15. Job enters upon the Reformation in science with a prophet’s view of the desperate efforts put forth, by scientists of our own period, to reach first causes by analytical deduction and hypothetical reasoning; and this unaided by any light claiming to come by inspiration of God. His harp seemed attuned in the most exquisite niceness of poetic finish, to that class of modern pretenders who talk of the fullness of nature’s laws, while they disbelieve in the existence of nature’s God. He opens the twenty-eighth chapter with certain admissions, as to points of knowledge obtainable from phenomena of nature, followed by questions suggestive of the paucity of all things seen to unfold a true and full cosmology. “Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.” Now beholding the futile efforts of Naturalists to reach first causes he exclaims, “There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. The lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing.” This and more is freely conceded as yielding a grand field for geological thought. “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living.” Right here, beholding the observations through heaven-pointed lenses, that man may read first causes in the stars, he gives the poetic reply of space. “The depth saith it is not in me.” Now beholding the kindled expectations in the student of the seas, as he traces her currents, measures her waves and tides, and reaches her deepest deposits, the sea is made to report, “It is not with me.” But may not wealth and position gain it from the schools? He answers: “It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it; and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.” Disappointed in reading first causes in all these resources man still inquires: “Whence then cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.” Let now the dead fossil speak. May not the entombed life of forty millions of years open up this subject to man?