In some true sense to every one of us, man or woman, come love and ambition: God who is love, and the world which is ambition.1 As Hercules was invited in one direction by pleasure and in the other by wisdom, so every one of us is called in one direction by ambition and in the other direction by love; and the great and final message of the Song of Songs is that love is the supreme factor in human life. And this truth of life is itself a parable, interpreting the still deeper truth that to love God and to be united to him is at once the supreme end and the supreme felicity of life. For the Song of Songs is an allegory in the same sense in which marriage is a symbol. The lesson of the Song of Songs is the strength and the joy of human love; but that is itself a prophetic interpretation of the strength and the joy of God's love for his own, and of their love for him.

1 "The typical interpretation is perfectly compatible with Ewald's view, and, indeed, if combined with it, is materially improved; the heroine's true love then represents God, and Solomon, in better agreement with his historical position and character, represents the blandishments of the world, unable to divert the hearts of his faithful servants from him." An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, by S. R. Driver, D. D., p. 451.

CHAPTER X

A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY

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THE Book of Job is unique in literature. It is almost impossible to classify it. Professor Genung calls it "The Epic of the Inner Life." It is, however, only by a kind of figure that it can be so called. The epic poem is supposed to relate at length and in metrical form "a series of heroic achievements or events under supernatural guidance." 1 This the Book of Job does not do. fessor Genung explains the title which he gives to the book, and with the explanation the title is exceedingly felicitous: "I regard," he says, "this ancient book as the record of a sublime epic action, whose scene is not the tumultuous battle-field, nor the arena of rash adventure, but the solitary soul of a righteous man." 2 But on the one hand, to designate the narrative of such a struggle in the soul of a righteous man as an epic is to give to the word a new, though a not inappropriate meaning; and on the other, this description of the poem indicates but one phase, and not the most important nor even the most interesting phase, of the book. 1 Century Dictionary.

2 The Epic of the Inner Life, by John F. Genung, pp. 20–26.

It is called, with great verisimilitude, a drama, by John Owen, and he not inaptly compares it with "The Prometheus Bound" of Eschylus, Goethe's "Faust," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and Calderon's "Wonder-Working Magician."1 Yet this word "drama" certainly suggests, if it does not require, action accompanying and helping to create the necessity for the speech, and in the Book of Job, except in the prologue, there is no action. Whatever may be said of its spirit, in its form it does not resemble the other great dramas to which Mr. Owen compares it. Biblical scholars have generally classified the Book of Job with the "Wisdom Literature." The Wisdom Literature was the nearest approximation which the Hebrews made to philosophy. The philosopher is interested in truth for its own sake; interested in the interrelationship of different truths; interested in correlating and harmonizing truths and so adjusting them as to make a more or less complete system of truth. The Hebrew had little or no interest in this process; he never undertook it; he was interested in truths but not in truth, and in truths only as they bore upon conduct and life. His wisdom, therefore, took the form not of general systems, but of specific affirmations of principles in their relation to actual life conditions. The Hebrew's philosophy was not abstract, but concrete; not generic, but applied; not scholastic, but expressed in the terms of experience. Thus the tendency of his philosophy 1 The Five Great Sceptical Dramas of History, by John Owen.

was either to aphoristic forms, as in the Book of Proverbs; or to dramatic forms, as in the Song of Songs and the Book of Job; or to an admixture of the two, as in the Book of Ecclesiastes. On the whole it appears to me that in Biblical criticism the Book of Job has been correctly classified; that its epic character - as the narrative of a soul struggle, and its dramatic character-as the interplay of human thought and emotion, are subsidiary to its philosophic character, as the discussion of a profound problem of human life; but that this discussion is not abstract and intellectual but vital and dramatic. Its interest lies not in any theory which it promulgates, but in human experience and in the bearing of a popular theory upon human experience in a time of trial. Professor Kent calls the book "Philosophical Drama."1 I should rather, with a slight difference in emphasis, call it Dramatic Philosophy.2

1 The Wise Men of Ancient History and their Proverbs, by Charles Foster Kent, Ph. D.

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2 It is hardly necessary to consider as a possible theory that the Book of Job is historical; the epilogue alone is quite conclusive upon that point. At the same time it is possible that it had an historical foundation, as most of the greater works of fiction have had. 'Hamlet' rests on an historical foundation; so does 'Macbeth;' yet they are works of imagination. 'The Ring and the Book' is founded on fact; Mr. Browning dug the substance of the story out of an old law report. In Ezekiel Job is referred to as if he were a well-known person. It is possible, of course, that the allusion here may be literary. We often speak of Polonius, or Colonel Newcome, or Mr. Pickwick as though they were real characters. It is, however, altogether probable that Job was an historical person, and that traditions concerning him were current

Without, then, endeavoring to classify the Book of Job, we may say of it that it has some of the qualities of all three types of literature, the epic, the drama, philosophy, but not all of the characteristics of either. If it be regarded as an epic, it is what Professor Genung calls it, an epic of the inner life. The epics of Homer deal with external adventure and with character as it is evolved out of and manifested in adventurous experiences. There is no action in the Book of Job. Throughout the poem the central figure sits among the ashes, his only adventures those of the spirit, striving by much vain reflection to solve the mystery of life. Not even by external symbols, as in Dante, are his spiritual struggles represented. If the book be regarded as a drama it is a monodrama. The celestial movement is introduced in the prologue simply to interpret the drama to us; the wife and the friends are but foils, partly to give occasion to Job's discourse, partly by contrast to interpret it. All attempt to find in them distinctive characters is in vain. Froude well says, "The friends repeat one another with but little difference; the sameness being of course intentional, as showing that they were not speaking for themselves but as representatives of a prevailing opinion." 1 The only actor in the drama is Job himself; the only action the

among the Jews." Seven Puzzling Bible Books, by Washington Gladden, D. D., p. 109.

1 Short Studies on Great Subjects: The Book of Job, by James Anthony Froude, M. A., p. 249.