The modern representatives of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar would comfort
us with the assurance that all such depression has physical causes:
right or wrong, what does their comfort profit! Consolation in being
told that we are slaves! What noble nature would be content to be cured
of sadness by a dose of medicine? There is in the heart a conviction
that the soul ought to be supreme over the body and its laws; that there
must be a faith which conquers the body with all its tyrants; and that
no soul is right until it has that faith--until it is in closest, most
immediate understanding with its own unchangeable root, God himself.
Such faith may not at once remove the physical cause, if such there be,
but it will be more potent still; in the presence of both the cause and
the effect, its very atmosphere will be a peace tremulous with unborn
gladness. This gained, the medicine, the regimen, or the change of air
may be resorted to without sense of degradation, with cheerful hope and
some indifference. Such is perhaps the final victory of faith. Faith, in
such circumstances, must be of the purest, and may be of the strongest.
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