MARCH
9, 1865:
Though the combatants
cannot know it, the Civil War enters its last month on this day. The
Confederate States of America is beginning its death throes as a nation.
And
so it is perhaps fitting that the Richmond
Post-Dispatch provides an editorial which draws heavily on the Book of Job
to present to its readership. It reads in part:
Without presuming to
intrude into the province of the clergy, we may conceive it possible that some
of them will, tomorrow, give us a text from the book of Job . . .
. . . Homo histrio, Deus vero pæta est; 'God is the sovereign poet'; and we cannot
refuse the part which he appoints us to bear in the scene . . .
It is a tradition of
the Jews that when Moses was sent by God into Egypt, and beheld the grievous
affliction of his people under Pharaoh, he took the pains to trans late the
book of Job into their language out of the Syriac, wherein it was first
written, to comfort them in their lamentable condition. "Be ye constant,
oh children of Israel," said Moses, "do not faint in your minds, but
suffer grief, and bear these evils patiently, as did that man whose name was
Job; who, though he was a righteous and faithful person, yet suffered the
sorest torment . . . Do not despair of a
better condition; you shall be delivered as Job was . . .
The condition of Job
in his prosperity was not unlike that of many large planters and farmers of the
South in better days. He was rich in land and cattle, and had large numbers of
slaves. The most unlimited plenty and hospitality reigned in his dwelling . .
. It was upon such a man as this —
devout, generous, genial, illustrious for virtue as for wealth — that the Devil
was permitted to turn loose fire, sword, hurricane, disease; to strip him of
children, servants, prosperity and health; to make him an object of scorn . .
. and to reduce him . . . low in the
regards of men . . . How many a Southern
patriarch, exiled from his home, and bereft of his possessions, can look back
with Job, and say: "Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when
God preserved me" . . . Yet, amidst
all his reverses and humiliations, Job did not deny the Providence of God; he
bore his disasters with resolution, with resignation, and even with hearty
thanksgiving.
If such a man could
be permitted thus to suffer, and could conclude that the best of men are but
vile in the sight of God, we of this generation can scarcely present any
superior claims to the indulgence of Heaven. The purest and noblest of our
people . . . have been reduced from alllorence to poverty, and are mourning
over better days . . .
. . . [H]eed the counsel of St. Basil:
"Remember all the past happiness thou hast enjoyed, and oppose better unto
worse. No man's life is entirely and thoroughly happy. If thou art grieved at
what is present, fetch thy comfort from what thou hast received before. Now
thou weepest, but formerly thou didst laugh; now thou art poor, but there was a
time when thou wanted nothing. Then thou drankest of the pure fountain of life;
be content and drink now more patiently of the troubled waters. Behold the
rivers, their streams are not clear in all places; and our life, thou knowest,
is like to one of them, which slides away continually, and is ofttimes full of
waves, which come rolling one upon another: one part of this river is passed
by, and another is running on its course. This part of it is gushing out from
the fountain, and the next is ready to follow as soon as it is gone.--And thus
we are all making great haste to the common sea; Death, I mean, which swallows
up all at last."
