the Babylonian legend was coupled up with a creation story, these numbers had to be introduced. We see that as the stories of creation retire further from their sources they become more and more confused and dim; and it is doubtful if those who incorporated them knew as much of the meaning of the symbolism as we do, as we have the advantage of having studied these symbolisms in all countries and throughout the changes of thousands of years..

CHAPTER VII

SEVENTH STORY-JOB'S MASCULINE CREATION

Job is perhaps the oldest book of the Hebrew scriptures; in fact, it probably belongs to Arabia, and was indigenous with the people when the Hebrews migrated into Palestine. Now, in Job we have a fragment of a Creation myth which has a very strong Arabian flavour. The Arab religion has always been intensely masculine, as was the Hebrew, descended from it, and gave rise to the Mohammedan cult with an intensely masculine God with no Queen of Heaven, not even an earthly Virgin Mary as companion; and Job is an intensely masculine book with only one tale of woman, who appears as Job's wife and gives him sinister advice in chapter ii., 9—“ Curse God and die," and personifies, therefore, the principle of evil as does Eve in Paradise. To Jews and Christians alike, woman is the "door of hell." But this intensely masculine book consists of a skeleton of the Sun God myth

on which is hung a philosophical poem, and the whole is a glorious mosaic of all the imagery and wisdom of the East.

The picture of Job and his friends sitting down discussing the "eternal verities "-the ever-present flux of good and evil, the overpowering majesty of "Tao," as the Chinese call it, the " way of the universe, "the music of the spheres," "the mills of the gods," and the beautiful familiarity of Job and the Almighty, "Ancient of Days," personally discussing creative power, and Al Shaddi's enthusiastic description of the horse of which he says-carried away in childish delight—" he saith among the trumpets, Ha! "Ha! and he smelleth the battle afar off and "the thunders of the Captains and the shouting." Verily, a god of battles.

Then the sons of god in their annual visit to their father, accompanied by the "Adversary," no doubt the black sheep of the family, a skalliwag son not at all welcome, whom the Almighty greets with the ungracious question, "Whence comest thou?" "What do you want here?"

Then the Ancient one in an incautious moment boasts of his servant Job, and the adversary thinks he can take down Al Shadai's

pride by corrupting Job. Then the immora! compact (the devil in Faust calls it a bet) about poor Job. Satan's cold cynicism" Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his life," summing up humanity like a Macchiavelli or a Büllow and the Ancient's interest in the experiment, "Behold he is in thine hand, but spare his life." There is a genial friendliness there, like some saga of the north. Then what a wealth of poetic human philosophy about birth, life, and death, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither " (the dead return to their great mother, Terra) till at the end exhausted he sighs, "Let me alone that "I may take comfort a little before I go "whence I shall not return, even to the land "of darkness and the shadow of death."

His poetic wandering amidst the humanised constellations "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion,' ""Canst thou find the sweet "influences of the Pleiades," sweet influences because the Pleiades is the home of Venus, such a wealth of talk, such as we all delight in. Then the marvellous glimpse of Newton's balanced system of forces, "He stretcheth out "the north over the empty place and hangeth "the earth upon nothing." "Then Iové

answered Iob out of the whirlwind" is the essence of the Arabic conception of Allah, and the whole poem is that of an astronomic Arab people with the words, "God is great graven on their hearts.

But at the end of the philosophical poem lové narrates to Iob in the form of challenging questions the whole history of creation in chapter 38.

"When I laid the foundations of the earth, who hath laid the measures thereof or stretched a line upon it "—" foundations fastened "laid the corner stone "thereof " [creation] "when the morning stars sang together " [a joyful creation, like Ruach's]. "Where is the way light dwelleth, and as for darkness where is the place "thereof," "commanded the morning and "caused the dayspring to know his place," Light and darkness,' "By what way the 'light is parted "[divided the light from the darkness in Genesis], "Who shut up the sea "with doors," "and brake it up for my de

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creed place," "made the cloud garment "thereof and the thick darkness," " "bars or doors" [to the waters], [to the waters], "hitherto "shalt thou come and no further," "here "shall thy proud waves be stayed," "who