufficiency of God, so finely emphasized by Eliphaz, are elements of the author's own teaching. ("God doth not need either man's work or his own gifts.') They are directed against certain old superstitions from which his contemporaries had not perhaps wholly shaken themselves free. The doctrine of retribution itself is not by any means rejected en bloc. Our author would only deny the propriety of its application to every case.

The Job of the dialogue is not the same person as the Job of the introduction. He is no longer a patient sufferer, who bows his head in unquestioning resignation before the inscrutable will of God. We have already noticed one possible reason for this change in the prolonged continuance of his agony. Patience needs strength, and his strength is becoming exhausted. Are we meant to suppose, as many Jewish Rabbis thought of old, and as Professor Budde thinks to-day, that Job's vehement complaints, which sometimes amount to a direct denial of all justice and moral distinctions in the divine rule, were intended by our author to show that Job's heart did of a truth contain within it the germs of spiritual pride, and that his suffering was a needful purification of an evil tendency which had hitherto been unsuspected either by himself or by others? Hardly. For in that case his sufferings would not in the last resort be undeserved, and the problem, Why do the righteous suffer, would once more be met by a denial. So far as they are righteous they do not suffer. Even if the sin be purely one of tendency and not of deed, a germinal sin which only special circumstances may ever cause to ripen into act, and which suffering may crush in the seed, still that very suffering will then come as a purification, and if as a purification, it will not come 'undeserved.' But one object of the Book of Job is surely to affirm that there is such a thing as