perish, before trial and judgment, especially imploring and crying to you for the same. We, however, take the Lord of heaven and earth, and his angels, together with our consciences, and all persons in all ages to whom our supplication may come, to witness, that we have here truly advertised your honours of our case and usage, and have in all humility offered our cause to Christian trial."* We make no comment on the soul-stirring facts here detailed. Dr. Southey applauds the character and government of Queen Elizabeth, as if her subjects, throughout her long reign, enjoyed an earthly paradise. Of her majesty he unhesitatingly affirms, without the formality of proof, that "never any sovereign reigned more to his own honour, or to the advantage of his subjects." The reader will naturally suppose, that when the Doctor composed "The Book of the Church," he was so enamoured with Elizabeth, and with the resolute proceedings of her bishops, that he lost all recollection of the multitudes of pious Christians who were crammed into filthy dungeons, without being charged with any offence, where they remained four or five years without trial or bail, and where, from the severity of their imprisonment, great numbers of them languished and died! This author further observes, that "persecution never can effect its object, unless it be carried to an extent at which humanity shudders and revolts." Does not humanity, then, both shudder and revolt at the barbarous persecution here recorded? The Doctor might not find it quite convenient, in composing his book, to record the foregoing melancholy occurrences; and we can easily comprehend that the detail of such facts would not suit a writer in defence of political religion. The learned Doctor had, however, a very high opinion of the means employed for upholding the ecclesiastical establishment; and he openly declares that the episcopal church, in those happy times, "carried on no war against the consciences of men." It is readily admitted, as the Doctor informs the reader, that he might exercise what he denominates conscience, while writing his book; yet he seems to have forgotten that other men had consciences, or that conscience was at all forced into a state of warfare, when men even sacrificed their lives for the sake of conscience! If, for an unyielding adherence to his religious principles, it had been Dr. Southey's misfortune to have been thrust into a dungeon in Newgate, and there detained for several years, without trial, and without any specific charge, we can have no doubt that he would have discovered war against conscience and judgmentagainst truth and equity-against humanity and the word of God. We pity the author who perverts his understanding, if not his conscience, by suffering himself to be warped and twisted into partial and incorrect and we feel no less pity for the readers, who receive for sober history the untrue dogmas of political and sectarian partizans. statements; * Lansdowne MSS. vol. cix. No. 12. B. B. + Ibid. vol. lxxiii. No. 27. Book of the Church, vol. ii. pp. 301, 304, 449. ESSAYS ON THE BOOK OF JOB.-NO. VII. BY THE REV. RALPH WARDLAW, D.D., GLASGOW. (Resumed from last Volume, page 666.) We have contemplated Job's first series of trials, and have endeavoured to draw from the afflictive scene some of the instructions it naturally suggests. Thus far, all is well. But the proof of the patriarch's integrity is not ended. In the beginning of the second chapter, we have a similar representation repeated to that in chap. i. 6-12. For the general principle on which we would interpret this passage-chap. ii. 1-6, we must refer the reader to the explanation of the former. (No. 5, Vol. xxiii. p. 591.) In the present passage, however, there is an addition to the former, corresponding to existing circumstances. Satan had before obtained permission to put Job to the test. He had done so; and his malicious insinuations and charges had been proved groundless. To this there is a reference in the words of Jehovah to Satan, and those of Satan in reply, verses 4—6. "And still he holdeth fast his integrity, though thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh and will he then bless thee to thy face?" (For the rendering of the last clause, see on chap. i. 11, Vol. xxiii. p. 598.) : The words of the Lord-"Thou movedst me against him to destroy him, without cause"-have evident reference to the failure of the former temptation. "Thy accusation has been proved false. My servant has stood the test. Thy malicious charge has been triumphantly refuted." The subtle and malignant adversary, however, does not give in-does not yield his point, and own himself in the wrong. He repeats the charge, and alleges plausible grounds for a further trial: "Skin for skin," &c. That the words "skin for skin" are proverbial, is universally admitted: but different senses have been affixed to the proverb. Parkhurst translates, "Skin after skin," and says: "The expression evidently alludes to the well-known fact of the renovation of the skin on any part of the body that has been excoriated, and is plainly proverbial, importing that a man may bear to part with all that he has, and to have his skin (as it were) stripped off again and again, provided only that his life be safe, all other losses may well be borne as external and superficial, and not coming home to the man's self." Mr. Good refers to Schultens, as supporting the same interpretation; but he justly objects to it on the ground, "that the person of Job had not hitherto been touched, and that the express reason offered by Satan why he still preserved his integrity depended upon this very fact, that his person had not been touched, but only his property and the persons of his children." According to Good himself, the import of the proverb depends on a double sense of the word skin, as the representative of property, and as the representative of person. It naturally stood for the former, because "the skins, or spoils, of beasts, in the rude and early ages of man, were the most valuable property he could acquire, and that for which he most frequently combated." And, according to him, although I cannot say that I think his references to chap. xviii. 13, and xix. 26, sufficiently conclusive on the point-skin stands also, in this book, for person, "the whole living body which it envelopes." "And it is upon this double meaning of the same term, and the play which is here given to it, by employing the term first in the one sense and then in the other, that the gist of this proverb, as a thousand others similarly constituted, depends." "Skin for skin," in this view of the phrase, is, in plain English, "property for person"—or, "the skin forming property for the skin forming person." I shall not discuss the point; but this explanation does, I confess, appear to me somewhat forced, having more in it of the ingenious than the natural. If my memory does not mislead me, the late Mr. Robinson, of Cambridge, considering skins as the representative of property, interpreted "skin after skin," or "skin upon skin," as meaning one part of property after another. "Skin upon skin, yea, every skin,—that is, all the property-that a man hath will he give for his life." Scott, in his poetical version, gives the sense, but under an image of quite a different description: "Who that escapes to shore, "Will, though his all be wreck'd, his loss deplore ?" Let the reader the skin mean To myself the expression appears a very simple one. only consider "skin" as the representative of property, ing the beast, on the principle of a part for the whole. We are accustomed to the use of the word head in this sense: we speak of a man having a hundred head of cattle. But there would be equal propriety in the phrase, a hundred skin of cattle, the hide being used for the animal.” "Skin for skin" will then become one of the most natural proverbial phrases we can imagine for barter, that is, the gaining of one thing for another as an equivalent; and, in the circumstances of the case, nothing could be more appropriate to Satan's purpose than this proverb. It contains, in fact, in this simple view of it, a repetition of the same charge with that in chap. i. 9: "Doth Job fear God for nought?” No: Job's service is still but "skin for skin;" it is still no better than selfish barter. “It is true," as if the devil had said, "thou hast taken away what was his; but himself thou hast left unscathed, his person is still safe and sound: and this is something vastly more precious to a man than his property." There may even, perhaps, be a designed insinuation, in the way of bitter sarcasm, of a selfish insensibility to the destruction of servants and children, while he himself is permitted to survive in health and vigour. "Try him then again," says Satan, "smite him more closely." verse 5. "But put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; and will he then to thy face bless thee? Thou gavest me permission, indeed, to try him; but my warrant was too limited. It extended not to his person. Now, 'all that a man hath will he give for his life.' Enlarge my powers, then give me more liberty. Consign his person to me. Put him to that proof." Satan obtains permission to renew his attack, to try the patriarch in his person, to any extent short of taking his life :-and he immediately avails himself of it :-verses 7, 8. "Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes." The disease with which the good man was thus smitten was, in all likelihood, much the same with those "boils" which formed one of the plagues of EgyptExod. ix. 10, 11. It is by many supposed to have been that which, in medical nomenclature, passes under the name of elephan.iasis; being so denominated, either from the great swelling produced by it in many parts of the body, or from the rough and scabrous appearance it gives to the skin: "A universal ulcer," says Michaelis, in his notes on Lowth, "an exceedingly foul, nauseous, and painful distemper. Those affected by it are said to have been weary of life, and to wish and hope for nothing so much as death. It made them impatient, passionate, discontented with every thing, wild and desperate." Any one who has experienced the burning pain and intolerable troublesomeness of even a single boil, may form some conception of what it must have been to be covered with fretting, purulent, inflammatory ulcers, from head to foot! The poor afflicted, tortured patient "sat down among the ashes," an indication, often alluded to in Scripture, of the cutest distress and most prostrate abasement-Isa. lviii. 5; Job xlii. 6; Mat. xi. 21; and he grasped at whatever sharp and rough material chanced to be within his reach, by the application of which he could impart a momentary sensation of relief, even although with the certain result of further irritating and inflaming the distemper. Thus the cup of the patriarch's earthly woe seems full. What additional bitterness could there be infused into it? Alas! that we should have to answer-a drop that, in one sense at least, was the bitterest of all. In the destruction of Job's family, ONE had been spared. That one was the wife of his bosom. This seems like mercy. Surely in her he will find a sharer and a soother of his sorrows; one who, in the tenderness of conjugal sympathy, will whisper in his ear the consolations of God, and apply the cooling and softening emollients to a frame, whose touch and whose breath were loathsome to all but a wife! This is what ought to have been. Mark now what was :—verse 9, "Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity— "'Twas then the frail companion of his care The poet, at the same time, it will be perceived, does not adopt the idea of cursing or renouncing, but supposes the spirit of the words to be that of contemptuous and sarcastic ridicule-sneering at his praises, as if, in his circumstances, they were those of cringing and mean-spirited sycophancy and hypocrisy. And the translation, "Bless God and die," or "Blessing God and dying," seems the true sense; there being a pointed and contumelious allusion in it to the language of Job, chap. i. 21. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" Notwithstanding the fearful part which Job's wife acted on this occasion, and notwithstanding her continuing in the same frame of spirit afterwards, taking part with Job's false friends rather than with himself, as she appears to have done from his own touching complaint-chap. xix. 17, “My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the children's sake of my own body;"-yet I cannot help suggesting an apprehension that she has in general been rather severely judged. We have been too much accustomed to think of Job alone as the sufferer, and of Job's wife in no other light than the single one of Job's tempter. It has become the saying of vulgar wit, that the devil took all his family from him but his wife, and if he had not expected a good turn at her hand, he would have taken her too. Thus the poor woman has been the subject only of bitter sneer, as a mere ingredient in her husband's sufferings; while the sentiment of pity has been reserved for him alone. But is this fair? Is it right that we should allow ourselves to forget that she was a fellow-sufferer? Was she a tempter only? Was she not also tempted? Think of the distracting circumstances of her situation. She had the feelings of a lady of the East, who stood high |