"_Men of understanding will say to me, And the wise who hears me will say:-- Job speaks without intelligence, And his words are without wisdom: Would that Job were tried unto the end For his answers after the manner of wicked men. For he addeth rebellion to his sin; He clappeth his hands amongst us And multiplieth his words against God._" The ideas of Elihu are few and fixed. When his attempts to convince betray his weakness in argument, he falls back on the vulgar expedient of brow-beating the defendant. He is a type of many would-be interpreters of Divine providence, forcing a theory of religion which admirably fits those who reckon themselves favourites of heaven, but does nothing for the many lives that are all along under a cloud of trouble and grief. The religious creed which alone can satisfy is one throwing light adown the darkest ravines human beings have to thread, in ignorance of God which they cannot help, in pain of body and feebleness of mind not caused by their own sin but by the sins of others, in slavery or something worse than slavery. XXVI. _THE DIVINE PREROGATIVE._ CHAPS. xxxv.-xxxvii. After a long digression Elihu returns to consider the statement ascribed to Job, "It profiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself with God" (chap. xxxiv. 9). This he laid hold of as meaning that the Almighty is unjust, and the accusation has been dealt with. Now he resumes the question of the profitableness of religion. "_Thinkest thou this to be in thy right, And callest thou it 'My just cause before God,' That thou dost ask what advantage it is to thee, And 'What profit have I more than if I had sinned'?_" In one of his replies Job, speaking of the wicked, represented them as saying, "What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have if we pray unto Him?" (chap. xxi. 15). He added then, "The counsel of the wicked be far from me." Job is now declared to be of the same opinion as the wicked whom he condemned. The man who again and again appealed to God from the judgment of his friends, who found consolation in the thought that his witness was in heaven, who, when he was scorned, sought God in tears and hoped against hope for His redemption, is charged with holding faith and religion of no advantage. Is it in misapprehension or with design the charge is made? Job did indeed occasionally seem to deny the profit of religion, but only when the false theology of his friends drove him to false judgment. His real conviction was right. Once Eliphaz pressed the same accusation and lost his way in trying to prove it. Elihu has no fresh evidence, and he too falls into error. He confounds the original charge against Job with another, and makes an offence of that which the whole scope of the poem and our sense of right completely justify.