himself, unconsciously hinting at his physical power.
He then read his text in a low voice: "Why
is life given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God
hath hedged in?" Musgrave was an uneducated man,
with strong logical instincts. Perhaps, had he
been educated thoroughly, the poetic vein, which gave
the chief charm to his mind and conversation, would
have been destroyed. As it was, he invariably
confined himself to logic so long as his emotions
remained untouched; but there were moments when his
blood seemed to catch fire, and he broke away from
the calm reasoning which serves for placid men.
He then spoke with poetry, and with an accent which
affected the nerves of all who heard him. On this
afternoon he began with a little sketch of the history
of Job, and he then detailed his notion that the Arab,
who wrote the most wonderful book in the world, was
really the type of the modern man, and lived hundreds
of generations before his time. He pointed out
that all around us in Britain were men of deep thoughts,
and wise thoughts, who had grown discontented with
the world, and had set up their own intelligence in
an endeavour to grasp the purpose of an intelligence
infinitely higher. The existence of evil, the
existence of pain, the existence of all the things
that make men’s pilgrimage, from dark to dark,
mysterious and awful, can never be probed to any purpose
by one creature created by the great Power who also
created the mystery of pain and the problem of evil.
Dwelling in the desert, and seeing day by day the movements
of the world, and the strange progress of the stars,
Job had grown to cherish the pride of intellect.
So long as his prosperity was unbroken, he was contented,
and busied himself day after day in relieving the wants
of the poor and in succouring the oppressed.
But when the blast of affliction blew upon him, his
kindly disposition forsook him for a little, and he
only thought of his own bitterness; he only thought
of the puzzles that have faced every man who has a
heart to feel since first our race appeared in this
wondrous place. Musgrave thought that every man
who has faith, every man whose heart has been torn
by the wrenches of chance, must sympathize with the
yearning of Job; but at the last every man, like Job,
comes to see that there are things beyond our minds.
Each of us learns that there are things before which
our intelligence must be abashed, and that the only
safe rule of life is to fall into the attitude of
trust, and question no more. He felt it necessary
to touch his homely hearers, and he said: “Only
last week the wind woke from the sky, and the storm
swept over the moor, and swept over this little place
where two or three are now gathered together to worship.
Many of our friends put forth in the morning in the
joy of strength, in the pride of manhood, and no one
of them fancied the sea that now fawns upon the shore
would wake up into fury, and would dash its claws
into cliff and sand, and rend the works of man into