“14.  Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built up again; he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

“15.  Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also, he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.”

That is to say, the heat of the fire from heaven sucks up the waters until rivers and lakes are dried up:  Cacus steals the cows of Hercules; and then again they fall, deluging and overturning the earth, piling it into Mountains in one place, says the Tupi legend, and digging out valleys in another.  And God buries men in the caves in which they sought shelter.

“23.  He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.

“24.  He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

“25. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.”

More darkness, more groping in the dark, more of that staggering like drunken men, described in the American legends: 

“Lo, mine eye,” says Job, (xiii, 1,) “hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and understood it.  What ye know, the same do I know also.”

We have all seen it, says Job, and now you would come here with your platitudes about God sending all this to punish the wicked: 

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“4.  But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.”

Honest Job is disgusted, and denounces his counselors with Carlylean vigor: 

“11.  Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you?

“12.  Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.

“13.  Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.

“14.  Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand?

“15.  Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him:  but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”

In other words, I don’t think this thing is right, and, though I tear my flesh with my teeth, and contemplate suicide, and though I may be slain for speaking, yet I will speak out, and maintain that God ought not to have done this thing; he ought not to have sent this horrible affliction on the earth—­this fire from heaven, which burned up my cattle; this whirlwind which slew my children; this sand of the sea; this rush of floods; this darkness in noonday in which mankind grope helplessly; these arrows, this poison, this rush of waters, this sweeping away of mountains.

“If I hold my tongue,” says Job, “I shall give up the ghost!”

Job believes—­

             “The grief that will not speak,
     Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.”

“As the waters fail from the sea,” says Job, (xiv, 11,) and the flood decayeth and drieth up: