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.