men, in the laborious service, or the still more laborious rule of the world. At every step the sense of hollowness, change, suffering, evil, grows upon the searcher, till the sad burden is repeated again and again- Vanity of vanities; all things are vanity'-'Better were it not to have been than to bebetter is it now to die than to live.' Only at last, like some storm-beaten ship, making not what harbour it will, but what it can, he disowns all study and enquiry as a mere 'weariness of the flesh,' and comes back to what he might have learnt at his mother's knee: To fear God and to keep His commandments, this is the whole duty,' and therefore the whole wisdom, 'of man.'

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Far different from the grand poetry of the Book of Job, and the pathetic speculation of Ecclesiastes, is the calm and oracular sententiousness of the Book of Proverbs. For it The Book of represents as already found that wisdom, for which Proverbs. the others profess to search. The proverb, according to a well-known definition, is the presentation of the wisdom of many '-the long-tried and accepted discoveries of common sense '-under a form stamped with the impress of the 'wit of one.' It has nothing to do with what is vague, imperfect, or mysterious. Accordingly the Book of Proverbs,' after a grand poetical opening-not unlike some of the reflective passages of the Psalms, and closely resembling many passages in the Book of Job-settles down into a long series of those clear-cut antithetical maxims which we call 'proverbs.' There are in it proverbs which sometimes startle us by their enunciation of what is called 'worldly wisdom,' regarding the object of life as simply a man's own happiness and peace and safety. There are proverbs of a higher wisdom of humanity, which find that object in the service and the love of men. But the characteristic proverbs, which stamp on the Scriptural book its peculiar distinction from all other books of proverbial philosophy,' are those which find the wisdom of man in the knowledge of the wisdom of God, understanding that under it the lower types of wisdom will find their place, since by it alone we learn to work out our own perfection, and fill our place rightly in the world of our fellowmen. This highest conception is especially prominent, as a dominant idea, in the grand introduction to the book, rising

again and again to a lofty philosophic enthusiasm. In that sense it is that in the first chapter Wisdom is introduced as crying without and uttering her voice in the streets,' in solemn and authoritative tones of entreaty and warning, blessing and condemnation, which are simply echoes of the voice of God Himself. To these succeeds in the next chapters the exquisite description of wisdom in all its intrinsic beauty and its capacity of blessing, as not merely the fear,' but 'the knowledge of the Lord.' But above all in the glorious eighth chapter (in which lies the first germ of the doctrine of 'the Word which was with God, and was God') the Divine Wisdom is personified, as possessed by the Lord in the beginning,' with Him,' when He created the world, and ordained the fortunes of the sons of men. What nobler answer could be given by the understanding to the revelation of God within the soul? Not (be it observed) an answer free from all doubt and perplexity, ignoring those deep shadows which shoot athwart the brightness of the knowledge of God. Otherwise it could not be true to human nature, and to the conditions of this imperfect human life. But an answer nevertheless deep and true, because it recognises and answers a real voice of God within.

The advance

knowledge.

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V. By these answers to the prophetic message we see how great an advance is made through prophecy in the revelation of God, although as yet prophecy has been in spiritual regarded only in its first simplicity, not in its full richness of development-only in its message to the present, and not yet in its greater work of preparation for the future. Nor can we well fail to see also how infinitely more vivid, because more spiritual and more personal, it makes the Union of the conception of God's covenant with man. But it is important to notice how in it those two ideas of the universal and the special covenant, as yet distinct, though harmonised, under the patriarchal and Mosaic revelation, now almost melt into each other. The sense of the relation to God, just because it is so intensely individual, is absolutely universal; for it is felt to depend on that which in us is essentially human, as distinct from all special phases of life and character, and accordingly it belongs to man as man. The Psalmists are true Israelites;

universal and special relation to

God.

they rejoice over the old glory and privileges of their race; they mourn over Israel in her sorrow and ruin; they yearn for the holy city and the temple, when they are far away. But yet the Psalms are just those parts of the Old Testament in which any believer in God may delight; they are just those parts which the whole Catholic Church of Christ has made for ages the food of the spiritual life. The writers of the Books of Wisdom, perhaps even more directly, deal with the truths and the perplexities concerning simply man as man. It has been noted that they represent exactly the time, when the thought of Israel felt most inclined to recognise brotherhood with all the wisdom of the East. The special and the universal covenant thus blend with each other. Nowhere do we find a better earnest of the time, when in the seed of Abraham the old promise should so grow as to encircle the whole earth.

But we note also how nobly both the elements involved in the idea of covenant-the conception of a personal God, and the consciousness of freedom and true personality in man -are here brought out.

of God over

The sense of the revelation of God in the soul by the Divine Spirit is simply the assertion of His sovereignty, not only in the outer sphere of physical force and hu- («) The man action, but in the inner realm of thought, which sovereignty all forms of Stoicism refuse to Him, in the spirit the soul. of self-reliance. He is brought near to us; we see Him, not far above or far away, but face to face. We know that the face is the face of a living God.

(b) The

in the soul.

But even more truly (as I have already hinted) this revelation of God in the soul brings out the other truth of the spirituality of man. If we contemplate only God in nature or God in history, man may be lost in the divine image multitude of God's creatures ruled by necessity or instinct, a mere instrument working out, whether he will or not, the design of the Creator. If we regard only God in law,' man may be but as a slave, driven by the scourge of fear, or lured by the promises of hope, while he lives his short span of life, before he vanishes away. But if he can recognise God speaking to the soul within by His word, and guiding it by His Spirit-if he can, with the Psalmist, feel

H

that he has the freedom to answer and to obey-if he can, with the writer of the Book of Proverbs, claim to enter in measure into the wisdom of God-then man can be no machine, no brute, no mere slave. He must have the divine image in him; he must be the true son of God. The truth, for want of which so many Eastern religions dream of an absorption of the soul into the deity, or a Nirvana in the virtual loss of all individuality, is here brought out clear and strong, and is worked step by step into the very texture of our consciousness.

(c) The existence of evil.

But what shall we say of the terrible consciousness of evil? We must distinguish, as usual, between the sense of its existence and the inquiry into its mystery.

The existence of evil in man, whether it be conceived as sin or as blindness, is brought out with special vividness in both these elements of Scripture. Naturally by the Psalmists it is especially felt as sin, polluting and enfeebling the soul, and calling down the wrath of a righteous God; by the writers of the Books of Wisdom as folly, blinding the mind, and by the very blindness cutting it off from entering into the wisdom of God. But in both phases it is natural that the blackness of evil should be brought out by the consciousness of the light of God's presence. It is a right instinct which says, My eye seeth Thee, therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.' Where shall we find, even under Christianity, so intense and absolute a confession of sin as in the fifty-first Psalm? Where can we trace, even in the saddest modern philosophy, a more oppressive sense of the blindness, folly, littleness of man, than in the passionate complaints of Job, or the gloomy despondency of the writer of Ecclesiastes? Yet the certainty that sin is not man's true nature, and that it can be and must be conquered, is necessarily deepened by every thought which shows us man as made in the deliverance Divine likeness, and living in conscious communion from evil. with the Eternal. Accordingly the presence of evil, though it may be felt deeply, is not felt as a hopeless burden on the despairing soul. It is, indeed, significant that there is a far closer approach to such hopelessness in the meditation of the intellectual searcher after truth, than in the spiritual experiences of the Psalmist. But through both

The hope of

there runs a strain of confident prayer to God against the power of evil. The Psalm prays that God will take away sin, the Book of Wisdom that He will take away folly; the one cries out for purity, the other for light. Neither doubts that the prayer, if sincere, will be fully answered.

But the mystery of evil hardly even approaches solution. To the questions which rise from time to time in the heart-Why has God made us thus ? '-whence (that is) The mystery did this power of evil come, and how can it be taken of evil. away?—no direct answer is given. To the first the only answer possible, as the books of Job and Ecclesiastes emphatically declare, is the answer of an absolute faith in the inscrutable wisdom and goodness of God. To the latter there comes only the certainty that in some way the deliverance must be and will be; and the eye of the enquirer here, as everywhere else in the Old Testament, is directed, onward to the glorious future, when all the promises of blessing shall have their perfect fulfilment. The effect of these answers on the soul seems to show itself in alternations of spiritual light and darkness; glimpses of glorious truth are now given and now snatched away; but through all, the soul, anchored on the sure covenant of God, can afford to wait for the day. VI. Here accordingly, as before in the earlier stages of revelation, the true conception of the relation of Scripture to the Natural Theology of man grows upon us at every The general step. As man knows himself better, and meditates result. on God more, the highest aspirations of his nature are more distinctly taken up, especially those moral and spiritual aspirations which bring him face to face with a personal and living God. At each step, moreover, there is made more evident than before the distinction between the clear authoritative declaration of the word of God, and the laborious inductions of our human thought. For only in this tone of moral certainty can the Scripture speak to thousands of simple souls, by whom the bare and thorny paths of abstract reasoning could never be trod.

It is as though we were passing on towards a central shrine through the various spheres of being. We pass from the outermost and widest region of the physical universe into the narrower yet more sacred sphere of the outward human life,