Expositor's Bible: The Book of JobWatson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Job
Watson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Bible. Job -- Commentaries
Now to this question, perplexing enough on the face of it when we
consider what suffering there is in the creation, how the waves of
life seem to beat and break themselves age after age on the rocks of
death, the answer in its first stage is that God and nature cannot be
at strife. They are not apart; there is but one universe, therefore
one Cause. One Omnipotent there is whose will is done, whose character
is shown in all we see and all we cannot see, the issues of endless
strife, the long results of perennial evolution. But then comes the
question, What is His character, of what spirit is He who alone rules,
who sends after the calm the fierce storm, after the beauty of life
the corruption of death? And one may say the struggle between Bible
religion and modern science is on this very field.
Cold heartless power, say some; no Father, but an impersonal Will to
which men are nothing, human joy and love nothing, to which the fair
blossom is no more than the clod, and the holy prayer no better than
the vile sneer. On this, faith arises to the struggle. Faith warm and
hopeful takes reason into counsel, searches the springs of existence,
goes forth into the future and forecasts the end, that it may affirm
and reaffirm against all denial that One Omnipotent reigns who is
all-loving, the Father of infinite mercy. Here is the arena; here the
conflict rages and will rage for many a day. And to him will belong
the laurels of the age who, with the Bible in one hand and the
instruments of science in the other, effects the reconciliation of
faith with fact. Tennyson came with the questions of our day. He
passes and has not given a satisfactory answer. Carlyle has gone with
the "Everlasting Yea and No" beating through his oracles. Even
Browning, a later athlete, did not find complete reason for faith.
"From Thy will stream the worlds, life, and nature, Thy dread
sabaoth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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