“Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord [as if God’s children could ever be absent from him], and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord [again] said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth? a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, ALTHOUGH THOU MOVEDST ME AGAINST HIM TO DESTROY HIM WITHOUT CAUSE.” Can God be moved against a man to destroy him without a cause? If so, God is neither immutable nor all-wise. Yet the Bible puts into God’s mouth the terrible admission that the Devil had moved God against Job to destroy him without cause. If true, it destroys alike God’s goodness and his wisdom. But Satan answered the Lord and said: “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life; put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.” Does the Lord now drive the Devil from his presence? Is there any expression of wrath or indignation against this tempter? “The Lord said unto Satan: Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life.” And Job, being better than everybody else, finds himself smitten in consequence with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. The ways of the Lord are not as our ways, or this would seem the reverse of an encouragement to virtue. In the account of the numbering by David, in one place “God,” and in another “Satan,” occurs (1 Chron. xxi,1; 2 Sam. xxiv, 1), and to each the same act of “moving” or “provoking” David to number his people is attributed. There may be in this more harmony than ordinary men recognise, for one erudite Bible commentator tells us, speaking of the Hebrew word Azazel: “This terrible and venerable name of God, through the pens of Biblical glossers, has been _a devil, a mountain, a wilderness, and a he-goat._”¹³ Well may incomprehensibility be an attribute of deity when, even to holy and reverend fathers, God has been sometimes undistinguishable from a he-goat or a Devil. Moncure D. Conway writes: “There can be little question that the Hebrews, from whom the Calvinist inherited his deity, had no Devil in their mythology, because the jealous and vindictive Jehovah was quite equal to any work of that kind—as the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, bringing plagues upon the land, or deceiving a prophet and then destroying him for his false prophecies.”¹⁴ ¹³ G.R. Gliddon’s extract from Land’s “Sacra Scritura,” chap, iii, sec. 1. “Demonology and Devil-lore,” vol. i, p. 11. ¹⁴ “Christian Records,” by the Rev. Dr. Giles, p. 144. God is a spirit. Jesus is God. Jesus was led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the Devil. All these propositions are equally credible.