Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/205

 It is on this that is founded the belief that it must, nay, that it ought, to go well with him. He is an end for God, and he is this as being a whole. And yet he, as constituting a whole, is himself something differentiated or distinct, since he has the power of willing and an external existence. The conscious subject now knows that God is the bond of this necessity, that He is this unity which brings about a state of well-being proportionate to the well-doing, and that this connection exists, for the divine universal will is at the same time the will which is determined in itself, and has consequently the power to bring about that connection.

The consciousness that these are thus joined together constitutes that faith, that confidence, which is a fundamental and praiseworthy trait of the Jewish people. The Old Testament Scriptures, the Psalms especially, are full of this confidence.

This, too, is the line of thought which is represented in the Book of Job, the only book the connection of which with the standpoint of the Jewish people is not sufficiently recognised. Job extols his innocence, finds his destiny unjust, he is discontented, i.e., there is in him a contradiction—the consciousness of the righteousness which is absolute, and the want of correspondence between his condition and this righteousness. It is recognised as being an end which God has that He makes things go well with the good man.

What the argument points to is that this discontent, this despondency, ought to be brought under the control of pure and absolute confidence. Job asks, “What doth God give me as a reward from on high? Should it not be the unrighteous man who is rejected thus?” His friends answer in the same sense, only they put it in the reverse way, “Because thou art unhappy, therefore we conclude that thou art not righteous.” God does this in order that He may protect man from the sin of pride.

God Himself at last speaks: “Who is this that talks