Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/74

 reminded, perhaps, of the lines of a poet painter inspired by Job—

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

And now we might almost think that the object of the theophany has been attained. Never more will Job presume to litigate with Shaddai, or measure the doings of God by his puny intellect. He has learned the lesson expressed in Dante's line—

State contenti, umana gente, al quia,

but also that higher lesson, so boldly expressed by the same poet, that in all God's works, without exception, three attributes are seen united—

Fecemi la divina potestate, La somma sapienza, e 'l primo amore.

He is silenced, indeed, but only as with the poet of Paradise—

All' alta fantasia qui mancò possa.

The silence with which both these 'vessels of election' meet the Divine revelation is the silence of satisfaction, even though this be mingled with awe. Job has learned to forget himself in the wondrous creation of which he forms a part, just as Dante when he saw

La forma universal di questo nodo.

Job cannot, indeed, as yet express his feelings; awe preponderates over satisfaction in the words assigned to him in xl. 4, 5. In fact, he has fallen below his better knowledge, and must be humbled for this. He has known that he is but a part of humanity—a representative of the larger whole, and might, but for his frailty, have comforted himself in that thought. God's power and wisdom and goodness are so wondrously blended in the great human organism that he