feelings brought into play, while he recognizes in the construction of the plot, and the gradual unfolding of the design, the work of a master spirit, guided, whether consciously or with the sure instinct of genius, by those principles in which the highest art and the most perfect nature meet and are reconciled."

1

Nor is it divines and expositors alone who have been fascinated by the spell of this sublime Poem. It is hardly possible to speak of it to an educated and thoughtful man who does not acknowledge its extraordinary power, its unrivalled excellence; while men of genius, to whom the greatest works of literature in many languages are familiar, are forward to confess that it stands alone, far above the head of all other and similar performance. Thus, Thomas Carlyle, our greatest living author, who can hardly be suspected of any clerical bias or prepossessions, says of this Book: "I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written. with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or noble sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem,man's destiny, and God's way with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual. . . . Such "Lectures on Heroes"-" The Hero as Prophet."

living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind :-so soft and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit."

And yet this grand Poem is comparatively little read, and, even where it is read, it is but very imper

fectly grasped and understood. Nor is it easy to

read it with intelligence and a clear vigorous conception of its meaning. It abounds in allusions to ancient modes of thought and speculation; its long sequences of thought and its quick cogent dialectic are disguised and obscured, in part, by the limitations of the proverbial form in which it is composed, and, in part, by the inevitable imperfections which cleave to translations of any and every kind, even the best. And while there are many able commentaries on it addressed to scholars, I know of only one-Canon Cook's in "The Speaker's Commentary" - from which the ordinary reader would be likely to derive much help; while even that, owing to the conditions under which it was written, leaves much to be desired. Yet there is no reason, in the Poem itself, why it should not be as well and intimately known, even to readers of the most limited education, as any one of Shakespeare's plays, and no reason why it should not become far more precious and instructive. That it is difficult to translate is true; but Renan has rendered it into the most exquisite French with admirable felicity and force. That every Chapter of it is studded with allusions which need to be explained, and that the argument of the

Book needs to be "exposed" and emphasized, is also true; but both these services have been rendered to scholars by a crowd of commentators, in the front rank of which stand such men as Schultens, Ewald, Schlottmann, Delitzsch, Dillmann, Merx, Renan, Godet, and Professor A. B. Davidson; and it surely cannot be impossible that the results of their labours, and of labours similar to theirs, should be given to the public in a popular and convenient form.

To achieve some such task as this-to make the Book of Job readable, intelligible, enjoyable to all who care to acquaint themselves with it, even though they should be familiar with none but our noble mother-tongue-has long been a cherished aim with

me.

Three times during the last ten years I have revised my translation of the Poem, seeking to make it less and less unworthy of the Original; and at intervals, during those years, I have sought to acquaint myself with the best expositions of it published in Germany, England, France, and America. Thus equipped and prepared, I venture to offer the results of my reading and labour to the readers of THE EXPOSITOR.

What I have aimed and tried to do is simply this: (1) To give a translation of the Poem somewhat more clear and accurate than that of our Authorized Version, and, in especial, a translation which should render the Poet's long lines, or sweeps, of consecutive thought more apparent. The Book belongs, as we shall see, to that class of Hebrew literature which is collectively designated the Chokmah, and is therefore composed in one of the most inflexible of literary forms,—the proverbial. At first sight it

would seem utterly incredible that a mere succession of proverbs should prove an adequate instrument for expressing any of the grander and more harmonious conceptions of the human mind, above all for expressing linked sequences of thought long drawn out. But there is absolutely no literary form which does not prove flexible and elastic in the hands of genius. In the very "Book of Proverbs itself the famous description of "Wisdom"1 shews what even the proverb is capable of in the hands of a master. And the Book of Job is written by a hand more free and masterly than that of Solomon himself. At times, no doubt, the contracting influence of the inferior form is obvious, breaking up the train of thought into brief pictorial sentences, each of which has a certain rounded completeness in itself; but at other times, and even as a rule I think,

2

I Proverbs viii.

2 It should not be forgotten that our Lord, adopting the style of his age and of the teachers of his native land, spake in proverbs, and in parables, which are but expanded proverbs. The ease with which He speaks hides from us his immense intellectual force, and a certain reverence, not always wise in the forms it assumes, often makes us shrink from discussing the intellectual claims of One whom we confess to be God as well as man. But if we would form an adequate and complete conception of Him, we must, with whatever modesty and reverence, reflect on his enormous, his immeasurable, superiority to all other Teachers in mental power. That He should use so inflexible an instrument of expression as the proverb and make it flexible is no slight proof of his wisdom and intellectual force. But it is only as we compare his "sayings," and especially his paradoxes, which are usually in the gnomic form, with the sayings of the masters of human wisdom that we are sufficiently impressed with the range and grasp of his mind. A foot-note is not the place for a dissertation, or it would be easy to institute a comparison between the proverbial and parabolic utterances of our Lord and those of the wisest of the ancients and moderns. Take only one or two suggestive illustrations. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" has won a secure place as a masterpiece of allegory by the suffrages of the best literary judges; but if our Lord

the thought triumphs over the form, subdues it to its own more imperious necessities, gnome is linked to gnome by connections more or less subtle, so that protracted and noble sequences of argument or description are fairly wrought out. This characteristic feature of the style of the Poem I have endeavoured to preserve.

(2) Another aim has been to supply such explanations, or illustrations, of the innumerable allusions to the physical phenomena of the East, to Oriental modes of thought and philosophy, to the customs and manners of human life in the antique world, with which the Poem abounds, as a modern reader of the Western world may require; in short, so to annotate the Poem as that an Englishman of ordinary intelligence and culture may be able, not only to read it without difficulty, but to enter into and enjoy the large and crowded picture of a bygone age which it presents.

had taken up the allegory, would He not have compressed it into a few sentences, without omitting any point of real value? and, beautiful as Bunyan's work is, will it for a moment compare with any one of the Parables considered even as a mere work of literary genius and art? Or, to come from parables to mere sayings, or guesses. Lord Bacon has many fine "sentences." Schiller's saying, “Death is an universal, and therefore cannot be an evil," has won much applause. Of the merit of Goethe's, "Do the duty that lies nearest to thee," Carlyle is never weary of insisting; and Carlyle himself has many compressed and noble sentences charged with a weight of meaning. But if we compare with these any of our Lord's sayings, such as, for example, "If a man will save his life, let him lose it ;" or, "Let him that would be greatest among you serve," who does not feel that we rise at once into an immeasurably larger and deeper world of thought? The very way in which He quotes might be adduced as another proof of his extraordinary and unparalleled intellectual force; as when, for example, He takes the answer to the question, "Which is the first and best commandment?" from the lips of the Rabbis, and resolves it at once, from the correct answer of a legal puzzle, into a practical moral code which covers the whole of human life.