Elihu seems to think that Job is an infidel, inasmuch as he hears him refuse to entertain orthodox theistical explanations of adequate rewards and punishments, together with theological responsibility; and further, that he denies any future life beyond the grave for mankind, any more than for the perishing brutes. Job considers that both good and evil, or pleasure and pain, are only sensational effects due to the peculiar condition of organised life in the womb of material processes; and he likens the dead to untimely, or assorted births. Elihu is indignant at this heresy; he combines with the other comforting friends to press Job to come to confession and receive the benefits of their absolution, together with priestly comforting and advice. But Job says, he is not punished for any theological evil at ali, he will confess nothing, and as for their spiritual comforting it is a miserable remedy, and their advice as unsavoury as saltless tasteless food.

Elihu remonstrates warmly, and protests vigorously, that Deity is just, and never preserves or prolongs the life of the wicked, but always awards to the poor their just rights, that he unceasingly supports the right cause, and sustains good monarchs on their thrones to uphold orthodox religion. He says the righteous men spend their days in prosperity and their life in pleasure, but disobedient (or heretical) princes shall fall by the sword. God, he maintains, is the God of the poor and oppressed, always attending to their cry; and to sum up his erudite speech, it is believed that divine providence has always helped the righteous man and punished the bad one, according to human views of justice; but then the preacher stumbles a little before arriving at the winning post, and ere he concludes his remarks, indulges in a peroration of his Deity's power, wisdom, majesty, and omnipotent strength; which is all very true, as far as it goes, in its own way, but the seventhly and lastly, is by no means in logical keeping with the rest of his discourse, and is indeed anything but that grand solution of the great Sphinx's riddle of the existence of pain and sorrow in the universe which he so dogmatically sought to force upon Job's acceptance, for

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Elihu's wind-up is this candid confession,-" Concerning the Almighty we cannot find him out!"

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Then why did this learned theologian, of the aristocratic family of the Rams, attempt to mislead his auditory by pretending to possess divine inspiration, and set himself up as an anointed apostle of theistic science? Either he has authority or he has not; if he has, why does he admit that he has sought for, and not been successful in finding Deity.

As he has confessedly been unable to find what he wanted, he must have assumed gratuitously what he preaches as divine inspiration.

If divine goodness ought to be, and actually is, the Being rewarding good men, and punishing the wrong-doers, here and hereafter, in the way that Prophet Elihu and the rest of his theistical professors contend that he must be, then there is no proof forthcoming that there is any deity at all; since all experience goes to show that human affairs are adjusted in some way that defies the ingenuity of any man to discover it, or to demonstrate that there is any absolute freedom of action reserved for mankind; but, on the contrary, that the laws of sociological science have yet to be discovered and obeyed by man, to apply those remedial measures for social disorders which are rashly and most unwarrantably ascribed to the operation of supernatural and theologically evil principles.

Job does not deny the existence of Deity, nor yet can he deny that immortality is the inheritance of the children of the eternal Father; but he does deny, unmistakably and emphatically, that man has that knowledge of his existence that he claims to be possessed of. The foundation for the theism of his comforting friends is that of the fundamental antithesis of good and evil, necessitating freedom of action for man to contract guilt, or deserve reward for good conduct. The problem of evil in the universe is their stumbling-block, they all boggle at it, for they persist in animating the universe with an intelligence that is nothing but their own standard

of perfection hoisted into heaven. In fact they idolize the human mind itself, and this is the foundation of all sacerdotalism.

Job argues that a man should do his duty because it is his duty, and he must not look for eternal reward or punishment; and as for evil, he asks "Shall I not take evil "(misfortune?) from the hand of God, as I have taken

good?" Thus he ignores the existence of theological evil, and controverts the notion that any solution of the problem of the existence of pain, sorrow, disaster, and death, in the universe, is capable of being given by mankind, so long as they persist in their misconceived ideas respecting their conditions of life, and what relation that condition has to Deity. So far as his theological friends can see from their own level of perspective in nature, they may be able to paint a tolerably good picture of sublunary affairs; in fact, Job does not much care to contradict them in their own philosophy. He says he knows all that they can tell him on conventional religious and social topics, and he cannot profit by their reiteration of the subject; what he stoutly contends for is the fact that they cannot see the limited character of their knowledge, and are blind to their own ignorance. They assume knowledge of the absolute, and having paraded infallible creeds, which all theologies of the absolute necessarily require, they are unable and unwilling to rectify the inadvertencies of crude thoughts, for they cannot confess their ignorance without admitting that their assumed knowledge of the absolute existence was a mistake. They take for granted what it is their business to prove, and their own prejudices blind them to the truth, so that they do not know their own real ignorance, and cannot perceive that corrected consciousness, by the inheritance of an elevated material condition of existence, would considerably alter their views of divine providence, and oblige them to confess that their first traditional concepts of Deity's relation to man were very far from being correct. And they would further be willing to admit that the result of their seeking to demonstrate the ex

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istence of a God upon the basis of the fundamental antithesis of theological good and evil, requiring freedom of action for man, with responsibility for future adjustment of mundane affairs, will infallibly lead to the conclusion that there is no such God at all, since it is not possible to demonstrate that there is any being whose acts are such as to shew that he carries on the work of providence in social life that is conventionally ascribed to him.

The doctrine of man's responsibility, on the ground of this absolute freedom of action, destroys the axiom of Deity's omnipotence. To deny this responsibility, does not necessarily loosen the reins of mutual obligation and social relations, by ignoring all distinction between right and wrong, for the fact is, men unceasingly try to shake off these obligations every day of their lives in over-reaching their fellows. The necessarian argues, that let as much freedom be conceded to mankind as any theological or other speculative dogma is capable of elaborating, it will be found in actual practice, that this assumed liberty is limited by an iron rule that cannot be stretched without a fearful recoil some time or other upon those who indulge in such self-willed and childish antics.

The denial of the dogma of theological evil cannot lead to confounding right and wrong; for the guidance of sound natural sense, if maintained in health by proper exercise, will be law enough for any one, and no man of sense can suppose that it constitutes service of truth to be emancipated from observance of those conditions that eternal rectitude has made essential for happy existence. It is not denial of morality that necessarians teach when they refuse to acknowledge God's judgment of man, as responsible to him for good and evil. Man's obligation is due to his fellow, and the necessarian would not think of loosening the bonds of mutual and interdependent obligations. The Bible does not say, that Deity requires man's blood for blood shed. It says, that man's blood will flow from the judgment that man has called upon himself by his own act of shedding blood. To

postulate a Deity affected by murder, or any other human crime, is to pourtray Him as a truly miserable and impotent being, since he cannot adequately protect himself from the crimes of his own creatures! Man's duty is to be done to his fellow, and all religion that pleads spiritualism for vain lipservice of Deity, and degrades social science by abandoning humanity to the dominant tyranny of empirical professors of piety is a farce. Man is bound to his fellow, and let him do his best in carrying out his theory of free will, he must in the end be mastered by that antagonism of self interest, in opposing free willers, that places unsurmountable barriers to any lengthy confusion of what is parenthesized as belonging exclusively to moral law.

It is argued, that since crime against man often goes unpunished and undetected, such escape from retributive justice calls for trial and sentence in another life; but what is here in the Bible to warrant any such supernatural adjustment of justice's scales? Punishment for sin is inherent in crime itself. If Deity be truly that one existence, that is the everlasting now of "I am," then his justice and his punishment are equally part of that eternal now, so that all effects of sin are necessarily inherent in the actions themselves. No one can conceive an idle thought without reaping the consequent effects of that psychical act, by the way in which it injures the molecular condition of his brain, this brain is evidently destined to mould the type of existence of which man is now but a foetal growth.

It has ever been a special part of all true prophets' teaching, to insist upon the the mens sana in corpore sano, as essential for sustaining the performance of active duties in the service of others, that is really the true worship of the universal Father. In ancient times the duties of physician and priest were associated, and the physician is after all the only true priest of the future. Now this physician-priest, to subdue the disordered vital action in others, must be in perfectly sound health himself, and the necessity for careful training of this curative mediator, explains Jesus' remark to