CHAPTER II.

The Neptunian Theory of Creation was first brought to Light in the Book of Job.

1. Like Homer, who dated his poem in the rising of the star Sirius, so Job dated his book in the Pleiades, while the sun was gaining his vernal equinox in the star Alcyone of this constellation. The Septuagint speaks of Job’s age at the commencement of his trial as being one hundred years. By the closing statement appended to his book, we learn that he lived after his restoration one hundred and forty years. This makes his age two hundred and forty at his death. Alcyone marks by precession of the equinoxes 2100 years B. C. The great period of his longevity indicates a time antedating Abraham’s day by more than two hundred years.

2. This book is an epi-dramatic Oratorio of human history. It is epic, in that it gives the history of a real life; dramatic, in that it dramatizes human history, by the inspirations of these actors, with the religious intuitions of all ages. The poem as a whole shows the contending forces that develop character; the struggle of man’s redeemed nature against the tendencies of a series of degenerate ages, as far down as the full triumph of Christ’s reign; followed by the long prosperity that awaits the Church. It also sets forth the longings of the human intellect for a knowledge of first causes; and its crowning success when Nature is studied in connection with the revelations of God’s Word. The Book of Job was evidently the only Scripture that the world had for at least eight hundred years. The introduction shows Job to have been a person adapted to great reverses of fortune, rich, pious, prosperous, happy, and respected. Two spirits, either of which may take form, but neither being dependent on form or locality, are present in their religious gatherings as they have ever been in ours. That objective figures come before our imaginations in reading this part of the poem, only shows the high character of the production.

3. The first question between God and Satan is that hackneyed one of all history, viz: Is piety a selfish ebullition of the human heart or a divinely planted principle? Satan takes the first statement, God the latter. Satan affirms that a sudden reverse of fortune will change the aspect of Job’s piety, and he will then curse God to his face. Great principles are best tested by suffering. Nor is it necessary that every one should suffer in the same direction to show forth the same. The world is full of delegated suffering; the few for the many, and sometimes one for all. Job is the right man in wealth, station, influence, and habits of mind to personify piety in its relation to the world’s progress.

4. The Orient is the place, and that period of the world the time, for the rich figures of speech found in the two scenes of this unparalleled production. Of the two forces meeting us in life, inviting our attention and co-operation, one must and but one can, at the same time, receive our homage. The one inclines you to and gives you credit for all good; the other inclines you from and gives you no credit for any good. The princely man of the Orient is suddenly confronted with absolute bankruptcy and bereavement of all his children, without the chance of speaking the parting good-bye. Satan expected the question settled in his favor, by a sudden outburst of passion, in vindictive hate to God. But listen! “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb (earth), and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The first scene is ended with Satan completely foiled. But, some one might say, the question only covered Job’s outward prosperity. True, his wife is left to him, but she is a part of himself.

5. Again the sons of God are together in worship. Satan begs leave to amend his indictment against piety. “Touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse thee.” Job is smitten in a manner calculated to break down his patience. The patience of his wife having become exhausted, she is influenced to give her vindictive advice in the line of Satan’s desires, “Curse God, and die.” “Thou speakest as a foolish woman. What! shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”

6. The prologue of scene second ends with Satan confounded. The incoming circumstances show God’s present proposition to be that true piety will not only endure, without tarnish, what Satan in his ill will has proposed, but it will survive and develop in strength in the ages to come, until it shall triumph over every foe. To refute all satanic charges to which history will give rise, God proposes to try it in this person, under the leading intuitions governing the masses of all ages, past and to come. Three supposed but mistaken friends hear of Job’s calamity, and resolve to condole his misery. These are ranked within the family of God’s sons. These men are kings in their time, and are supposed to be entitled to a hearing. Their mistakes will make them really Job’s enemies. Such are the coadjutors that Satan is about to have brought to his aid. They find Job in keen anguish of body, incapable of recognizing his friends.

7. These persons are all representative characters, whose intuitions will partake of the nature of the epochs of human history, through which the prophet Job is about to be taken. Job personifies piety; Eliphaz, reverence in tradition; Bildad, special Providence as a rule of action; Zophar, ignorance, the mother of devotion. Beginning with the fall of man, each epoch of human history is to stamp the prevailing religious intuitions of the masses upon these men.

8. Piety must be tried under all. Until the enlightened age of the world is reached, piety will have little to cling to but faith in God, and that in the face of appearances. Such is the drama about to be enacted. Six grand epochs of historic time must be passed to reach even the present time. (1.) Deism of the antediluvian world. (2.) Special Providence as a rule of action following the flood, and out of which grew the building of the Tower of Babel. (3.) He was left alone through materialistic worship in idolatry, as in Abraham’s time. (4.) He was confronted by a superstitious looking-behind, as in Persia’s time. (5.) Tempted with an abnormal ambition, as in Alexander’s time. (6.) He must be surrounded by the ruling necessities of commercial selfishness inaugurated by Rome, and transmitted by circumstantial links in the progress of civilization to our own time.

9. Human history in the drama starts in with a wail. Job, with the intuitions of a deist, bewails his very existence. As he looks to the future there is not one ray of hope. “Thou (God) shalt search for me in the morning but I shall not be. He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.”

Where now is that oft repeated declaration of Satan, that piety, at best, is only a selfish looking forward to rewards in the future? The piety of Job survives this terrible ordeal. The blinding intellectual fog of deism could not lose his point of compass.

Creeds may be good as sign-boards directing the traveler, but they go but a little ways in determining the action of the truly pious. As he approaches the flood he beholds the “numbering of man’s days on the earth.” And, as the reality bursts upon his vision, he experiences a perfect revolution of intuition. All is special Providence now.

10. The flood is passed in chapter eight, and “man’s days become as a shadow.” The law of God’s natural Providence, in cause and effect, is by Job and his friends completely ignored. His own condition will look him in the face with terrible effect, asking an explanation. To such an ordeal, with Bildad framing an enthusiastic argument upon the evidences of special Providence in the affliction, was Job brought. He can logically prove Job to be one of the worst of men. “Doth God pervert judgment?” To Job he saith, “If thou wast pure and upright, surely now he would awake for thee.” Job with his intuitions cannot see why the argument is not sound. “I know it is so of a truth.” To work thus upon the nerves of a sick man, who has been shut off from comprehensive views of God’s general Providence in law, is well calculated to break him down in impatience toward God. But Job replies, “If I say I am perfect it shall also prove me perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul; neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that he should lay his hand upon us both.” Zophar replied, “Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.” Job replied, “I could speak as you do if I were in your stead.” “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Job claims an honest integrity of purpose, though denying perfection in attainment.

10. For this noble stand he is rewarded on the spot with a prophetic view of what forms the first chapter in the “Little Book” of star-dates. Tracing time back by the precession of the equinoxes to where the sun crossed its spring equinox in Orion’s belt, he saw the commencement of man. Tracing the same line forward to the end of our race, where indeed time ends, he saw that it rested in Ash or the Great Bear (margin) incorrectly translated Arcturus; new version, Great Bear.

Looking to the same kind of date of his own time, he saw the sun crossing the Pleiades. Looking at the full inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, represented by the termination of Job’s own sufferings, he saw the time measured in the Summer Solstitial colure going from under the Altar. “Thou madest Ash, Orion and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.” Here commences the “Little Book,” alluded to so often in prophecy, with four of the most important dates of history, but sealed upon the back part until the opening of the same by the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah” to his servant John. Here, perhaps all unconscious of their bearings on future history, he is picturing in the heavens, and dating by means of the precession of the equinoxes, the long periods, revolutions, changes and triumphs his sufferings were to take him, followed by the long prosperity of the Church of Christ in the latter day.

11. Representing the reign of universal idolatry, and consequent ignorance of the masses, and preceding the anxious inquiries concerning immortality by Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Zophar is prepared to fill in his part of the drama.

The question of the resurrection is discussed in the light of nature, in Chap. 14. He is compelled to leave it as an open question, only wishing that it might be true. “Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me.” He nears the time of the general expectation of Messiah’s appearance on earth.

He closes to allow Zophar, the representative of those Scribes and Pharisees in their tradition, to speak again. This is found in the fifteenth chapter.

12. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth, inclusive, Job personifies Christ. Hence these chapters are Messianic. “They have gaped upon me with their mouth, they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully. My days are extinct, the graves are ready for me. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. Are there not mockers with me? For thou hast hid their heart from understanding.” Many of these sentences are quoted into the twenty-second psalm, recognized by all commentators to be Messianic. This Special Providence, as a rule to depend upon, watched Christ on the cross; it triumphed over the fact that God did not deliver him.

Here it is in prophecy: “The snare is laid for him in the ground. It shall devour the strength of his skin, even the firstborn of death, it shall devour his strength. His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle. His remembrance shall perish from the earth. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. He shall neither have son or nephew among his people.” Isaiah, quoting the sentiment, asks, “Who shall declare his generation, for his life was taken from the earth?”

The Messianic voice is personified from the grave. The grave speaks the facts of history. “He hath put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolks have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They whom I loved are turned against me. Why do you persecute me as God?” In the nineteenth chapter Job has reached the resurrection. How changed the voice! “Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen, and lead in the rock forever.”

13. “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Ignorance is not satisfied with the report “that he is risen from the dead.” “The triumph of the wicked is short. Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, yet he shall perish forever. He shall fly away as a dream.” The days of apostolic teaching and suffering passed, Christianity debauched by a state religion, ignorance again put forth as a dying gasp, a few platitudes in defense of God and against piety. Chap. 20. Job answered by referring man’s conduct in life to a future judgment. Chap. 21. Reverence in tradition exhorted Piety to speedy repentance. Chaps. 23 and 24. Piety is searching directly for the true God.

14. Special Providence, ignoring law, boasteth of his secular strength. “Is there any numbers of his armies?” Here in the poem civilization reached the dawn of the Reformation. Chap. 26. It begins in the line of science. The rocks begin to speak. “Dead things are formed from under the waters.” The orbicular motion and the present pole-pointing of the Earth, according to the Copernican system, is seen. “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the Earth upon nothing.” How exactly in accordance with the history of scientific reform, that this knowledge should begin in small fragments of truth. A glimpse of the ancient pole-pointing is seen. “He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end”; or until the end of light begins with darkness. He saw the great “change of times and seasons” caused by the Noachian flood. “He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud. Lo these are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him! but the thunder of his power who can understand?”

15. Job enters upon the Reformation in science with a prophet’s view of the desperate efforts put forth, by scientists of our own period, to reach first causes by analytical deduction and hypothetical reasoning; and this unaided by any light claiming to come by inspiration of God. His harp seemed attuned in the most exquisite niceness of poetic finish, to that class of modern pretenders who talk of the fullness of nature’s laws, while they disbelieve in the existence of nature’s God. He opens the twenty-eighth chapter with certain admissions, as to points of knowledge obtainable from phenomena of nature, followed by questions suggestive of the paucity of all things seen to unfold a true and full cosmology. “Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.” Now beholding the futile efforts of Naturalists to reach first causes he exclaims, “There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. The lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing.” This and more is freely conceded as yielding a grand field for geological thought. “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living.” Right here, beholding the observations through heaven-pointed lenses, that man may read first causes in the stars, he gives the poetic reply of space. “The depth saith it is not in me.” Now beholding the kindled expectations in the student of the seas, as he traces her currents, measures her waves and tides, and reaches her deepest deposits, the sea is made to report, “It is not with me.” But may not wealth and position gain it from the schools? He answers: “It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it; and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.”

Disappointed in reading first causes in all these resources man still inquires: “Whence then cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.” Let now the dead fossil speak. May not the entombed life of forty millions of years open up this subject to man?

16. Destruction and death say, “We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heavens, to make the weight of the winds, and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then did he see it and declare it.” But how shall man gain this true wisdom of causes? “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” It is the voice of the Saviour, he who “walked in the garden.” Men must be drawn toward God before they can see him in his word. “And unto man he said, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” It cannot be doubted that more reverence for God, and less egotistical trust in self, would greatly aid the wisest thinker of the present day. We have had altogether too much of that feigned or real pity for the Bible, as unfortunate in its allusions to science, deserving to be ranked with the superstitions of the untutored masses of the unlettered ages. It is true that prophetic allusions to scientific subjects are usually poetic, but none the less specific and definite for this. These allusions embody a true objective view, leaving to science the task to subjectively work out the true condition of things presenting such phenomena. Thus prophecy poetized upon the “Place for light, and the home and house for darkness; and the path leading to the bounds between them.” Scientifically explained, one pole of the Earth must have pointed steadily to the sun, leaving half the globe in perpetual darkness.

17. Joshua is said to have commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, and they obeyed him. Subjectively rendered the sun went not down, during one night, which could have been objectively accomplished by a mirage. As this would answer the purpose for which the phenomena is reported, it is highly probable that this is all that is meant. Again, God made a firmament. But firmaments called heaven are not things made. Subjectively rendered, he made a globe, from which the visible expanse is seen. These figures of speech, and especially the one called metonymy, run all through prophetic sayings. The heart’s willingness to accept the truth is often necessary to the intellect’s perceiving it.

18. The Reformation has made some considerable progress, and Job’s three mistaken friends begin to see their errors, and acknowledge themselves silenced. Job’s renewed ability to speak, and the readiness with which he handles the subject of each passing event, shows that the darkness is passing away, and the teachings of these dismal ages are being counteracted.

19. A far more formidable enemy, in the person of Elihu, is about to arise. He represents Secular Education, in unbelief of the inspiration of God, or the existence of true piety. He reasons that all men are essentially alike, imperfect; that heredity, inclination, education and surrounding circumstances account for all the difference in men. That Job, having claimed upright intentions before God, has committed a grave offence. His God is one of cause. “I will fetch my knowledge from afar: he that is perfect in knowledge is with thee. My lips shall utter knowledge clearly. All flesh shall perish together.” What is this but infidel Deism? How different the expression of the wise man! “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?” The one is mortal, the other immortal. For some cause Job is silent, though again and again challenged to the combat. Let us apply a little history to the prophetic drama. French Atheists, in a convention in 1808, put forth eighty-three counts, any one of which was claimed sufficient to prove the Bible to be uninspired. Sir Charles Lyell, himself a Deist, wrote, “Of these counts, not one of them remains today. Science has laid them aside as untenable.”

20. We have three distinct views of prayer, represented in Bildad, Elihu and Job. Bildad’s view is, “If deserving, you can have all you ask for, without reference to law. All that you need is faith to perpetuate the line of miracles.” Elihu’s view was essentially expressed by the Professor who threw down the challenge, called the prayer gauge. Its substance was, “Prayer changes no effect following cause. It cannot mitigate the death rate in a hospital.” Job’s position is that prayer may be beneficial when in harmony with God’s laws. There are three realms, viz, physics, mind and spirit. Mind is higher than physics, and, within bounds, rules it; spirit is higher than either, and within bounds rules both: that prayer to God, ever subject to “Thy will be done, not mine,” may increase the power of the spirit in man over the lower realms of law, thus securing wonderful help from God, according to his expressed will in law. This does not necessarily involve miracle in the answer God gives. It is in harmony with the law of the spirit, that God within the spirit greatly increases its power over mind and matter. This was the secret of Job’s power over his contestants. This power Elihu denied. Secular Education will readily admit that God, by his direct power (which is Special Providence), created matter, again set it in motion, again gave life to portions of it, etc., and then deny that God would listen to the cry of his children for spiritual or material help. This modern Elihu has completely ignored the efforts of God to help the would-be scientists to phenomena and principles, which would link his knowledge of nature in happy relation with first causes. Hence in the end, like Elihu, he is destined to be completely confounded.

21. Two thousand years ago, science established the Ptolemaic theory of Astronomy. It taught it for eighteen hundred years, when the Copernican theory forced its way to the front. And now, it is evident, the true theory was clearly taught in God’s first book of Inspiration, called Scripture. A few years since, Elihu, as a learned professor, would take a piece of granite in his hand, and learnedly talk of the crystals formed, as it slowly cooled, as the first crust formed upon the sea of lava.

22. Now, the same professor talks to his class of the sedimentary nature of the rock, and the crystals formed under great pressure in the deep sea. Four thousand years ago, the Bible gave this knowledge to the world. For some cause, Job is reticent while Elihu speaks. He speaks as a “beast of power, rising up out of the earth.” But God has something to say as to who shall stand in the coming ages. Piety will stand up, and God will answer as by the power of the whirlwind. Chap. 38. “Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone thereof?” Marginal reading “made the cornerstone to sink.” Balancing order, in exact equipose, is proclaimed in science. “Not one star could be spared,” say the Solons of Philosophy, “without throwing all into the greatest confusion.” The balancing of the primary gases, as each sun gathered in the beginning, was seen by Job. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

23. The great under-waters were once imprisoned as though shut behind doors. “Or who shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth as if it had issued out of the womb?” Rotundity of the Earth is here given with the inside water. He saw the young Earth first “clothed in a garment of clouds,” and “thick darkness a swaddling band about it.” He saw the “foundations of the earth breaking up,” as the flood in Noah’s day poured in over the earth. “And brake up the decreed place for it,” and set new “bars and doors.” A change of polarity, and when it took place, is seen. “Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the day-spring to know his place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?” When have the wicked been shaken out of it, but when “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up?” The finishing touch is added to the Copernican system. “It is turned as clay to the seal.” Allusion is made to the clay on the potter’s wheel rotating to a fixed seal shaping the same. In contrast to its present motion, he saw a former condition with pole pointing to the sun. This was a motion that never exchanged the darkness for light, nor light for darkness, but both remained stationary. “Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know the paths to the house thereof?” He saw the contrasted appearance of the former earth to her present contour. “The waters are hid as with a stone.” Altogether, the land hemisphere covered the under-waters; “and the face of the deep is frozen.” The face of the deep in the southern hemisphere of the ancient earth was locked in darkness and perpetual ice. He had asked the question, “Out of whose womb came the ice?” Where was it born? This is one of the most perplexing questions in science.

24. Where was the ice born that once plowed such deep furrows over hill and dale, that climbed the rugged mountain, and filled ancient river beds with three thousand feet of drift? In vain do you ask where the ice came from that scooped out the Yosemite Valley, or laid the deep beds of water-washed pebbles along the Sierra Nevada mountains. God has answered it in giving the ancient polarity, by which the mighty deep of one half the globe was covered with ice. Again, “Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of the thunder?” Our earth is a magnet. The way of the lightning produces spiral effects on plants and cyclones from the equator to each pole. The earth being divided, forming the Atlantic Ocean, and the pole being locally changed on the globe, a new way for the lightning is formed. This poem is wonderful for its flights of prophetic views. The vision, from comprehending the phenomena attending the globe in its antediluvian state, now changes to a mode of communication by telegraph of our own time. To identify the century in which it would appear, he resorted to the third clock of the heavens, measured by precession. He noticed that beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades at the usual time of Zenith measurement, in the evening, standing over the January thaw, followed in a few days with Orion’s belt in the same place. At the time of Job’s captivity the Pleiades rose to the Zenith on the 10th day of November. By the slow action of precession they have moved eastward, until now they come to the Zenith on the second day of January. Only eighteen days elapse before Orion’s belt stands in the Zenith to look down on sealed rivers, as the thaw is over.

25. “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” The time in this poetic allusion is our present century. The phenomena seen is employing lightning as a messenger. “Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?” Proceeding to give the habits and instincts of a few representative animals in natural history, Job proposed to sit down and say no more.

26. But God proposed to gird him for the description of two representative fossil animals of the Middle and Tertiary ages. For the ruling king of saurians, he described Ichthyosaurus under the title of Leviathan. For the king of the Myocene period he described the Megathareum under the title of Behemoth. God opens the understanding of Job’s three mistaken friends, and makes demands for repentance and reparation. Job becomes their intercessor. The captivity of Piety ends here. The “times of the gentiles are fulfilled.” “The sanctuary is cleansed.” “Babylon is fallen.” “The white horse appears, and Jesus reigns King of kings and Lord of lords.”

27. Now commences the grandest era of Job’s life. It is double in prosperity to all going before. The time for its continuance is very long. The universal respect that will be shown the church, the voluntary contributions in liberal free-will offerings, the abundance of peace and prosperity, are well diagrammed and set forth in the closing events of Job’s life.

Elihu will still talk of the “Twilight of Christianity,” but faith is looking for the dawn of Christ’s triumph, when the dragon, “like lightning,” must “fall from the heavens,” and nations will hail with joy the reign of righteousness.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

“Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of hosts; he is the King of glory.”