trouble_. These answers, of course, do not cut deep enough, and their inadequacy reflects adversely on the value of the Wise-men’s judgments of life. But three important points must be noted in extenuation. First, the best that Israel’s Wisdom had to say on the sore problem was not said in the proverbs to which we are here limiting attention. If anyone desires to know how unflinchingly certain Wise-men and other Jews could face the facts and uphold their faith, he must turn to the _Book of Job_, to the _Psalms_, to _Daniel_ and the daring aspirations of Apocalyptic writers. Secondly, there was as yet among the Jews no active belief in the continuance of personal consciousness after physical death, and thus the moral problem raised by the suffering of good men was immensely harder for them than it is for ourselves. The Hebrews from earliest times had believed vaguely that a phantom-like continuation of individuality awaited good and bad alike in the underworld of _Sheol_; but that existence was not reckoned to be “life” in any real sense; certainly it was not thought that a man could receive the reward of his merits in _Sheol_, the land of shades. _Sheol_ offered no solution, or even alleviation, of the moral enigma confronting the Wise. If there was to be a Divine vindication of morality, in their opinion it must needs be shown on earth, either in the life-time of the sufferer himself or in that of his children. In the period we are considering, reason and intuition were already pointing the Jewish thinkers to a higher doctrine of human immortality; but no traces of the great liberating conception have made their appearance in the proverbs.[85] The attitude of the Wise towards death may be grasped from Ben Sirach’s words: _When a man is dead he shall inherit creeping things and beasts and worms_ (E. 10^{11})--_Thanksgiving perisheth from the dead, as from one that is not; he that is in life shall praise the Lord_ (E. 17^{28}). Death to Ben Sirach is a great silencing fact, not a mystery provoking thought. Sometimes he speaks of it very quietly: _All things that are of the earth turn to the earth again, and all things that are of the waters return to the sea_ (E. 40^{11}), and he bids men fear it not, seeing that death comes to us all: _Fear not the sentence of death. Remember them that have been before thee and that come after. This is the sentence from the Lord over all flesh, and why doest thou refuse when it is the good pleasure of the Most High? Whether thou livest ten or a hundred or a thousand years, there is no inquisition of life in the grave_ (E. 41^{3, 4}). The same unquestioning acquiescence appears in the helpless commonplace of the following: _O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that is at peace in his possessions, unto the man that is at ease and hath prosperity in all things, and that still hath strength to enjoy luxury. O death, acceptable is thy sentence