ELIHU REPROVES JOB
charge of Providence, all-wise and amiable. That He guides this world to ends we cannot understand; desirable ends, did we but know them, but incomprehensible; that this life, this whole Universe, is but the starting point for a developing series of immortal lives. And from this you conclude that the part a human being has to play in this scheme is the part of a trustful child, which need only not pester the Higher Powers, which need only do its few simple congenial duties, to be surely preserved and rewarded and carried on."
"There is much in simple faith," said Sir Eliphaz; "sneer though you may."
"But your view is a grimmer one, Dr. Barrack; you say that this Process is utterly beyond knowledge and control. We cannot alter it or appease it. It makes of some of us vessels of honour and of others vessels of dishonour. It has scrawled our race across the black emptiness of space, and it may wipe us out again. Such is the quality of Fate. We can but follow our lights and instincts. . . . In the end, in practical matters, your teaching marches with the teaching of Sir Eliphaz. You bow to the thing that is; he gladly and trustfully—with a certain old-world courtesy, you grimly—in the modern style. . . ."
For some moments Mr. Huss sat with compressed lips, as though he listened to the pain within him. Then he said: "I don't.
"I don't submit. I rebel—not in my own strength nor by my own impulse. I rebel by the spirit of God in me. I rebel not merely to make weak gestures of defiance against the black disorder and cruelties of
111
