8. Piety must be tried under all. Until the enlightened age of the world is reached, piety will have little to cling to but faith in God, and that in the face of appearances. Such is the drama about to be enacted. Six grand epochs of historic time must be passed to reach even the present time. (1.) Deism of the antediluvian world. (2.) Special Providence as a rule of action following the flood, and out of which grew the building of the Tower of Babel. (3.) He was left alone through materialistic worship in idolatry, as in Abraham’s time. (4.) He was confronted by a superstitious looking-behind, as in Persia’s time. (5.) Tempted with an abnormal ambition, as in Alexander’s time. (6.) He must be surrounded by the ruling necessities of commercial selfishness inaugurated by Rome, and transmitted by circumstantial links in the progress of civilization to our own time. 9. Human history in the drama starts in with a wail. Job, with the intuitions of a deist, bewails his very existence. As he looks to the future there is not one ray of hope. “Thou (God) shalt search for me in the morning but I shall not be. He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.” Where now is that oft repeated declaration of Satan, that piety, at best, is only a selfish looking forward to rewards in the future? The piety of Job survives this terrible ordeal. The blinding intellectual fog of deism could not lose his point of compass. Creeds may be good as sign-boards directing the traveler, but they go but a little ways in determining the action of the truly pious. As he approaches the flood he beholds the “numbering of man’s days on the earth.” And, as the reality bursts upon his vision, he experiences a perfect revolution of intuition. All is special Providence now.