is quite different. It is rather to induce that frame of mind which shall recognize that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. "Wisdom," in short, as the Hebrews understood it, is the end of all philosophy: wisdom, a practical concern, a way of living, an undeviating and unquestioning faith, a blind acceptance of the reality of God, in the teeth of many logical difficulties.

To any one accustomed to the dialogues of Plato or to the ethics of Aristotle, almost the first thing which strikes the reader of Job and of Ecclesiastes is the formlessness of the books. There is no feeling for form. The notion of a logical advance from point to point, in order to establish a conclusion based on the evidence thus acquired, does not seem to recommend itself to the Hebrew thinker. On the contrary, his arguments go backwards and forwards, involving a great deal of what we should term unnecessary repetition, and perhaps more frequently than not supplying a rhetorical answer to an intellectual difficulty. It was not the province of the Jew to enlarge the sphere of intellect, and to order life solely as the intellect might direct. It was rather his province to teach the absolute importance of conduct. From the very earliest times Jahveh, even by the nomad tribes of Arabia, was regarded as a God arranging the details of ordinary life, quite as much as the object of their creed. Some of the Greek thinkers recognize no difference between ethics and politics, the latter being merely the former "writ large" in the body of a State. The Jew recognized no real difference between intellectual and ethical discipline. The religion which dictated ceremonial observances was also the main inspirer of human virtue and the ultimate organizer of social conditions. Hence wisdom is not primarily intellectual wisdom, but practical wisdom. In the Book of Job the possibility of metaphysical knowledge for man is with the greatest emphasis totally denied. Let us look at the first nine chapters of Proverbs, and we shall find this specifically Hebrew wisdom characterized in detail. The fear of God is its beginning, the fear of God is its goal. It teaches not metaphysical knowledge, but a godly life. And hence, too,

in the eighth chapter of Proverbs wisdom is personified, as it were, as the first creation of God, helping the divine Author, co-operating with him in the work of creation.

There is an obvious contrast between the Book of Proverbs and the other two books which belong to this department. "Proverbs" represents Hebraic thought in its more sunny aspect. It does not go very deep, but it gives admirable, though somewhat superficial, advice in many of the concerns of life. Job and Ecclesiastes are built up on different lines. Job is infinitely the nobler work of the two, the product of more thoughtful and more serious brains. It is, indeed, the finest flower, the summit and crown of Hebraic thought. But the total result of Job and Ecclesiastes is much the sameunless, indeed, we suppose in the latter case, as some critics have supposed, that the writer veiled his scepticism under certain compromises with the existing creed. Let us take the Book of Koheleth first. Its object is obviously to obtain an interpretation of the world, and also rules for practical life, quite apart from tradition. Although the author finds that it is impossible for him to avoid the implications of tradition, he starts, at all events, from the basis of observation and experience. And what is the result of his observation and experience? It is saddening, pessimistic, despairing. Everywhere in Nature we find movement, but a movement which effects nothing. The rivers go on running into the sea, but the sea is not full. The rain comes down from the clouds, and is then sucked up again by the heat of the sun, and the process is eternally repeated. We cannot discover any end in all this. Phenomena recur, but there is no progress. The same thing holds true of the activity of man. He builds up, and the man who follows him destroys. He puts before himself the ideal of gratifying every desire, and he finds that the happiness for which he is searching is a will-o'-the-wisp. Desire itself perishes at the moment of fruition. Death comes at the last to cancel all hopes. Nor yet can a combination of men effect more than a single individual. The object of all states is to reward excellence, to encourage virtue, to establish prosperity. But merit is generally dis

regarded-at all events, unrewarded. "Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed." There is no such thing in real life as the justice of which poets dreamed. We may even go further than this. We may say that Accident, Chance is the ruler of life. The royal thinker who was determined to trust to his observation and experience comes at the last to this lamentable conclusion, that the only hypothesis to explain the world is that it is the creation of Chance. Shall we say, then, with some religious thinkers, that however perplexing may be the issues of mundane existence, there is to be another world which is to set all difficulties right? That is not a solution which recommends itself to Koheleth. Indeed, he rejects it with some scorn. Why should man be held to be better than animals? Why should his spirit endure, when we know that the breath of the brutes ceases when death comes ?

How are we to frame any rules of life based on such a dreary philosophy? Here comes the most astonishing part of the book, that aspect of it which illustrates almost better than anything else the tenacity with which the Hebrew clung to his original creed. First of all we get a purely Cyrenaic doctrine. A certain amount of pleasure is to be got out of life, however aimless it seems to be. It is pleasant to live in the sunlight. Some of our appetites can be gratified with ease and pleasure. Life must not be taken too seriously. However hopeless the outlook, let a man be content with each day as it comes, derive from it such good as it can offer, and at all events preserve a cheerful face. There is a touch here of Aristippus and Epicurus, and more than a passing resemblance to Omar Khayyám. But whereas men like these, having suggested pessimistic principles, desire to carry them out to their logical conclusion, the author of Ecclesiastes will not have a word said to impugn the reality of God. In his head might reign the Greek spirit: in his heart was the soul of a Jew. The philosophy of Kant exhibited very much the same phenomenon. According to the philosopher of Königsberg, pure reason could never prove the existence of God, any more than it could prove the immortality of the soul, or the existence of a world of metaphysical truth.

Nevertheless, the practical reason cannot do its proper work without these postulates. There must be a God, there must be immortality, there must be a real world: or else ethics become impossible. So, too, Koheleth, with his Epicurean philosophy, with his voice of despair, with his intellectual realization that Chance rules the world and not Reason, yet never dares to question the existence of God. Sometimes one detects a note in his thought which is almost repellent. His religion apparently does not help him to solve any of his troubles, but he is very keenly conscious that divine things may be a source of actual peril to a man. You are to walk carefully when you approach the House of God, say as little as you can when you are there, walk warily, be afraid. But that is not his best attitude. The better temper appears in his concluding verses, which, indeed, prove better than anything else the triumphant power and authority of the Jewish temperament based on a long and definite teaching. Whatever he dares to think about the world and about man, the author does not dare to utter any words of scepticism in reference to Divinity. God exists, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Now, apart from all the differences involved in style and manner of treatment, this is precisely the result of the Book of Job. The intellect rebels, but faith remains constant. We cannot see our way along the thorny paths, but we must believe where we cannot prove. If a Greek thinker had had the problems of the Book of Job to discuss, we feel at once how different would have been his treatment. He would have applied analysis to some of the conceptions, such as those of "virtue," "happiness," "sin," of which the book is full. He would have asked, if confronted with the question how it comes to pass that a good man may suffer calamity and an evil man may prosper, what we precisely meant by such words as prosperity and suffering? Do we mean merely the temporal loss of earthly happiness? Do we mean by prosperity only the possession of the good things of life? Or are we confusing in this matter the two different domains of spirit and flesh and the gratifications which belong to

each? Spiritual success may be quite possible, even in the midst of material failure. The problem, at all events, cannot be decided by merely external signs. We want to know a great deal more about the condition of the good man and the bad man respectively before we can settle the doubt as to which of the two is the happier. But analysis is not the strong point of the Book of Job. The Jewish thinker attacks his subject in quite a different way, with a dramatic and imaginative framework and profuse rhetorical eloquence. Το some extent the writer is under the dominion of purely Jewish ideas; but also, because he is an entirely honest man, and through the mouth of Job constantly repeats that it is nothing but hypocrisy to distort obvious facts, he has written a book which is quite as much modern as it is ancient.

He approaches his theme dramatically. The picture is drawn for us of the wealthy head of a great family or tribe, a sort of Bedouin Prince honoured and respected by every one, a man of sincerity and benevolence. It is very easy for such a man to be good, is the sneer of Satan. Doth Job serve God for naught? Why, every day testimony is borne of the benefits which accrue to the man who is a "father to the poor," who " causes the widow's heart to sing for joy." How shall the value of this goodness be tested? Satan is allowed to take away all his possessions, to deprive him of his family, and finally even to afflict Job himself with a loathsome disease, in order to discover whether his virtue is part of himself or merely an outward covering, a thing of circumstance, due to ease and unchallenged prosperity. So the problem is put before us, the problem of a good man suddenly confronted with disaster, to whom his wife, with quick petulance, recommends the easy solution, "Curse God and die." Job's faith is not of this pattern. The two elements of his character which are constantly put before us are, first, his undeviating confidence in God; secondly, his determination to plead his cause before Him. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him; but I will maintain mine own ways before Him." For Job is a straightforward man, and he will not play the hypocrite. He has done the best he can with him