THE book of Job has been called by a profound thinker, "a masterpiece of Semitic genius," and scholars have found much pleasure in its dramatic and majestic presentation of the problem of human suffering and the attempts of philosophy and scholastic theology to account for it. Apart from the views of critics and scholars, the wayfaring man, when himself oppressed by the heavy burden of suffering, whether mental or physical, is greatly drawn to the book of Job, and ofttimes is tempted to echo the sad plaint of this just man who, according to the story, had to endure untold misery because Satan desired to afflict him. Strangely enough, many who read the book fall into the very mistake for which Job's three friends were so severely rebuked by divine wisdom, as we are told in its last chapter, and ask, as did Eliphaz, "Who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?" What is most needed, in the study of Job's experience, is the intuition and spiritual understanding which can pierce the veil of material sense and follow the patriarch through his darkest hours up to his complete emancipation, and learn therefrom that a righteous concept of God demands a true concept of man, for without both we shall continue to wrestle in the darkness of material belief and speculation.
According to the story, which is doubtless, in part at least, allegorical, Job was a good man, but he believed, as so many do today, that God "permits" evil for some mysterious and inscrutable purpose, and, as we are told, the patriarch experienced the result of his mistaken concept of God. He believed that both good and evil come from God, and that it is our duty to accept evil as well as good, a belief which can never lead to aught but discord. Mrs. Eddy says: "Christian Science . . . brings to light the only living and true God and man as made in His likeness; whereas the opposite belief — that man originates in matter and has beginning and end, that he is both soul and body, both good and evil, both spiritual and material — terminates in discord and mortality, in the error which must be destroyed by Truth" (Science and Health, p. 338).
Job's sufferings all came from the false concept which he had most likely inherited from his fathers, and which would deepen with each generation until its claim to validity was subjected to the test of divine Truth. Job's struggle to accept as a divine decree the loss of his possessions and the sudden death of all his children, was more than the human sense could endure, and so he became desperately ill. This too was held to be due to the divine consent to the "wiles of the devil," — the lying mortal mind which, as Jesus declared, "was a murderer from the beginning," and which makes sufferers believe that their afflictions come from God. The severest test came to Job in his bodily suffering, and then his wife's faith failed utterly when it was most needed, for she bade him "curse God, and die." He refused to do this, but he did curse the day he was born, a protest against the belief in mortal existence which may have been the beginning of his emancipation. Commenting on this outbreak, our revered Leader says, "I have learned that a curse on sin is always a blessing to the human race" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 278).
