424 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



But let us choose a less familiar example of the spirit in 

 which the Hebrew glories in the power of man s cunning 

 and labour to subdue all nature. Such an example we shall 

 find in Job s description of the art of mining, the Old Testa 

 ment counterpart of the famous chorus of the Antigone : 



For there is a lode for silver : a place for gold which is fined. 



Iron is brought from dust : and stones are smelted into brass. 



Man sets an end to darkness and searches out to its farthest veins : 



the stone that lies in night and gloom. 

 The shaft is opened far from all sojourners : and there forgotten of 



human foot, 



They hang far from mortals : they flit to and fro. 

 The earth out of her groweth bread : and beneath they pierce 



resistless as fire. 



The place of her brightest jewels : the dust of her gold are theirs. 

 The path that the eagle hath not seen : the eye of the vulture hath 



not scanned : 

 Which the proud beasts have not trod : which the lion hath never 



walked. 

 On the flint he layeth his hand : overturneth mountains from their 



roots. 

 Through the rock he cleaveth passages : and his eye beholds all 



precious things ; 



He binds up the shafts from weeping : and brings forth secret trea 

 sure to light. ] 



In lays like the Song of the Well created things appear 

 as man s friends : in the picture that we have taken from 

 Job they are represented as his captives and his slaves. 

 We have still to consider the more awful aspect of the 

 powers of nature in which they present themselves as 

 the utterances of a mysterious might, before which the 

 strength and wisdom of man are as naught. This is 

 the point of view from which the nature-worship of 

 the heathen Semites appears in its proper contrast to 

 the polytheism of Greece. In the Hellenic religion the 

 plastic element, the sensuous ideal, predominates. &quot; The 



1 Job xxviii. i seq. The allusion in the last line is to the greatest 

 difficulty with which the miner has to contend the breaking in of 

 water through his shafts. The contrast with the Chorus of Sophocles 

 (Antig. 362 seq.} is instructive, but cannot be drawn out here. I 

 remark only the counterfoil to man s power and cunning in each case. 

 Job continues : &quot; But where shall wisdom be found ? &quot; Sophocles adds : 

 Ai5a IJLOVOV &amp;lt;f&amp;gt;vi.v OVK 



