His study of apocalyptic prophecy had resulted in the construction of an elaborate scheme of the past and future course of the divine kingdom which is its interesting as it is curious. He distinguished three stages or ages of the world corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity, the three conditions of married persons, clergy, and monks, the three periods of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the final dispensation. The advent of the last of these periods, that of the Holy Spirit, the “spiritualis intelligentia,” proceeding from the Old and New Testaments, he regarded as imminent. It was to be the period of perfect freedom from the letter, of monastic contemplation, adoration, and jubilation, and of the widest possible diffusion of the gospel (even to the Jews); but it was to be preceded by fearful judgments, in which Antichrist should become manifest. He regarded the Church of Rome as having been typified by the kingdom of Judah, while the Eastern Church corresponded to that of Israel. The way in which he worked out this analogy gave him scope for pointing out the manifold errors and corruptions into which he believed the Church of the West to have fallen, yet in no spirit of hostility to that organization as such. His eschatology found great currency and much acceptance amongst the stricter members of the Franciscan order,—the “Zelatores” as they were called,—and gradually gave rise to a cognate literature more manifestly opposed to Rome and even to ecclesiasticism of any kind. Among this class of compositions the greatest historical importance belongs to the Liber intro-ductorius in Evangelium oeternum, now no longer extant, except in some excerpts. The work was censured as heretical by the university of Paris, and the order for its destruction was obtained from Alexander IV. in 1255; this, however, only stimulated the public interest in the books of Joachim himself, which now began to be circulated and read more widely than ever. That interest died a natural death, however, when the year 1260, which Joachim had fixed as the time of the end, had come and gone, leaving the old and evil world practically unchanged.

See Engelhardt, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, 1832; Neander, Gesell, d. Christi. Religion u. Kirche (English translation, vol. vii., 1852); Renan, “Joachim de Flore et l’Évangile éternel,” in the Revue des Deux Mondes for 1866; Preger, Gcsch. d. deutschen Mystik, vol. i., 1875; and Moller’s art. “Joachim von Floris,” in Herzog-Plitt’s Rcal-Encyk., vol. vi.

In place of the present town of Joachimsthal, which dates from the year 1516, there stood formerly the village of Conradsgrün. This was ceded by the kings of Bohemia to the counts of Schlick, from whom it passed by feudal tenure to the knights of Haslava. It is from the silver guldengroschen, first coined in 1518 by order of Gount Schlick, and afterwards known as Joachimsthaler, that the •German term thaler is derived. In 1547, during the Smalkald war, the town was besieged by William Thumshirn, general of John Frederick, elector of Saxony, but the siege was soon raised. In 1579 certain special privileges and additional lands were granted to Joachimsthal by the emperor Rudolph II. The last emigration of Protestants from the neighbourhood to Saxony took place in 1663. Three-fourths of the town was destroyed by fire on the 81st March 1873. The large church of St Joachim, which was also burned, was rebuilt and restored in 1876. . In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the castle of Freudenstein.

The story of the pontificate of Joan was received as fact from the 13th to the 15th century, but it has been discredited by later researches. The circumstantial evidence around which it clung, and which may have aided in suggesting it, was the observance of a circuit by the papal processions so as to avoid passing through a certain street (a statue at one time standing in that street, said to represent a woman and child, with a monumental stone near it having a peculiar inscription), and the use of a pierced seat at the enthronement of the popes. Of these facts other and more credible explanations have, however, been given, although there is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate beyond dispute the manner in which the story originated. According to Dr Dollinger, who gives an elaborate analysis of the story in Die Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters, Munich, 1863, the tradition finds no support in the original text either of Marianus Scotus, Sigebert of Gemblours, or Otto of Freysingen. She is first mentioned by Stephen de Bourbon, who died in 1261, and who took his information probably from the chronicle of the Dominican Jean de Mailly, no copy of which is now known to be in existence. The story is not found in any of the original manuscripts of Martinus Γolus, and according to Dollinger was interpolated in that chronicle some time between 1278 and 1312. He attributes the propagation of the myth chiefly to its insertion in Martinus Γolus, from which it was copied into the Flores Temporum, a chronicle founded on Martinus, and its real originators he supposes to have been the Dominicans and Minorites, who had a grudge against the papacy on account of the persecutions they were experiencing at the hands of Benedict VIII. So rapidly did the tradition spread that in 1400 a bust of the papess was placed in the cathedral of Siena along with the other popes, having the inscription “John VIII., a woman from England.” The statue occupied this position till the beginning of the 17th century.

See the work of Dollinger above mentioned, which has been translated into English both in England and in America, and the authorities therein referred to.

JOAN of Arc, or more properly Joanneta Darc, afterwards known in France as Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans, was born about 1411, the daughter of Jacques Darc, peasant proprietor of Domremy, a small village partly in Champagne and partly in Lorraine, and of his wife Isabeau de Vouthon, who from having made a pilgrimage to Rome had received the usual surname of Romée. Joan never learned to read or write, and received her sole religious instruction from her mother, who taught her to recite the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo. In her childhood she was noted for her abounding physical energy; but her vivacity, so far from being tainted by any coarse or unfeminine trait, was the direct outcome of intense mental activity and an abnormally sensitive nervous temperament. Towards her parents her conduct was uniformly exemplary, and the charm of her unselfish kindness made her the special favourite of many in the village. In all household work she was specially proficient, her skill in the use of the needle not being excelled by that of any matron even of Rouen. As she grew to womanhood she became inclined to silence, and spent much of her time in solitude and prayer. All advances made by the young men of her acquaintance with the view of winning her attention or favour she decisively repelled; and, while active in the performance of her usual round of duties, and apparently finding her mode of life quite pleasant and congenial, inwardly she was engrossed with thoughts reaching far beyond the circle uf her daily concerns.

At this time, through the alliance and support of Philip of Burgundy, the English had extended their conquest over the whole of France north of the Loire as well as Guienne; and, while the infant Henry VI. of England had in 1422 been proclaimed king of France at his father’s grave at St Denis, Charles the dauphin, devoted only to present ease and pleasure, was almost passively contemplating the slow dismemberment of his kingdom by internal confusion and misery, and by the progressive encroachments of the English rule. The fact that the hard straits to which the kingdom was reduced were greatly owing to the conduct of Isabella, the dauphin’s mother, who disinherited her son iu favour of Henry V. of England, the husband of her daughter Catherine, supplied an opportunity for the fulfilment of the ancient prophecy of the enchanter Merlin, that the calamities which should fall upon France through the depravity of a woman would be removed by the instrumentality of a chaste virgin. To the imagination of the time there was, moreover, nothing strange in such a mode of deliverance, for it was no uncommon occurrence for damsels to accompany their lovers to the wars, and, disguised as pages, to share to some extent in their dangers and adventures. In the country of Joan the tradition was current that this virgin should come out of the forest of Domremy, where Joan was accustomed in her childhood to tend her father’s sheep. How it therefore became fixed in her mind that she was the destined deliverer of her country there is little difficulty in understanding. She possessed a nature strongly sympathetic, and it was kindled to ardent patriotism by the sad condition of her country; her imagination was so overpower-ingly vivid that it frequently deceived her reason; and her consciousness of endowments which could find no proper scope for their activity within her narrow sphere must have confirmed if they did not originate her prognostications that she was appointed to some high destiny. Gradually her whole attention became so engrossed with her country’s wrongs that all her waking hours were one continued and prolonged prayer for its deliverance. The result was that, owing to a peculiarity in her nervous constitution, her own thoughts and hopes seemed to take audible voice, and returned to her as assurances and commands spoken to her by the saints. At last, when in 1428 Orleans, the key to the south of France, was invested by the English under the earl of Salisbury, the voices became so peremptory and urgent as to overcome all pretexts for delay on account of previous discouragements and rebuffs. Notwithstanding the strong remonstrances of her parents, who viewed her resolve with poignant grief and dismay, she now renewed with increased determination her efforts to win from Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucou-Ieurs, an introduction to the dauphin Charles. In all her subsequent acts she professed to be guided by the voices of the saints, who had set before her the twofold task of relieving Orleans and crowning the young dauphin at Rheims. By persistent importunity, the effect of which was increased by the simplicity of her demeanour and her calm assurance of success, she at last prevailed on the governor to grant her request; and in February 1429, accompanied by two knights, she set out on her perilous journey to the court of the dauphin at Chinon. At first Charles refused to see her, but the rising tide of popular feeling in her favour induced his advisers to persuade him after three days to grant her an interview. Of the divinity of her commission she is said to have persuaded him by discovering him though disguised in the crowd of his courtiers, and by assuring him regarding his secret doubts as to his legitimacy. Accordingly, after a commission of doctors had reported that they had found in her nothing of evil or contrary to the Catholic faith, and a council of matrons had reported on her chastity and virginity, she was permitted to set forth with an army of 4000 or 5000 men designed for the relief of Orleans. At the head of the army she rode clothed in a coat of mail, armed with an ancient sword which she had divined to be hidden near the altar of St Catherine de Fierbois, and carrying a white standard of her own design embroidered with lilies and having on the one side the image of God seated on the clouds and holding the world in his hand, and on the other a representation of the annunciation. Joan was of medium height, stoutly built, but finely proportioned; and her frame was capable of enduring great fatigue. Notwithstanding subsequent traditions, she does not appear to have been strikingly handsome. Conventional beauty of the highest type could not be expected in one accustomed to her mode of life, but the most authentic testimonies represent her as less comely than many in her own station. Her features were, moreover, expressive rather of rustic honesty and innocence than of mental power, although she is said to have possessed grand melancholy eyes which, probably on account of the high and noble purpose which animated them, exercised an indescribable charm. Her voice was powerful, but at the same time of great sweetness, and her manner possessed a fine natural dignity and grace, which, while it repelled familiarity, softened and subdued even the rudest of the soldiers. Nominally she had been entrusted with the command of the army, but in reality it was under the direction of experienced generals; and it cannot be pretended that the victories accomplished in consequence of her co-operation were the result of brilliant military genius. Indeed, the blind obstinacy with which in the face of overwhelming odds she refused to acknowledge defeat place it beyond doubt that she was unable to estimate the elements of success in battle, and was actuated throughout by a fatalistic persuasion that victory was inevitable if she persevered unflinchingly in her efforts to obtain it. At the same time she possessed a shrewd and penetrating judgment both as to men and things, and the manner in which she conducted herself amid the varied difficulties of her career indicated extraordinary force of character and high and noble prudence. What, however, she chiefly supplied to the French cause was concentrated energy and resolution. Above all, she inspired the soldiery with a fanatic enthusiasm armed with the sanctions and ennobled by the influences of religion; and she overawed the enemy by the superstitious fear that she was in league with supernatural powers.

By a remarkable stroke of good luck Joan succeeded in entering Orleans on the 29th April 1429, and through the vigorous and unremitting attacks of the French the English gradually became so discouraged that on the 8th of May they raised the siege. By the capture of Jargeau and Beaugency, followed by the great victory of Patay, where Talbot was taken prisoner, the English were driven beyond the Loire. With some difficulty the king was then persuaded to set out towards Rheims, which he entered with an army of 12,000 men on July 16th, Troyes having on the way been taken by assault at the sole instigation of the Maid. On the following day, holding the sacred banner, she stood next to Charles at his coronation in the cathedral. After an endeavour to detach Burgundy from the English cause, the king at last agreed to attempt the capture of Paris, but on account of the disastrous result of an attack made on the 8th September, in which Joan was wounded, he resolved, notwithstanding her passionate remonstrance, to withdraw from the city, and disbanded his troops. Joan went into Normandy to assist the duke of Alençon, but in December returned to the court, and on the 29th she and her family were ennobled with the surname of du Lis. Unconsoled by such honours, she rode away from the court in March, to assist in the defence of Compiègne against the duke of Burgundy; and on the 24th May she led an unsuccessful sortie against the besiegers, when on account of her determination to fight to the last she was surrounded and taken prisoner. Charles, partly perhaps on account of his natural indolence, partly on account of the intrigues at the court, made no effort to effect her ransom, and never showed any sign of interest in her fate. Probably he had found her so difficult to manage and control that he as well as his generals regarded her presence with the army as more embarrassing than helpful; and doubtless her capture dissipated the halo of supernatural power that had surrounded her. By means of negotiations instigated and prosecuted with great perseverance by the university of Paris and the Inquisition, and through the persistent scheming of Pierre Cauchon, the ejected bishop of Beauvais, she was sold in November by Luxembourg and Burgundy to the English, who on January 3, 1431, at the instance of the university of Paris, delivered her over to the Inquisition for trial. After a public examination, begun on the 9th January and lasting six days, and another conducted in the prison, she was, on the 20th March, publicly accused as a heretic and sorcerer, and, being in the end found guilty, she made her submission at the scaffold on the 24th May, and received pardon. She was still, however, the prisoner of the English, and, having been induced by those who had her in charge to resume her male clothes, she was on this account judged to have relapsed, was sentenced to death, and burned at the stake on the streets of Rouen, May 30,1431. The sentence was revoked by the pope on the 7th July 1456, and since then it has been the custom of Catholic writers to uphold the reality of her divine inspiration. In 1436 an impostor appeared, professing to be Joan of Arc escaped from the flames, who succeeding in inducing many people to believe in her statement, but afterwards confessed her imposture.

There is no doubt that Joan herself believed in her supernatural guidance, and her judges, notwithstanding all their efforts, were unable to bring to light the smallest semblance of a sign of conscious dishonesty on her part. At the same time the nobility of her purpose was unstained by the faintest symptom of selfish regard to her own fame and glorification. Indeed the greatness of her career did not consist in her military achievements, but in her pure, true, and ardent character, which made her a pathetic victim to the mean and grovelling aims of those in whose cause she fought with such simple sincerity of faith, and to the cruelties of a superstitious age.

Literature.— All previous works on Joan of Arc were deprived of a great part of their critical value by the publication, in 5 vols., 1841-49, of the Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, edited by J. Quicherat. The record of the Procès de condamnation consisted originally of the official notes of the trial, afterwards edited in Latin by P. Cauchon, and bears internal marks of general truthfulness. The original French minute does not exist except in a fragment which has been reproduced by Μ. Vallet de Viriville in his French translation of the Latin version, published in 1867. A French translation of the Procès de condamnation and Procès de réhabilitation by E. O’Reilly appeared in 1868. The 4th vol. of Quicherat is occupied with old chronicles and histories, the principal of which are those of Percival de Cagny, a retainer of the duke of Alençon, never before published; Jacques le Bouvier (Berri), that from 1402-1411 first published in 1653 as part of a history of Charles VI., and the remainder, 1411-1444, in the collection of Denis Godefroy, 1661; Jean Chartier, only contemporaneous from 1437, before which it borrows chiefly from the Chroniqτce de la Pvxelle and Le Bouvier, what it does not borrow being utterly untrustworthy, published 1476-77, 1493, 1514, 1517-18, by Denis Godefroy, 1661, and Vallet de Viriville, with notes, 1858; Journal du Siege d'Orléans, founded on the chronicles of Berri and Jean Chartier, with a few other documents, published 1576, 1606, 1611, 1619, 1621, and reprinted with notes by Jacob in 1855; la Geste des nobles François, or Chronique de Cousinot, which closes with 1429, but some years afterwards was completed by a nephew of Cousinot to the siege of Paris so as to form the Chronique de la Pucelle, published by Denis Godefroy, 1661, by Μ. Petitot, 1825, in vol. viii. of Mémoires relatifs a l'histoire de France, and with notes by Vallet de Viriville, 1859; Chronique d:Enguerran de Monstrelet, first published about 1500 and very frequently afterwards, English translation by Thomas Johnes, 1840, the last and best French edition, that of L. Douët d’Arcq, 6 vols., 1857-62. The principal other contemporary authorities are Basin’s Histoire des Règnes de Charles VII. ct de Louis XI., first published in a complete form by Quicherat, with notes and life, 4 vols., 1855-1859; the Chronique Normande of Pierre Cochon, the part referring to Joan published along with Chronique de la Pucelle by Vallet de Viriville, 1859, the whole by De Robillard de Beaurepaire, 1870; Chronique de Robert Blondel, first published by Vallet de Viriville, 1859; Chronique de Jean Raoult, or Chronique anonyme de Charles VII., first published by Vallet de Viriville, 1858; Abrégé d' Histoire chronologique, by Denis Godefroy, 1661; Le mystère du Siégé d'Orléans, in verse, published from a manuscript in the Vatican in Collection de Documents inédits sur l' Histoire de France, 1862; a Latin poem by Valesan Vasanius, 1501; an anonymous Latin poem, manuscript 5970 of the Imperial Library of Paris; a poem by Christine de Pisan, 1429, printed in 1865; Martial Auvergne, Les Vigilles du roy Charle, in verse, 1505—one hundred copies of the portion relating to Joan of Arc -printed at Orleans, 1866, of which one copy is in the British Museum.

The earliest life by other than contemporaries is that in Latin by Jean Hordal, 1612. Edmond Richer, who had procured the original documents of the Procès, finished a life of Joan in 1628 which was never published, but of which Lenglet-Dufresnoy made use to correct his own work, published in 1754 in two volumes. Charles du Lys, a descendant of her kin, published D’ l'extraction et parenté de la Pucelle d'Orléans, 1611, enlarged edition 1612, 3d in 1628, all of which were republished by Vallet de Viriville in Trésor des pièces rares et anciennes, 1856. In 1790 L’Averdy published an analysis of the manuscript of the Procès in the 3d vol. of Mémoires of the Academy or Inscriptions. The principal other works previous to the publication of the Procès are those of Lebrun des Charmettes, 1817, 4 vols.; Saint-Prix, 1817; Lemaire, 1818; Jollois, 1821; Dumas, 1843; De Beauregard, 1847; and the accounts by De Barante, Michelet, and Sismondi in their several histories. Since the publication of the Procès the works of original critical value are Aperçus Nouveaux by J. Quicherat, 1850; the lives by B. Henri Martin, last ed., 1875; Wallon, I860; and Villiaumé, 1863. Other lives have been written by Lamartine, 1852; Lafontaine, 1854; Desjardins, 1854; Michaud, 1861; Sepet, 1869. See also Vallet de Viriville, Recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, 1854; Histoire de Charles VIL, by the same, 3 vols., 1862—65; De Robillard de Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le procès de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, 1869; Boucher de Molandon, Première Expédition de Jeanne d'Arc, 1874; E. de Bouteiller, Jeanne d’Arc dans les chroniques Missives de P. Vigneullcs, 1878; and E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Lafamille de Jeanne d’Arc, 1878, Nouvelles Recherches sur la famille de Jean d'Arc, 1879, and Notes Iconographiques, 1879. The principal German works are those of Görres, 2d ed., 1835 (French transi., 1843); Hase, 1861; Eysell, 1861; andHirzell, 1877. In English, in addition to the essays of De Quincey and Lord Mahon, there are lives by Harriet Parr, 1866; Mrs Bray, 1874; and Janet Tuckey, 1880. Of the numerous dramas and poems of which Joan of Arc has been the subject, mention can only be made of Die Jungfrau von Orleans of Schiller, the Joan of Arc of Southey, and the scandalous burlesque-epic of Voltaire. A drama in verse by Jules Barbier has been set to music by C. Gounod, 1873.

Contents.— As it now lies before us it consists of five parts. 1. The prologue, in prose, ch. i,-ii., describes in rapid and dramatic steps the history of this man, his piety and prosperity and greatness corresponding to his godliness; then how his life is drawn in under the operation of the trying, sifting providence of God, through the suspicion suggested by the Satan, the minister of this aspect of God’s providence, that his godliness is but selfish and only the natural return for the unexampled prosperity bestowed upon him, and the insinuation that if stripped of his prosperity he will renounce God to His face. These suspicions bring down two severe calamities on Job, one depriving him of · all external blessings, children and possessions alike, and the other throwing the man himself under a loathsome and painful malady. In spite of these afflictions Job retains his integrity and ascribes no wrong to God. Then the advent of Job’s three friends is described, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, who, having heard of Job’s calamities, come to condole with him. 2. The body of the book, in poetry, ch. iii.-xxxi., contains a series of speeches in which the problem of Job’s afflictions and the relation of external evil to the righteousness of God and the conduct of men is brilliantly discussed. This part is divided into three cycles, each containing four speeches, one by Job and one by each of the friends (ch. iii·-xiv.; ch. xv.-xxi.; ch. xxii.-xxxi.), although in the last cycle the third speaker Zophar fails to answer, and Job, having driven his opponents from the field, carries his reply through a series of discourses in which he dwells in pathetic words upon his early prosperity, contrasting with it his present misery and humiliation, and ends with a solemn repudiation of all the offeηces that had been insinuated or might be suggested against him, and a challenge to God to appear and put His hand to the charge which He had against him and for which He afflicted him.’ 3, A youthful bystander named Elihu, the representative of a younger generation, who had been a silent observer of the debate, intervenes and expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which both J ob and his friends had conducted the cause, and offers what is in some respects a new solution of the question (ch. xxxii.-xxxvii.). 4. In answer to Job’s repeated demands that God would appear and solve the riddle of his life, the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. The Divine speaker does not condescend to refer to Job’s individual problem, but in a series of ironical interrogations asks him, as he thinks himself capable of fathoming all things, to expound the mysteries of the origin and subsistence of the world, the phenomena of the atmosphere, the instincts of the creatures that inhabit the desert, and, as he judges God’s conduct of the world amiss, invites him to seize the reins himself and gird him with the Divine thunder and quell the rebellious forces of evil in the universe (ch. xxxviii.-xlii. 6). Job is humbled and abashed, and lays his hand upon his mouth, and repents his hasty words in dust and ashes. No solution of his problem is vouchsafed; but God Himself effects that which neither the man’s own thoughts of God nor the representations of the friends could accomplish: he heard of Him with the hearing of the ear without effect, but now his eye saw Him. This is the profoundest religious deep in the book. 5. The epilogue, also in prose, ch. xlii. 7-17, describes Job’s restoration to a prosperity double that of his former estate, his family felicity, and long life.

Design.— With the exception of the episode of Elihu, the connexion of which with the original form of the poem may be doubtful, all these five parts are essential elements of the work as it came from the hand of the first author, although some parts of the second and fourth divisions may have been expanded by later writers. The idea of the composition is not to be derived from any single element of the book, as from the prologue, but from the teaching and movement of the whole piece. Job is unquestionably the hero of the work, and in the ideas which he expresses and the history which he passes through combined we may assume that we find the author himself speaking and teaching. The discussion of the question of suffering between Job and his friends occupies two-thirds of the book, or, if the space occupied by Elihu be not considered, nearly three-fourths, and in the direction which the author causes this discussion to take we may see revealed the main didactic purpose of the book. When the three friends, the representatives of former theories of providence, are reduced to silence and driven off the ground by Job, we may be certain that it was the author’s purpose to discredit the ideas which they represent. Job himself offers no positive contribution to the doctrine of evil; his position is negative, and merely antagonistic to that of the friends. But this negative position victoriously maintained by him has the effect of clearing the ground, and the author himself supplies in the prologue the positive truth, when he communicates the real explanation of his hero’s calamities, and teaches that they were a trial of his righteousness. It was therefore the author’s purpose in his work to widen men’s views of the providence of God and set before them a new view of suffering. This may be considered the first great object of the book. This purpose, however, was in all probability no mere theoretical one, but subordinate to some .wider practical design. No Hebrew writer is merely a poet or a thinker. He is always a teacher. He has men before him in their relations to God. And it is not usually men in their individual relations, but as members of the family of Israel, the people of God. It is consequently scarcely to be doubted that the book has a national scope. The author considered his new truth regarding the meaning of affliction as of national interest, and to be the truth needful for the heart of his people in their circumstances. But the teaching of the book is only half its contents. It contains also a history—deep and inexplicable affliction, a great moral struggle, and a victory. The author meant his new truth to inspire new conduct, new faith, and new hopes. In Job’s sufferings, undeserved and inexplicable to him, yet capable of an explanation most consistent with the goodness and faithfulness of God, and casting honour upon his faithful servants; in his despair bordering on unbelief, at last overcome; and in the happy issue of his afflictions—in all this Israel may see itself, and from the sight take courage, and forecast its own history. Job, however, is not to be considered Israel, the righteous servant of the Lord, under a feigned name; he is no mere parable (though such a view is found as early as the Talmud); he and his history have both elements of reality in them. It is these elements of reality common to him with Israel in affliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole, confined within the straitened limits set by its own ignorance, wounded to death by the mysterious sorrows of life, tortured by the uncertainty whether its cry finds an entrance into God’s ear, alarmed and paralysed by the irreconcilable discrepancies which it seems to discover between its necessary thoughts of Him and its experience of Him in His providence, and faint with longing that it might come into His place, and behold Him, not girt with His majesty, but in human form, as one looketh upon his fellow, —it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job instructive to Israel in the times of affliction when it was set before them, and to men in all ages. It would probably be a mistake, however, to imagine that the author consciously stepped outside the limits of his nation, and assumed a human position antagonistic to it. The chords he touches vibrate through all humanity; but this is because Israel is the kernel of humanity, and because from Israel’s heart the deepest music of mankind is heard, whether of pathos or of joy.

Two threads requiring to be followed, therefore, run through the book,—the one the discussion of the problem of evil between Job and his friends, and the other the varying attitude of Job’s mind towards heaven, the first being subordinate to the second. Both Job and his friends advance to the discussion of his sufferings and of the problem of evil, ignorant of the true cause of his calamities,— Job strong in his sense of innocence, and the friends armed with their theory of the righteousness of God, who giveth to every man according to his works. With fine psychological instinct the poet lets Job altogether lose his self-control first when his three friends, the men his fellows, came to visit him. His bereavements and the acute anguish of his malady he bore with a steady courage, and the direct instigations to godlessness of the woman, his wife, he repelled with severity and resignation. But when men, his equals and the old associates of his happiness, came to see him, and when he read in their looks and in their seven days’ silence the depth of his own misery, his self-command deserted him, and he broke out into a cry of despair, cursing his day and crying for death (ch. iii.). Job had somewhat misinterpreted the demeanour of his friends. It was not all pity that it expressed. Along with their pity they had also brought their theology with them, and they trusted to heal Job’s malady with this. Till a few days ago Job would have agreed with them on the sovereign virtues of this remedy. But he had learned through a higher teaching, the events of God’s providence, that it was no more a specific in his case. His violent impatience, however, under his afflictions and his covert attacks upon the divine rectitude only served to confirm the view of his sufferings which their theory of evil had already suggested to his friends. And thus commences the high debate which continues through thirty chapters of the book.

The principle with which the three friends of Job came to the consideration of his history was the principle that calamity is the result of evil-doing, as on the other hand prosperity is the reward of righteousness. Suffering is not an accident or â spontaneous growth of the soil; man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards; there is in human life a tendency to do evil which draws down upon men the chastisement of heaven (ch. ∙v. 6). The form in which the principle is enunciated by Eliphaz, from whom the other speakers take their cue, is this: where there is suffering there has been sin in the sufferer, not necessarily deadly sin, though where the suffering is great the sin must have been heinous. Not suffering in itself, but the effect of it on the sufferer is what gives insight into his true character. Suffering is not always punitive; it is far offener disciplinary, designed to wean the good man from his sin. If he sees in his suffering the monition of God and turns from his evil, his future shall be rich in peace and happiness, and his latter estate more prosperous than his first. If he murmurs or resists, he can only perish under the multiplying chastisements which his impenitence will provoke. Now this principle of the friends is far from being a peculiar crotchet of theirs; its truth is undeniable, though they erred in supposing it a principle that would cover the wide providence of God. The principle is the fundamental idea of moral government, the expression of the natural conscience, a principle common more or less to all peoples, though perhaps more prominent in the Semitic mind, because all religious ideas are more prominent and simple there,—not suggested to Israel first by the law, but found and adopted by the law, though it may be sharpened by it. It is the fundamental principle of prophecy no less than of the law, and, if possible, of the wisdom or philosophy of the Hebrews more than of either. Speculation among the Hebrews had a simpler task before it than it had in the West or.in the further East. The Greek philosopher began his operations upon the sum of things; he threw the universe into his crucible at once. His object was to effect some analysis of it, such an analysis that he could call one element cause and another effect. Or, to vary the figure, his endeavour was to pursue the streams of tendency which he could observe upwards till he reached at last the central spring which sent them all forth. God, a single cause and explanation, was the object of his search. But to the Hebrew this was already found. The analysis resulting in the distinction of God and the world had been effected for him long ago, so long that the history and circumstances of the process had been forgotten, and only the unchallengeable result remained. His philosophy was not a quest of God whom he did not know, but a recognition on all hands of God whom he knew. The great primary idea to his mind was that of God, a Being wholly just, doing all. And the world was little more than the phenomena that revealed the mind and the presence and the operations of God. Consequently the nature of God as known to him and the course of events formed a perfect equation. The idea of what God was in Himself was in complete harmony with His manifestation of Himself in providence, in the events of human life, and the history of men and nations. The philosophy of the wise did not go behind the origin of sin, or referred it to the freedom of man; but, sin existing, and God being in immediate personal contact with the world, every event was a direct expression of His moral will and energy; calamity fell on wickedness, and success attended right-doing. This view of the moral harmony between the nature of God and the events of providence in the fortunes of men and nations is the view of the Hebrew wisdom in its oldest form, during what might be called the period of principles, to which belong Prov. x. sg. ; and this is the position maintained by Job’s three friends. And the significance of the book of Job in the history of revelation arises from this that it marks the point when such a view was definitively overcome, closing the long period when this principle was merely subjected to questionings, and makes a new positive addition to the doctrine of evil.

Job agreed with the friends that afflictions came directly from the hand of God, and also that God afflicted those whom He held guilty of sins. But his conscience denied the imputation of guilt, whether insinuated by his friends or implied in God’s chastisement of him. Hence he was driven to conclude that God was unjust, that He sought occasions against him, and perverted his right. The position of J ob appeared to his friends nothing else but impiety, as it came very near being; while theirs was to him mere falsehood and the special pleading of sycophants in behalf of God because He was the stronger. Within these two iron walls the debate moves, making little progress, but with much brilliancy, if not of argument, of illustration. A certain advance indeed is perceptible. In the first series of speeches, ch. iv.-xiv., the key-note of which is struck by Eliphaz, the oldest and most considerate of the three, the position is that affliction is caused by sin, and is chastisement designed for the sinner’s good; and the moral is that Job should recognize it and use it for the purpose for which it was sent. In the second, ch. xv.-xχi., the other side of the picture is held up, the terrible fate of the sinner, and those brilliant pictures of a restored future, thrown in by all the speakers in the first series, are absent. Job’s demeanour under the consolations offered him afforded little hope of his repentance. In the third series, ch. xxii. sg., the friends cast off all disguise, and openly charge Job with a course of evil life. That their armoury was now exhausted is shown by the brevity of the second speaker, and the failure of the third to answer in any form. In reply Job disdains for a time to touch what he well knew lay under all their exhortations; he laments with touching pathos the defection of his friends on whom he counted, who were like the winter torrents looked for in vain by the perishing caravan in the summer heat; he meets with bitter scorn their constant cry that God will not castoff the righteous man, by asking—How one can be righteous with God? what can humaħ weakness, however innocent, do against infinite might and subtlety? they are righteous whom an omnipotent and perverse will thinks fit to consider so; he falls into a hopeless wail over the universal misery of man, who has aweary campaign of life appointed him; then, rising up in the strength of his conscience, he upbraids the Almighty with His misuse of His power and His indiscriminate tyranny,—righteous and innocent He destroys alike—and challenges Him to lay aside His majesty and meet His creature as a man, and then he would not fear Him. Even in the second series Job can hardly bring himself to face the personal issue raised by the friends. His relations to God absorb him almost wholly,—his pitiable isolation, the indignities showered on his once honoured head, the loathsome spectacle of. his body; and, abandoned by all, he turns for pity from God to men and from men to God. Only in the third series of debates does he put out his hand and grasp firmly the theory of his friends, and their “defences of mud” fall to dust in his hands. Instead of that roseate moral order which they are never weary insisting upon, he finds only disorder and moral confusion. When he thinks of it, trembling takes hold of him. It is not the righteous but the wicked that live, grow old, yea wax mighty in strength, that send forth their children like a flock and ’ establish them in their sight. Before the logic of facts the theory of the friends goes down; and with this negative result, which the author skilfully reaches through the debate, has to be combined his own positive doctrine of the uses of adversity advanced in the prologue.

To a reader of the poem now it appears strange that both parties were so entangled in the meshes of their preconceptions regarding God as to be unable to break through to broader views. The friends, while maintaining their position that injustice on the part of God is inconceivable, might have given its due weight to the persistent testimony of Job’s conscience as that behind which it is impossible to go, and found refuge in the reflexion that there might be something inexplicable in the .ways of God, and that affliction might have some other meaning than to punish the sinner or even to wean him from his sin. And Job, while maintaining his innocence from overt sins, might have bowed beneath the rod of God and confessed that there was such sinfulness in every human life as to account for the severest chastisement from heaven, or at least have stopped short of charging God foolishly. Such a position would certainly be taken up by an afflicted saint now, and such an explanation of his sufferings would suggest itself to the sufferer, even though it might be in truth a false explanation. Perhaps here, where an artistic fault might seem to be committed, the art of the writer, or what is the same thing his truth to nature, and the extraordinary freedom with which he moves among his materials, as well as the power and individuality of his dramatic creations, are most remarkable. It was the rôle which the author reserved for himself to teach the truth on the question in dispute, and he accomplishes this by allowing his performers to push their false principles to their proper...