The Detroit times., 1916-09-19
Job and His Wife
BY Or. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. BY Frank Crane)


Curse God and die !" exclaimed Jobs
wife when calamity piled upon him.
Though He slay me- yet will | trust
Him., answered Job. And these two at
titudes still characterize the world.
The woman reasoned that because her
husband lost his flocks and houses, his
children died, and boils came on him,
therefore if there was a Providence it
was malicious one.
Something in Jobs nature made him
argue more deeply, clinging TO his faith
in the eternal goodness.
Today the issue is still fresh. When
the young wife dies at the very time
her husband and children need her most:
when the saint has a cancer and the
drunken loafer remains in sound health.
when the good and kind fall into poverty
and the wicked wax fat. there are those
who jeer and say, Where now is your
God. and what kind of moral universe
do you call this?
Not long ago there appeared in the
Mercure of Paris a most bitter arraign-
ment Of Divinity because the present
monstrous chaos of horror had been per-
mitted in Europe. 1t expressed the
query of many "If il is the law Of his
tory that righteousness prospers and
evil is punished. if the meek shall inherit
The earth, and bloody men stumble on 10
ruin. why this hideous war;"
But Jobs decision was the sounder.
Maeterlnck has clearly put il in modern
terms. in his Wisdom and Destiny" say
ing that the popular notion is superficial
-and mistakes entirely the grounds of eth
ical conviction.
For, he declares, our belief in morality
arises not from the apparent justice of
the universe, but from its apparent in
justice
If every good deed were straightway
visibly rewarded and every bad deed i'm
mediately punished We should not believe
in justice at all we should all be slaves,
.unreasoning children and time-servers.
We become moral only when we are
thrown back upon our instincts by the
seeming injustice of destiny.
Morality is not produced by any weigh
ing of profit and loss nor by rewards and
puniShments; morality is not policy.
II is not adopted by the shrewd and wise
because il pays; il is believed in by the
simple and heroic because il does not pay.
Morality is result of faith, not of in
tellect
The man who sees how a good deed
will profit him, and hence does it. is not
moral, he is cunning. 1t is the man who
does not see yet does his good deed from
inner compulsion, that is moral.
Prosperity was the reward of the Old
Testament, said Bacon; adversely of the
New
You cannot lure men to grandeur Of
soul by sugar plums To make men good
you must appeal to the soldier feeling in
them When Garibaldi offered his rag
ged recruits wounds and hardships and
death and asked who now would follow
him. the Italians cheered threw their
caps in the air. and volunteered in a
frenzy of patriotism. You cannot arouse
that kind of sentiment by promising gold
and luxury.
II is not the tears Of vile men but their
prosperity and laughter that makes Us
believe in the Day of Judgment.
The universe and its events do not
make man moral; man makes the uni
verse moral.
The throne Of God is in the breast Of
mankind
The rich and contented and smugly
satisfied do not bother much about Just
Judge; il is those who, when cast down
and bleeding, cry out, Though He slay
me, yet will trust Him." that attain un-
to moral sublimity.