100 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



destitution* What wonder that pious hands should have 

 added the speeches of Elihu, and made many other 

 alterations in the book of Job ! 



Finally God speaks out of the storm, and here the 

 poetry of the book rises to its most majestic heights* 

 The Almighty points out to Job that his knowledge is 

 too limited thus to criticise God's rule over the Universe* 

 With cutting irony, God points out that when the 

 foundations of the world were laid, and the morning stars 

 sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy. 

 Job was not there ! 



Then God brings before Job the physical phenomena 

 of Nature ; land and sea, hght and darkness, the ordered 

 movements of the heavenly bodies, snow, hail, rain and 

 ice, all of which Job utterly fails to understand, but which 

 nevertheless, are under God's direction* All these 

 things and many more are brought before Job to teach 

 him the limitations of his knowledge* 



But some may say that Science has knocked the 

 bottom out of this argument* We now understand about 

 these things* And there is a certain amount of truth in 

 this suggestion* But if our boasted knowledge has robbed 

 us of our sense of Wonder and Reverence and Awe, 

 as we witness the works of the Creator ; if it has taken 

 from us our sense of humility in the Presence of God, 

 then we are far poorer than were our forefathers, who 

 knew so much less than we* It is still true that ** we 

 live by admiration, hope and love/' 



But surely the discoveries of Science should have 

 increased, not diminished, our admiration and our 

 reverence* How small was the earth and how puny 

 the universe known to those ancient Hebrews, compared 

 with those known to us* The earth, so much smaller 

 than that which we know, seemed to them the centre 

 of the universe* The sky was an inverted basin, a solid 

 hemisphere of blue, resting on the earth, and upon Jts 



