It is, indeed, reasonable that as long as we are persuaded that our English theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we should shrink from contact with investigations which, however ingenious in themselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation. But there are some learned Germans whose orthodoxy would pass examination at Exeter Hall; and there are many subjects, such, for instance, as the present, on which all their able men are agreed in conclusions that cannot rationally give offence to any one. With the Book of Job, analytical criticism has only served to clear up the uncertainties which have hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be, beyond all doubt, a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost in the form in which it now remains to us. The questions on the authenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thought important, have given way before a more sound conception of the dramatic unity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely an enquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resources of modern scholarship and historical and mythological research to bear upon the obscurity of separate passages. It is the most difficult of all the Hebrew compositions--many words occurring in it, and many thoughts, not to be found elsewhere in the Bible. How difficult our translators found it may be seen by the number of words which they were obliged to insert in italics, and the doubtful renderings which they have suggested in the margin. One instance of this, in passing, we will notice in this place--it will be familiar to every one as the passage quoted at the opening of the English burial service, and adduced as one of the doctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body:--'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 I shall see God.' So this passage stands in the ordinary version. But the words in italics have nothing answering to them in the original--they were all added by the translators[I] to fill out their interpretation; and for _in my flesh_, they tell us themselves in the margin that we may read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read) '_out of_,' or _'without' my flesh_. It is but to write out the verses, omitting the conjectural additions, and making that one small but vital correction, to see how frail a support is there for so large a conclusion: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the latter upon the earth; and after my skin destroy this ; yet without my flesh I shall see God.' If there is any doctrine of a resurrection here, it is a resurrection precisely _not_ of the body, but of the spirit. And now let us only add, that the word translated Redeemer is the technical expression for the 'avenger of blood;' and that the second paragraph ought to be rendered--'and one to