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THE BOOK OF JOB.

To know and appreciate a great book should be the honorable goal every reading person sets before him. We can all do that. If at the first we cannot discriminate between better and poorer books, between the ones which last a day and those which last all the days, our gladness may be that such defect may be remedied. As the musician can train the fingers to be expert in touching the keys and the right keys, so all of us can train our taste to select and admire the genuinely notable in literature. We may be disciples of the best. All our reading life must devote itself to coming in touch with the nobler books nobler geniuses have written. Who tells me about a great book, I will always count my benefactor.

"Job" is a greatest book. It has passed out of the company of the greater books into the selecter company of the greatest. That will, I venture to hope, commend it to growing minds, eager for the larger and the nobler. Thomas Carlyle once, reading at prayers in a friend's house, from the book of "Job," became oblivious to surroundings and read on and on till one by one the listeners arose and slipped out in silence, leaving the rapt reader alone, he holding on his solitary way until the last line fell

from his lips.

must be the

Nor can we wonder at him. Such disposition of every thoughtful peruser of this strange, strong, masterful poem. We must not lay it aside till we have found the outcome of this commanding soul whose name is Job.

Job is a prince-old, rich, fortunate, benevolent and good. Life has dealt kindly with him, so that looking at his face you would not from his wrinkles guess his years. The great honor him; the good trust him; the poor in his bounty find plenty; no blessing has failed him; so that his name is the synonym of good fortune.

Suddenly to such a man comes every form of disaster-poverty, penury, disease, death of those he loves the most.

What will this man do now when he has suffered such stinging reverses? This is the theme of the drama, for "Job" is a dramatic poem, like Shakespeare's plays. Seeing the theme is such, we may readily see how human the interest is. We shall as we live be called on to be witnesses at many a tragedy like Job's. Plenty of people topple from the hilltop of sunny success to the black valley of utter failure. This is far from an isolated experience. Not a day walks from sunrise to sunset that somewhere in the land some Job does not find himself a bankrupt.

Will Job play the man when all things are

against him? is the vital question in this drama. Or will he whimper and scowl and curse the world? Will he turn cynic when his sunlight is turned to darkness? Youth may look for failure. People who do things amass and lose. That is history. It is better to have gained and lost than not to have had the grit and manliness to have gained at all. From this standpoint the Book of Job is far from being remote from our modern experience. It is talking about us, as all great literature is. Great books are always as new as this morning, because the principal themes of life are evermore recurring. Life renews itself as the Spring.

Of the Book of Job we say it is sublime. It has the quality of Niagara and of the mountains and. the ocean and the sky. Can we utter higher praise? We will take the poem, read it, study its beautiful phrasings, as we would study a flower petal by petal, then muse on its totality of wonder and strength as we would muse on a landscape which passes from sea borders slowly, growing on its levels fields of corn and supplying room for home and farm and village, and lifting still until its slant comes to the sky in the spring of bold mountains where earth and sky meet. Such a landscape is the drama of Job. Some time test your brains by reading it. If you like it, you have come far in your appreciation of noblest poetry. -William A. Quayle.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave:
But no man dug that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e'er;

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the tramping,
Or saw the train go forth.
Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek Grows into the great sun;

Noiselessly as the spring-time

Her crown of verdure weaves,

And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves,-

So, without sound of music,
Or voice of them that wept,

Silently down from the mountain's crown The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-peor's height,
Out of his rocky eyrie,

Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking

Still shuns that hallowed spot:

For beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not.

But when the warrior dieth,
His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed, and muffled drum,

Follow the funeral car;

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed, While peals the minute gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honored place,
With costly marble drest,

In the great minster transept,

Where lights like glories fall,

And the choir sings, and the organ rings,

Along the emblazoned wall.

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