of the Book of Job cannot rest con-
tent with that noble poem in the form
which it now possesses; the imagina-
tive impulse which even the casual
reading of the poem liberates in him
sends him behind the finished product
to the life of which it was the immor-
tal fruit; he enters into the groping
thought of an age which has perished
out of all other remembrance; he
deals with a problem which is as old
as man from the standpoint of men
who have left no other record of
themselves. In proportion to the
depth of his feeling and the vitality of
his imagination he must saturate him-
self with the rich life of thought, con-
viction, and emotion, of struggle and
aspiration, out of which the greatest
of the poems of nature took its rise.
He must, in a word, receive into him-
self the living material upon which

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v?