Proverbs 4

Proverbs 4:1-27

WISDOM, THE THING Proverbs 4 THE words of this chapter involve the wise counsel of an experienced father speaking to his children, and especially to his son. They present at once the prominent principles of true education, making a distinction, however, between mere learning and real wisdom. It’s a chapter that the annual graduate should read. Yea, it is one that the under-graduate should patiently peruse. To this moment, the name of Solomon stands without a human peer in wisdom’s realm. The words of Solomon are still worth serious consideration.There are people who imagine that the minister has no specific interest in the educational process, and that the Bible is no longer a worthy text-book. All such are but poorly informed.The late Newell Dwight Hillis, in an address which he delivered before the Baptist Social Union of Chicago some years since, speaking to the subject of “Protestantism and Popular Education”, said, “Goethe confessed that the German Universities and the German language were due to a Gospel preacher’s work, namely,—that of Martin Luther. The intellectual impetus that has blessed Switzerland was ‘received first of all from John Calvin, a Gospel preacher. At Bunker Hill, Rufus Choate affirmed that Roger Williams gave America her free institutions; while, as we know, Jonathan Edwards and John Harvard and the great Dr. Williams were to the educational dawn of New England what Washington and Jefferson and Adams were to independence and republican tendencies.”In spite of the drift in the direction of infidelity, it still remains a fact that the church functions prominently in education; and the true minister is the patron of the same.

That’s why we speak to this subject. That’s why we are deeply interested in the suggestions of this chapter.But the chapter itself raises some questions of real merit, and the rightful answers to these questions is of first moment. Chief among them is this:WHAT IS WISDOM? The answer to this question involves eliminations as well as definitions, negatives as well as affirmations.Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom. There are a great many facts in the earth, the knowledge of which, do not render one wise, but foolish instead. There are many things to be known that are better never known. There are whole realms that the wise never explore, unless they do it from a missionary standpoint, for the simple reason that to know some things is temptation, sin, and folly of the foulest sort.There is an impression, with the young especially, that they must see every phase of life—its seamy side—as they call it, in order to be wise. There is an impression with even some older people that to gain information from every possible quarter is to strengthen oneself against ignorance which, in the judgment of many, is the mother of all crimes. But history disproves this opinion.

Ignorance has been the brooding mother of black crimes, it is true; but intelligence, of a certain sort, has its rifer temptations still; and the shrewdest men, the men who have nosed into every secret of life, are the men whose sins are mightiest, and who, from the standpoint of God, are among the fools.Artemas Ward is quoted as having said, “It is better not to know so much than to know so many things that ain’t so”; and if we may be permitted to paraphrase his thought, we would say, “It is better not to know so much than to know so many things concerning which Satan is the great professor, the school-master, to bring us to sin.” There is an education that only adds to one’s inefficiency, and results in one’s degradation—and that’s the education that combines learning with vicious living.Rev. Cyrus Townsend Brady once gave to the public an instance of the same, publishing it in the “Ladies Home Journal”.

He was a missionary in the great west on a train to make an appointment. A young divinity student came aboard. Brady said he was one of the ambitious kind of divinity students who wreck a parish or two when they begin, and finally drift upon the ecclesiastical bargain-counter. He was ready to argue about anything with anybody. A greasy, dilapidated-looking tramp came into the caboose at one of the stations at the end of a division, and presently engaged in a heated discussion with the young theologue on the disadvantages of education. He maintained the affirmative—that the less a man knew, and the less education he had, the happier he was—with much skill and adroitness, and routed the poor boy so effectively that he rose and went out on the platform to hide his chagrin, leaving the supposed tramp chuckling over his easy victory.

The bishop had listened without saying a word, and when the student left, he turned to the man and inquired sharply: “What college are you from, sir?” “Yale!” answered the man without thinking. The thoughtless admission revealed the fact that the man’s ability in argument was the product of knowledge; but his whole appearance proved that he was utterly without wisdom.Neither is learning always wisdom.

Learning is more akin to knowledge than it is to wisdom. In fact it is defined as “gaining knowledge by study, investigation, observation or inquiry; to acquire by receiving instruction”. But it does not follow that a man will be wise when he has finished the schools of learning, when he has taken the college course of four years or more, when he has gone abroad and sat under noted professors for special instruction in certain branches. Learning is one thing and wisdom is another.To illustrate, Russell Conwell, in connection with the founding of Chicago University, delivered an address, in the course of which he told the story of a friend of his who graduated from school with the first honors, delivering the valedictory in Latin with all the polish and scholarship imaginable, and Conwell says, “I said to myself, ‘If he will only make me Secretary of the Treasury, or something like that, when he gets to be President, that is all I will ask”.But years passed by, and in an interior town in New England, while I was lecturing, a man came up to me and said, ‘Do you remember me?’ At first I did not recognize him, and then visions of the White House appeared, and I said to him, as the volume of mighty enterprises in every land and visions of government passed away, ‘Where are you now?’ He answered me, ‘Over in that barrel factory, at the cooper’s trade.’” “Now,” said Conwell, “no man can reverence the cooper’s trade more than I do, but why was this man at the cooper’s trade”—because learning was one thing and wisdom another!“The worst fool in the world is the educated fool”, the man who comes out of the college filled with book learning, but having no practical knowledge of the earth upon which he lives, or the society through which he moves.Selden, a scholar, surely of first attainments, affirmed, “No man is wiser for his learning”, and you know there is a Saxon proverb, “No fool is a perfect fool until he learns Latin”. I used to think I was a perfect fool, when trying to learn it!Wisdom is useful information. At least so Solomon must have considered it, when he said, ‘Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. * * Exalt her and she shall promote thee” (Proverbs 4:7-8).Wendell Phillips, in that wonderful address, delivered at Harvard, “The Scholar in the Republic”, quotes Gibbon as saying, “We have two educations, one from teachers, and one we give ourselves”, and remarks, “This last is the real and only education of the masses—one gotten from life, from affairs, from earning one’s bread; necessity, the mother of invention; responsibility, that teaches productions and inspires respect for right.” “In this sense,” he continues, “the Fremont Campaign of 1856 taught Americans more than a hundred colleges, and John Brown’s pulpit at Harper’s Ferry was equal to ten thousand ordinary Professor chairs”, especially if those chairs were such as the President-chair of Columbia, used in defense of the legalized liquor traffic; or any of those institutions where skepticism permeates and poisons the whole atmosphere through which our children move.

The parents of this time do well to remember that such mighty men as Phillips, and Wayland, and Mark Hopkins, and Timothy Dwight, were bred in better days, and in better institutions, though not so big! institutions that made wisdom the principal thing, and that defined wisdom as meaning first of all to know God, and the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, His Son.This is what James meant when he said, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).No wonder Solomon said, “Get wisdom * * forget it not * * Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee; love her, and she shall keep thee” (Proverbs 4:5-6). And again,“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. “For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. “She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou const desire are not to be compared unto her. “Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. “She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her” (Proverbs 3:13-18). FOR WHOM IS THIS WISDOM ? This fourth chapter of Proverbs begins, “Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father” and the words are God’s to an unwise world. If learning has been a partial mother and wisdom the lot of a few, it is not the great Father’s fault. He purposed it for all. He proffers it to all. Would that American Christianity might sit at the Master’s feet in this matter and learn of Him! We have among us a philosophy that “all men are born free and equal”, which we work into eloquent Fourth of July orations; but when September comes and our schools open, this philosophy is largely forgotten and the practice of the ancients is prevalent.Wisdom knows no station!

Rome educated only her ruling classes. Greece had her schools, and so excellent were they that our modern systems have not shone her educated sons into oblivion; but they were schools for the elect only.

The old world has never been quite willing to give the poor an equal chance at education. America has pioneered in that matter.Matthew Arnold, when he was in this country, was charmed to find in a Boston Library a ragged newsboy who was reading “The Life of George Washington”. And Arnold said, “Nothing I have seen in your country so impressed me as the presence of that ragged urchin in that library; the evident freedom he felt and the high degree of intelligence he evinced. I do not believe that there is a reading-room in all England where that boy, dressed as he was, would have been welcome. It is, I tell you, a sight that impresses a European not accustomed to your democratic ways.” Aye, and it is also a sight that somewhat surprises the American, for it is not as common as the casual visitor would imagine. Our great civic centers have their thousands of children who cannot enter the public schools for want of clothing, books and other supplies, and, in many instances, for want of school room.Joseph Cook said that if we are ever to elevate society, we must lay hold upon what the Southerners call “the mud sill”, and when that goes up, every tier above it will rise.

The problem of popular education will never be solved, in keeping with God’s mind, until the poorest born may find it possible—mark you I say “possible”—to graduate from public school, academy, college and university.Again, wisdom knows no sex.Education is a very natural mother, in that she has been slow to see that the girl is the brother’s equal. Sixty years ago, the individual who dared to affirm an equality of the sexes was reckoned a rebel against good customs.

The spirit of the small boy, of whom Miss Esmen used to tell, has long characterized masculinity, and is not quite dead to-day. According to Miss Esmen, a neighbor lady was calling upon the mother of four sons, and in the course of their conversation, the visitor remarked to the mother, “What a pity one of your children had not been a girl.” Instantly the junior dropped his toys, and with his keen black eyes flashing the fire of anger, said, “I’d like to know who’d ‘a bin ‘er. George wouldn’t ‘a bin ‘er; Jack wouldn’t a’ bin ‘er; Tom wouldn’t a’ bin ‘er; and I wouldn’t ‘a bin ‘er.” I am sure he went to Congress, or at least was a delegate to the quadrennial conference of the Methodist church, and his constituency is to-day a majority of the masculine gender.We long ago celebrated the 400th anniversary of our continent’s discovery, but only recently the centenniel of our first female seminary commencement. In 1894 the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia enjoyed that honor. Some time after, 1821, Mount Holyoke Seminary of South Haddley, Mass. was founded.You will remember that incident in Hawthorne’s “Marble Fawn”, where the sculptor, Kenyon, in search of Hilda, walked out of Rome by way of the San Sabastino gate. Half an hour brought him to that spot where an excavation showed evidence of a buried building.

At the mouth of this excavation Kenyon sat down to rest. He suddenly noticed that he was upon what seemed to be a shapeless fragment of stone largely concealed by the crumbled earth. “But his practiced eye was soon aware of something artistic in this rude object, and presently he had dug out a headless figure of marble.

Both arms were also broken at the elbow. By digging further he found the arms and put them in their place, and on further search, the head. Clearing from it the clinging soil, he set it upon the slender neck.” Hawthorne says, “The effect was magical. It immediately lighted up and vivified the whole figure, endowing it with personality, soul and intelligence”, and lo! the Venus of the Tribune was before him, and her divinity was evident.The divinity of woman has appeared to the eyes of man as a very discovery indeed, as a matchless immortality, since her rights to education have been regarded, and her higher mental and spiritual powers have come to their divinely appointed place.So to the rich and poor, to male and female, Solomon speaks for God, saying, “Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:7).WHAT ARE WISDOM’S RESULTS? Solomon says what most accept as true, that the first result is promotion.“Exalt her, and she shall promote thee” (Proverbs 4:8). Promotion, the lifting of a man in the scale of life to a higher level—that is what promotion means; that is what wisdom accomplishes.Henry Wilson is an illustration. That noble vice-president was born in poverty and says himself, “Want sat by my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread and cry because she had none to give.” But Wilson determined, by the help of God, to be wise. He believed, with Solomon, that “wisdom was the principal thing”, and stored his mind with useful information, and wisdom proved herself faithful to him by his promotion.President Alderman of Tulare University in an address made some years since, said, “An educated man is one who has first of all, ability to behave himself properly; second, ability to use language with force and precision; third, open-mindedness to ideas; fourth, to get what he wants out of books; fifth, ability to observe closely, imagine vividly and reason accurately; sixth, ability to do some sort of work well and cheerfully.” A man thus educated has more than learning; he has wisdom; and the results of it will be evidenced in all he undertakes.William E. Gladstone was easily England’s first citizen while he lived.

He was a man of good birth, tireless energy, open-mindedness, moral courage and Christian faith. Running through all of this, like the scarlet thread in the cordage of the English navy, was the persistent accumulation of workable information, until he came to be a veritable encyclopedia.We re-call that some years ago the “Ladies Home Journal” told of a reception held in the great English hall, where Mr. and Mrs Gladstone were honored guests.

A company of ladies were discussing together a troublesome question, and finally one said, “Well, there is One above who knows all things; and sometime He can make it plain to us”. “Yes, yes!” replied Mrs. Gladstone, “William is in the gallery. He will be down in a minute and I am sure he can tell us all about it,” and the dear, good woman, in her honest mistake, almost expressed a veritable truth, namely—that her husband knew everything.“Wisdom is the principal thing. Exalt her and she shall promote thee”. The promotion here referred to, however, is not necessarily financial or even official. There are honors that far exceed office or opulence—the honors of great living, great thinking, great doing.Ambassador Bryce, speaking before the Chicago University some years ago, said, “The ardor with which the study of physical sciences is now being pursued for practical purposes must not make us forget that education has to do a great deal more than turn out a man to succeed in business.” It must be admitted that big business is just now in the ascendant, but big business fails to be righteous when it ignores the finest sentiments of humanity—unselfishness and true serviceableness.

Earth’s monuments are not promotion. Wisdom brings to honor those who embrace her.In fact, true honor is a direct product of wisdom.

It is reported that when the students at Andover waited for their breakfast at the boarding house, and his associates stood chaffing each other, Joseph Cook would turn invariably to the big dictionary in the corner of the room, and learn the synonyms of a word, or search out its derivation. And Joseph Cook, the man of ready speech, remarkable diction, and splendid culture, was the consequence.“She shall bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her” (Proverbs 4:8). “What shall I do to be forever known? Thy duty ever. This did many who yet sleep all unknown. Oh, never, never. Thinkest thou, perchance, that they remain unknown, whom thou knowest not. By angel trumpets in Heaven their praise is blown. Divine their lot.” And, as a final result, a crown of glory.“She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee” (Proverbs 4:9). Nelson, commenting on Titus 2:6, said, “Without education the powers of the mind are not free. If we are not free we are still the slaves of ignorance and prejudice, and cannot use the powers that God has given us. An angel may slumber in a block of marble, but it takes the chisel of the sculptor to bring it into view. Education is the chisel that releases the angel imprisoned in every human creature. But whether the angel when once released shall be a good or bad angel, an angel of light or an angel of darkness, will depend much on the kind of education. An Angelo could produce from the same block of marble a satyr or a seraph. It all depends upon the direction he gives the chisel. Education to be beneficial must be a true education; that is, it must include the moral element.

False education awakens the powers without giving them direction. Then, when the life, misguided, takes the wrong direction it goes to the devil with the speed of the steam-engine, rather than, as in ignorance it might, at the pace of the stage-coach. Education alone does not insure moral safety. You will find accomplished scholars in State prison, and our defaulters were many of them men who spent their leisure in their elegant libraries. Many of the most brilliant and highly educated professional men it has been my fortune to meet perished ignominiously as drunkards. Education, then, must have the moral element, and it is an utter absurdity—the very folly of culture—to say that we can have the moral element in infirm natures without the grace of God.” The man who does not come into that crown of glory at the end, has lived all in vain.

Worldly attainments or possessions are poor returns for the struggle of existence.There is an old story, with which you are familiar, which brings us face to face with this thought. It is of Philip de Neri, a saint of the sixteenth century.

A young Italian student, looking to the law as a profession, told the saint what his purpose in life was. “Well”, answered the saint, “when you get through your course of study, what then?” “Then I shall take my doctor’s degree.” “And then?” “Well, then I shall have a number of difficult questions to manage and shall catch people’s notice by my eloquence, my learning, and my acuteness, and gain great reputation.” “And then?” “Why, then I shall be promoted to some high office, and shall make much money.” “And then?” “Then, then I shall die.” Here Philip raised his voice and asked, “And what then?” Whereupon the young man was unable to answer and departed with down cast eyes.Young men and women; believe in education! For its place in this land, praise God and the fathers who were faithful to Him. Believe in learning of the largest sort, and hold it ever as your personal regret that you might not have sat at the feet of still others of the great teachers of your time. But count all attainments of the intellect that look little or nothing beyond personal pleasure and temporary success, as little better than trash, and plead for that wisdom which gives promise of the good things of time, and the glory of eternity when your souls shall be glorified, your estate shall be that of the glorified, and your eternal habitation that city, of which it is written, “The glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23); “for wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence, but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it!”

Proverbs 4:14-15

A TIMELY WARNING Proverbs 4:14-15I COME to the young, and especially to the young men in this audience with the soundest possible advice. I bring to you the counsel of one whose advanced age and experience, whose superior wisdom and unquestioned inspiration leave no doubt as to the correctness of his counsel. The words of our text are the words of Solomon, at the very mention of whose name we give respectful attention, knowing that the king’s words are unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh”.In the chapter before us, Solomon addresses his auditors in the character of children and reviews for them the instruction which he received as a child. He simply relates what his father David taught him while yet a noisy boy. In doing so, he shows his reverence for the wisdom of gray hairs, and especially for that of his own father. It is at once a noble and a profitable thing for a son to treasure in his heart those jewels of instruction received at different times from a father’s lips. When this is not done, there is something radically wrong. Either the father or the son is unworthy the sacred relationship.

May I never see the day in which I shall forget some precious lessons learned from my father’s lips and from his life!But there is another thing that should be said in connection with the fact that our text contains the counsel given Solomon in his early life. That circumstance should clearly indicate that in the years which have passed since, Solomon has put to actual test all these maxims and has discovered no unsoundness in them.

The merest acquaintance with the man Solomon induces the conviction that he not only received the best maxims, but that in youth at least, he followed them to his splendid profit.It may be true that those who have made failures in life are prepared by their own experience to point out some dangers; they may warn against the breakers whereon they made shipwreck. But if one is to make a success in life, if he is to escape its dangers, it is not enough that he be simply warned; he needs sound counsel as well. It is not enough that he learn where some one else was wrecked; he needs to know where the currents and the channels are that he may sail to safe harbor. If I want to live a sober life, I don’t want a reformed drunkard to tell me how to do it. If I want to lead a religious life, I don’t wish the counsel of one who has spent a lifetime in sin and was saved therefrom but yesterday. In other words, I do not want to be told how not to do it, but rather how to do it.

If I am going to merchandise, I want him who has made his millions at it to be my tutor. If I am going to plead law, I want the instruction of one who is a recognized lord of lawyers.

If I am going to preach, I want the prince of preachers to teach me.Young men, if you are ambitious to make the most of life, there will come times when you will doubt your own wisdom and feel the need of advice. Seek it always of those men who have themselves made something of life. Second only to that direction which Heaven will give, if you ask it, will be that received from the lips and hearts of noble men. The words of my text mean all the more to me because Solomon uttered them. “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away”.THE CHOICE OF A WRONG COURSE IN LIFE We appreciate the wisdom of this warning when once we begin to think about how much depends upon the choice of a right course in life. The words of Ruskin “There is not an hour of youth but is trembling with destinies,” are eminently true because for most men the years of their youth cast the horoscope of their future. The plans formed then, or, as is more often the case, the failure to decide upon any definite life plan, decides their course in life. The paths entered then, whether deliberately chosen or simply drifted into, will determine in most cases the trend of life’s journey. We do not believe that a very great number of young men sit down to a cool choice of a wicked course and rise up to follow such a course knowing where it will end. We apprehend that there is more mischief resulting from an utter failure to decide upon any plan whatsoever, to make choice of a definite course at all, than from almost any other source.We fear that the number of noble souls that raise for self, and wrestle with the question, “How can I make the most of life?” is not so large as Heaven intended it should be.

It is so much easier to sit down and hope, Micawber-like, that the good, will of itself, turn up. Such an action requires so much less thought, so much less conviction, so much less resolution, so much less courage, that we are all tempted to drift, rather than stem the current.But before we yield to that temptation, we had best stir ourselves to the question, Whither are these currents tending? and learn in answer, that they terminate in the gulf of temporal and eternal ruin.While I was in Louisville as a student, the police of the city made a raid one night upon some of the grog shops, gambling dens, bawdy houses, and arresting a score of men, marched them to the station house and locked them up till morning.

When the day dawned, they were brought into court, fined considerable sums and dismissed with tarnished names. If you could have visited that court and learned the history of those men, I am persuaded that you would have found that a majority of them at least had simply drifted to evil rather than having taken this path from preference.But, be that as it may, the ruinous results are the same. The man who does the one is just as inexcusable as he who does the other. The words of our text cover the whole ground for it. “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men”; that is, by no means at all be found in the path which leads to hell.But our text contains another warning which every young man stands greatly in need of. That warning is againstTHE CHOICE OF EVIL COMPANY “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men”. If you enter into the path of the wicked, if you go into the way of evil men, you will of necessity have the company of those that tread such a pathway. My text makes it imperative that I should speak to you who have already made or are now making your choice of companions. The words of Goethe ought to contain a lesson for every young man. “Tell me with whom thou dost company, and I will tell thee who thou art.” And that grand statement of inspiration will bear repeating, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed” Oh, the power for evil that there is in godless association.When we hear young fellows talking about how they spent last night, and above all with whom they spent it, it is little wonder that their hearts are inflamed to evil, that their feet are swift to destruction.They seek places and company, the very character of which whispers of hell. If it were possible for an angel from Heaven to become corrupt and literally wallow in vice, he certainly would do so, if he visited the places, and met the people, that many of the young men of this city visit and meet.There is little need we dwell on this point. No man knows ruinous effects of godless companionship better than he who is under its spell. Some may be asking the question already, “How shall we escape the path of the wicked, and the way of the evil?” And that after all is the important question.Here again we have Solomon’s reply.

He says you can escape it by ‘avoiding it, passing not by it, turning from it, and passing away.’Oh, what wisdom in that direction. The reason that children are so often burned is that they will play with the fire; and the reason that young men are so often found in the path of iniquity is simply because they did not keep at a safe distance from its open gateway.

That young man who, instead of avoiding, absolutely turning away from the alluring scenes of evil, draws near, and looks in, until his carnal appetite is inflamed, stands at the very threshold of his ruin.The old Stoic philosophers taught the youth of their time that there was a peculiar virtue in looking upon sin and remaining unmoved by it, but Solomon, whose wisdom was as superior to theirs as the heavens are high above the earth, gave out this safer lesson: “Pass not by it”. Keep always a safe distance between you and its sight. Years ago I read an excellent little book, entitled, “Advice to Young Men”, and in teaching along this line, the author enforced the truth by this story. It was that of “an eagle in the far west, which, soaring with steady wing and looking with eagle eyes, saw far below him the grand scenes of American nature, clothed with the first snow of early winter. As he rose higher and higher toward the blue heaven, his eye rested upon the distant river, whose shore was now fretted with ice. Upon its bosom he saw floating the carcass of a huge buffalo.

He paused in his upward flight, he gazed hungrily upon the floating animal, he descended to settle and revel upon this feast of corruption. While he feasted he was calmly and smoothly floating down the river.

Gorged with his foul meal, his energies became dormant, his wings drooped and ere he was aware, his feathers touched the oozing putrefaction and he slept upon the foetid mass.“The corruption stiffened around his feet, and the points of his wings, and feathers upon the breast, were being attached, while slowly but surely he was borne on until the roar of the cataract thundered on his ear. He roused himself, he looked wildly about, he struggled hard for liberty, but in vain. His powers had been enfeebled by his gluttony, his feet and wings were fast bound. He screamed until his wild cries resounded through the valley. He looked up toward the beautiful blue heaven that he had abandoned, and longed to throw off his horrid companion and rise to soar in its pure air again. But it was too late.

Swiftly now he was nearing the rapids, where he was hurried over, sucked into the foaming cataract, and dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath.”Such an illustration finds its analogy in the human life. How often we see young men, who in the morning of life, soar in the air of pure morals to heights that are most honorable, but who at the sight of some floating mass of moral corruption, have descended to feast to their ruin.

Truly did Shakespeare speak when he said, “How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done.” Young men, if you would escape the way of the wicked, take Solomon’s advice and avoid putting yourself in the way of temptation to sin. Probably there will never come a time when men will not defend their right to take a social drink, or to engage in the social game of cards. Be that as it may, our text leads us to say that if you would certainly escape drunkenness and gambling, you had best turn squarely away from these first beginnings. But you say, are these the first beginnings of drunkenness and gambling? If they are not, then what are the first ways? No man gambles at the first.

No man is a drunkard at the beginning. All will admit that; but some man will say, are there not those who never carry these things to that excess?

To be sure there are! But there is a large number who do come to excess, and float on until they awake over the cataract of their ruin. What right has any young man to think that he will surely be one of the favored number, who will stop this side that cataract?Dr. Basil Marely of Louisville, preached a sermon on temperance, in which he said substantially this. “Whether prohibition is the thing for this country, I do not propose to say. Just what we should do to reclaim those of our fellows who have fallen victims to the accursed drink habit, I do not know. But this I do know, that every young man is safe, who makes total abstinence the law of his life.” In the day that you violate that, I recall my insurance.

Your safety becomes then a question, which nothing but the end of life will certainly determine. At any moment, that which you took at first that it might gently warm you with its glow, may unite its strength with some of the undreamed combustibles of a latent appetite, and break into a blaze that will burn and consume.

Truly has it been said that “the social glass may grow into an appetite which it is a crime to gratify, an impossibility to satisfy, and an agony to deny.”Just as the eagle swoops down to take a weasel into his talons, with a view to a dainty meal, soon to find sharp teeth sunk into its breast and its life blood being sucked out, so many a habit which a man is sure that he can control, ere he is aware of it, has sucked the last drop of vitality from his soul.But why insist upon the dangers of drunkenness and gambling? Are those who fall into these, sinners above the rest? By no means! There are a score of habits against which we would like to sound an equal warning. But there is no need that we name them. You know them, and some of them must be nameless if my lips are clean. But these to which I have referred illustrate the principle, and will serve to apply the precept of Solomon, and what he says to one of us, he says to all: “avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away”.The inspired counselor givesHIS REASONS FOR THAT WARNING “Because they sleep not except they have done some mischief, and their sleep is taken away unless they can cause some to fall”. What a graphic picture is this of those whose feet take hold on hell. Pass along the streets of this city tonight and you will see these words verified. You may admire some of these emissaries of the devil. They may have attractions for you, that of a sweet face, keen wit, or agreeable and affable manners. All the better reason why you should fear them, for their strength to evil is simply increased thereby.It is a well known fact of natural history, that some of the most venomous serpents, wear brightest colors. You yourselves, if you would give the deadly poison, are apt to encase it in an appetizing morsel. So Satan does with the venom of sin.

He has lodged it in the heart of some very agreeable men, some very fascinating women. But Solomon has against them the charge, “they sleep not except they have done some mischief, and their sleep is taken away unless they can cause some to fall”. And the law of self-protection, even if we care nothing for holiness, demands that we part company with them forever.A writer in speaking of the “Snares of the Devil”, says, “One of the wonders of nature is called the Opelet, about as large as the German aster, with many long petals of light color, glossy as satin, each tipped with a rose color. The lovely petals move about in the water, while the Opelet clings to a rock. How innocent and lovely it looks on its rocky bed! Who would suspect that it would eat anything grosser than dew or sunlight?

But those beautiful waving arms have to provide for a large open mouth, hidden down deep among them. The instant a foolish little fish touches one of the rosy tips, he is struck with a poison as fatal to him as lightning.

He immediately becomes numb and in a moment stops struggling, and then the other arms enfold him.I need not apply this illustration. You cannot mistake its meaning. As you value your life, young men, “Enter not, avoid; pass not by; turn from, and pass away”.