I

My task to-day, Gentlemen, is mainly practical: to choose a particular book of Scripture and show (if I can) not only that it deserves to be enjoyed, in its English rendering, as a literary masterpiece, because it abides in that dress, an indisputable classic for us, as surely as if it had first been composed in English; but that it can, for purposes of study, serve the purpose of any true literary school of English as readily, and as usefully, as the Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" or "Hamlet" or "Paradise Lost." I shall choose "The Book of Job" for several reasons, presently to be given; but beg you to understand that, while taking it for a striking illustration, I use it but to illustrate; that what may be done with "Job" may, in degree, be done with "Ruth," with "Esther," with the "Psalms," "The Song of Songs," "Ecclesiastes;" with Isaiah of Jerusalem, Ezekiel, sundry of the prophets; even with St Luke's Gospel or St Paul's letters to the Churches.

My first reason, then, for choosing "Job" has already been given. It is the most striking illustration to be found. Many of the Psalms touch perfection as lyrical strains: of the ecstacy of passion in love I suppose "The Song of Songs" to express the very last word. There are chapters of Isaiah that snatch the very soul and ravish it aloft. In no literature known to me are short stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel parables—I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a middle and an end; for diction never less than adequate, constantly right and therefore not seldom superb, as theme, thought and utterance soar up together and make one miracle, I can name no single book of the Bible to compare with "Job."

My second reason is that the poem, being brief, compendious and quite simple in structure, can be handily expounded; "Job" is what Milton precisely called it, 'a brief model.' And my third reason (which I must not hide) is that two writers whom I mentioned in my last lecture Lord Latymer and Professor R. G. Moulton—have already done this for me. A man who drives at practice must use the tools other men have made, so he use them with due acknowledgment; and this acknowledgment I pay by referring you to Book II of Lord Latymer's "The Poet's Charter,' and to the analysis of "Job" with which Professor Moulton introduces his "Literary Study of the Bible.'