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  THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
  by Robert Forman Horton
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Robert Forman Horton's exploration of justification and law in Christian
doctrine and practice.

  Chapters: 16

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Proverbs
    1. Chapter III: 1-10               [30]37
    2. Chapter V: 3-20               [54]27
    3. Chapter VII: 1-5                [80]93
    4. Chapter IX: 1-3                [102]123-[103]4
    5. Chapter XI: 1                  [134]215
    6. Chapter XIII: 1                  [214]125, [215]179, [216]181
    7. Chapter XV: 1                  [288]172, [289]203
    8. Chapter XVII: 1                  [371]143
    9. Chapter XIX: 1                  [434]142, [435]165
   10. Chapter XXI: 1                  [504]4, [505]328
   11. Chapter XXIII: 1-3                [573]333
   12. Chapter XXV: xxv.-xxix.         [629]5
   13. Chapter XXVII: 1                  [666]350
   14. Chapter XXIX: 1                  [727]88
   15. Chapter XXXI: xxxi. generally    [766]6, [767]397

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  CHAPTER 0: THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
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  CHAPTER 1: CHAPTER III: 1-10               [30]37
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so sensitive, so tender, and at the same time so surpassingly important, that
the lid has to shield it by a quick instinctive movement outrunning thought, and
the hand has to be ready at all times to come to its succour. The commandments
are to be written on the fingers, like engraved rings, which would serve as
instant reminders in unwary moments; the very instruments through which the evil
would be done are to be claimed and sealed and inscribed by the righteousness
which can preserve from evil, while in the secret tablets of the heart the holy
truths are to be written; so that if, in the business of life, the writing on
the fingers may get blurred or effaced, the principles of righteousness may yet
be kept like priceless archives stored in the inviolable chambers of the inner
man. Wisdom is to be treated as a sister, [111] not as if there were a natural
kinship, but on the ground of the beautiful influence which a true sister, a
pure woman soul, exercises over a young man's life. It is given to a sister
again and again, by unfailing sympathy and by sweet comprehending ways, not
teasing nor lecturing, but always believing and hoping and loving, to weave a
magical spell of goodness and truth around a brother who is exposed to dangerous
temptations; she will "maintain for him a saving intercourse with his true
self;" when the fires of more ardent affections are burning low, or extinguished
in doubt or disgust, she will be with him like a calm impersonal presence,
unobtrusive, unforgotten, the more potent because she makes no show of power.
Such a lovely fraternal relation is to be maintained with Wisdom, constant as a
tie of blood, firm as a companionship from earliest infancy, yet exalted and
enthusiastic in its way, and promising a lifelong attraction and authority.

This blessed kinship with Understanding should save the young man from such a
fate as we are now to contemplate.

It is twilight, not yet absolutely dark, but the shuddering horror of the scene
seems to quench the doubtful glimmer of evening and to plunge the observer
suddenly into midnight. [112] There is a young man coming round the corner of
the street. His is no manly walk, but an idle, effeminate saunter--a detail
which is not brought out in the English Version. [113] He is a dandy and sadly
empty-headed. Now all young men, good and bad alike, pass through a period of
dandyism, and it has its uses; but the better the stuff of which the man is
made, the more quickly he gets over the crisis, and returns to his senses. This
young man is "void of understanding;" his dandyism will be chronic. His is a
feeble will and a prurient mind; but his special weakness consists in this, that
he thinks he can always resist temptation, and therefore never hesitates to
thrust himself in its way. It is as if one were to pride himself on being able
to hang on with his fingers to the rim of a well: he is always hanging there,
and a touch will send him in. One who is in his own opinion weaker would give
the dangerous place a wide berth, and nothing but sheer force would bring him to
the edge.

This young dandy has nothing to say for himself. A tempter need not be at the
trouble to bring any sound arguments, or to make the worse appear the better
reason; to this poor weakling the worse the reason is the better it will appear.
As you see him lolling down the path with his leering look and his infinite
self-satisfaction--good-natured, but without any other goodness; not with bad
intentions, but with everything else bad--you can foresee that he will be blown
over as easily as a pleasure skiff on a stormy ocean; if you have a
compassionate heart you mourn over him at once, for you see the inevitable.

The woman has come out to meet him--like a bird-catcher who has been watching
for the unwary bird. Now he should escape at once, for her very attire warns him
of her intentions. But this is just his weakness; he delights to place himself
in such a position; he would say that it is the proof of his manliness that he
can resist. She approaches him with a smirk and a smile, with an open
countenance but a closed heart. She utters a sound, moving and pathetic like the
murmur of harp-strings; [114] it comes from that inward tumult of passion in the
woman's nature which always flutters the heart of a weak youth. [115] She is a
wild undisciplined creature; she always hankers after the forbidden; the quiet
home ways are insufferable to her; out in the streets, with their excitement,
their variety, their suggestions, their possibilities, she forgets, if she does
not quiet, her restlessness. The poor woman-nature which, rightly taught and
trained, might make the beauty and sweetness of a home, capable of sanctified
affections and of self-sacrificing devotion, is here entirely perverted. The
passion is poisoned and now poisonous. The energy is diseased. The charms are
all spurious. She goes abroad in the blackness of night because in even a faint
light her hideousness would appear; under the paint and the finery she is a hag;
her eyes are lustreless but for the temporary fire of her corruptions; behind
that voice which croons and ripples there is a subdued moan of despair--the
jarring of harp-strings which snap and quiver and shudder and are silent for
ever. The wise man looks at her with compassionate loathing, God with pity which
yearns to save; but this foolish youth is moved by her as only a fool could be
moved. His weak understanding is immediately overcome by her flatteries; his
polluted heart does not perceive the poison of her heartless endearments.

She throws her arms round him and kisses him, and he makes no question that it
is a tribute to the personal attractions which he has himself often admired in
his mirror. She would have him believe that it was he whom she had come out
specially to seek, though it would have been just the same whoever had caught
her eye; and he, deceived by his own vanity, at once believes her. She has a
great deal to say; she does not rely on one inducement, for she does not know
with whom she has to do; she pours out therefore all her allurements in
succession without stopping to take breath.

First, she holds out the prospect of a good meal. She has abundant meat in the
house, which comes from the sacrifice she has just been offering, and it must be
eaten by the next day, according to the commandment of the Law. [116] Or if he
is not one to be attracted merely by food, she has appeals to his æsthetic side;
her furniture is rich and artistic, and her chamber is perfumed with sweet
spices. She perceives perhaps by now what a weak, faint-hearted creature,
enervated by vice, unmanly and nervous, she has to do with, and she hastens to
assure him that his precious skin will be safe. Her goodman is not at home, and
his absence will be prolonged; he took money with him for a long journey, and
she knows the date of his return. The foolish youth need not fear, therefore,
"that jealousy which is the rage of a man;" he will not have to offer gifts and
ransom to the implacable husband, because his deed will never be known. How
hollow it all sounds, and how suspicious; surely one who had a grain of
understanding would answer with manly scorn and with kindling indignation. But
our poor young fool, who was so confident of himself, yields without a struggle;
with her mere talk, playing upon his vanity, she bends him as if he were a
water-weed in a stream--her appeals to his self-admiration drive him forth as
easily as the goads urge an ox to the slaughter-house.

And now you may watch him going after her to destruction!

Is there not a pathos in the sight of an ox going to the slaughter? The poor
dumb creature is lured by the offer of food or driven by the lash of the driver.
It enters the slaughter-house as if it were a stall for rest and refreshment; it
has no idea that "it is for its life." The butcher knows; the bystanders
understand the signs; but it is perfectly insensible, taking a transitory
pleasure in the unwonted attentions which are really the portents of death. It
is not endeared to us by any special interest or affection; the dull, stupid
life has never come into any close connection with ours. It has never been to us
like a favourite dog, or a pet bird that has cheered our solitary hours. It gave
us no response when we spoke to it or stroked its sleek hide. It was merely an
animal. But yet it moves our pity at this supreme moment of its life; we do not
like to think of the heavy blow which will soon lay the great slow-pacing form
prostrate and still in death.

Here is an ox going to the slaughter,--but it is a fellow-man, a young man, not
meant for ignominious death, capable of a good and noble life. The poor degraded
woman who lures him to his ruin has no such motive of serviceableness as the
butcher has. By a malign influence she attracts him, an influence even more
fatal to herself than to him. And he appears quite insensible,--occupied
entirely with reflections on his glossy skin and goodly form; not suspecting
that bystanders have any other sentiment than admiration of his attractions and
approval of his manliness, he goes quietly, unresistingly, lured rather than
driven, to the slaughter-house.

The effect of comparison with dumb animals is heightened by throwing in a more
direct comparison with other human beings. Transposing the words, with
Delitzsch, as is evidently necessary in order to preserve the parallelism of the
similitude, we find this little touch: "He goeth after her straightway, as a
fool to the correction of the fetters,"--as if the Teacher would remind us that
the fate of the young man, tragic as it is, is yet quite devoid of the noble
aspects of tragedy. This clause is a kind of afterthought, a modification. "Did
we say that he is like the ox going to the slaughter?--nay, there is a certain
dignity in that image, for the ox is innocent of its own doom, and by its death
many will benefit; with our pity for it we cannot but mingle a certain
gratitude, and we find no room for censure; but this entrapped weakling is after
all only a fool, of no service or interest to any one, without any of the
dignity of our good domestic cattle; in his corrupt and witless heart is no
innocence which should make us mourn. And the punishment he goes to, though it
is ruin, is so mean and degrading that it awakes the jeers and scorn of the
beholders. As if he were in the village stocks, he will be exposed to eyes which
laugh while they despise him. Those who are impure like himself will leer at
him; those who are pure will avert their glance with an ill-disguised contempt."
There, then, goes the ox to the slaughter; nay, the mere empty-headed fool to
the punishment of the fetters, which will keep him out of further mischief, and
chain him down to the dumb lifeless creation to which he seems to belong.

But the scorn changes rapidly to pity. Where a fellow-creature is concerned we
may not feel contempt beyond that point at which it serves as a rebuke, and a
stimulus to better things. When we are disposed to turn away with a scornful
smile, we become aware of the suffering which the victim of his own sins will
endure. It will be like an arrow striking through the liver. Only a moment, and
he will be seized with the sharp pain which follows on indulgence. Oh the nausea
and the loathing, when the morning breaks and he sees in all their naked
repulsiveness the things which he allowed to fascinate him yester-eve! What a
bitter taste is in his mouth; what a ghastly and livid hue is on the cheek which
he imagined fair! He is pierced; to miserable physical sufferings is joined a
sense of unspeakable degradation, a wretched depression of spirits, a wish to
die which is balanced in horrid equilibrium by a fear of death.

And now he will arise and flee out of this loathly house, which seems to be
strewn with dead men's bones and haunted by the moaning spirits of the mighty
host which have here gone down into Sheol. But what is this? He cannot flee. He
is held like a bird in the snare, which beats its wings and tries to fly in
vain; the soft yielding net will rise and fall with its efforts, but will not
suffer it to escape. He cannot flee, for if he should escape those fatal doors,
before to-morrow's sun sets he will be seized with an overmastering passion, a
craving which is like the gnawing of a vulture at the liver; by an impulse which
he cannot resist he will be drawn back to that very corner; there will not be
again any raptures, real or imagined, only racking and tormenting desires; there
will be no fascination of sight or scent or taste; all will appear as it
is--revolting; the perfumes will all be rank and sickly, the meat will all be
blighted and fly-blown; but none the less he must back; there, poor, miserable,
quivering bird, he must render himself, and must take his fill of--loves? no, of
maudlin rapture and burning disgust; solace himself? no, but excite a desire
which grows with every satisfaction, which slowly and surely, like that
loathsome monster of the seas, slides its clinging suckers around him, and holds
him in an embrace more and more deadly until he finally succumbs.

Then he perceives that the fatal step that he took was "for his life," that is,
his life was at stake. When he entered into the trap, the die was cast; hope was
abandoned as he entered there. The house which appeared so attractive was a mere
covered way to hell. The chambers which promised such imagined delights were on
an incline which sloped down to death.

Look at him, during that brief passage from his foolish heedlessness to his
irretrievable ruin, a Rake's Progress presented in simple and vivid pictures,
which are so terrible because they are so absolutely true.

After gazing for a few minutes upon the story, do we not feel its power? Are
there not many who are deaf to all exhortations, who will never attend to the
words of Wisdom's mouth, who have a consummate art in stopping their ears to all
the nobler appeals of life, who yet will be arrested by this clear presentation
of a fact, by the teacher's determination not to blink or underrate any of the
attractions and seductions, and by his equal determination not to disguise or
diminish any of the frightful results?

We may cherish the sweetness and the purity which reticence will often preserve,
but when the sweetness and the purity are lost, reticence will not bring them
back, and duty seems to require that we should lay aside our fastidiousness and
speak out boldly in order to save the soul of our brother.

But after dwelling on such a picture as this there is a thought which naturally
occurs to us; in our hearts a yearning awakes which the book of Proverbs is not
capable of meeting. Warnings so terrible, early instilled into the minds of our
young men, may by God's grace be effectual in saving them from the decline into
those evil ways, and from going astray in the paths of sin. Such warnings ought
to be given, although they are painful and difficult to give. But when we have
gone wrong through lack of instruction, when a guilty silence has prevented our
teachers from cautioning us, while the corrupt habits of society have drawn us
insensibly into sin, and a thousand glozening excuses have veiled from our eyes
the danger until it is too late, is there nothing left for us but to sink deeper
and deeper into the slough, and to issue from it only to emerge in the chambers
of death?

To this question Jesus gives the answer. He alone can give it. Even that
personified Wisdom whose lofty and philosophical utterances we shall hear in the
next chapter, is not enough. No advice, no counsel, no purity, no sanctity of
example can avail. It is useless to upbraid a man with his sins when he is bound
hand and foot with them and cannot escape. It is a mockery to point out, what is
only too obvious, that without holiness no man can see God, at a moment when the
miserable victim of sin can see nothing clearly except the fact that he is
without holiness. "The pure in heart shall see God" is an announcement of
exquisite beauty, it has a music which is like the music of the spheres, a music
at which the doors of heaven seem to swing open; but it is merely a sentence of
doom to those who are not pure in heart. Jesus meets the corrupt and ruined
nature with the assurance that He has come "to seek and to save that which was
lost." And lest a mere assertion should prove ineffectual to the materialised
and fallen spirit, Jesus came and presented in the realism of the Cross a
picture of Redemption which could strike hearts that are too gross to feel and
too deaf to hear. It might be possible to work out ideally the redemption of man
in the unseen and spiritual world. But actually, for men whose very sin makes
them unspiritual, there seems to be no way of salvation which does not approach
them in a tangible form. The horrible corruption and ruin of our physical
nature, which is the work of sin, could be met only by the Incarnation, which
should work out a redemption through the flesh.

Accordingly, here is a wonder which none can explain, but which none can
gainsay. When the victim of fleshly sin, suffering from the arrow which has
pierced his liver, handed over as it seems to despair, is led to gaze upon the
Crucified Christ, and to understand the meaning of His bearing our sins in His
own body on the tree, he is touched, he is led to repentance, he is created
anew, his flesh comes again to him as a little child, he can offer up to God the
sacrifice of a contrite heart, and he is cleansed.

This is a fact which has been verified again and again by experience. And they
who have marked the power of the Cross can never sufficiently admire the wisdom
and the love of God, who works by ways so entirely unlike our ways, and has
resources at His command which surpass our conception and baffle our
explanation.

If there is a man literally broken down and diseased with sin, enfeebled in will
and purpose, tormented by his evil appetite so that he seems like one possessed,
the wisest counsels may be without any effect; paint in the most vivid hues the
horrible consequences of his sin, but he will remain unmoved; apply the coercion
of a prison and all the punishments which are at the disposal of an earthly
judge, and he will return to his vicious life with a gusto increased by his
recuperated physical strength; present to him the most touching appeals of wife
and children and friends, and while he sheds sentimental tears he will continue
to run the downward way. But let him be arrested by the spectacle of Christ
crucified for him, let the moving thought of that priceless love and untold
suffering stir in his heart, let his eyes be lifted never so faintly to those
eyes of Divine compassion,--and though he seemed to have entered the very
precincts of the grave, though the heart within him seemed to have died and the
conscience seemed to be seared with a hot iron, you will observe at once the
signs of returning animation; a cry will go up from the lips, a sob will
convulse the frame, a light of passionate hope will come into the eyes. Christ
has touched him. Christ is merciful. Christ is powerful. Christ will save.

Ah, if I speak to one who is bound with the cords of his sin, helplessly
fettered and manacled, dead as it were in trespasses, I know there is no other
name to mention to you, no other hope to hold out to you. Though I knew all
science, I could not effectually help you; though I could command all the
springs of human feeling, I could not stir you from your apathy, or satisfy the
first cries of your awaking conscience. But it is permitted to me to preach unto
you--not abstract Wisdom, but--Jesus, who received that name because He should
save His people from their sins.
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[110] Prov. vii. 6.

[111] Prov. vii. 4.

[112] Prov. vii. 9.

[113] Prov. vii. 8. The term tsd describes a special kind of motion, e.g., the
slow pacing of the oxen that bare the ark (2 Sam. vi. 15), or the imagined
efforts of idols to move (Jer. x. 5); it is therefore unfortunate to render it
by the generic word "go." The affected dignity and sauntering insouciance of a
dandy are immediately suggested by it, and the shade of meaning is fairly well
preserved in the English "saunter."

[114] This is the meaning of the word translated 'clamorous.'

[115] So says the Greek version of ver. 10: he poiei neon exiptasthai kardias.

[116] See Lev. vii. 16.
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VIII.

THE FIRST-BORN OF THE CREATOR.

"Doth not Wisdom cry?"--Prov. viii. 1.

In the last chapter a dark and revolting picture of Vice was drawn. This chapter
contains a lovely and living picture of Wisdom. In this contrast, as we have
already seen, Vice can be presented as a vicious woman, because it is unhappily
only too easy to find such an incarnation in actual experience; Wisdom, on the
other hand, cannot be presented as an actual person, but only as a
personification, because there was, as yet, no Incarnation of Wisdom; far from
it, Solomon, the wisest of men, the framer of many wise proverbs, had been in
practical conduct an incarnation of folly rather than of wisdom, had himself
become a proverb for a wise and understanding heart in combination with a dark
and vicious life. Yet how could the teacher fail to feel that some day there
must be an Incarnate Wisdom, a contrast to the Incarnate Vice, a conqueror and
destroyer of it? In describing Wisdom personified, and in following out her
sweet and high-souled utterance, the teacher unconsciously to himself becomes a
prophet, and presents, as we shall see, a faint and wavering image of Him who of
God was to be made unto men Wisdom, of Him who was actually to live a concrete
human life embodying the Divine Wisdom as completely as many poor stained human
lives have embodied the undivine folly of vice. The description, then, is an
adumbration of something as yet not seen or fully understood; we must be careful
not to spoil its meaning by representing it as more, and by attempting to press
the details in explanation of the being and the work of Christ. We shall do
wisely to look at the whole picture as it formed itself before the eye of the
writer, and to abstain from introducing into it colours or shades of our own.
Our first task must be to follow the movement of the chapter as carefully as
possible.

Wisdom, unlike the vicious woman who lurks in the twilight at the corner of the
street which contains her lair, stands in the open places; she makes herself as
manifest as may be by occupying some elevated position, from which her ringing
voice may be heard down the streets and up the cross-ways, and may attract the
attention of those who are entering the city gates or the doors of the houses.
As her voice is strong and clear, so her words are full and rounded; there is no
whispering, no muttering, no dark hint, no subtle incitement to secret
pleasures; her tone is breezy and stirring as the dawn; there is something about
it which makes one involuntarily think of the open air, and the wide sky, and
the great works of God. [117] There is the beauty of goodness in all that she
says; there is the charming directness and openness of truth; she abhors
tortuous and obscure ways; and if some of her sayings seem paradoxes or enigmas,
a little difficult to understand, that is the fault of the hearer; to a tortuous
mind straight things appear crooked; to the ignorant and uninstructed mind the
eternal laws of God appear foolishness; but all that she says is plain to one
who understands, and right to those who find knowledge. [118] She walks always
in a certain and undeviating course--it is the way of righteousness and
judgment--and only those who tread the same path can expect to perceive the
meaning of what she says, or to appreciate the soundness of all her counsels.
[119] And now she proclaims the grounds on which she demands the attention of
men, in a noble appeal, which rises to a passionate eloquence and deepens in
spiritual significance as it advances. Roughly speaking, this appeal seems to
fall into two parts: from ver. 10 to ver. 21 the obvious advantages of obeying
her voice are declared, but at ver. 22 the discourse reaches a higher level, and
she claims obedience because of her essential nature and her eternal place in
the universe of created things.

In the first part Wisdom solemnly states her own value, as compared with the
valuables which men usually covet--silver, and gold, and precious stones. That
she is of more account than these, appears from the fact that they are but parts
of her gifts. In her train come riches; but they differ from ordinary riches in
being durable; her faithful followers obtain substantial wealth, and their
treasuries insensibly fill. [120] To riches she adds honour, a crown which
worldly riches seldom bring, and, what is better still, the honour which she
confers is associated with righteousness, while the spurious honour which is
commonly rendered to riches, being conferred without any moral implication, is
devoid of any moral appreciation. [121] But after all, she herself is her own
best reward; the prosperity which accompanies her seems trivial compared with
the desirableness of her own person. Her queenly dwelling is prudence, and at
her touch all the charmed regions of knowledge and discovery fly open; they who
dwell with her and are admitted to share her secrets find the fruit and the
increase of the intellectual life incomparably better than fine gold or choice
silver. And what gives to her endowments their peculiar completeness is that she
requires a moral culture to go hand in hand with mental development; and leading
her disciples to hate evil, and to avoid the arrogance and the pride of the
intellect, she rescues knowledge from becoming a mere barren accumulation of
facts, and keeps it always in contact with the humanities and with life. Indeed,
she finds it one great part of her mighty task to instruct the rulers of men,
and to fit them for the fulfilment of their high functions. Her queenly
prerogative she shares with all her faithful followers. Since Wisdom is the
actual arbiter of human life, the wise man is, as the Stoics would have said, a
king; nor can any king be recognized or tolerated who is not wise. [122]

And all these advantages of wealth and honour, of knowledge, and power, and
righteousness, are put within the reach of every one. Wisdom is no churl in
loving; she loves all who love her. She does not seek to withdraw herself from
men; rather she chooses the places and the ways in which she can best attract
them. Queenly as she is, she condescends to woo them. Her invitations are
general, even universal. And therefore if any do not find her, it is because
they do not seek her; if any do not share in her rich gifts and graces, it is
because they will not take the trouble to claim them. [123]

But now we pass on to the second ground of appeal. Wisdom unveils herself,
discloses her origin, shows her heart, stands for a moment on her high celestial
throne, that she may make her claims upon the sons of men more irresistible. She
was the first creation of God. [124] Before the earth issued out of nothingness
she was there. In joyous activity, daily full of delight, she was beside God, as
an architect, in the forming of the world. She saw the great earth shaped and
clothed for the first time in the mantle of its floods, and made musical with
the sound of its fountains. She saw the mountains and the hills built up from
their foundations. She saw the formation of the dry land, and of the atoms of
dust which go to make the ground. [125] She saw the sky spread out as a firm
vault to cover the earth; and she saw God when

"... in His hand

He took the golden compasses, prepared

In God's eternal store, to circumscribe

This universe and all created things." [126]

She saw the mighty tides of the ocean restricted to their appointed cisterns,
and the firm outlines of the land fixed as their impassable barriers. [127] And
this very Wisdom, who thus presided over the formation of land, and sea, and
sky, is she who still sports with God's fruitful earth--yes, sports, for the
great characteristic of Wisdom is her exultant cheerfulness, and it must by no
means be supposed that the foolish and the wicked have all the gaiety and mirth
as their own. [128] This Wisdom is she too who finds her peculiar delight with
the sons of men.

Is it not obvious, then, that men, who are her sons, ought to give ear to her
counsels? What could establish a stronger claim for attention than this ancient
origin, this honourable part in laying the very foundations of the earth, and
this special interest in human life from the beginning? Raised to this high
level, where we command so wide a prospect, are we not forced to see that it is
our duty, our interest, our joy, to come as humble suitors to the gates of
Wisdom, and there to watch, and wait, and seek until we may obtain admission?
Must we not search after her, when in finding her we find life and obtain favour
of the Lord? Can we not perceive that to miss her is to miss life, to wrong our
own souls--to hate her is to love death? Evidently her eagerness to win us is
entirely disinterested; though she delights in us, she could easily dispense
with us; on the other hand, though we do not delight in her, though we
constantly turn a deaf ear to her, and refuse to walk in her ways, she is
indispensable to us.

Such a passage as this gives rise to many reflections, and the longer we
meditate upon it the more rich and suggestive it appears. Let us try to follow
out some of the thoughts which readily present themselves, and especially such
as are suggested by the verses which may be described as the poem of creation.

First of all, here is the noble idea which overturns at a touch all mythological
speculations about the origin of things--an idea which is in deep harmony with
all the best knowledge of our own time--that there is nothing fortuitous in the
creation of the world; the Creator is not a blind Force, but an Intelligent
Being whose first creation is wisdom. He is the origin of a Law by which He
means to bind Himself; arbitrariness finds no place in His counsels; accident
has no part in His works; in Wisdom hath He formed them all. In all heathen
conceptions of creation caprice is supreme, law has no place, blind force works
in this way or that, either by the compulsion of a Necessity which is stronger
than the gods, or by freaks and whims of the gods which would be contemptible
even in men. But here is the clear recognition of the principle that God's Law
is a law also to Himself, and that His law is wisdom. He creates the world as an
outcome of His own wise and holy design, so that "nothing walks with aimless
feet." It is on this theological conception that the possibility of science
depends. Until the universe is recognized as an ordered and intelligible system
the ordered and intelligent study of it cannot begin. As long as the arbitrary
and fortuitous are supposed to hold sway inquiry is paralyzed at its
starting-point.

It may, however, be suggested that the doctrine of Evolution, which scientific
men are almost unanimous in accepting, is inconsistent with this idea of
Creation. By this doctrine our attention is directed to the apparently
disordered collision of forces, and the struggle for existence out of which the
order and progress of life are educed, and it is hastily assumed that a Wise
Intelligence would not work in this way, but would exhibit more economy of
resources, more simplicity and directness of method, and more inevitableness of
result. But may we not say that the apparent fortuitousness with which the
results are achieved is the clearest evidence of the wise purpose which orders
and directs the process? for about the results there can be no question; order,
beauty, fitness everywhere prevail; life emerges from the inorganic, thought
from life, morality and religion from thought. The more our attention is called
to the apparently accidental steps by which these results are reached, the more
persuaded must we become that a great and a wise law was at work, that by the
side of the Creator, as a master workman, was Wisdom from the beginning. Such a
passage as this, then, prepares the way for all science, and furnishes the true
conceptions without which science would be sterile. It takes us at a step out of
a pagan into a truly religious mode of thinking; it leads us out of the misty
regions of superstition to the luminous threshold of the House of Knowledge. It
may be said with truth that many scientific facts which are known to us were not
known to the writer; and this may raise a prejudice against our book in those
minds which can tolerate no thought except that of the present generation, and
appreciate no knowledge which is not, as it were, brought up to date; but the
fruitful conception is here, here is the right way of regarding the universe,
here the preparation of all science.

And now to advance to another idea which is implied in the passage, the idea
that in the very conception of the universe human life was contemplated, and
regarded with a peculiar delight by the Wisdom of God. The place which Man
occupies in creation has been variously estimated in different religious systems
and by different religious thinkers. Sometimes he has been regarded as the
centre of all things, the creature for whom all things exist. Then a reaction
has set in, and he has been treated as a very insignificant and possibly
transient phenomenon in the order of things. It is characteristic of the Bible
that it presents a balanced view of this question, avoiding extremes in both
directions. On the one hand, it very clearly recognizes that man is a part of
the creation, that he belongs to it because he springs out of it, and rules over
it only in so far as he conforms to it; on the other hand, it clearly insists on
that relation between man and his Creator which is hinted at here. Man is always
implicitly connected with God by some half-divine mediator. The Wisdom of God
watches with an unmoved heart the growth of the physical world, but into her
contemplation of mankind there enters a peculiar delight. There is that in man
which can listen to her appeals, can listen and respond. He is capable of rising
to the point of view from which she looks out upon the world, and can even see
himself in the light in which she sees him. In a word, man, with all his
insignificance, has a sublime possibility in him, the possibility of becoming
like God; in this he stands quite alone among created things; it is this which
gives him his pre-eminence. Thus our passage, while it does not for a moment
imply that the material universe was made for the sake of man, or that man in
himself can claim a superiority over the other creatures of the earth--and so
far takes a view which is very popular with scientific men--yet parts company
with the philosophy of materialism in claiming for man a place altogether
unique, because he has within him the possibility of being linked to God by
means of the Wisdom of God.

And now we may notice another implication of the passage. While Wisdom
celebrates her high prerogative as the first-born of the Creator and the
instrument of the creation, and urges upon men as parts of the creation the
observance of the Moral Law, she is implicitly teaching the great truth which
men have been so slow to grasp, that the law of practical righteousness is of a
piece with the very laws of creation. To put it in another form, the rules of
right conduct are really the rules of the universe applied to human life. Laws
of nature, as they are called, and laws of morality have their origin in one and
the same Being, and are interpreted to us by one and the same Wisdom. It would
be well for us all if we could understand how far-reaching this great truth is,
and an intelligent study of this passage certainly helps us to understand it.
None of us, in our wildest moments, think of pitting ourselves against the laws
of nature. We do not murmur against the law of gravitation; we scrupulously
conform to it so far as we can, knowing that if we do not it will be the worse
for us. When heavy seas are breaking, and the spirit of the winds is let loose,
we do not venture on the waves in a small, open boat, or if we do, we accept the
consequences without complaint. But when we come to deal with the moral law we
entertain some idea that it is elastic and uncertain, that its requirements may
be complied with or not at pleasure, and that we may violate its eternal
principles without any serious loss or injury. But the truth is, the Law is one.
The only difference arises from the fact that while the natural laws, applying
to inanimate objects or to creatures which enjoy no freedom of moral life, are
necessarily obeyed, the moral rules apply to conscious reasoning creatures, who,
possessed of freedom, are able to choose whether they will obey the law or not.
Yes, the Law is one, and breaches of the Law are punished inevitably both in the
natural and in the moral sphere. This same Wisdom, to which "wickedness is an
abomination," and which therefore exhorts the sons of men to walk in the ways of
righteousness, is the great principle which ordered the physical universe and
stamped upon it those laws of uniformity and inevitableness which Science
delights to record and to illustrate.

But when we notice how the Wisdom who is here speaking is at once the mouthpiece
of the laws which underlie the whole creation and of the laws which govern the
moral life, it is easy to perceive how this passage becomes a foreshadowing of
that wonderful Being who of God is made unto us Wisdom as well as Righteousness.
Or, to put it in a slightly different way, we are able to perceive how this
passage is a faint and imperfect glimpse into the nature and the work of Him
whom in New Testament phraseology we call the Son of God--faint and imperfect,
because this Wisdom, although represented as speaking, is still only an
abstraction, a personification, and her relation both to God and to man is
described in very vague and indefinite language; and yet, though faint and
imperfect, very true as far as it goes, for it recognizes with wonderful
distinctness the three truths which we have just been considering, truths that
have become luminous for us in Christ; it recognizes, firstly, that the world
was the creation of Wisdom, of Reason, or, if we may use the New Testament term,
of the Word; it recognizes, secondly, that the thought of Man was contained in
the very thought of creation, and that man was related in a direct and unique
way with the Creator; lastly, it recognizes that goodness lies at the very root
of creation, and that therefore natural law when applied to human life is a
demand for righteousness.

It is interesting to observe that this glimpse, this adumbration of a great
truth, which was only to become quite clear in Christ Jesus our Lord, was
advanced a little in clearness and completeness by a book which is not generally
considered to be inspired, the so-called book of Wisdom, in a passage which must
be quoted. "For she [i.e. Wisdom] is a breath of the power of God, and a pure
influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can no defiled thing
fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted
mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness. And being but one,
she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new; and
in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and
prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom. For she is more
beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars; being compared with
the light, she is found before it." [129]

In this passage Wisdom is still a mere impersonation, but the language employed
is evidently very near to that which the New Testament applies to Christ. When
Philo came to treat of the idea, and wished to describe this intermediate being
between God and man, he employed another term; changing the feminine into the
masculine, he spoke of it as the Logos. And this expression is adopted by the
Fourth Gospel in describing the Eternal Son before He became flesh; the Word of
the fuller revelation is the Wisdom of the Proverbs.

How far Christ recognized in this impersonation of our book a description or
representation of Himself it is impossible to say. It is certain that on one
occasion, in defending His action against the charges of the Pharisees, He
declared, "Wisdom is justified of her children," [130] a defence which can be
most simply explained by supposing that Wisdom stands for Himself. It is
certain, too, that He spoke of His own pre-existence, [131] and that the
Evangelist assigns to Him in that life before the Incarnation a position not
unlike that which is attributed to Wisdom in our passage: "All things were made
by Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made.... No man
hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath declared Him." [132] But whether our Lord expressly acknowledged
the forecast of Himself which is contained in the passage or not, we cannot fail
to mark with joy and wonder how strikingly all that is best in the utterance and
in the delineation of Wisdom is produced, concrete, tangible, real, in Him.

He, like Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, appears in the busy haunts of man,
appeals to them, invites them with large, open-armed generosity. His voice is to
the sons of men. He, like Wisdom, can say with absolute truth, "All the words of
My mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing crooked or perverse in them." He
too could speak of His teaching as "plain and right," and could with simple
literalness declare that His words were more precious than gold, while obedience
to Him would cause men "to inherit substance." With what force He might claim
that even kings rule by Him we shall only know when the kingdoms of the world
have become His in their integrity; but we can see at once how appropriate in
His lips is the beautiful saying, "I love them that love Me, and those that seek
Me early shall find Me."

With equal suitability might He, the First-born of all creation, the beginning
of the creation of God, use the sublime language which follows. And He too could
say that His delight was with the sons of men. Yes, how much that means to us!
If His delight had not been with us, how could ours ever have been with Him?
What a new meaning irradiates every human being when we realize that with him,
with her, is the delight of the Son of God! What a revelation lies in the fact,
a revelation of what man was by his origin, made in the image of God, and of
what he may be in the last event, brought to "the fulness of the measure of the
stature of Christ." We must not speak as if He delights in us because He has
redeemed us; no, He redeemed us because He delighted in us. Is not this a ground
on which He may appeal to us, "Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto Me; for
blessed are they that keep My ways"? And can we not say to Him with a fervour
which the cold abstraction of Wisdom could not possibly excite, "We would watch
daily at Thy gates, waiting at the posts of Thy doors. For when we find Thee we
find life and obtain favour of the Lord. When we sin against Thee we wrong our
own souls; when we hate Thee we love death"?

Yes, in place of this ancient Wisdom, which, stately and lovely as she is,
remains always a little intangible and unapproachable, Christ is made unto us
Wisdom, and He speaks to us the old words with a deeper meaning, and new words
which none but He could ever speak.
__________________________________________________________________

[117] Prov. viii. 1-6.

[118] Prov. viii. 7-9.

[119] Prov. viii. 20.

[120] Prov. viii. 8, 9.

[121] Prov. viii. 18.

[122] Prov. viii. 10-16.

[123] Prov. viii. 17.

[124] Prov. viii. 22. There is unfortunately an ambiguity in the word qnh. It
may mean either "to possess" or "to create." Cf. Gen. xiv. 19, 22, where it is
impossible to decide between "Possessor of the earth" and "Maker of the earth."
That the word might be rendered "got" in this passage is evident from iv. 7,
where it is employed; on the other hand, the LXX. renders ektise, and the author
of Ecclesiasticus evidently took it in this sense; cf. i. 4, "Wisdom hath been
created before all things, and the understanding of prudence from everlasting."
In Gen. iv. it is rendered "gotten," but it is quite possible that the joyful
mother called her son qyn with the feeling that she had created him with the
help of the Lord.

[125] Prov. viii. 26.

[126] Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 225.

[127] Prov. viii. 29. It is hardly necessary to point out that the language
betrays a complete ignorance of those facts with which astronomy and geology
have made us familiar. The author puts into the lips of Wisdom the scientific
conceptions of his own time, when the earth was regarded as a flat surface,
covered by a solid circular vault, in which the sun, and moon, and stars were
fixed. The "circle upon the flood" is probably the apparent circle which is
suggested to the observer by the horizon. No one had as yet dreamed that the
mountains were thrown up by, not settled in, the surface of the earth, nor was
it dreamed that the bounds of the sea are far from being settled, but subject to
gradual variations, and even to cataclysmal changes. It may be observed,
however, that the voyage of the Challenger seems to have established beyond
question that the great outlines of land and ocean have remained approximately
the same from the beginning. Ocean islands are of volcanic origin or the work of
the coral-insect; but the great continents and all contained within the fringe
of a thousand-fathom depth from their shores have remained practically unaltered
despite the numerous partial upheavals or submergences. A passage so full of
spiritual and moral significance, and yet so entirely untouched by what are to
us the elementary conclusions of science, should furnish a valuable criterion in
estimating what we are to understand by the Inspiration of such a book as this.

[128] Cf. x. 23.

[129] Wisdom vii. 25-29. The book of Wisdom, a work of the second century b.c.,
at one time had a place in the canon, and owes its exclusion, in all
probability, to the fact that it was written in Greek; as there was no Hebrew
original, it was evident that Solomon was not the author. But the use which the
Epistle to the Hebrews makes of the passage quoted in the text may suggest how
very unnecessary the exclusion from the canon was.

[130] Luke vii. 35; Matt. xi. 19.

[131] John viii. 58.

[132] John i. 3, 18.
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IX.

TWO VOICES IN THE HIGH PLACES OF THE CITY.

Ch. ix., vv. 14 with 3, and 16 with 4.

After the lengthened contrast between the vicious woman and Wisdom in chaps.
vii. and viii., the introduction of the book closes with a little picture which
is intended to repeat and sum up all that has gone before. It is a peroration,
simple, graphic, and beautiful.

There is a kind of competition between Wisdom and Folly, between Righteousness
and Sin, between Virtue and Vice; and the allurements of the two are disposed in
an intentional parallelism; the colouring and arrangement are of such a kind
that it becomes incredible how any sensible person, or for that matter even the
simple himself, could for a moment hesitate between the noble form of Wisdom and
the meretricious attractions of Folly. The two voices are heard in the high
places of the city; each of them invites the passers-by, especially the simple
and unsophisticated--the one into her fair palace, the other into her foul and
deadly house. The words of their invitation are very similar: "Whoso is simple,
let him turn in hither: as for him that is void of understanding, she saith to
him;" but how different is the burden of the two messages! Wisdom offers life,
but is silent about enjoyment; Folly offers enjoyment, but says nothing of the
death which must surely ensue. [133]

First of all we will give our attention to the Palace of Wisdom and the voices
which issue from it, and then we will note for the last time the features and
the arts of Mistress Folly.

The Palace of Wisdom is very attractive; well built and well furnished, it rings
with the sounds of hospitality; and, with its open colonnades, it seems of
itself to invite all passers-by to enter in as guests. It is reared upon seven
well-hewn marble pillars, in a quadrangular form, with the entrance side left
wide open. [134] This is no shifting tent or tottering hut, but an eternal
mansion, that lacks nothing of stability, or completeness, or beauty. Through
the spacious doorways may be seen the great courtyard, in which appear the
preparations for a perpetual feast. The beasts are killed and dressed; the wine
stands in tall flagons ready mixed for drinking; the tables are spread and
decked. All is open, generous, large, a contrast to that unhallowed private
supper to which the unwary youth was invited by his seducer. [135] There are no
secret chambers, no twilight suggestions and insinuations: the broad light
shines over all; there is a promise of social joy; it seems that they will be
blessed who sit down together at this board. And now the beautiful owner of the
palace has sent forth her maidens into the public ways of the city: theirs is a
gracious errand; they are not to chide with sour and censorious rebukes, but
they are to invite with winning friendliness; they are to offer this rare
repast, which is now ready, to all those who are willing to acknowledge their
need of it. "Come, eat ye of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have
mingled." [136]

We were led to inquire in the last chapter how far our Lord identified Himself
with the hypostatic Wisdom who was speaking there, and we were left in some
doubt whether He ever consciously admitted the identity; but it is hardly a
matter of doubt that this passage was before His mind when He spoke His parable
of the Wedding Feast. [137] And the connection is still more apparent when we
look at the Greek version of the LXX., and notice that the clause "sent forth
her bond-servants" is precisely the same in Prov. ix. 3 and in Matt. xxii. 3.
Here, at any rate, Jesus, who describes Himself as "a certain king," quite
definitely occupies the place of the ancient Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, and
the language which in this passage she employs He, as we shall see, in many
slight particulars made His own.

Yes, our Lord, the Wisdom Incarnate, has glorious ideas of hospitality; He keeps
open house; His purpose is to call mankind to a great feast; the "bread and the
wine" are prepared; the sacrifice which furnishes the meat is slain. His
messengers are not commissioned with a mournful or a condemnatory proclamation,
but with good tidings which they are to publish in the high places. His word is
always, Come. His desire is that men should live, and therefore He calls them
into the way of understanding. [138] If a man lacks wisdom, if he recognizes his
ignorance, his frailty, his folly, if he is at any rate wise enough to know that
he is foolish, well enough to know that he is sick, righteous enough to know
that he is sinful, let him approach this noble mansion with its lordly feast.
Here is bread which is meat indeed; here is wine which is life-giving, the fruit
of the Vine which God has planted.

But now we are to note that the invitation of Wisdom is addressed only to the
simple, not to the scorner. [139] She lets the scorner pass by, because a word
to him would recoil only in shame on herself, bringing a blush to her queenly
face, and would add to the scorner's wickedness by increasing his hatred of her.
Her reproof would not benefit him, but it would bring a blot upon herself, it
would exhibit her as ineffectual and helpless. The bitter words of a scorner can
make wisdom appear foolish, and cover virtue with a confusion which should
belong only to vice. "Speak not in the hearing of a fool; for he will despise
the wisdom of thy words." [140] Indeed, there is no character so hopeless as
that of the scorner; there proceeds from him, as it were, a fierce blast, which
blows away all the approaches which goodness makes to him. Reproof cannot come
near him; [141] he cannot find wisdom, though he seek it; [142] and as a matter
of fact, he never seeks it. [143] If one attempts to punish him it can only be
with the hope that others may benefit by the example; it will have no effect
upon him. [144] To be rid of him must be the desire of every wise man, for he is
an abomination to all, [145] and with his departure contention disappears. [146]
They that scoff at things holy, and scorn the Divine Power, must be left to
themselves until the beginnings of wisdom appear in them--the first sense of
fear that there is a God who may not be mocked, the first recognition that there
is a sanctity which they would do well at all events to reverence. There must be
a little wisdom in the heart before a man can enter the Palace of Wisdom; there
must be a humbling, a self-mistrust, a diffident misgiving before the scorner
will give heed to her invitation.

There is an echo of this solemn truth in more than one saying of the Lord's. He
too cautioned His disciples against casting their pearls before swine, lest they
should trample the pearls under their feet, and turn to rend those who were
foolish enough to offer them such treasure. [147] Men must often be taught in
the stern school of Experience, before they can matriculate in the reasonable
college of Wisdom. It is not good to give that which is holy to dogs, nor to
display the sanctities of religion to those who will only put them to an open
shame. Where we follow our own way instead of the Lord's, and insist on offering
the treasures of the kingdom to the scorners, we are not acting according to the
dictates of Wisdom, we get a blot for that goodness which we so rashly offer,
and often are needlessly rent by those whom we meant to save. It is evident that
this is only one side of a truth, and our Lord presented with equal fulness the
other side; it was from Him we learnt how the scorner himself, who cannot be won
by reproof, can sometimes be won by love; but our Lord thought it worth while to
state this side of the truth, and so far to make this utterance of the ancient
Wisdom His own.

Again, how constantly He insisted on the mysterious fact that to him that hath
shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken what he hath,
precisely in the spirit of this saying: "Give instruction to a wise man, and he
will be yet wiser: teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning."
[148] The entrance into the kingdom, as into the house of Wisdom, is by
humility. Except a man turn, and become as a little child, he cannot enter.
Wisdom is only justified of her children: until the heart is humble it cannot
even begin to be wise; although it may seem to possess a great deal, all must be
taken away, and a new beginning must be made--that beginning which is found in
the fear of the Lord, and in the knowledge of the Holy One. [149]

The closing words in the invitation of Wisdom are entirely appropriate in the
lips of Jesus, and, indeed, only in His lips could they be accepted in their
fullest signification. There is a limited sense in which all wisdom is
favourable to long life, as we saw in chap. iii., but it is an obvious remark,
too, that the wise perish even as the fool; one event happens to them both, and
there appears to be no difference. But the Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ, was
able to say with a broad literalness, "By Me thy days shall be multiplied, and
the years of thy life shall be increased." With Him the outlook widened; He
could speak of a new life, of raising men up at the last day; He could for the
first time give a solution to that constant enigma which has puzzled men from
the beginning, How is it that Wisdom promises life, and yet often requires that
her children should die? how is it that the best and wisest have often chosen
death, and so to all appearance have robbed the world of their goodness and
their wisdom? He could give the answer in the glorious truth of the
Resurrection; and so, in calling men to die for Him, as He often does, He can in
the very moment of their death say to them with a fulness of meaning, "By Me thy
days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased."

And then how entirely is it in harmony with all His teaching to emphasize to the
utmost the individual choice and the individual responsibility. "If thou art
wise, thou art wise for thyself: and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear
it." There can be no progress, indeed no beginning, in the spiritual life, until
this attitude of personal isolation is understood. It is the last result of true
religion that we live in others; but it is the first that we live in ourselves;
and until we have learnt to live in ourselves we can be of no use by living in
others. Until the individual soul is dealt with, until it has understood the
demands which are made upon it, and met them, it is in no position to take its
rightful place as a lively stone in the temple of God, or as a living member in
the body of Christ. Yes, realize this searching assurance of Wisdom, let us say,
rather, of Christ: if you are like the wise virgins in the parable, it is for
your own everlasting good, you shall enter into the hall with the Bridegroom;
but if you are like the foolish virgins, no wisdom of the wise can avail you, no
vicarious light will serve for your lamps; for you there must be the personal
humiliation and sorrow of the Lord's "I know you not."

If with scornful indifference to your high trust as a servant of the Master you
hide your talent, and justify your conduct to yourself by pleading that the
Master is a hard man, that scorn must recoil upon your own head; so far from the
enlarged wealth of the others coming to meet your deficiencies, the misused
trifle which you still retain will be taken from you and given to them. Men have
sometimes favoured the notion that it is possible to spend a life of scornful
indifference to God and all His holy commandments, a life of arrogant
self-seeking and bitter contempt for all His other creatures, and yet to find
oneself at the end entirely purged of one's contempt, and on precisely equal
terms with all pious and humble hearts; but against this notion Wisdom loudly
exclaims; it is the notion of Folly, and so far from redeeming the folly, it is
Folly's worst condemnation; for surely Conscience and Reason, the heart and the
head, might tell us that it is false; and all that is sanest and wisest in us
concurs in the direct and simple assurance, "If thou scornest, thou alone shalt
bear it."

Such is the invitation, and such the warning, of Wisdom; such is the invitation,
and such the warning, of Christ. Leave off, ye simple ones, and live. After all,
most of us are not scorners, but only very foolish, easily dazzled with false
lights, easily misled with smooth utterances which happen to chime in with our
own ignorant prejudices, easily seduced into by-paths which in quiet moments we
readily acknowledge to be sinful and hurtful. The scorners are but a few; the
simple ones are many. Here is this gracious voice appealing to the simple ones,
and with a winsome liberality inviting them to the feast of Wisdom.

At the close of ver. 12 the LXX. give a very interesting addition, which was
probably translated from a Hebrew original. It seems to have been before our
Lord's mind when He drew the description of the unclean spirit walking through
waterless places, seeking rest and finding none. [150] The passage is a
figurative delineation of the evils which result from making shams and
insincerities the support of life, in place of the unfailing sureness and
available strength of wisdom; it may be rendered thus: "He who makes falsehood
his support shepherds the winds, and will find himself pursuing birds on the
wing; for it means leaving the paths of his own vineyard, and wandering over the
borders of his own husbandry; it means walking through a waterless wilderness,
over land which is the portion of the thirsty; he gathers in his hands
fruitlessness." What a contrast to the spacious halls and the bountiful fare of
Wisdom! A life based upon everlasting verities may seem for the time cold and
desolate, but it is founded upon a rock, and not a barren rock either, for it
sends forth in due course corn, and wine, and oil. The children in that house
have bread enough and to spare. But when a man prefers make-believe to reality,
and follows the apparently pleasant, instead of the actually good, what a
clutching of winds it is! what a chase after swift-vanishing birds of joy! The
wholesome ways, fruitful, responsive to toil, are left far behind; and here soon
is the actual desert, without a drop of water to cool the lips, or a single
fruit of the earth which a man can eat. The deluded soul consumed his substance
with harlots, and he gathers the wind. The ways of vice are terrible; they
produce a thirst which they cannot quench; and they fill the imagination with
torturing images of well-being which are farther removed from reality by every
step we take. Wisdom bids us to make truth our stay, for after all the Truth is
the Way and the Life, and there is no other way, no other life.

And now comes the brief closing picture of Folly, to which again the LXX. give a
short addition. Folly is loud, empty-headed as her victims, whom she invites to
herself, not as Wisdom invites them, to leave off their simplicity, but rather
as like to like, that their ignorance may be confirmed into vice, and their
simplicity into brutishness. She has had the effrontery to build her house in
the most prominent and lofty place of the city, where by good rights only Wisdom
should dwell. Her allurements are specially directed to those who seem to be
going right on in their wholesome ways, as if she found her chief delight, not
in gratifying the vicious, but in making vicious the innocent. Her charms are
poor and tawdry enough; seen in the broad sunlight, and with the wholesome air
all round her, she would be revolting to every uncorrupted nature; her clamorous
voice would sound strident, and her shameless brow would create a blush of shame
in others; she naturally therefore seeks to throw a veil over herself and a
glamour over her proposals; she suggests that secrecy and illicitness will lend
a charm to what in itself is a sorry delight. It is clandestine, therefore it is
to be sweet; it is forbidden, therefore it is to be pleasant. Could anything be
more sophistical? That which owes its attraction to the shadows of the night
must obviously be intrinsically unattractive. It is an argument fit only for the
shades of the lost, and not for those who breathe the sweet air and behold the
sun. Her house is indeed haunted with ghosts, and when a man enters her portal
he already has his foot in hell. Well may the LXX. add the vehement warning,
"Spring away from her clutches; do not linger in the place; let her not have thy
name, for thou wilt traverse another's waters; from another's waters hold aloof,
from another's fountains do not drink, in order that thou mayest live long, and
add to thy years of life."

And now, before leaving this subject, we must briefly remark the great change
and advance which Christ has brought into our thought of the relation between
the two sexes. This Book of Wisdom is a fair illustration of the contempt in
which woman was held by the wise men of Israel. One would suppose that she is
the temptress, and man is the victim. The teacher never dreams of going a step
backward, and asking whose fault it was that the temptress fell into her vicious
ways. He takes no note of the fact that women are first led astray before they
lead others. Nor does he care to inquire how the men of his day ruined their
women by refusing to them all mental training, all wholesome interest and
occupation, shutting them up in the corrupting atmosphere of the seraglio, and
teaching them to regard the domestic sphere, and that only in its narrowest
sense, as the proper limit of their thought and affection. It was reserved for
the Great Teacher, the Incarnate Wisdom Himself, to redress this age-long
injustice to woman, by sternly holding up to men the mirror of truth in which
they might see their own guilty hearts. [151] It was reserved for him to touch
the conscience of a city woman who was a sinner, and to bring her from her
clamorous and seductive ways to the sweetness of penitential tears, and the
rapturous love which forgiveness kindles. It is He, and not the ancient Wisdom,
which has turned the current of men's thoughts into juster and kindlier ways on
this great question. And thus it is that the great Christian poet represents the
archangel correcting the faulty judgment of man. [152] Adam, speaking with the
usual virtuous indignation of the stronger sex in contemplation of the soft
vision of frail women presented to his eyes, says:--

"O pity and shame, that they, who to live well

Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread

Paths indirect, or in the midway faint!

But still I see the tenour of man's woe

Holds on the same, from woman to begin."

The correction is the correction of Christ, though Michael is the speaker:--

"From man's effeminate slackness it begins,"

Said the angel, "who should better hold his place,

By wisdom and superior gifts received."

Our Lord draws no such pictures as these in the book of Proverbs; they have
their value; it is necessary to warn young men against the seductions which the
vices of other men have created in woman's form; but He prefers always to go to
the root of the matter; He speaks to men themselves; He bids them restrain the
wandering eye, and keep pure the fountains of the heart. To that censorious
Wisdom which judges without any perception that woman is more sinned against
than sinning He would oppose His severe command to be rid of the beam in one's
own eye, before making an attempt to remove the mote from another's. It is in
this way that He in so many varied fields of thought and action has turned a
half truth into a whole truth by going a little deeper, and unveiling the
secrets of the heart; and in this way He has enabled us to use the half truth,
setting it in its right relation to the whole. [153]
__________________________________________________________________

[133] Cf. for this contrast between the two xxiii. 26-28, where Wisdom speaks,
and expressly warns against her rival.

[134] The arrangement of the house is that of an open courtyard, surrounded with
apartments, the general roof supported on the pillars thus. Provill

[135] Prov. vii. 14.

[136] Prov. ix. 5.

[137] Matt. xxii. 1, et seq.

[138] Prov. ix. 6.

[139] Prov. ix. 7.

[140] Prov. xxiii. 9.

[141] Prov. xiii. 1.

[142] Prov. xiv. 6.

[143] Prov. xv. 12.

[144] Prov. xix. 25.

[145] Prov. xxiv. 9.

[146] Prov. xxii. 10.

[147] Matt. vii. 6.

[148] Prov. ix. 9. Cf. xviii. 15, "The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge;
and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge."

[149] Prov. ix. 10.

[150] Matt. xii. 43.

[151] See John viii. 1 et seq.

[152] Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 650 etc.

[153] The fuller teaching of the book on the subject of Woman will be found in
Lect. XXXI. __________________________________________________________________

X.

WEALTH.

"Treasures of wickedness profit nothing:

But righteousness delivereth from death."--Prov. x. 2.

"O'erweening statesmen have full long relied

On fleets and armies and external wealth;

But from within proceeds a Nation's health."

Wordsworth.

No moral system is complete which does not treat with clearness and force the
subject of wealth. The material possessions of an individual or of a nation are
in a certain sense the pre-requisites of all moral life; for until the human
being has food to eat he cannot be virtuous, he cannot even live; until he has
clothing he cannot be civilised; and unless he has a moderate assurance of
necessaries, and a certain margin of leisure secured from the toil of life, he
cannot live well, and there can be no moral development in the full sense of
that term. And so with a nation: it must have a sufficient command of the means
of subsistence to maintain a considerable number of people who are not engaged
in productive labour, before it can make much advance in the noblest qualities
of national life, progress in the arts, extension of knowledge, and spiritual
cultivation. The production of wealth, therefore, if not strictly speaking a
moral question itself, presses closely upon all other moral questions. Wisdom
must have something to say about it, because, without it, Wisdom, in a material
world like ours, could not exist.

Wisdom will be called upon to direct the energies which produce wealth, and to
determine the feelings with which we are to regard the wealth which is produced.

Moral problems weightier still begin to emerge when the question of Distribution
presents itself. Moral considerations lie at the root of this question; and
Political Economy, so far as it attempts to deal with it apart from moral
considerations, must always be merely a speculative, and not a practical or a
fruitful science.

If Production is in a sense the presupposition of all moral and spiritual life,
no less certainly correct moral conceptions--may we not even say true spiritual
conditions?--are the indispensable means of determining Distribution. For a
society in which every individual is striving with all his strength or cunning
to procure for himself the largest possible share of the common stock, in which
therefore the material possessions gravitate into the hands of the strong and
the unscrupulous, while the weak and the honourable are left destitute--such a
society, if it ever came into existence, would be a demoralised society. Such a
demoralisation is always probable when the means of production have been rapidly
and greatly improved, and when the fever of getting has overpowered the sense of
righteousness and all the kindlier human feelings. Such a demoralisation is to
be averted by securing attention to the abiding moral principles which must
govern men's action in the matter of wealth, and by enforcing these principles
with such vividness of illustration and such cogency of sanction that they shall
be generally accepted and practised.

In our own day this question of the distribution of wealth stands in the front
rank of practical questions. Religious teachers must face it, or else they must
forfeit their claim to be the guides and instructors of their generation.

Socialists are grappling with this question not altogether in a religious
spirit: they have stepped into a gap which Christians have left empty; they have
recognised a great spiritual issue when Christians have seen nothing but a
material problem of pounds, shillings, and pence, of supply and demand, of
labour and capital. Where Socialism adopts the programme of Revolution, Wisdom
cannot give in her adhesion; she knows too well that suffering, impatience, and
despair are unsafe, although very pathetic, counsellors; she knows too well that
social upheaval does not produce social reconstruction, but a weary entail of
fresh upheavals; she has learnt, too, that society is organic, and cannot, like
Pelops in the myth, win rejuvenescence by being cut up and cast into the
cauldron, but can advance only by a quiet and continuous growth, in which each
stage comes naturally and harmoniously out of the stage which preceded. But all
Socialism is not revolutionary. And Wisdom cannot withhold her sympathy and her
aid where Socialism takes the form of stating, and expounding, and enforcing
truer conceptions concerning the distribution of wealth. It is by vigorous and
earnest grappling with the moral problem that the way of advance is prepared;
every sound lesson therefore in the right way of regarding wealth, and in the
use of wealth, is a step in the direction of that social renovation which all
earnest men at present desire.

The book of Proverbs presents some very clear and decisive teaching on this
question, and it is our task now to view this teaching, scattered and
disconnected though it be, as a whole.

I. The first thing to be noted in the book is its frank and full recognition
that Wealth has its advantages, and Poverty has its disadvantages. There is no
quixotic attempt to overlook, as many moral and spiritual systems do, the
perfectly obvious facts of life. The extravagance and exaggeration which led St.
Francis to choose Poverty as his bride find no more sanction in this Ancient
Wisdom than in the sound teaching of our Lord and His Apostles. The rich man's
wealth is his strong city, [154] we are told, and as an high wall in his own
imagination, while the destruction of the poor is their poverty. The rich man
can ransom himself from death if by chance he has fallen into difficulties,
though this benefit is to some extent counterbalanced by the reflection that the
poor escape the threats of such dangers, as no bandit would care to attack a man
with an empty purse and a threadbare cloak. [155] The rich man gains many
advantages through his power of making gifts; it brings him before great men,
[156] it procures him universal friendship, such as it is, [157] it enables him
to pacify the anger of an adversary, [158] for indeed a gift is as a precious
stone in the eyes of him that hath it, whithersoever it turneth it prospereth.
[159] Not only does wealth make many friends, [160] it also secures positions of
influence and authority, over those who are poorer, enabling a man to sit in
Parliament or to gain the governorship of a colony. [161] It gives even the
somewhat questionable advantage of being able to treat others with brusqueness
and hauteur. [162]

On the other hand, the poor man has to use entreaties. [163] His poverty
separates him from his neighbours, and even incurs his neighbours' hatred. [164]
Nay, worse than this, his friends go far from him, his very brethren hate him,
if he calls after them they quickly get out of his reach; [165] while the
necessity of borrowing from wealthier men keeps him in a position of continual
bondage. [166] Indeed, nothing can compensate for being without the necessaries
of life: "Better is he that is lightly esteemed, and is his own servant, than he
that honoureth himself, and lacketh bread." [167]

Since then Poverty is a legitimate subject of dread, there are urgent
exhortations to diligence and thrift, quite in accordance with the excellent
apostolic maxim that if a man will not work he shall not eat; while there are
forcible statements of the things which tend to poverty, and of the courses
which result in comfort and wealth. Thus it is pointed out how slack and
listless labour leads to poverty, while industry leads to wealth. [168] We are
reminded that the obstinate refusal to be corrected is a fruitful source of
poverty, [169] while the humble and pious mind is rewarded with riches as well
as with honour and life. [170] In the house of the wise man are found treasures
as well as all needful supplies. [171] Drunkenness and gluttony lead to poverty,
and drowsiness clothes a man with rags. [172] And there is a beautiful
injunction to engage in an agricultural life, which is the only perennial source
of wealth, the only secure foundation of a people's prosperity. As if we were
back in patriarchal times, we are thus admonished in the later proverbs of
Solomon [173] :--

"Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks,

And look well to thy herds;

For riches are not for ever;

And doth the crown endure unto all generations?

The hay is carried, and the tender grass showeth itself,

And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in.

The lambs are for thy clothing,

And the goats are the price of the field:

And there will be goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy
household;

And maintenance for thy maidens."

II. But now, making all allowance for the advantages of wealth, we have to
notice some of its serious drawbacks. To begin with, it is always insecure. If a
man places any dependence upon it, it will fail him; only in his imagination is
it a sure defence. [174] "Wilt thou set thine eyes upon it? it is gone. For
riches certainly make themselves wings, like an eagle that flieth toward
heaven." [175]

But, further, if the wealth has been obtained in any other way than by honest
labour it is useless, at any rate for the owner, and indeed worse than useless
for him. [176]

As the text says, treasures of wickedness profit nothing. In the revenues of the
wicked is trouble. [177] Got in light and fallacious ways, the money dwindles;
only when gathered by labour does it really increase. [178] When it is obtained
by falsehood--by the tricks and misrepresentations of trade, for example--it may
be likened to a vapour driven to and fro--nay, rather to a mephitic vapour, a
deadly exhalation, the snares of death. [179] Worst of all is it to obtain
wealth by oppression of the poor; one who does so shall as surely come to want
as he who gives money to those who do not need it. [180] In fact, our book
contains the striking thought that ill-earned wealth is never gathered for the
benefit of the possessor, but only for the benefit of the righteous, and must be
useless until it gets into hands which will use it benevolently. [181]

And while there are these serious drawbacks to material possessions, we are
further called upon to notice that there is wealth of another kind, wealth
consisting in moral or spiritual qualities, compared with which wealth, as it is
usually understood, is quite paltry and unsatisfying. When the intrinsic defects
of silver and gold have been frankly stated, this earthy treasure is set, as a
whole, in comparison with another kind of treasure, and is observed to become
pale and dim. Thus "riches profit not in the day of wrath, but righteousness
delivereth from death." [182] Indeed it is only the blessing of the Lord which
brings riches without drawbacks. [183] In the house of the righteous is much
treasure. [184] Better is a little with righteousness than great treasure
without right. [185] In the light of these moral considerations the relative
positions of the rich and the poor are reversed; it is better to be an honest
poor man than a perverse rich man; the little grain of integrity in the heart
and life outweighs all the balance at the bank. [186]

A little wisdom, a little sound understanding, or a little wholesome knowledge
is more precious than wealth. How much better is it to get wisdom than gold.
Yea, to get understanding is rather to be chosen than silver. [187] There may be
gold and abundance of rubies, but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.
[188]

Nay, there are some things apparently very trifling which will so depreciate
material wealth that if a choice is to be made it is well to let the wealth go
and to purchase immunity from these trivial troubles. Better is a little with
the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a
dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. [189]
Better is a dry morsel and quietness therewith than an house full of feasting
with strife. [190] Yes, the good will and affectionate regard of our fellow-men
are on the whole far more valuable than a large revenue. A good name is rather
to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.
[191] Indeed, when the relations of the rich and the poor are brought up into
God's presence our whole conception of the matter is liable to change; we
observe the rich and the poor meet together, and the Lord the maker of them all;
[192] we observe that any slur cast on the poor or any oppression of them is
practically a reproach against the Maker, [193] whilst any act of pity or
tenderness to the needy is in effect a service rendered to God; and more and
more we get to feel that notwithstanding the rich man's good opinion of himself
he presents rather a sorry spectacle in the presence of the wise, even though
the wise may be exceedingly poor. [194]

Taking into account therefore the intrinsic insecurity of wealth, and the
terrible flaws in the title which may result from questionable ways of obtaining
it, and estimating at a right value the other things which are not usually
reckoned as wealth,--goodness, piety, wisdom, knowledge, and love,--we can quite
understand that enlightened men might be too busy in life to make money, too
occupied with grave purposes and engrossed with noble objects of pursuit to
admit the perturbations of mammon into their souls. [195] Making all allowance
for the unquestionable advantages of being rich, and the serious inconveniences
of being poor, we may yet see reasons for not greatly desiring wealth, nor
greatly dreading poverty.

III. But now we come to the positive counsels which our Teacher would give on
the strength of these considerations about money and its acquisition. And first
of all we are solemnly cautioned against the fever of money-getting, the passion
to get rich, a passion which has the most demoralising effect on its victims,
and is indeed an indication of a more or less perverted character. The good man
cannot be possessed by it, and if he could he would soon become bad. [196]

These grave warnings of Wisdom are specially needed at the present time in
England and America, when the undisguised and the unrestrained pursuit of riches
has become more and more recognised as the legitimate end of life, so that few
people feel any shame in admitting that this is their aim; and the clear
unimpassioned statements of the result, which always follows on the unhallowed
passion, receive daily confirmation from the occasional revelations of our
domestic, our commercial, and our criminal life. He that is greedy of gain, we
are told, troubleth his own house. [197] An inheritance may be gotten hastily at
the beginning, but the end thereof shall not be blessed. [198] A faithful man
shall abound with blessings, but he that maketh haste to be rich (and
consequently cannot by any possibility be faithful) shall not be unpunished.
[199] He that hath an evil eye hasteth after riches, and knoweth not that want
shall come upon him. [200] "Weary not thyself," therefore, it is said, "to be
rich;" which, though it may be the dictate of thine own wisdom, [201] is really
unmixed folly, burdened with a load of calamity for the unfortunate seeker, for
his house, and for all those who are in any way dependent upon him.

Again, while we are cautioned not to aim constantly at the increase of our
possessions, we are counselled to exercise a generous liberality in the disposal
of such things as are ours. Curiously enough, niggardliness in giving is
associated with slothfulness in labour, while it is implied that the wish to
help others is a constant motive for due diligence in the business of life.
"There is that coveteth greedily all the day long, but the righteous giveth and
withholdeth not." [202] The law of nature,--the law of life,--is to give out and
not merely to receive, and in fulfilling that law we receive unexpected
blessings: "There is that scattereth and increaseth yet more, and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth only to want. The liberal soul
shall be made fat; and he that watereth shall be watered also himself." [203]
"He that giveth to the poor shall not lack; but he that hideth his eyes shall
have many a curse." [204] "He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord,
and his good deed will He pay him again." [205] "He that hath a bountiful eye
shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor." [206]

Such a wholesome shunning of the thirst for wealth, and such a generous spirit
in aiding others, naturally suggest to the wise man a daily prayer, a request
that he may avoid the dangerous extremes, and walk in the happy mean of worldly
possessions: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is
needful for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest
I be poor and steal, and use profanely the name of my God." [207] It is a
request not easy to make with perfect sincerity; there are not many who, like
Emerson's grandfather, venture to pray that neither they nor their descendants
may ever be rich; while there have been not a few who in a "show of wisdom in
will-worship and humility and severity to the body" have sought for an
unnecessary and an unwholesome poverty. But it is a wise request; it finds an
echo in the prayer which our Lord taught His disciples, and constantly appears
inwoven in the apostolic teaching. And if the individual is to desire such
things for himself, he must naturally desire that such may be the lot of his
fellow-creatures, and he must make it the aim of his efforts after social reform
to indefinitely increase the number of those who occupy this happy middle
position, and have neither riches nor poverty.

And now we have followed the lines of teaching contained in this book on the
subject of wealth, and it is impossible to miss the wisdom, the moderation, the
inspiration of such counsels. We cannot fail to see that if these principles
were recognised universally, and very generally practised; if they were
ingrained in the constitution of our children, so as to become the instinctive
motives and guides of action; the serious social troubles which arise from the
unsatisfactory distribution of wealth would rapidly disappear. Happy would that
society be in which all men were aiming, not at riches, but merely at a modest
competency, dreading the one extreme as much as the other; in which the
production of wealth were constantly moderated and controlled by the conviction
that wealth gotten by vanity is as the snares of death; in which all who had
become the owners of wealth were ready to give and glad to distribute, counting
a wise benevolence, which in giving to the needy really lends to the Lord, the
best investment in the world.

If these neglected principles are hitherto very faintly recognised, we must
recollect that they have never been seriously preached. Although they were
theoretically taught, and practically lived out, in the words and the life of
Jesus Christ, they have never been fully incorporated into Christianity. The
mediæval Church fell into the perilous doctrines of the Ebionites, and glorified
poverty in theory while in practice it became an engine of unparalleled
rapacity. Protestantism has generally been too much occupied with the great
principle of Justification by Faith to pay much attention to such a writing as
the Epistle of St. James, which Luther described as "a letter of straw"; and
thus, while we all believe that we are saved by faith in Christ Jesus, it seldom
occurs to us that such a faith must include the most exact and literal obedience
to His teachings. Christian men unblushingly serve Mammon, and yet hope that
they are serving God too, because they believe on Him whom God sent--though He
whom God sent expressly declared that the two services could not be combined.
Christian men make it the effort of a lifetime to become rich, although Christ
declared that it was easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; and when they hear that Christ required
an intending follower to sell all that he had and give to the poor, they explain
it away, and maintain that He does not require such a sacrifice from them, but
simply asks them to believe in the Atonement.

In this way Christians have made their religion incredible, and even ridiculous,
to many of the most earnest spirits of our time. When Christ is made unto them
Wisdom as well as Redemption, they will see that the principles of Wisdom which
concern wealth are obligatory upon them, just because they profess to believe in
Christ. __________________________________________________________________

[154] Prov. x. 15; xviii. 11.

[155] Prov. xiii. 8.

[156] Prov. xviii. 16.

[157] Prov. xix. 6; xiv. 20.

[158] Prov. xxi. 14.

[159] Prov. xvii. 8. More literally: "A precious stone is the gift in the eyes
of him who gets possession of it, whithersoever he turneth he deals wisely."
That is to say, the man who receives the gift, whether a judge or a witness or
an opponent, is as it were retained for the giver, and induced to use his best
faculties in behalf of his retainer.

[160] Prov. xix. 4: "Wealth addeth many friends, but the poor--his companion
separates from him."

[161] Prov. xxii. 17.

[162] Prov. xviii. 23.

[163] Prov. xviii. 23.

[164] Prov. xiv. 20; xix. 4.

[165] Prov. xix. 7. The sense of the Authorised Version is here retained, but it
will be seen in Lecture XII. that there is good reason for treating the third
clause of the verse as a mutilated fragment of another proverb: see p. [1]166.

[166] Prov. xxii. 7.

[167] Prov. xii. 9. This reading is obtained by following the LXX., whose
translation ho douleuon eauto shows that they pointed vvd lv. Cf. Eccles. x. 27:
"Better is he that laboureth and aboundeth in all things than he that boasteth
himself and lacketh bread."

[168] Prov. x. 4.

[169] Prov. xiii. 18.

[170] Prov. xxii. 4.

[171] Prov. xxi. 20.

[172] Prov. xxiii. 21.

[173] Prov. xxvii. 23-27.

[174] Prov. xi. 28.

[175] Prov. xxiii. 5 (marg.).

[176] Cf. the Turkish proverb: "Of riches lawfully gained the devil takes half,
of riches unlawfully gained he takes the whole and the owner too."

[177] Prov. xv. 6, cf. xiv. 24, "A crown of the wise is their riches, but the
folly of fools, (though they be rich, remains nothing but) folly."

[178] Prov. xiii. 11.

[179] Prov. xxi. 6. It is evident from their translation epi pagidas thanatou
that the LXX. read mvqsymvt as in Psalm xviii. 6, and this gives a very graphic
and striking sense, while the received text of the Hebrew, mvqsymvt, is hardly
intelligible.

[180] Prov. xxii. 16.

[181] Prov. xiii. 22; xxviii. 8.

[182] Prov. xi. 4.

[183] Prov. x. 22.

[184] Prov. xv. 6.

[185] Prov. xvi. 8.

[186] Prov. xix. 1. The parallelism in this verse is not so complete as in
xxviii. 6. The Peshitto reads, "than he who is perverse in his lips and is
rich," but it is better to retain the text and understand: There is a poor man
walking in his integrity, and everyone thinks that he is to be commiserated; but
he is much better off than the fool with perverse lips, though no one thinks of
commiserating this last.

[187] Prov. xvi. 16.

[188] Prov. xx. 15.

[189] Prov. xv. 16, 17.

[190] Prov. xvii. 1.

[191] Prov. xxii. 1. This proverb is inscribed in the cupola which lights the
Manchester Exchange. It is a good skylight, but apparently too high up for the
busy merchants on the floor of the Exchange to see without more effort than is
to be expected of them.

[192] Prov. xxii. 2.

[193] Prov. xiv. 31; xvii. 5.

[194] Prov. xxviii. 11. Cf. an interesting addition to xvii. 6 in the LXX.-- tou
pistou holos ho kosmos ton chrematon tou de apistou oude obolos. The faithful
man owns the whole world of possessions, the unfaithful owns not a farthing.

[195] It is said of Agassiz that he excused himself from engaging in a
profitable lecturing tour on the ground that he had not time to make money.

[196] Cf. the saying of Sirach: "Winnow not with every wind and go not into
every way, for so doth the sinner that hath a double tongue." (Eccles. v. 9).

[197] Prov. xv. 27.

[198] Prov. xx. 21.

[199] Prov. xxviii. 20.

[200] Prov. xxviii. 22.

[201] Prov. xxiii. 4.

[202] Prov. xxi. 26.

[203] Prov. xi. 24, 25.

[204] Prov. xxviii. 27.

[205] Prov. xix. 17.

[206] Prov. xxii. 9.

[207] Prov. xxx. 8, 9.
__________________________________________________________________

XI.

GOODNESS.

"The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them."--Prov. xi. 6.

"An unjust man is the abomination of the righteous, and he who goes right in his
way is the abomination of the wicked."--Prov. xxix. 27.

The book of Proverbs abounds with sayings which have the sound of truisms,
sayings which repeat, with innumerable variations and shades of colouring, that
wickedness is an evil, hateful to God and to men, and that righteousness is a
blessing not only to the righteous themselves, but to all with whom they are
connected. We are disposed to say, Surely no reasonable person can question such
an obvious truth; but on reflection we remember that the truth was not perceived
by the great religions of antiquity, is not recognised now by the vast majority
of the human race, and even where it is theoretically admitted without question
is too frequently forgotten in the hurry and the pressure of practical life.
There is good reason therefore why the truism, as we are inclined to call it,
should be thrown into the form of maxims which will find a hold in the memory,
and readily occur to the mind on occasions of trial. And as we pass in review
what Proverbial Religion has to say upon the subject, we shall perhaps be
surprised to find how imperfectly we have apprehended the supreme importance of
goodness, and how insidiously teachings, which were originally meant to enforce
it, have usurped its place and treated it with contumely. It will begin to dawn
upon us that the truth is a truism, not because it is carried out in practice,
but only because no one has the hardihood to question it; and perhaps we shall
receive some impulse towards transforming the conviction which we cannot dispute
into a mode of conduct which we cannot decline.

To begin with, our book is most unflinching in its assertions that,
notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, wickedness is a mistake, a
source of perpetual weakness and insecurity, always in the long run producing
ruin and death; while righteousness is in itself a perpetual blessing, and is
weighted with beautiful and unexpected fruits. The very reiteration becomes most
impressive.

The hope of the righteous shall be gladness; but the expectation of the wicked
shall perish. [208] The righteous shall never be removed, but the wicked shall
not dwell in the land. [209] The house of the wicked shall be overthrown, but
the tent of the upright shall flourish. [210] The wicked earneth deceitful
wages, but he that soweth righteousness hath a sure reward. [211] A man shall
not be established by wickedness, while the root of the righteous shall never be
moved. [212] The wicked really falls by his own wickedness, and is swept away by
his own violence. [213] He sows iniquity and reaps calamity. [214] His crooked
way, his malignant thoughts, the hatred against his neighbour, the guile in his
heart, and the flood of evil things which comes out of his lips, have one
issue--destruction. [215] When he comes to die, his expectation perishes, all
the hope of iniquity ends in disappointment. [216] His lamp goes out not to be
relit. [217] Meanwhile, the light of the righteous man rejoices, because he
attains unto life as surely as the wicked works towards death. [218]

It is true that the appearance of things is different. Hand joins in hand to
promote evil. [219] Men follow out what seems right in their own hearts, evil as
they are. [220] Success seems to attend them, and one is tempted to envy the
sinners, and to fret at their ways. [221] But the envy is misplaced; the evil
man does not go unpunished; the wicked are overthrown and are not. [222] The way
which seemed right in a man's eyes proves to be the way of death. [223] A
righteous man falleth seven times and riseth up again; but the wicked are
overthrown by calamity, [224] and the righteous are obliged to look upon their
fall. [225]

On the other hand, goodness is its own continual reward. While treacherous men
are destroyed by their perverseness, the upright are guided by their own
integrity. [226] While the sinner is overthrown by his wickedness, righteousness
guardeth him that is upright in the way. [227] If the righteous gets into
trouble he is delivered, while the wicked falls into his place: [228] there is a
kind of substitution; a ransom is paid to enable the righteous to escape, and
the ransom is the person of the wicked. [229] Not only does the righteous come
out of trouble, [230] but, strictly speaking, no mischief really happens to him;
it is only the wicked that is filled with evil. [231] The righteous eats to the
satisfying of his own soul, but the belly of the wicked shall want. [232] The
good man walks on a highway and so preserves his soul. [233] Mercy and truth
shine upon him because he devises good. [234] He only followed after
righteousness and mercy, but he found life, righteousness, and honour. [235] His
heart is flooded with joy, he actually sings as he journeys on. [236] He seems
like a tree in the green leaf, a tree of life, the fruits of which cannot fail
to be attractive; so that he unconsciously wins favour. [237] The fruit does not
fail, because the root is alive. [238] And if in actual life this blessedness of
the good man does not appear, if by reason of the evil in the world the
righteous seem to be punished, and the noble to be smitten, [239] that only
creates a conviction that the fruit will grow in another life; for when we have
closely observed the inseparable connection between goodness and blessedness, we
cannot avoid the conviction that "the righteous hath hope in his death." [240]
Yes, practical goodness is the source of perpetual blessing, and it cannot be
altogether hidden. Even a child maketh himself known by his doings, whether his
work be pure and right. [241] To the good we must assign the supremacy; the evil
must bow before them and wait at their gates. [242] And it is easy to understand
why it appears so incongruous--so abnormal, like a troubled fountain and a
corrupted spring, when the righteous give way to the wicked. [243]

Nor is the blessing of goodness at all limited to the good man himself. It falls
on his children too. A just man that walketh in his integrity, blessed are his
children after him. [244] It reaches even to the third generation. A good man
leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. [245] The righteous is a
guide to his neighbour also. [246] He is a joy to his sovereign; he that loveth
pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend. [247]
His character and his well-being are a matter of public, even of national
concern, for there is something winning in him; he acts as a saving influence
upon those who are around him. [248] Therefore, when the righteous increase the
people rejoice, [249] when they triumph there is great glory. [250] When it
goeth well with the righteous the city rejoiceth, just as when the wicked perish
there is shouting. By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, just as
it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. [251] Yes, righteousness exalteth a
nation, while sin is a reproach to the whole people. [252]

It is the grand public interest to see the wicked perish in order that the
righteous may increase: [253] for the way of the wicked causes other people to
err. [254] His lips are like a scorching fire; [255] his presence brings a
general atmosphere of contempt, ignominy, and shame. [256] When the wicked rise
men hide themselves, [257] when they bear rule the people sigh. [258] Well may
the national feeling be severe on all those who encourage the wicked in any way.
He that saith unto the wicked, Thou art righteous, peoples shall curse him,
nations shall abhor him; but to them that rebuke him shall be delight, and a
good blessing shall come upon them. [259] It is a sure sign that one is
forsaking the law when one ceases to contend with the wicked and begins to
praise them. [260]

Blessing to himself, blessing to his children, his neighbours, his country, is
the beautiful reward of the good man; ruin to himself, a spreading contagion of
evil to others, and general execration, is the lot of the wicked. Well may the
former be bold as a lion, and well may the latter flee when no man pursues, for
conscience makes cowards of us all. [261]

But at present we have not touched on the chief blessedness of the good, and the
chief curse of the evil, on that which is really the spring and fountain-head of
all. It is the great fact that God is with the righteous and against the wicked,
that He judges men according to their integrity or perverseness, and accepts
them or rejects them simply upon that principle. By looking at this lofty truth
we get all our conceptions on the subject cleared. The perverse in heart are an
abomination to the Lord; such as are perfect in their way are His delight. [262]
A good man shall obtain favour of the Lord, but a man of wicked devices will He
condemn. [263] Evil devices are an abomination to the Lord, [264] and so is the
wicked, but He loveth the righteous. [265] To justify the wicked or to condemn
the righteous is equally abominable to Him. [266] He considers the house of the
wicked, how the wicked are overthrown to their ruin. [267] He overthrows the
words of the treacherous man, while His eyes preserve him that hath knowledge.
[268] He weighs the heart and keeps the soul and renders to every man according
to his work. [269] Thus His way is a stronghold to the upright, but a
destruction to the workers of iniquity. [270] He does not regard prayer so much
as righteousness; he that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his
prayer is an abomination. [271] Sacrifice goes for nothing in His sight if the
life is not holy. To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than
sacrifice. [272] The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination: how much more
when he bringeth it with a wicked mind? [273] Yes, it is an abomination to the
Lord, just as the prayer of the upright is His delight. The Lord is far from the
wicked, but He heareth the prayer of the righteous. [274] When the foolish
sinner offers a sin-offering instead of relinquishing his sin, the very offering
mocks him, for it is only the righteous who find favour with the Lord. [275]

It is this solemn truth, the truth of God's own way of regarding goodness and
wickedness, which makes earnestness on the subject essential. If goodness were
only pleasing to man, if sin were only an offence against creatures like
ourselves, ordinary prudence would require us to be good and to avoid evil, but
higher sanction would be wanting. When, however, the matter is taken up into the
Divine presence, and we begin to understand that the Supreme Ruler of all things
loves righteousness and hates iniquity, visits the one with favour and the other
with reprobation, quite a new sanction is introduced. The wicked man, who makes
light of evil, to whom it is as a sport, appears to be nothing short of an
absolute fool. [276] In God's presence it is not difficult to perceive that
goodness is wisdom, the only wisdom, the perfect wisdom.

But now it may occur to some of us that it is surely nothing very wonderful to
lay this stress upon the close connection between goodness and God-pleasing. Is
it not, we are inclined to say, the most obvious and unquestioned of facts that
God requires goodness at our hands, and is angry with the wicked every day? It
is not very wonderful to us, because Revelation has made it familiar, but none
the less it is a truth of Revelation, and if we were to ask in what the
Inspiration of this book consists, no simpler and truer answer could be given
than that it teaches, as we have just seen, the alliance of God with
righteousness and the abhorrence in which He holds wickedness.

Yes, a truism, but it was a discovery which the world was very slow to make, and
it is still a principle on which the world is very unwilling to act.

The main characteristic of all heathen religions is that their gods do not
demand righteousness, but certain outward and formal observances; sacrifices
must be offered to them, their vindictive temper must be propitiated, their
anger averted; if the dues of the gods are paid, the stipulated quantity of corn
and wine and oil, the tithes, the firstfruits, the animals for the altar, the
tribute for the temple, then the worshipper who has thus discharged his
obligations may feel himself free to follow out his own tastes and inclinations.
In the Roman religion, for example, every dealing with the gods was a strictly
legal contract; the Roman general agreed with Jupiter or with Mars that if the
battle should be won a temple should be built. It was not necessary that the
cause should be right, or that the general should be good; the sacrifice of the
wicked, though offered with an evil intent, was as valid as the sacrifice of the
good. In either case the same amount of marble and stone, of silver and gold,
would come to the god.

In the Eastern religions not only were goodness and righteousness dissociated
from the idea of the gods, but evil of the grossest kinds was definitely
associated with them. The Phoenician deities, like those of the Hindoos, were
actually worshipped with rites of murder and lust. Every vice had its patron god
or goddess, and it was forgotten by priest and people that goodness could be the
way of pleasing God, or moral evil a cause of offence to Him.

Even in Israel, where the teaching of Revelation was current in the proverbs of
the people, the practice generally followed the heathen conceptions. All the
burning protests of the inspired prophets could not avail to convince the
Israelite that what God required was not sacrifice and offering, but to do
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. Again and again we find
that the high places were frequented and the ritual supported by men who were
sensual, unjust, and cruel. The Sabbath Day was kept, the feasts were duly
observed, the priests were handsomely maintained, and there, it was supposed,
the legitimate claims of Jehovah ceased. What more could He desire?

This is surely the most impressive proof that the Truth which is under
consideration is far from being obvious. Israel himself, the chosen channel for
communicating this truth to the world, was so slow to understand and to grasp
it, that his religious observances were constantly degenerating into lifeless
ceremonies devoid of all moral significance, and his religious teachers were
mainly occupied in denouncing his conduct as wholly inconsistent with the truth.

So far from treating the truth as a truism, our Lord in all His teaching
laboured to bring it out in greater clearness, and to set it in the forefront of
His message to men. He made it the very keynote of the Gospel that not every one
who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth
the will of His Father in heaven. He painted with exquisite simplicity and
clearness the right life, the conduct which God requires of us, and then likened
every one who practised this life to a man who builds his house on a rock, and
every one who does not practise it to a man who builds his house on the sand. He
declared, in the spirit of all that we have just read from the book of Proverbs,
that teachers were to be judged by their fruits, and that God would estimate our
lives not by what we professed to do, but by what we did; and He took up the
very language of the book in declaring that every man should be judged according
to his works. [277] In every word He spoke He made it plain that goodness is
what God loves, and that wickedness is what He judges and destroys. In the same
way every one of the Apostles insists on this truth with a new earnestness. St.
John more especially reiterates it, in words which sound even more like a truism
than the sayings of this book: "He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as
He is righteous;" and, "If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one
also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him." [278]

The Gospel itself is accompanied by a new and more earnest assertion of this
cardinal truth, that God loves goodness, and that He judges men according to
their works. And even now, after many centuries of Christian faith, and
notwithstanding all the teachings of the Bible and the witness of the Spirit, it
is very difficult for many of us to understand that religion is goodness, and
religion without goodness is impiety of the worst kind. It is supposed by some,
in face of all the accumulated truth and wisdom of the ages which have passed
since this book was written, that God's last and highest message is a
dispensation from practical righteousness--that the Gospel of Grace means God's
willingness to accept men because they believe, apart from the actual goodness
to which all faith is calculated to lead; as if the Gospel were an announcement
that God had entirely changed His nature, and that all the best and noblest
teachings of His Spirit in the past were set aside by His final revelation.
Behind some figment or other, some perverted notion of imputed righteousness,
men try to hide their guilty countenance, and to persuade themselves that now,
in virtue of the Cross, they can see God without holiness, without purity of
heart. Heaven has been treated as a place where men can enter who work
abomination and make a lie; and in order to secure a full acceptance for our
dogma we try to depreciate goodness as if it were a thing of little worth, and
even come to look with some suspicion on those who are only good--only moral, I
think we call it--and do not hold our own views of speculative truth. Meanwhile
religious teachers "tell the wicked they are righteous," and earn the curse of
the nation, because they thereby enable men to be hard and cruel and unjust and
selfish and proud and contemptuous, and yet to esteem themselves as justified by
faith. Others "justify the wicked," accepting a verbal profession in place of a
virtuous practice; and that, as we have seen, is abominable to the Lord.

Justification by faith loses all its meaning and all its value unless it is
fully admitted that to be just is the great end and aim of religion. Salvation
becomes a delusion unless it is perceived that it means righteousness. Heaven,
and the saints' everlasting rest, become worthless and misleading ideas unless
we recognise that it is the abode of goodness, and that saints are not, as we
sometimes seem to imply, bad people regarded as holy by a legal fiction, but
people who are made good and are actually holy.

Strong as the language of our book is upon the subject, it is not possible to
bring out in mere proverbial sayings the eternal necessity of this great truth.
Goodness and blessedness are actually identical, the reverse and the obverse
sides of the same coin. If a man is made good he is made blessed; but if he is
made blessed to all appearance, and not good, the blessedness proves to be an
illusion. It could not possibly avail to be justified by faith, unless we were
made just by faith; a sore body is not healed by covering it up, a dead man is
not quickened by a smiling mask. There have been many people who counted
themselves the elect, and made no question that they were saved, though they
remained all the time inwardly wicked; they were miserable, sour, discontented,
censorious, a burden to themselves, an eyesore to others; they were persuaded
that they would be happy in heaven, and they supposed that their constant
wretchedness was due to their being pilgrims in a strange land; but the fact was
they would be more wretched still in heaven, for nowhere is evil such a curse as
in a place where good prevails; their misery arose from their own wicked hearts,
and in the next world, their hearts still being wicked, their misery must
continue and increase.

May God grant us a clear vision in this matter, that we may see the due relation
of things! Goodness is the principal thing--for it faith itself and all religion
exists. God is goodness--man is evil; what God means by saving us is to make us
good like Himself. That we must be saved by faith means that we must be made
good by faith, not that we must take faith in place of goodness. That
righteousness is imputed to us by the goodness of God means that the goodness of
Christ is reckoned as ours for the purpose of making us good, not in order to
spare us the necessity of being good. And in this way, and this only, we must
estimate one another. What a man believes in his heart we can never fully know;
but whether he is good or not is a matter plain as the day. It is easy to bandy
words of reproach, to call men unbelievers, sceptics, atheists; but there is
only one wise way of speaking and thinking. If we see goodness, let us thank
God, for there, be sure, His Spirit is; [279] if we see the lovely graces which
shine in our Lord Jesus Christ gleaming, however fitfully, in our fellow-men,
let us recognise Christ there. And where we see wickedness, let no consideration
of outward Christian profession or orthodoxy of belief restrain us from fully
recognising that it is evil, or from courageously contending against it.
__________________________________________________________________

[208] Prov. x. 28.

[209] Prov. x. 30.

[210] Prov. xiv. 11. Cf. Prov. xii. 7: "Overthrow the wicked; and they are not
(i.e., there is no rising again for them), but the house of the righteous shall
stand."

[211] Prov. xi. 18.

[212] Prov. xiii. 3.

[213] Prov. xi. 5, 6; xxi. 7.

[214] Prov. xxii. 8.

[215] Prov. xxi. 7, 8, 10, 15; xxvi. 24, 26; xv. 28.

[216] Prov. xi. 7.

[217] Prov. xiii. 9; xxiv. 20.

[218] Prov. xi. 19.

[219] Prov. xi. 21.

[220] Prov. xiv. 12; xvi. 5, 25; xxi. 2.

[221] Prov. xxiii. 17, 18; xxiv. 1, 19.

[222] Prov. xii. 7.

[223] Prov. xiv. 12; xvi. 25.

[224] Prov. xxiv. 15, 16.

[225] Prov. xxix. 16.

[226] Prov. xi. 3.

[227] Prov. xiii. 6. Cf. Prov. xiv. 14: "The backslider in heart shall be sated
from his own ways, and the good man from himself." Though probably we ought to
read, with Nowack, mmllyv, which would give a completer parallelism: "The
backslider shall be sated from his own ways, and the good man from his own
doings."

[228] Prov. xi. 8. Cf. Prov. xxviii. 18.

[229] Prov. xxi. 18.

[230] Prov. xii. 13.

[231] Prov. xii. 21.

[232] Prov. xiii. 25.

[233] Prov. xvi. 17; xix. 16.

[234] Prov. xiv. 22.

[235] Prov. xxi. 21.

[236] Prov. xxi. 15; xxix. 6. Unless, with Delitzsch, we are to read bphs for
bphs, and yrvts for yrvn, which would give: "In the steps of a bad man lie
snares, but the righteous runs and rejoices."

[237] Prov. xi. 27, 30.

[238] Prov. xii. 12.

[239] Prov. xvii. 26: "To punish the righteous is not good, nor to smite the
noble for their uprightness."

[240] Prov. xiv. 32.

[241] Prov. xx. 11.

[242] Prov. xiv. 19.

[243] Prov. xxv. 26.

[244] Prov. xiv. 26: "In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his
children shall have a place of refuge." So Prov. xx. 7: "A just man that walketh
in his integrity: blessed are his children after him."

[245] Prov. xiii. 22.

[246] Prov. xii. 26.

[247] Prov. xxii. 11. Cf. Prov. xvi. 13.

[248] Prov. xi. 31.

[249] Prov. xxix. 2.

[250] Prov. xxviii. 12.

[251] Prov. xi. 10, 11.

[252] Prov. xiv. 34.

[253] Prov. xxviii. 28.

[254] Prov. xii. 26.

[255] Prov. xvi. 27.

[256] Prov. xviii. 3.

[257] Prov. xxviii. 28.

[258] Prov. xxix. 2.

[259] Prov. xxiv. 24, 25.

[260] Prov. xxviii. 4.

[261] Prov. xxviii. 1.

[262] Prov. xi. 20.

[263] Prov. xii. 2.

[264] Prov. xv. 26.

[265] Prov. xv. 9.

[266] Prov. xvii. 15, 26; xviii. 5.

[267] Prov. xxi. 12, where "one that is righteous" seems to mean God Himself;
see the margin of R.V.

[268] Prov. xxii. 12.

[269] Prov. xxiv. 12.

[270] Prov. x. 29.

[271] Prov. xxviii. 9.

[272] Prov. xxi. 3.

[273] Prov. xxi. 27.

[274] Prov. xv. 8, 29.

[275] Prov. xiv. 9. This seems to be the meaning of this difficult verse, which
should be translated: The sin-offering mocks fools, but among the righteous is
favour.

[276] Prov. x. 23.

[277] Matt. xvi. 27.

[278] 1 John iii. 7, 10; ii. 29.

[279] "If ye know that He is righteous," says St. John, "ye know that every one
also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him." (1 John ii. 29).
__________________________________________________________________

XII.

THE TONGUE.

"A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth: and the doings of
a man's hands shall be rendered unto him."--Prov. xii. 14.

"In the transgression of the lips is a snare to an evil man: but the righteous
shall come out of trouble."--Prov. xii. 13.

"A fool's vexation is presently known: but a prudent man concealeth
shame."--Prov. xii. 16.

"He that uttereth truth showeth forth righteousness, but a false witness
deceit."--Prov. xii. 17.

"The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a
moment."--Prov. xii. 19.

"Lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord: but they that deal truly are His
delight."--Prov. xii. 22.

"There is that speaketh rashly like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of
the wise is health."--Prov. xii. 18.

"A prudent man concealeth knowledge: but the heart of fools proclaimeth
foolishness."--Prov. xii. 23.

"The words of the wicked are a lying in wait for blood: but the mouth of the
upright shall deliver them."--Prov. xii. 6.

"Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop; but a good word maketh it
glad."--Prov. xii. 25.

There is nothing which seems more insubstantial than speech, a mere vibration in
the atmosphere which touches the nerves of hearing and then dies away. There is
no organ which seems smaller and less considerable than the tongue; a little
member which is not even seen, and, physically speaking, soft and weak. But the
word which issues out of the lips is the greatest power in human life. That
"soft tongue breaketh the bone." [280] Words will change the currents of life:
look for instance at a great orator addressing his audience; how miraculous must
it seem to a deaf man watching the speaker that the quiet opening of a mouth
should be able to produce such powerful effects upon the faces, the movements,
the conduct of the listeners!

We are coming to consider the importance of this diminutive organ, the ill uses
and the good uses to which it may be turned, and the consequent necessity of
fitly directly and restraining it.

On the use of the tongue depend the issues of a man's own life. It may be
regarded as a tree which bears fruits of different kinds, and such fruits as his
tongue bears a man must eat. If his words have been good, then he shall be
satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth. [281] "A man's belly shall be
filled with the fruit of his mouth, with the increase of his lips shall he be
satisfied." [282] The fruits which grow on this tongue-tree are death and
life--the tongue produces them--and he that loves the tree shall according to
his love eat the one fruit or the other; if he loves death-bearing speech he
shall eat death; if he loves life-bearing speech he shall eat life. [283] So
deadly may be the fruit of the tongue that the mouth of the fool is regarded as
a present destruction. [284] So wholesome may be the fruit of the tongue that
the tongue of the wise may be actually denominated health. [285]

In the case of the fool it is always very obvious how powerfully the tongue
affects the condition of the speaker. His lips are always coming into strife,
and his mouth is always calling for stripes. It is his destruction, and his lips
are the snare of his soul. [286] In the transgression of the lips always lies
the snare for the evil man: ultimately all men are in effect condemned out of
their own mouths. [287] The tongue proves to be a rod for the back of the proud
and foolish owner of it, while the good man's tongue is a constant
life-preserver. [288] As an old proverb says, a fool's tongue is always long
enough to cut his own throat. On the other hand, where the tongue is wisely used
it always brings back joy to the speaker in the end. [289] Thus whoever keeps
his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles, [290] but the man who
does not take the pains to hear, but gives his testimony falsely, shall perish.
[291] While the use of the tongue thus recoils on the speaker for good or for
evil, it has a wide influence also on others. "He that hath a perverse tongue
falleth into mischief," [292] but when speech is good, and such as it ought to
be, "the words of a man's mouth are like deep waters, a gushing brook, a well of
wisdom." [293]

Thus it is of vast and obvious importance how we use our tongue. If our speech
is gracious we shall win the friendship of the king, [294] and it is a pleasant
thing if we "keep the words of the wise within us and if they be established
together upon our lips." [295] It is better for us to be poor than perverse or
untruthful in our speech. [296] Our teacher, especially our Divine Lord, will
rejoice inwardly and deeply "when our lips speak right things." [297]

We are now cautioned against some of the evil purposes to which the tongue may
be turned, and as all the heads of evil are passed in review we realize why St.
James spoke of the tongue as "the world of iniquity" (iii. 6); and how profound
was our Lord's teaching that out of the mouth proceed the things which defile a
man (Matt. xv. 18).

First of all, the tongue is a fruitful source of Quarrelling and discord. A fool
cannot hide his vexation, but must immediately blurt it out with the tongue.
[298] When he is angry he must utter it all at once, [299] though a wise man
would keep it back and still it, so concealing shame. No one is more certain to
come to grief than "he who provokes with words." [300] These irritating taunts
and threats are like coals to hot embers, and wood to fire; [301] in their
absence the contention would quickly die out. It is therefore the wise counsel
of Agur to one who has done foolishly in exalting himself, or has even
entertained for a moment the arrogant or quarrelsome thought, "Hand on thy
mouth!" for speech under such circumstances produces strife as surely as
churning produces butter from milk, or a blow on the nose blood. [302] Rash,
inconsiderate, angry words are like the piercings of a sword. [303] If only our
wrathful spirit made us immediately dumb, anger would never go far, it would die
out as a conflagration dies when there is no wind to fan the flames.

But again, the tongue is the instrument of Lying; one of its worst disservices
to man is that when it is well balanced, so that it easily wags, it often
betrays him into untruths which his heart never contemplated nor even approved.
It is the tongue which by false witness so often condemns the innocent. [304] A
worthless witness mocketh at judgment; and the mouth of the wicked swalloweth
iniquity. [305] And though such a witness shall not in the long run go
unpunished, nor shall the liar escape, [306] yet, as experience shows, he may
have brought ruin or calamity on others before vengeance falls upon him. The
false witness shall perish, [307] but often not before he has like a mace or a
hammer bruised and like a sword or a sharp arrow pierced his unfortunate
neighbour. [308] It is the tongue which glozes over the purposes of hate, and
lulls the victim into a false security; the fervent lips and the wicked heart
are like a silver lining spread over an earthen vessel to make it look like
silver; the hatred is cunningly concealed, the seven abominations in the heart
are hidden; the pit which is being dug and the stone which is to overwhelm the
innocent are kept secret by the facile talk and flatteries of the tongue; the
more the tongue lies in its guileful machinations the more the heart hates the
victims of its spite. [309] A righteous man hates lying, but the wicked, by his
lies, brings disgrace and shame. [310] The lie often appears to prosper for a
moment, [311] but happily it is an abomination to the Lord, [312] and in His
righteous ordering of events he makes the falsehood which was as bread, and
sweet to the lips, into gravel which breaks the teeth in the mouth. [313] The
curse which is causeless is frustrated, and so also is the empty lie; it wanders
without rest, without limit, like a sparrow or a swallow. [314]

Closely allied to lying is Flattery; and to this vile use the tongue is often
put. Flattery is always a mistake. It does not attain its end in winning the
favour of the flattered; for in the long run "he that rebuketh a man shall find
more favour than he that flattereth with the tongue." [315] If it is believed,
as often unfortunately it is, it proves to be a net spread in the path, which
may trip up, and may even capture and destroy, the unwary walker. [316]

Another evil use of the tongue is for Whispering and tale-bearing. "He that
goeth about as a tale-bearer revealeth secrets"--he is not to be trusted, it is
better to have nothing to do with him. Disclosing the secret of another is a
sure way of incurring reproach and lasting infamy. Such a habit is a fruitful
source of rage and indignation, it brings black wrath to the countenance of him
whose secret has been published, just as a north wind spreads the rain clouds
over the sky. [317] The temptation to tattling is great; the business of a
gossip brings an immediate reward; for the corrupt heart of man delights in
scandal as an epicure in tit-bits: "The words of a whisperer are as dainty
morsels which go down into the chamber of the belly." [318] But what mischief
they do! They separate bosom friends, sowing suspicion and distrust. [319] Where
there is already a little misunderstanding, the whisperer supplies wood to the
fire and keeps it burning; apart from him it would soon die out. [320] But if he
thinks there is any prospect of a reconciliation he will be constantly harping
on the matter; one who seeks love would try to hide the transgression, but the
scandalmonger is a foe to love and the unfailing author of enmity. [321]

But there is Mischief, more deliberate and more malignant still, which the
tongue is employed to plot, to plan and to execute. "With his mouth the godless
man destroyeth his neighbour." [322] "The words of the wicked are a lying in
wait for blood." [323] "The mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things," [324]
blasphemies, obscenities, curses, imprecations. "A froward man scattereth abroad
strife." [325] He deceives, and in bitter raillery declares that he was only
jesting; he is like a madman casting firebrands, arrows, and death. [326] We
know what it is to hear a man pouring out foul, abusive, and impious language,
until the very atmosphere seems enflamed with firebrands, and arrows fly hither
and thither through the horrified air. We know, too, what it is to hear the
smooth and well-turned speech of the hypocrite and the impostor, which seems to
oppress the heart with a sense of decomposition; righteousness, truth, and joy
seem to wither away, and in the choking suffocation of deceit and fraud life
itself seems as if it must expire.

It is a relief to turn from those worst uses of the tongue to the more
pardonable vices of Rashness and Inopportuneness of speech. Yet these too are
evil enough in their way. To pass a judgment before we are in possession of the
facts, and before we have taken the pains to carefully investigate and consider
them, is a sign of folly and a source of shame. [327] So impressed is our
teacher with the danger of ill-considered speech that he says, "Seest thou a man
that is hasty in his words? there is more hope of a fool than of him." [328] And
even where the utterance of the tongue is in itself good it may be rendered evil
by its untimeliness; religious talk itself may be so introduced as to hinder the
cause of religion; pearls may be cast before swine: "Speak not in the hearing of
a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of thy words." [329] There must be some
preparation of spirit before we can wisely introduce Divine and heavenly things,
and circumstances must not be chosen which will tend to make the Divine things
seem mean and contemptible. It may be good to rebuke an evildoer, or to admonish
a friend; but if the opportunity is not fitting, we may make the evildoer more
evil,--we may alienate our friend without improving him.

Considering then what mischief may be done with the tongue, it is not to be
wondered at that we are cautioned against excessive speech. "In the multitude of
words there wanteth not transgression, but he that refraineth his lips doeth
wisely." [330] "He that guardeth his mouth keepeth his life; who opens wide his
lips gets destruction, and a fool spreadeth out folly." [331] "In all labour is
profit, the talk of the lips tends only to poverty." [332] "Wisdom rests in the
heart of the understanding, but even in the inward part of fools all is
blabbed." [333] "In the fool are no lips of knowledge" because he is always
talking. [334] "The tongue of the wise uttereth knowledge aright, but the mouth
of fools poureth out folly." [335] "A fool hath no delight in understanding, but
only that his heart may reveal itself." [336] One who is always pouring out talk
is sure to be pouring out folly. The wise man, feeling that all his words must
be tested and weighed, is not able to talk very much. When your money is all in
copper, you may afford to throw it about, but when it is all in gold you have to
be cautious. A Christian feels that for every idle word he utters he will have
to give account, and as none of his words are to be idle they must be
comparatively few; the word that kindles wrath, the lie, the whisper, the
slander, can therefore find no place on his lips.

This brings us to the Good and beautiful uses of the tongue, those uses which
justify us in calling the tongue of the wise Health. [337] First of all the
tongue has the gracious power of soothing and restraining anger. It is the
readiest instrument of peace-making. Gentleness of speech allays great offences,
[338] and by preventing quarrels, disarming wrath, and healing the wounds of the
spirit, it maintains its claim to be a tree of life. [339] If in the tumult of
passion, when fiery charges are made and grievous provocations are uttered, the
tongue can be held in firm restraint, and made to give a soft answer, the storm
will subside, the angry assailant will retire abashed, [340] and the flaming
arrows will be quenched in the buckler of meekness which opposes them. Nor is
the tongue only defensive in such cases. The pleasant words, spoken out of a
kindly and gentle nature, have a purifying effect; [341] they cleanse away the
defilements out of which the evil passions sprang; they purge the diseased
humours which produce the irritations of life; they supply a sweet food to the
poor hearts of men, who are often contentious because they are hungry for
sympathy and love. Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, health
to the bones. [342] They must be true words, or they will not in the end be
pleasant, for, as we have seen, the sweet bread of falsehood turns to gravel in
the mouth. But what a different world this would become if we all spoke as many
pleasant words as we honestly could, and were not so painfully afraid of showing
what tenderness and pity and healing actually exist in our hearts! For another
beautiful use of the tongue is to comfort the mourners, of whom there are always
so many in the world. "Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop." There
are these stooping, bowed-down hearts everywhere around us. We wish that we
could remove the cause of sorrow, that we could effectually change the
conditions which seem unfavourable to joy; but being unable to do this, we often
stand aloof and remain silent, because we shrink from giving words without
deeds, pity without relief. We forget that when the heart is heavy it is just "a
good word that maketh it glad." [343] Yes, a word of genuine sympathy, a word
from the heart,--and in trouble no other word can be called good,--will often do
more to revive the drooping spirit than the grosser gifts of material wealth. A
coin kindly given, a present dictated by a heart-felt love, may come as a
spiritual blessing; on the other hand, money given without love is worthless,
and seldom earns so much as gratitude, while a word in season, how good it is!
[344] It is better than silver and gold; the discouraged and despondent heart
seems to be touched with the delicate finger of hope, and to rise from the ashes
and the dust with a new purpose and a new life. It must, of course, be in
season. "As vinegar upon nitre so is he that sings songs to a sad heart." [345]
But the seasonable word, spoken just at the right moment and just in the right
tone, brief and simple, but comprehending and penetrating, will often make the
sad heart sing a song for itself.

Great stress is to be laid on this seasonableness of speech, whether the speech
be for comfort or reproof. A word fitly spoken, or to preserve the image implied
in the original, a word that runs on its wheels in the just and inevitable
groove, is compared to a beautiful ornament consisting of golden apples set in
an appropriate framework of silver filigree. [346] In such an ornament the
golden apples torn from their suitable foil would lose half their beauty, and
the silver setting without the apples would only suggest a void and a missing.
It is in the combination that the artistic value is to be found. In the same
way, the wisest utterance spoken foolishly [347] jars upon the hearers, and
misses the mark, while a very simple saying, a platitude in itself, may by its
setting become lovely and worthy. The best sermon in a social gathering will
seem out of place, but how often can the Christian man by some almost unobserved
remark correct unseasonable levity, rebuke unhallowed conversation, and lead the
minds of the company to nobler thoughts. The timely word is better than the best
sermon in such a case.

The use of the tongue in Reproof is frequently referred to in these proverbs. "A
wise reprover upon an obedient ear" is compared to "an earring of gold, an
ornament of fine gold." [348] And rebuke is, as we have seen, preferred before
flattery. [349] But how wise we must be before our tongue can fitly discharge
this function! How humble must the heart be before it can instruct the tongue to
speak at once with firmness and tenderness, without a touch of the Pharisee in
its tone, to the erring brother or the offending stranger! A rebuke which
springs not from love but from vanity, not from self-forgetfulness but from
self-righteousness, will not be like an earring of gold, but rather like an
ornament of miserable tinsel chafing the ear, the cause of gangrene, a
disfigurement as well as an injury. But if we live in close communion with
Christ, and daily receive His stern but tender rebukes into our own souls, it is
possible that we may be employed by Him to deliver timely rebukes to our
fellow-men.

There are two other noble uses of the tongue to which reference is constantly
made in our book; the Instruction of the ignorant, and the Championship of the
distressed. With regard to the first, we are told that "the lips of the wise
disperse knowledge," while of course the heart of the foolish not being right
cannot possibly impart rightness to others. [350] It is only the wise in heart
that can claim the title of prudent, but where that wisdom is "the sweetness of
the lips increaseth learning." [351] "The heart of the wise instructeth his
mouth and addeth learning to his lips." [352] The lips of knowledge are compared
to a precious vessel which is more valuable than gold or rubies. [353] To teach
well requires earnest preparation, "the heart of the righteous studieth to
answer." [354] But when the right answer to the pupil is discovered and given it
is beautifully compared to a kiss on the lips. [355]

But never is the tongue more divinely employed than in using its knowledge or
its pleadings to deliver those who are in danger or distress. "Through knowledge
the righteous may often be delivered." [356] The mouth of the upright will
deliver those against whom the wicked are plotting. [357] It is a great
prerogative of wise lips that they are able to preserve not themselves only but
others. [358] The true and faithful witness delivers souls. [359] It is this
which gives to power its one great attraction for the good man. The ruler, the
judge, the person of social consideration or of large means is in the enviable
position of being able to "open his mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such
as are left desolate, to judge rightly and minister judgment to the poor and
needy." [360]

The Press--that great fourth estate--which represents for us the more extended
use of the tongue in modern times, illustrates in the most vivid way the service
which can be rendered where speech is fit, and also the injury that can be done
where it is rash, imprudent, dishonest, interested, or unjust.

After thus reviewing some of the good uses of the tongue, and observing how they
depend on the state of the heart, [361] we cannot help again laying stress on
the need of a wise self-control in all that we say. He that refraineth his lips
doeth wisely. A man of understanding holdeth his peace. [362] "He that spareth
his words hath knowledge." [363] "Even a fool when he holdeth his peace is
counted wise, when he shutteth his lips he is prudent." [364] If only the
uninstructed and foolish person has sense enough to perceive that wisdom is too
high for him he will not open his mouth in the gate, [365] and so in listening
he may learn. "Of thine unspoken word thou art master," says an Indian proverb,
"but thy spoken word is master of thee." We are to be swift to hear, but slow to
speak: we are to ponder all that we hear, for it is only the simple that
believes every word, the prudent man looks well to his going. [366] As St. James
says, summing up all the teaching that we have reviewed, "If any man thinketh
himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his
heart, this man's religion is vain." [367]

And now there is only one other point to be noticed, but it is one of vast
importance. As we realize the immense power of the tongue and the great issues
which depend on its right or wrong employment; as we sum up all the evil which
its tiny unobserved movements can accomplish, and all the rich blessings which
it is, under right supervision, capable of producing; and as from personal
experience we recognise how difficult it is to bridle the unruly member, how
difficult it is to check the double fountain so that it shall send forth sweet
waters only, and no bitter, we may be awed into an almost absolute silence, and
be inclined to put away the talent of speech which our Lord has given to us, not
daring to use it lest in using we should abuse it. But here is the answer to our
misgiving: the plans and preparations of our hearts belong to us, but the answer
of the tongue is from the Lord. [368] This most uncontrollable organ of the body
can be put under our Lord's control. He is able to give us "a mouth and wisdom,"
and to make our words not our own but the utterance of His Holy Spirit. There
may be "an ocean round our words which overflows and drowns them," the
encircling influences of God, turning even our faultiest speech to good account,
neutralising all our falterings and blunderings, and silencing our follies and
perversities.

Shall we not put our lips under our Lord's control, that the answer of our
tongue may be from Him? While we seek daily to subject our hearts to Him, shall
we not in a peculiar and a direct manner subject our tongues, to Him? for while
a subjected heart may keep the mouth from speaking evil, if the tongue is to
speak well and to be employed for all its noble uses it must be immediately
moved by God, our lips must be touched with a coal from the altar, our speech
must be chastened and purified, inspired and impelled, by Him.
__________________________________________________________________

[280] Prov. xxv. 15.

[281] Prov. xiii. 2.

[282] Prov. xviii. 20.

[283] Prov. xviii. 21.

[284] Prov. x. 14.

[285] Prov. xii. 18.

[286] Prov. xviii. 6, 7.

[287] Prov. xii. 13.

[288] Prov. xiv. 3.

[289] Prov. xv. 23.

[290] Prov. xxi. 23.

[291] Prov. xxi. 28.

[292] Prov. xvii. 20.

[293] Prov. xviii. 4.

[294] Prov. xxii. 11.

[295] Prov. xxii. 18.

[296] Prov. xix. 1, 22.

[297] Prov. xxiii. 16.

[298] Prov. xii. 16.

[299] Prov. xxix. 11.

[300] Prov. xix. 7. All the Proverbs in this selection are in the form of a
distich. This affords a fair presumption that this verse with its three clauses
is mutilated; and the presumption is confirmed by the fact that the third clause
adds nothing of value, even if it be intelligible at all, to the sense. There is
good reason, therefore, for believing that this third clause is the half of a
distich which has not been preserved in its integrity; all the more because the
LXX. have a complete proverb which runs thus: ho polla kakopoion telesiourgei
kakian, hos de erethizei logous ou sothesetai. "He that does much evil is a
craftsman of iniquity, and he that uses provoking words shall not escape."
Perhaps in the Hebrew text which was before the Greek translators mndph appeared
instead of mrdph, and l' hyh instead of l'hmh.

[301] Prov. xxvi. 21.

[302] Prov. xxx. 32, 33.

[303] Prov. xii. 18.

[304] Prov. xii. 17.

[305] Prov. xix. 28.

[306] Prov. xix. 5, rep. ver. 9.

[307] Prov. xxi. 28.

[308] Prov. xxv. 18.

[309] Prov. xxvi. 23-28.

[310] Prov. xiii. 5.

[311] Prov. xii. 19.

[312] Prov. xii. 22.

[313] Prov. xx. 17.

[314] Prov. xxvi. 2.

[315] Prov. xxviii. 23.

[316] Prov. xxix. 5.

[317] Prov. xi. 13 and xx. 19; xxv. 2, 23. Cf. "Whoso discovereth secrets loseth
his credit and shall never find friend to his mind" (Eccles. xxvii. 16).

[318] Prov. xviii. 8, rep. xxvi. 22.

[319] Prov. xvi. 28.

[320] Prov. xxvi. 20.

[321] Prov. xvii. 9.

[322] Prov. xi. 9.

[323] Prov. xii. 6.

[324] Prov. xv. 28.

[325] Prov. xvi. 28.

[326] Prov. xxvi. 18, 19.

[327] Prov. xviii. 13.

[328] Prov. xxix. 20.

[329] Prov. xxiii. 9.

[330] Prov. x. 19.

[331] Prov. xiii. 3, 16.

[332] Prov. xiv. 23.

[333] Prov. xiv. 33.

[334] Prov. xiv. 7. There is a quaint and pertinent passage in Lyly's
Euphues:--"We may see the cunning and curious work of Nature, which hath barred
and hedged nothing in so strongly as the tongue, with two rowes of teeth, and
therewith two lips, besides she hath placed it farre from the heart, that it
should not utter that which the heart had conceived; this also should cause us
to be silent, seeinge those that use much talke, though they speake truly, are
never beleeved."

[335] Prov. xv. 2.

[336] Prov. xviii. 2.

[337] Prov. xii. 18.

[338] Eccl. x. 4.

[339] Prov. xv. 4. mrp' is best rendered here and in Eccl. x. 4 by "gentleness."
It is just that quality of humility and submission and tranquillity which our
Lord blessed as meekness.

[340] Prov. xv. 1.

[341] Prov. xv. 26.

[342] Prov. xvi. 24.

[343] Prov. xii. 25.

[344] Prov. xv. 23.

[345] Prov. xxv. 20.

[346] Prov. xxv. 11.

[347] Cf. Eccles. xx. 20: "A wise sentence shall be rejected when it cometh out
of a fool's mouth, for he will not speak it in due season."

[348] Prov. xxv. 12.

[349] Prov. xxviii. 23.

[350] Prov. xv. 7.

[351] Prov. xvi. 21.

[352] Prov. xvi. 23.

[353] Prov. xx. 15.

[354] Prov. xv. 28.

[355] Prov. xxiv. 26.

[356] Prov. xi. 9.

[357] Prov. xii. 6.

[358] Prov. xiv. 3.

[359] Prov. xiv. 5, 25.

[360] Prov. xxxi. 8, 9.

[361] Note the intimate connection between conduct and speech in such a proverb
as xvii. 4. When we do evil we are always ready to listen to evil talk, when we
talk deceitfully we are preparing to go on to worse deeds of evil, to listen to
tongues of destruction. Note, too, how in xii. 5 the thoughts and the counsels
of the heart come before the words and the mouth in v. 6.

[362] Prov. xi. 12.

[363] Prov. xvii. 27.

[364] Prov. xvii. 28. Cf. the old Norse proverb:--

"An unwise man when he comes among the people

Had best be silent: no one knows

That he nothing knows unless he talks too much."

[365] Prov. xxiv. 7.

[366] Prov. xiv. 15.

[367] James i. 26.

[368] Prov. xvi. 1.
__________________________________________________________________

XIII.

PRIDE AND HUMILITY.

"A wise son heareth his father's instruction, but a scorner heareth not
rebuke."--Prov. xiii. 1.

"Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth correction, but he that
regardeth reproof shall be honoured."--Prov. xiii. 18.

"By pride cometh only contention, but with the well advised is wisdom."--Prov.
xiii. 10.

"Whoso despiseth the word bringeth destruction on himself; but he that feareth
the commandment shall be rewarded."--Prov. xiii. 13.

This last proverb appears in another form, as, "He that giveth heed unto the
word shall find good, and whoso trusteth in the Lord happy is he."--Prov. xvi.
20.

By a proud man we mean one who esteems himself better than others; by a humble
man we mean one who counts others better than himself. The proud man is so
convinced of his intrinsic superiority that if appearances are against him, if
others obtain more recognition, honour, wealth than he, the fault seems to him
to lie in the evil constitution of the world, which cannot recognize merit; for
his own intrinsic superiority is the axiom which is always to be taken for
granted; "his neighbours therefore find no favour in his eyes, and he even
desires their calamity and ruin," in order, as he would put it, that every one
may be set in his due place. [369] Meanwhile he is always boasting of
possessions, dignities, and gifts which do not yet, but some day will, appear to
the public eye. He is like clouds which overcast the sky, and wind which frets
the earth, without bringing any wholesome rain. [370] If, on the other hand,
appearances are with him, if wealth, dignity, and honour fall to his share, he
is affably convinced of his own supreme excellence; the proof of his own
conviction is written large in his broad acres, his swelling dividends, and his
ever-increasing troops of flatterers and friends; and he moves smoothly on
to--what?--strange to say, little as he thinks it, to destruction, for "Pride
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." [371] If he only
knew he would say, "Better is it to be of a lowly spirit with the meek than to
divide the spoil with the proud;" [372] for "before destruction the heart of man
is haughty, and before honour goeth humility." [373] The event shows, if not in
this world, yet the more surely in the next, that it is well to "let another man
praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." [374]

When our eyes are open to see things as they are, we are no longer in the least
impressed by the "proud and haughty man whose name is scorner working in the
arrogance of pride." [375] We may not live to see it, but we are quite persuaded
that "a man's pride shall bring him low, but he that is of a lowly spirit shall
obtain honour." [376] "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more
hope of a fool than of him." [377]

Now what are the evil effects of pride, and what are the blessings that follow
on humility?

First of all, pride cuts a man off from all the salutary effects of reproof,
rebuke, criticism, and counsel, without which it is not possible for any of us
to become wise. "A wise son" is the result of "a father's correction," says the
text, and such a son makes his father glad; [378] but the pride in a child's
heart will often prevent him from receiving even the correction of a father, and
will lead him to despise his mother. And if the parents have not firmness and
wisdom enough to overcome this childish resistance, it will grow with years, and
prove more and more disastrous. "He is in the way of life that heedeth
correction, but he that forsaketh reproof erreth." [379] If he had loved reproof
he would have acquired knowledge, but hating it he becomes brutish. [380] It is
evident then that this pride is folly. He is a fool that despises his father's
correction, but he that regardeth reproof getteth prudence. [381] He that
refuseth correction despiseth his own soul, but he that hearkeneth to reproof
getteth understanding. [382]

When we are grown up, and no longer under the tutelage of parents who love us,
pride is still more likely to harden our hearts against criticism and counsel.
The word of warning falls on the proud ear in vain, just because it is the word
of warning, and often does the wilful heart mourn as it suffers the penalty of
its stubbornness. [383] A man who refuses correction is a synonym for poverty
and shame. [384] These words which we in our pride despise might be an
incalculable benefit to us. Even the most witless criticism may be useful to a
humble mind, even the most unjust attacks may lead us to wholesome
self-searching, and to a more careful removal of possible offences. While if the
criticism is fair, and prompted by a kind heart, or if the rebuke is
administered by one whose wisdom and justice we respect, it is likely to do us
far more good than praise and approval. "A rebuke entereth deeper into one that
hath understanding than a hundred stripes into a fool." [385] "Better is open
rebuke than love that is hid." [386] If we were wise we should value this plain
and honest speaking much more than the insipid flattery which is often dictated
by interested motives. [387] In fact, praise is a very questionable benefit; it
is of no use at all unless we carefully test it, and try it, and accept it with
the greatest caution, for only a small part of it is pure metal, most of it is
mere dross; [388] and praise that is not deserved is the most dangerous and
deleterious of delights. But rebuke and criticism cannot do us much harm. Many
great and noble men have been ruined by admiration and popularity, who might
have thriven, growing greater and nobler, in the fiercest and most relentless
criticism. Donatello, the great Florentine sculptor, went at one time of his
life to Padua, where he was received with the utmost enthusiasm, and loaded with
approbation and honours. But soon he declared his intention of returning to
Florence, on the ground that the sharp assaults and the cutting criticisms which
always assailed him in his native city were much more favourable to his art than
the atmosphere of admiration and eulogy. In this way he thought that he would be
stimulated to greater efforts, and ultimately attain to a surer reputation. In
the same spirit the greatest of modern art critics has told us how valuable to
him were the criticisms which his humble Italian servant made on his drawings.
Certainly, "with those who allow themselves to be advised is wisdom." [389] "He
that trusteth in his own heart," and cannot receive the advice of others, "is a
fool; but whoso walketh wisely he shall be delivered," sometimes perhaps by the
humble suggestions of very simple people. [390]

Yes, "with the lowly is wisdom:" [391] they "hearken to counsel," [392] and in
doing so they get the advantage of many other wits, while the proud man is
confined strictly to his own, and however great his capacity may be, it is
hardly probable that he will sum up all human wisdom in himself. The lowly gives
heed to the word, no matter who speaks it, and finds good; [393] he abides among
the wise, because he is always ready to learn; consequently, he becomes wise,
and eventually he gets the honour which he deserves. [394] It is in this way
that people of lowly station and very moderate abilities often come to the
front. "A servant that deals wisely has rule over a son that causes shame, and
has part in the inheritance among the brethren." [395] To a crafty son no good
shall be, but to a servant who is wise his actions shall prosper and his way be
made straight. [396] The consciousness of not being clever, and a wise
diffidence in our own judgment, will often make us very thankful to learn from
others and save us from the follies of wilfulness; and thus very much to their
own astonishment the humble find that they have outdistanced their more
brilliant competitors in the race, and, walking in their humility, unexpectedly
light upon recognition and admiration, honour and love.

This first point, then, becomes very clear in the light of experience. One of
the most injurious effects of Pride is to cut off its miserable victim from all
the vast help and service which rebuke and criticism can render to the humble.
One of the sweetest results of a genuine humility is that it brings us to the
feet of all wise teachers; it multiplies lessons for us in all the objects which
surround us; it enables us to learn even from those who seem to be too captious
to teach, or too malevolent to be even wise. The humble mind has all the wisdom
of the ages as its possession, and all the folly of fools as an invaluable
warning.

Secondly, by pride comes nothing but strife, [397] and he loveth transgression
that loveth strife; he that raiseth high his gate, i.e., builds a lofty house,
seeketh destruction. [398] It is the pride of monarchs and nations which
produces war; the sense of personal dignity which is always sudden and quick in
quarrel; the feeling of swollen self-importance which is afraid to make peace
lest it should suffer in the eyes of men. And in the affairs of private life our
pride, rather than our sense of right, usually creates, fosters, and embitters
divisions, alienations, and quarrels. "I am perfectly innocent," says Pride; "I
bear no resentment, but it would be absurd for me to make the first advances;
when those advances are made, I am willing to forgive and to forget." "I think I
am innocent," says Humility, "but then I may have been very provoking, and I may
have given offence without knowing it; in any case, I may as well make an offer
of apology; if I fail, I fail."

Nor is this the only way in which strife grows out of pride, for "by pride comes
nothing but strife." All the foolish extravagances of social competition are to
be traced to the same source. One man "raises high his gate," builds a fine
house, and furnishes it in the best way. He flatters himself that his "little
place" is tolerably comfortable, and he speaks with some contemptuous pity of
all his neighbours' houses. Immediately all his neighbours enviously strive to
excel him, and pride vies with pride, heartburnings are many and bitter. Then
there comes on the scene one who in wealth and ostentation of wealth exceeds
them all, and the first man is now racked with envy, strains every nerve to
outdo the insolent intruder, suffers his debts to far exceed his assets, and
soon incurs the inevitable crash. That is how pride works in one very obvious
department of social life. But it is the same in every other department. Who can
calculate the miseries which are produced by the grotesque assumptions of poor
mortals to be superior to their fellow-mortals? Parents will mar their
children's lives by refusing their consent to marriages with those who, for some
perfectly artificial reason, are held to be beneath them; or will still more
fatally ruin their children's happiness by insisting on alliances with those who
are held to be above them. Those who prosper in the world will heartlessly turn
their backs on relations who have not prospered. Men who earn their living in
one particular way, or in no particular way, will loftily contemn those who earn
their living in another particular way. Those who dress in the fashion will look
in another direction when they pass people who do not dress in the fashion,
though they may be under deep obligations to these slighted friends. This is all
the work of pride. Then there are the sneers, the taunts, the sarcasms, the
proud man's scorn, like "a rod in the mouth" indeed, [399] which falls with
cutting cruelty on many tender backs and gentle faces. The overbearing temper of
one who "bears himself insolently and is confident" [400] will sometimes take
all the sweetness out of life for some delicate woman, or shrinking child, or
humble dependent, bruising the poor spirit, rending the terrified heart,
unnerving and paralysing the weaker and more helpless nature.

From first to last this haughty spirit is a curse and a torment to everyone, and
not least to itself. It is like a cold and biting wind. It is like an erosive
acid. It produces more sorrows than the north wind produces icicles. It mars
more lives than anyone but God is able to count. It breaks the hearts of the
humble, it excites the passions of the wrathful, it corrupts the conduct of the
weak. It ruins children, it poisons social life, it inflames differences, and
plunges great nations into war.

If it were permitted to enter heaven, it would turn heaven into hell, it would
range the hosts of heaven in envious cliques and mutually scornful castes, it
would make the meek spirit sigh for earth, where there was at least the hope of
death, and would turn the very presence and power of God into a constant object
of envy and an incentive to rebellion. It is obvious, then, that pride cannot
enter heaven, and the proud man, if he is to enter, must humble himself as a
little child.

Third--and this leads us to contemplate the worst result of Pride and the
loveliest outcome of Humility--"Every one that is proud of heart is an
abomination to the Lord; though hand join in hand he shall not be unpunished."
[401] "The Lord will root up the house of the proud; but He will establish the
border of the widow." [402] In a word, Pride is hateful to God, who resists the
proud and gives grace to the humble. The proud man, whether he knows it or not,
comes into direct conflict with God: he may not intend it, but he is pitting
himself against the Omnipotent. That hardening of the face is a sign of evil,
just as the patient humble ordering of the way is a sign of righteousness. [403]
In that high look and proud heart there seems to be something dignified,
flashing, and luminous; it is undoubtedly much admired by men. By God it is not
admired; it is regarded merely as the lamp of the wicked, and as sin. [404] The
light, such as it is, comes from hell; it is the same light that burned on the
faces of the apostate angels "o'erwhelmed with floods and whirlwinds of
tempestuous fire." The proud man dares the thunderbolts of God. He scorns men
whom he sees, and in doing so he scorns God whom he has not seen; the men whom
he consciously scorns cannot, but the God whom he unwittingly scorns will, take
vengeance upon him. He has hardened his heart, he has grown great in his own
eyes, he has despised the creatures made in God's image; he will suddenly be cut
off, and that without remedy.

On the other hand, by humility men learn to know and to fear the Lord. [405] God
reveals Himself to the humble heart, not as a King of Terrors, but kind and
good, with healing in His wings, leading the contrite spirit to implicit trust
in Himself, and "whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he." [406] When we realize
this we cannot wonder that so few people seem to know God; men are too proud;
they think of themselves more highly than they ought to think, and consequently
they do not think at all of Him; they receive honour one of another, and eagerly
desire such honour, and consequently they cannot believe in Him, for to believe
in Him implies the desire of no honour except such as comes from Him.

It is a strange truth that God should dwell in a human heart at all, but it is
almost self-evident that if He is to dwell in any human heart it must be in one
which has been emptied of all pride, one which has, as it were, thrown down all
the barriers of self-importance, and laid itself open to the incoming Spirit. If
we cling to ever so little of our natural egotism; if we dwell on any imagined
excellence, purity, or power of our own; if we are conscious of any elation, any
springing sense of merit, which would set us, in our own judgment, on some
equality with God,--how could the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity
enter in? That thought of vanity would seek to divide our nature with Him, would
enter into negotiations for a joint occupation, and the insulted Spirit of God
would depart.

If in ordinary human affairs "before destruction the heart of man is haughty,
and before honour goeth humility;" [407] if even in our dealings with one
another happiness and success and prosperity depend on the cultivation of a
modest spirit, how much more when we come to deal with God must haughtiness
appear the presage of destruction, and humility the only way of approach to Him!

It is not possible to think too humbly of yourself, it is not possible to be too
lowly, you cannot abase yourself too much in His Holy Presence. Your only
attitude is that of Moses when he took off his shoes because the place he stood
on was holy ground; or that of Isaiah when he cried out that he was "a man of
unclean lips." To those who know you your humiliations may sound excessive,--as
we are told the disciples of St. Francis remonstrated with him for his
self-depreciation [408] --but not to God or to your own heart. And He, if He has
set His love upon you, and purposes to make you a temple for His indwelling,
will use method after method of humbling you to prepare for His entrance. Again
and again you will say, Surely now I am low enough, am I not humbled in the
dust? But His hand will still be upon you, and He will show you heads of pride
which have yet to be levelled down. In the last humbling you will find that
there is rising within you a certain pride in the humility itself. That also
will He subdue. And some day, if you are willing, you shall be lowly enough for
the Most High to dwell in, humble enough to offer a perpetual incense of praise.
__________________________________________________________________

[369] Prov. xxi. 10.

[370] Prov. xxv. 14.

[371] Prov. xvi. 18, 19.

[372] Prov. xvi. 18, 19.

[373] Prov. xviii. 12.

[374] Prov. xxvii. 2.

[375] Prov. xxi. 24.

[376] Prov. xxix. 23.

[377] Prov. xxvi. 12.

[378] Prov. xiii. 1; xv. 20.

[379] Prov. x. 17.

[380] Prov. xii. 1.

[381] Prov. xv. 8.

[382] Prov. xv. 32.

[383] Prov. xiii. 13 should be translated: "Whoso despiseth the word (sc. of
warning and rebuke) shall be under a pledge to it (i.e. he has contracted an
obligation to the word by hearing it, and in case of disobedience will have to
redeem this implicit pledge by suffering and remorse), but he that feareth the
commandment shall be rewarded."

[384] Prov. xiii. 17.

[385] Prov. xvii. 10.

[386] Prov. xxvii. 5.

[387] Prov. xxviii. 23.

[388] Prov. xxvii. 21: "The fining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold,
and a man for the mouth of his praise." This somewhat obscure aphorism is most
simply explained thus:--A man should make his conscience a kind of furnace, in
which he tries all the laudatory things which are said of him, accepting only
the refined and pure metal which results from such a test, and rejecting the
dross. This is simpler than, with Delitzsch, to explain, "a man is tested by the
praise which is bestowed upon him as silver and gold are tested in the fire."

[389] Prov. xiii. 10.

[390] Prov. xxviii. 26.

[391] Prov. xi. 2.

[392] Prov. xii. 15b.

[393] Prov. xvi. 20.

[394] Prov. xv. 31, 33.

[395] Prov. xvii. 2.

[396] This is an addition of the LXX. to xiii. 13, and may represent an original
Hebrew text. For the idea cp. Eccles. x. 25, "Unto the servant that is wise
shall they that are free do service."

[397] Prov. xiii. 10.

[398] Prov. xvii. 19.

[399] Prov. xiv. 3.

[400] Prov. xiv. 16.

[401] Prov. xvi. 5.

[402] Prov. xv. 25.

[403] Prov. xxi. 29.

[404] Prov. xxi. 4.

[405] Prov. xxii. 4. The probable rendering is, "The outcome of humility is the
fear of the Lord, riches, honour, and life."

[406] Prov. xvi. 20.

[407] Prov. xviii. 12.

[408] The answer of the saint was very characteristic. Could he really believe
that he was so vile as he said, when he compared himself with others who were
obviously worse? "Ah," he said, "it is when I recount all God's exceptional
mercies to me that I seem to myself the worst of men, for others have not had
such favours at His hands."
__________________________________________________________________

XIV.

THE INWARD UNAPPROACHABLE LIFE.

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with
its joy."--Prov. xiv. 10.

"Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of mirth is
heaviness."--Prov. xiv. 13.

"Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know."

Matthew Arnold.

We know each other's appearance, it is true, but there for the most part our
mutual knowledge ceases. Some of us unveil nothing of ourselves to anyone; some
of us unveil a little to all; some a good deal to a few; but none of us can
unveil all even to the most intimate friend. It is possible to live on terms of
complete confidence and even close intimacy with a person for many years, to
become thoroughly acquainted with his habits, his turns of expression, his modes
of thought, to be able to say with a certain infallibility what course he will
take in such and such circumstances--and yet to find by some chance uplifting of
a curtain in his life that he cherished feelings which you never even suspected,
suffered pains of which you had seen no trace, and enjoyed pleasures which never
came to any outward expression.

How true this is we realize at once if we turn inwards and review all the
thoughts which chase each other through our brain, and all the emotions which
throb in our heart for a single day, and then deduct those which are known to
any human being, known or even suspected; the sum total we find is hardly
affected at all. We are quite startled to discover how absolutely alone we live,
how impossible it is for a stranger, or even for an intimate friend, to meddle
with more than a fragment of our inner life. This is not because we have any
wish to conceal, but rather because we are not able to reveal, our silent unseen
selves; it is not because others would not like to know, but because they have
not the instruments to investigate, that within us which we on our part are
quite helpless to express.

For instance, "the desire accomplished is sweet to the soul," [409] yet no one
can know how sweet but he who cherished the desire. When a man has laboured for
many years to secure an adequate maintenance for his family, and at length finds
himself in easy circumstances, with his children growing up around him well and
happy, no one besides himself can in the least gauge the sense of satisfaction,
contentment, and gratitude which animates his heart, because no one can realize
without actual experience the long and anxious days, the sickening fears, the
blighted hopes, the rigorous sacrifices, through which he passed to attain his
end. Or, when an artist has been toiling for many years to realize upon canvas a
vision of beauty which floats before the inward eye, and at last succeeds, by
some happy combination of colours, or by some dexterous sweep of the brush, or
by some half-inspired harmony of form and composition, in actually bodying forth
to the senses that which has haunted his imagination, it is hopeless for any one
else to understand the thrilling joy, the light-hearted ecstasy, which are
hidden rather than expressed by the quiet flush on the cheek and the sparkling
glance of the eye.

The mystical joy of a love which has just won an answering love; the deep-toned
joy of the mother in the dawning life of her child; the joy of the poet who
feels all the beauty of the earth and the sky pulsing through his nerves and
raising his heart to quick intuitions and melodious numbers; the joy of the
student, when the luminous outlines of truth begin to shape themselves before
his mind in connected form and startling beauty; the joy of one who has toiled
for the restoration of lost souls, and sees the fallen and degraded awaking to a
new life, cleansed, radiant and strong; the joy of the martyr of humanity, whose
dying moments are lit with visions, and who hears through the mysterious
silences of death the voices of those who will one day call him blessed,--joys
like these may be described in words, but they who experience them know that the
words are, relatively speaking, meaningless, and they who do not experience them
can form no conception of them. "When the desire cometh it is a tree of life,"
[410] which suddenly springs up in the garden of the heart, puts forth its
jubilant leaves of healing, flashes with white wings of scented blossom, and
droops with its full offering of golden fruit, as if by magic, and we are
surprised ourselves that those around us do not see the wonder, do not smell the
perfume, do not taste the fruit: we alone can sit under its branches, we alone
can catch the murmur of the wind, the music of achievement, in its leaves.

But this thought becomes very pathetic when we think of the heart's bitterness,
which the heart alone can know,--the hope deferred which makes it sick, [411]
the broken spirit which dries up the bones, [412] the spirit which for so long
bore a man's infirmity, and then at last broke because it could bear no more,
and became itself intolerable. [413] The circumstances of a man's life do not
give us any clue to his sorrows; the rich have troubles which to the poor would
seem incredible, and the poor have troubles which their poverty does not
explain. There are little constitutional ailments, defects in the blood, slight
deformities, unobserved disabilities, which fill the heart with a bitterness
untold and unimaginable. There are crosses of the affections, disappointments of
the ambitions; there are frets of the family, worries of business; there are the
haunting Furies of past indiscretions, the pitiless reminders of half-forgotten
pledges. There are weary doubts and misgivings, suspicions and fears, which
poison all inward peace, and take light out of the eye and elasticity out of the
step. These things the heart knows, but no one else knows.

What adds to the pathos is that these sorrows are often covered with laughter as
with a veil, and no one suspects that the end of all this apparently spontaneous
mirth is to be heaviness. [414] The bright talker, the merry jester, the singer
of the gay song, goes home when the party separates, and on his threshold he
meets the veiled sorrow of his life, and plunges into the chilly shadow in which
his days are spent.

The bitterness which surges in our brother's heart would probably be
unintelligible to us if he revealed it; but he will not reveal it, he cannot. He
will tell us some of his troubles, many of them, but the bitterness he must keep
to himself.

How strange it seems! Here are men and women around us who are unfathomable; the
heart is a kind of infinite; we skim the surface, we cannot sound the depths.
Here is a merry heart which makes a cheerful countenance, but here is a
countenance unclouded and smiling which covers a spirit quite broken. [415] Here
is a cheerful heart which enjoys a continual feast, [416] and finds in its own
merriment a medicine for its troubles; [417] but we cannot find the secret of
the cheerfulness, or catch the tone of the merriment, any more than we can
comprehend what it is which is making all the days of the afflicted evil. [418]

We are confined as it were to the superficial effects, the lights and shadows
which cross the face, and the feelings which express themselves in the tones of
the voice. We can guess a little of what lies underneath, but our guesses are as
often wrong as right. The index is disconnected, perhaps purposely, from the
reality. Sometimes we know that a heart is bitter, but do not even surmise the
cause; more often it is bitter and we do not know it. We are veiled to one
another; we know our own troubles, we feel our own joys, that is all we can say.

And yet the strangest thing of all is that we hunger for sympathy; we all want
to see that light in the eyes of our friends which rejoices the heart, and to
hear those good things which make the bones fat. [419] Our joy is eager to
disclose itself, and often shrinks back appalled to find that our companions did
not understand it, but mistook it for an affectation or an illusion. Our sorrow
yearns for comprehension, and is constantly doubled in quantity and intensity by
finding that it cannot explain itself or become intelligible to others. This
rigid and necessary isolation of the human heart, along with such a deep-rooted
desire for sympathy, is one of the most perplexing paradoxes of our nature; and
though we know well that it is a fact, we are constantly re-discovering it with
a fresh surprise. Forgetting it, we assume that every one will know how we need
sympathy, though we have never hung out the signals of distress, and have even
presented a most repellent front to all advances; forgetting it, we give
expression to our joy, singing songs to heavy hearts, and disturbing others by
unseasonable mirth, as if no icy channels separated us from our neighbours'
hearts, making our gladness seem frigid and our merriment discordant before it
reaches their ears. Yes the paradox forces itself on our attention again; human
hearts are isolated, alone, without adequate communication, and essentially
uncommunicative, yet all of them eagerly desiring to be understood, to be
searched, to be fused. Is it a paradox which admits of any explanation? Let us
see.

It has been very truly said, "Man is only partially understood, or pitied, or
loved by man; but for the fulness of these things he must go to some far-off
country." In proportion as we are conscious of being misunderstood, and of being
quite unable to satisfy our longing for sympathy and comprehension at human
fountains, we are impelled by a spiritual instinct to ask for God; the thought
arises in us that He, though He be very far off, must, as our Creator,
understand us; and as this thought takes possession of the heart a tremulous
hope awakes that perhaps He is not very far off. There lie before us now some
beautiful sayings which are partly the expression of this human conviction, and
seem partly to be inspired by the Divine response to it. "If thou sayest,
Behold, we knew not this man; doth not He that weigheth the heart consider, and
he that keepeth the soul, doth not He know?" [420] "The hearing ear, and the
seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them." [421] How obvious is the
inference that the Maker of the ear and the eye hears those silent things which
escape the ear itself, and sees those recesses of the human heart which the
human eye is never able to search! "The eyes of the Lord are in every place,
keeping watch upon the evil and the good." [422] "Sheol and Abaddon are before
the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men." [423] He sees
in the heart what the heart itself does not see. "All the ways of a man are
clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits." [424] In fact, the
spirit of man itself, the consciousness which clears into self-consciousness,
and becomes in moral matters conscience, this "spirit, is the lamp of the Lord,
searching all the innermost parts of the belly," [425] so that a "man's goings
are of the Lord;" and he is often moved by this indwelling spirit and guided by
this mysterious lamp in a way which "he can hardly understand." [426]

This intimacy of knowledge is not without its most solemn, and even terrible,
side. It means of course that the Lord knows "the thoughts of the righteous
which are just, and the counsels of the wicked which are deceit." [427] It means
that out of His minute and infallible knowledge He will render to every man
according to his works, judging with faultless accuracy according to that
"desire of a man which is the measure of his kindness," recognizing the "wish of
the poor man," which, though he has not power to perform it, is more valuable
than the boasted performances of those who never act up to their power of
service. [428] It means that "the Lord trieth the hearts just as the fining pot
tries the silver, and the furnace the gold." [429] It means that in thought of
such a searching eye, such a comprehensive understanding on the part of the Holy
One, none of us can ever say, "I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my
sin." [430]

All this it means, and there must be some terror in the thought; but the terror,
as we begin to understand, becomes our greatest comfort; for He who thus
understands us is the Holy One. Terrible would it be to be searched and known in
this minute way by one who was not holy, by one who was morally indifferent, by
one who took a curious interest in studying the pathology of the conscience, or
by one who had a malignant delight in cherishing vices and rewarding evil
thoughts. Though we sometimes desire human sympathy in our corrupt passions and
unhallowed desires, and are eager for our confederates in sin to understand our
pleasures and our pains,--and out of this desire, it may be observed, comes much
of our base literature, and all of our joining with a company to do evil,--yet
after all we only desire this confederacy on the understanding that we can
reveal as little, and conceal as much, as we like; we should no longer be eager
to share our feelings if we understood that in the first contact our whole heart
would be laid bare, and all the intricacies of our mind would be explored. We
must desire that He who is to search us through and through should be holy, and
even though He be strict to mark iniquity, should be one who tries the heart in
order to purify it. And when we are awakened and understand, we learn to rejoice
exceedingly that He who comes with His lamp to search the inmost recesses of our
nature is He who can by no means tolerate iniquity, or pass over transgression,
but must burn as a mighty fire wherever He finds the fuel of sin to burn.

Have we not found a solution of the paradox? The human heart is isolated; it
longs for sympathy, but cannot obtain it; it seems to depend for its happiness
on being comprehended, but no fellow-creature can comprehend it; it knows its
own bitterness, which no one else can know; it broods over its own joys, but no
one can share them. Then it makes discovery of the truth that God can give it
what it requires, that He fully understands, that He can enter into all these
silent thoughts and unobserved emotions, that He can offer an unfailing sympathy
and a faultless comprehension. In its need the lonely heart takes refuge in Him,
and makes no murmur that His coming requires the searching, the chastisement,
and the purging of sin.

No human being needs to be misunderstood or to suffer under the sense of
misunderstanding. Let him turn at once to God. It is childish to murmur against
our fellows, who only treat us as we treat them; they do not comprehend us,
neither do we comprehend them; they do not give us, as we think, our due,
neither do we give them theirs; but God comprehends both them and us, and He
gives to them and to us accurately what is due.

No human being is compelled to bear his bitterness alone, for though he cannot
tell it or explain to his fellows, he can tell it, and he need not explain it,
to God. Is the bitterness an outcome of sin, as most of our bitterness is? Is it
the bitterness of a wounded egotism, or of a remorseful conscience, or of
spiritual despondency? Or is it the bitterness which springs from the cravings
of an unsatisfied heart, the thirst for self-completeness, the longing for a
perfect love? In either case God is perfectly able and willing to meet the need.
He delights to turn His knowledge of our nature to the purpose of cleansing and
transforming the sinful heart: "By His knowledge shall My righteous servant
justify many," He says. He is ready, too, to shed abroad His own rich love in
our hearts, leaving no room for the hankering desire, and creating the peace of
a complete fulfilment.

No human being need imagine that he is unappreciated; his fellow-men may not
want him, but God does. "The Lord hath made every thing for His own purpose,
yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." [431] He apprehends all that is good
in your heart, and will not suffer a grain of pure gold to be lost; while He
sees too every particle of evil, and will not suffer it to continue. He knows
where the will is set upon righteousness, where the desire is turned towards
Him, and will delicately encourage the will, and bountifully satisfy the desire.
He sees, too, when the will is hardened against Him, and the desire is set upon
iniquity, and He is mercifully resolved to visit the corrupt will and the evil
desire with "eternal destruction from the face of the Lord, and from the glory
of His might,"--mercifully, I say, for no torture could be more terrible and
hopeless than for the evil man to live eternally in the presence of God.

Finally, no human being need be without a sharer of his joy: and that is a great
consideration, for joy unshared quickly dies, and is from the beginning haunted
by a vague sense of a shadow that is falling upon it. In the heart of the
Eternal dwells eternal joy. All loveliness, all sweetness, all goodness, all
truth, are the objects of His happy contemplation; therefore every really joyful
heart has an immediate sympathiser in God; and prayer is quite as much the means
by which we share our gladness as the vehicle by which we convey our sorrows to
the Divine heart. Is it not beautiful to think of all those timid and retiring
human spirits, who cherish sweet ecstasies, and feel glowing exultations, and
are frequently caught up in heavenly raptures, which the shy countenance and
stammering tongue never could record? They feel their hearts melt with joy in
the prospect of broad skies and sunlit fields, in the sound of morning birds and
rushing streams; they hear great choirs of happy spirits chanting perpetually in
heaven and in earth, and on every side of their obscure way open vistas of
inspired vision. No stranger meddles with their joy, or even knows of it. God is
not a stranger; to Him they tell it all, with Him they share it, and their joy
is part of the joy of the Eternal.
__________________________________________________________________

[409] Prov. xiii. 19.

[410] Prov. xiii. 12.

[411] Prov. xiii. 12.

[412] Prov. xvii. 22.

[413] Prov. xviii. 14.

[414] Prov. xiv. 13.

[415] Prov. xv. 13.

[416] Prov. xv. 15b.

[417] Prov. xvii. 22.

[418] Prov. xv. 15.

[419] Prov. xv. 30.

[420] Prov. xxiv. 12, marginal reading.

[421] Prov. xx. 12.

[422] Prov. xv. 3.

[423] Prov. xv. 11.

[424] Prov. xvi. 2, rep. xxi. 2.

[425] Prov. xx. 27.

[426] Prov. xx. 24.

[427] Prov. xii. 5.

[428] Prov. xix. 22.

[429] Prov. xvii. 3.

[430] Prov. xx. 9.

[431] Prov. xvi. 4. This strange saying, interpreted in the light of the Gospel,
cannot mean that wicked people are actually made in order to exhibit the
righteousness and judgment of God in their punishment on the day of wrath,
though that was probably the thought in the mind of the writer. But it reminds
us of the truth that every human being is a direct concern of the Maker, who has
His own wise purpose to fulfil in even the most inconsiderable and apparently
abortive life.
__________________________________________________________________

XV.

A PASSIONATE DISPOSITION.

"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but a grievous word stirreth up anger." In
the LXX. there is another clause inserted at the beginning, Orge apollusi kai
phronimous, apokrisis de hupopiptousa apostrephei thumon, logos de luperos
egeirei orgas."--Prov. xv. 1.

"A meek tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breaking of the
spirit."--Prov. xv. 4.

"A wrathful man stirreth up contention: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth
strife."--Prov. xv. 18.

Bad temper causes more suffering than the modified severity with which we judge
it would imply. It is in a home what toothache is in the body: the pain is
insufferable and yet it is not treated as serious. A passionate man or woman
spreads a pervading sense of irritation in the house or in the workshop, and all
the other occupants of the place are as if they dwelt in a country subject to
earthquakes; life for them is divided between anxiety to avoid the explosion and
a painful effort to repair its devastations. We are not severe enough on these
faults of temper in ourselves or in others; we are too prone to excuse them on
the ground of temperament, as if we were no more responsible for outbreaks of
passion than for the colour of our hair or the tone of our complexion. It will,
therefore, do us good to see what the Wise Man says on the subject.

First of all, we have several proverbs which remind us how irritating an angry
disposition is: it is the constant occasion of strife; it grows itself by each
fresh annoyance that it gives, so that it quickly becomes ungovernable, and thus
"the wrathful man aboundeth in transgression." [432] A fierce ungovernable
temper will set a whole city in a flame, [433] and lead to disasters of national
and even world-wide extent. However peaceful and happy a community may be, if a
choleric man enters it, signs of combustion will soon begin to appear. There are
always hot embers which wise men are earnestly trying to damp down, [434] there
are trivial irritations, petty annoyances, incipient envies, which are only too
easily inflamed; the cool spirit and the conciliatory word and the ingenious
diversion of thought will keep the embers choked until the heat dies away, but
"as coals to hot embers, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to inflame
strife." [435]

We may well be cautioned to give such an inflammatory character a wide berth;
"Make no friendship with a man that is given to anger; and with a wrathful man
thou shalt not go: lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul." [436]
Even a sweet temper may be chafed into peevishness by constant irritations; with
passionate people the gentlest become passionate in self-defence. When this
unbridled, ill-disciplined nature approaches, we should avoid it as if it were a
bear robbed of her whelps, for such is this fool in his folly. [437]

This leads us to notice that anger and folly are very closely allied. The
passionate nature is constantly betrayed into actions which sober wisdom must
condemn,--"He that is soon angry will deal foolishly.... He that is slow to
anger is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly."
[438] Any one with a grain of sense will put a check upon his rising temper; his
discretion makes him slow to anger, and he never feels to have won such true
glory as when he bridles his wrath and passes by an offence without a sign of
annoyance or resentment. [439] You may almost be sure that a man is wise if you
find that he has a cool spirit. [440] When you see a person who cautiously
avoids the ground where strife is apt to be excited, and builds his house on a
spot where contention is impossible, you instinctively respect him, for you know
it betokens wisdom; but when you see a man always getting involved in quarrels,
always showing his teeth, [441] you rightly conclude that he is a fool. [442] "A
fool uttereth all his anger: but a wise man keepeth it back and stilleth it."
[443] If we are naturally irritable or splenetic, wisdom will incline us to
avoid occasions which excite us, and to keep a watchful guard over our spirits
where the occasions are inevitable. If we neglect such precautions we shall
justly be counted fools, and the consequent outbreaks of passion will lead us
into fresh exhibitions of folly, and more completely justify the harsh judgment
which has been passed upon us.

But not the least sign of the folly which is inherent in passion is the shocking
effect which it has upon those who give way to it. As the LXX. version says at
the beginning of this chapter, "Anger destroys even the wise." And one whose
spirit is without restraint is forcibly compared to a city that is broken down
and has no wall; [444] every foe can go up and possess it, every thoughtless
child can fling a firebrand into it; the barest word, hint, smirk, shrug of the
shoulders, any unintentional slight or reflection, nay, even silence itself,
will suddenly set the powder-train on fire, and the consequent explosion will be
more destructive to the city itself than to those who are outside. "A man of
great wrath shall bear the penalty," and, poor fellow, perhaps it is best that
he should, for if you deliver him from the consequence of his passion, that will
only encourage him in further outbreaks, and so he will become worse, and your
deliverance will be an endless task. [445]

Our great King Henry II. was subject to fits of uncontrollable passion, in which
he would roll on the floor and bite the dust, impotent with rage; and all the
sorrows of his life and reign, falling heavily upon him in his later years, were
occasioned by this unhappy temper. At the present time we are told that the
Chinese frequently indulge in fits of passionate wrath, which react terribly
upon their health and make them physically ill. The wrathful man does mischief
to many, but his wrath is like an old arquebus, which, when it is fired, hurts
the bearer almost as much as the enemy. It may fail to hit the mark, but it is
sure to knock down the marksman.

Probably here the plea will be urged that we cannot help our temper, and it may
be said, the suffering which it brings upon us is the best proof that it is an
infirmity rather than a vice. Now this excuse cannot be allowed to pass; a
certain good bishop on one occasion hearing it urged, in extenuation of a man's
conduct, that he had such an unfortunate temper, exclaimed, "Temper, why temper
is nine-tenths of Christianity!" If we are not to be blamed for bad temper, then
there is no fault or defect or vice which we cannot shift off our own shoulders
and lay to the charge of our constitution. But our constitution is no excuse for
sin; the most that can be urged is that if we are constitutionally inclined to
any particular sin we must seek for a special strength to fortify us against it.
If in building a city an ancient engineer had one side more exposed than the
rest, protected by no natural escarpments of rock or bends of the river, there
he would concentrate all his skill to make the wall impregnable. If you find
that one of your bodily organs betrays a tendency to disease, you are careful to
avoid the exposure, or the strain, or the derangement, which would unfavourably
affect it. If your lungs are delicate you shun fogs and chills; if your heart is
feeble you are careful to avoid any sudden excitement; if your eyes are weak you
notice very particularly by what light you read, and are sensitive to the least
weariness in those delicate instruments. In the same way, if your special
infirmity lies in the temper; if you are easily provoked, or apt to fall into
sullenness; if a sudden annoyance excites an uncontrollable passion in your
mind, or drops into your heart seeds of bitterness which rapidly grow and become
ineradicable; you have your work cut out for you; your daily task will be to
avoid the things which produce such ill effects, and to cultivate the habits
which lessen the virulent action of these irritant poisons. Few of us realize
how wonderfully our constitution is subjected to our own control, and how much
we ourselves have to do with the making of it.

You know, we will suppose, that you are easily entangled in a quarrel; you must
then prepare yourself before you go out into the business of the day,--"Go not
forth hastily to strive, lest.... What wilt thou do in the end, when thy
neighbour hath put thee to shame?" [446] This realization of what will probably
result from your hasty temper will act as a check upon it, and you will be
inclined, if you have any ground of offence against your neighbour, to go
quietly and debate it with him alone. [447] Or if the contention has been sprung
upon you unawares, take care that over the floodgates of your passion has been
written this wholesome warning, "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth
out water: therefore leave off contention, before there be any setting of the
teeth." [448] Knowing your danger you must summon to your aid all the heroism of
your nature, and remember that this is the time and the occasion to exercise it.
Others have to win their spurs on the battlefield; this is your battlefield, and
here your spurs are to be won. Others have to win kingdoms or capture cities;
here is the kingdom where you are to reign, this is the city which you are to
take. "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth
his spirit than he that taketh a city." [449]

Get at some grand root principle like this: "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but
love covereth all transgressions." [450] Ah, yes, if you are disposed to be
angry with men, fill your spirit with love to them; that will soothe your
irritable nerves, and will flow over their transgressions so that they cease to
annoy you because you cease to see them; when we are fervent in love to one
another, the love covers a multitude of sins. [451] Where love comes into the
soul we are more anxious to convert those who offend us than to be angry with
them. [452] Love saves us from the self-vaunting which exposes us to the
annoyances, and provokes the attacks, of the malignant; [453] and it enables us
to bear all things, almost without a ruffle or a perturbation. Strange to say,
passionate temperaments are often very affectionate; let them cultivate the love
in themselves, and it will be the destruction of the evil temper. And where the
evil passion comes from a true moroseness, then the fruit can only be destroyed
with the root, and the root can only be destroyed when love is shed abroad in
the heart.

Or possibly your anger is not of the passionate kind, but rather stern and
resentful, arising from an exaggerated sense of self-importance. A meek [454]
heart is not wrathful, and it is the life of the flesh; but where meekness
fails, envy enters as rottenness of the bones, and with envy, hatred and malice.
[455] A meek [456] tongue not only checks wrath in itself, but soothes it in
others; it is a tree of life, just as perverseness in it is a breaking of the
spirit. [457] If you thought less of yourself, you would not so frequently feel
your dignity offended; you would not require this weapon of wrath always at hand
to leap forth and avenge your outraged pride. From the meek heart vengeance dies
away. "Say not thou, I will recompense evil: wait on the Lord, and He shall save
thee." [458] You are sudden and quick in quarrel, because you think of yourself
more highly than you ought to think; and because others do not share your
opinion of yourself, you must summon all your artillery of wrath to make them
bend the stubborn knee and offer you the due tribute of deference or admiration.
For if bad temper comes often from constitutional infirmities which must be
carefully watched and controlled, it comes just as frequently from that subtle
enemy of our souls, Pride.

But now we come to the important question, How are our evil passions to be
cured? And we must frankly admit that our book has no suggestions to offer. Its
tendency is to regard our disposition as fixed, our temperament as irreversible,
our character as unchangeable. It points out with crystalline clearness the
mischief of wrath and the merit of meekness, but it never so much as entertains
the possibility that the wrathful man might become meek, the passionate man
patient and gentle.

We have in our analysis of the evil observed that in order to avoid it we must
be vigilant to mark and control the first risings of passion; we have noted too
that if we were truly loving, anger would die away, and if we were truly humble,
the resentments which stir our anger would have nothing to feed upon. But the
main difficulty is, how are we to become watchful, since it is the special
characteristic of a hasty temper that it overpowers our sentinels before it
assaults the city? And how are we to become loving and humble? It is only
throwing the difficulty back a step or two, and showing us how insuperable it
is, to say that we must become good in one direction in order to escape the evil
which lies in another direction. It does not help the Ethiopian to become a
European to tell him that Europeans have white skins instead of black; nor can a
leopard change his kind because he learns that his spots are his distinctive
mark.

There must be a deeper message than that of the Proverbs to solve this practical
difficulty; though we may well feel that the book is invaluable in setting
before us how greatly we need a deeper message. No infirmity of human nature
proves more forcibly than the one with which we are dealing that "some thing out
of Nature" must come in if a change is to be effected. "We must be born again;"
it is only a regenerate heart which will have the impulse and the ability to
watch against the eruption of a passionate disposition. It is only a regenerate
heart which can love in such a way that irritations cease to fret, or that can
be humble enough to escape the exasperations of wounded pride. Many of us think
lightly of these particular faults, and scarcely designate ill-temper a sin at
all; but however we may regard it, the wrathful disposition requires nothing
less than Christ, and Him crucified, to cure it, and God deemed it worth while
to send His only-begotten Son in order to effect the cure. In Christ Jesus are
forces, moral and spiritual, strong enough to control the most uncontrollable
rage and to soothe the most irritable temper; and as we can point to no other
power which is sufficient for such a change, so few things manifest so
strikingly the blessed presence of Christ in the heart as the softened and
gentle temper, the removal of all those explosive elements which before He
entered were constantly causing trouble and suffering and alarm.

Here is an example taken from a country where the knowledge of the Gospel is
comparatively recent. A Japanese gentleman living at Fujioka, who was much
addicted to the use of sáke, a strong intoxicant, which produced the worst
results on his temper, was led through reading a tract on the subject to
renounce the evil habit, and to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour. In
proportion as the Divine power mastered him he became a new creature. One day
his wife had been careless about some silkworms' eggs, which had become
partially destroyed, and she trembled with fear that he would become enraged
when he discovered it, and punish her severely, as he had done before. But to
her great astonishment, when he found out what had happened he remained
perfectly calm, and then said, "We can distribute them among our poor
neighbours, and so they will have a larger crop. Thus it will perhaps be better
than if we had sold them and taken all the money ourselves." His wife was so
impressed with this change of character that she said, "This is the result of
Christianity; I want to become a Christian too." She sought and found, and her
whole family sought and found. And not only so, but the neighbours were struck
by this "living epistle," and shortly afterwards when the missionary went to
Fujioka there were ten persons awaiting baptism. At the present time a good
Christian Church is growing up in the place. [459]

Where the Lord Jesus Christ reigns evil passions subside and die away. "Learn of
Me: for I am meek and lowly of heart." "Blessed are the meek: for they shall
inherit the earth." One who is born again, one whose life is hidden with Christ
in God, is necessarily meek, meek as the Lord Himself: not, as we well know,
devoid of noble anger or fiery indignation, for indeed it is only the meek heart
from which all personal pretensions have been eradicated, and to which no
personal feeling can be attributed, that is able to pour out vials of wrath,
undeterred and unquenchable, upon all that is base and mean, impure and false,
corrupt and cruel; but meek in this beautiful sense, that it never takes
offence, never suspects evil, never resents any wrong except moral wrong that is
done to others, or spiritual wrong done to God. All the tinder on which angry
passions feed has been removed by the Cross of Christ, and therefore the only
wrath which can be entertained is such wrath as God feels,--the deep intense
glow of consuming indignation against sin.

For our evil tempers, then, our passion, our wrath, our sullen pride, our
fretful irritability, our outbreaks of sarcasm, our malignant sneers, there is
only one possible cure; we must bring the heart, out of which all the evil
comes, to Jesus Christ, that He may create it anew; we must accept our failures
as evidence of an imperfect surrender, and come afresh with a more insistent
cry, and a more perfect faith, that He may reign in our hearts as undisputed
Lord, checking, subduing, warring down, every evil motion there.
__________________________________________________________________

[432] Prov. xxix. 22.

[433] Prov. xxix. 8.

[434] Prov. xxix. 8.

[435] Prov. xxvi. 21.

[436] Prov. xxii. 24.

[437] Prov. xvii. 12.

[438] Prov. xiv. 17, 29.

[439] Prov. xix. 11. "When Lanfranc was prior of Bec he ventured to oppose Duke
William's Flemish marriage. In a wild burst of wrath William bade his men burn a
manor house of Bec and drive out Lanfranc from Norman ground. He came to see the
work done, and found Lanfranc hobbling on a lame horse towards the frontier. He
angrily bad him hasten, and Lanfranc replied by a cool promise to go faster out
of his land if he would give him a better steed. 'You are the first criminal
that ever asked gifts from his judge,' retorted William, but a burst of laughter
told that the wrath had gone, and William and Lanfranc drew together
again."--Green's Conquest of England, p. 551.

[440] Prov. xvii. 27.

[441] This word htnl, which only occurs here (xx. 3) and in xvii. 14 and xviii.
1, would seem from the cognate root in Arab. and Syr. to mean "setting the teeth
together," which is a much more vivid and specific idea than quarrelling.

[442] Prov. xx. 3.

[443] Prov. xxix. 11.

[444] Prov. xxv. 28.

[445] Prov. xix. 19.

[446] Prov. xxv. 8.

[447] Prov. xxv. 9.

[448] Prov. xvii. 14. See note 4, p. 205.

[449] Prov. xvi. 32.

[450] Prov. x. 12.

[451] 1 Peter iv. 8.

[452] James v. 20.

[453] 1 Cor. xiii. 4.

[454] This meaning of mrp', as was observed in Lecture XII., p. [2]172, seems to
yield the best sense in these two passages (cp. xii. 18; xiii. 17), as in Eccl.
x. 4, "gentleness allayeth great offences," which is a good commentary on our
text.

[455] Prov. xiv. 30.

[456] This meaning of mrp', as was observed in Lecture XII., p. [3]172, seems to
yield the best sense in these two passages (cp. xii. 18; xiii. 17), as in Eccl.
x. 4, "gentleness allayeth great offences," which is a good commentary on our
text.

[457] Prov. xv. 4.

[458] Prov. xx. 22.

[459] Missionary Review of the World, Feb. 1889, p. 143.
__________________________________________________________________

XVI.

A JUST BALANCE.

"A just balance and scales are the Lord's: all the weights of the bag are His
work."--Prov. xvi. 11.

"A false balance is an abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is His
delight."--Prov. xi. 1.

"Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them alike are an abomination to
the Lord."--Prov. xx. 10.

"Divers weights are an abomination to the Lord; and a false balance is not
good."--Prov. xx. 23.

The sixteenth chapter opens--and we may annex to it the last verse of chap.
xv.--with a series of sayings which are grouped together on the principle that
the name of the Lord occurs in each. There is no obvious connection between the
successive verses, and some of them have been already touched on in previous
lectures, but it will be worth while to glance at the series as a whole.

The Lord's presence must be recognised and reverenced before we can make any
progress in wisdom, and in His presence we must humble ourselves before we can
expect any honour. [460] We are entirely dependent upon Him; although our hearts
may form plans, we cannot utter anything aright unless He controls our tongue.
[461] However self-satisfied we may be with our own ways, however convinced we
may be of our own innocence, He weighs our spirit, and will often find a guilt
which our conceit ignores, an impurity which our vanity would hide. [462] We
should do well, therefore, to commit all our works to Him, in order that He may
revise and correct our purposes and establish those which are good. [463] We
cannot think too much of His all-inclusive wisdom and knowledge; everything lies
in His hands and is designed for His ends; even the wicked who rebel against
Him--men like Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Judas, Elymas--must in their inevitable
punishment glorify His righteousness and truth. [464] For punishment is
absolutely sure; the proud are an abomination to Him, and though they combine to
oppose His will and to escape the penalty, it will be quite in vain. [465] On
the other hand, where He sees mercy and truth He will purge iniquity, and when
men fear Him they will depart from evil. [466] When His smile is upon them and
He approves their ways, He will make their path plain, pacifying their enemies,
and making their hearts glad. [467] He will guide them, even directing their
steps, in such a manner that their own imperfect counsels shall turn to a happy
and successful issue. [468] "Whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he." [469]
Indeed we cannot exaggerate the minute observation of the Lord; no detail
escapes His eye, no event is beyond His control; even what is generally called
Chance is but another name for His unmarked and unknown direction; the very
lot--that lot which settles contentions and separates the strong [470] --cast
into the lap is actually disposed by Him; [471] much more, therefore, are the
deliberate transactions of commerce--those subtle bonds of the cash nexus which
twine man to man and nation to nation--under His constant inspection and a
subject of His most interested concern,--"a just balance and scales are the
Lord's: all the weights of the bag are His work."

It is, then, as part of the Lord's watchful activity and direct, detailed
connection with all the affairs of human life, that He is interested in our
business and trade. We may notice at once that this is very characteristic of
the Old Testament religion. In the Deuteronomic Law it was written: "Thou shalt
not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in
thine house divers measures, a great and a small. A perfect and a just weight
shalt thou have; a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that do such
things, even all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy
God." [472] Again, in the Levitical Law we find: "Ye shall do no unrighteousness
in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights,
a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which
brought you out of the land of Egypt." [473]

The Israelite was encouraged to think that all the work in which he engaged was
ordained by, and therefore under the observation of, his God. "Hate not
laborious work, neither husbandry which the Most High hath ordained," says
Ecclesiasticus. [474] And there is a striking passage in Isaiah where the
operations of agriculture are described in detail, and all are attributed to
God, who instructs the husbandman aright and teaches him. It all comes from the
"Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom." [475]

But at present we are concerned only with trade as a department of industrial
life, and especially with the actual chaffering of exchange, the barter of goods
for goods, the weights and measures which settle the quantities, and the rules
which must govern all such transactions. We should gather that the commercial
fraud of those primitive times took this comparatively simple form: the merchant
would have, let us say, a half shekel which came a little short of the
regulation weight; or he would have a cubit measure (1 ft. 9 in.) half an inch
under a cubit; or he would have a vessel professing to hold a hin (i.e. a little
more than a gallon), but actually holding a little less than a gallon; or he
would have a dry measure, marked as an ephah (i.e. about three pecks), but
incapable of holding the ostensible quantity. In an ordinary way he would use
these inadequate measures, and thus nibble a little from every article which he
sold to a customer. But in the event of a purchaser presenting himself who had a
fuller knowledge or might conceivably act as an inspector and report the fraud
to the judge, there would be a just half shekel weight in the bag, a full cubit
rule hidden behind the counter, a hin or an ephah measure of legal dimensions
within easy reach. You may smile at such primitive methods of deception, but it
requires many generations for a civilized society to elaborate commercial fraud
on the large scale.

Now passing at once to our own times and bringing the truth of our text to
illuminate them, I should like to say a little to people engaged in business,
whether as employers or employed, whether the business is wholesale or retail.
And let me assure you that I am not going to attempt a detailed examination and
criticism of your business concerns. Such an attempt would be grossly
impertinent, and might well expose me, not only to your indignation, but to your
ridicule. No, I do not believe that it is the part of the preacher to meddle
with matters which he does not understand; he only discredits his message by
affecting an omniscience which he cannot possibly possess. I have no doubt that
the youth who has been in a warehouse or behind the counter for six months
already knows more of commercial habits, of trade practices, of the temptations
and difficulties which practically press upon people in business, than I know,
or am likely to know if I live to twice my present age. I shall not therefore
insult you by attempting to point out evils and expose abuses, to denounce
particular frauds, and to hold up any special people or classes of people to
moral reprobation. My task is quite different; it is this:--I am to remind you,
first, that God possesses that omniscience to which I can lay no claim, and
therefore is intimately acquainted with all the transactions of your bank, your
warehouse, your office, your counter, your workshop; and, secondly, that He
regards with intense satisfaction all fair dealing, and with vindictive
indignation every fraud, and trick, and lie. And on the strength of this I am to
ask you very earnestly to review your lives and your practices in the light of
His judgment, and to consider how you may bring all your doings in business into
conformity with His will.

Perhaps you will let me, as a man speaking to his fellow-men, as a Christian, I
hope, speaking to his fellow-Christians, expand these three points a little.

First. We are all of us tempted to think that a considerable proportion of our
life is too insignificant to attract the particular attention of God. We can
understand that He takes notice of our entrance into, and our exit from, the
world, but we think that between the two limits He leaves us to "devise our own
ways." Or possibly we can recognise His interest in the crises of our life, but
are inclined to question His minute care of the common and monotonous routine.
He marks what business we enter, but, when we are in it, lets us alone. He is
interested in our marriage, but, when we are married, leaves husband and wife to
adjust their own relations. Or He marks a large business transaction in which
there is room for a really gigantic fraud, but cannot pay any attention to a
minute sale over the counter, the trivial adulteration of a common article, the
ingenious subterfuge for disposing of a damaged or useless stock. Is not this
our unspoken but implicit mode of reasoning? And could anything be more
illogical? The Divine Power which could create this infinitely diversified
universe must be able to mark every tiniest detail of the tiniest object in it.
Great and small are relative terms, and have no significance to Him. Naturalists
tell us that in the scale of living creatures, arranged according to size, the
common beetle occupies the middle point, the smallest living creature being as
much smaller as the largest is larger than it. And yet the microscope, so far
from showing that God takes less care with the infinitesimal creations of His
hand, rather inclines us to say that the smaller the creature is, the more
delicate adjustment, the more exquisite proportions, the more brilliant hues,
does it display. Our Lord brought home to us this minuteness of the Divine Mind,
this infinite power of embracing the veriest trifles of the creation in His
thought and care, by assuring us that not a sparrow falls without His notice and
that the hairs of our heads are all numbered.

There is then no logical resting-place, when we are thinking of the Mind of God.
If He knows us at all, He knows all about us. If He marks what we consider the
important things in our life, He marks equally what we consider the unimportant
things. The whole life, with every detail from birth to death, is accurately
photographed in the light of His omniscience; and as the exposed plate of the
camera receives many details which escape the observation of our eyes, so the
smallest and least observed transaction in the daily business, every figure
entered truly or falsely in the ledger, every coin dropped justly or dishonestly
into the till, every bale, every packet, every thread, every pin, which changes
hands in the market, passes at once into the observant and comprehending mind of
God. [476]

Second. But in this exhaustive and detailed knowledge of the way in which you
are conducting your business, His warm approval follows everything that is
honest and just, His vehement censure lights on all that is dishonest or unjust.
It may come as a great comfort to you to know that a little business matter
which cost you a considerable struggle the other day was duly noted and recorded
by the Lord. I was not present at the time, nor did any one who was near you in
the least surmise what was passing. But you suddenly recognised the possibility
of making a large profit by simply adopting a very slight subterfuge; what made
the case peculiarly difficult was that neighbouring and rival firms to your
certain knowledge did the like every day; the innocent faces of wife and
children at home seem to urge you, for what a difference would this sum of money
make to their comfort and welfare in the coming year! you weighed the little
trick over and over again, and set it now in this light, now in that, until at
last the black began to seem grey, and the grey almost white. After all, was it
a subterfuge? was it not merely a quite legitimate reserve, an even laudable
commercial prudence? And then, as you wavered, some clear light of truth fell
upon your mind; you saw distinctly what was the right course, and very quietly
you took it; the prospect of gain was surrendered, you saw the advantage pass
over to your rival; he availed himself of it, and went to church next Sunday
just the same. Sometimes you have wondered whether after all you were not too
scrupulous.

Now all that God knows; it is His delight; He has recorded it already in His
Book, and also in your own moral nature, which is the stronger and the better
for it.

On the other hand, it must be a subject of some concern to many that the same
all-observing, all-recording Mind regards with hatred all the sharp practices by
which in business we deceive and defraud one another. I suppose there is a way
of making up books which would pass any accountant in London, and yet would not
pass the audit of God. I suppose there are gains which to the average commercial
conscience of to-day appear fair enough, and yet to the One who weighs the
spirits of men seem to be quite illicit. There must be men who made their money
long ago in certain ways best known to themselves, and are now living in great
comfort; but all the time in the books of God a terrible record stands against
them, and as the eye of God falls upon those pages, the moan of the ruined, the
cry of the fatherless and the widow, and the horrified entreaties of the
helpless come up into His ear.

We have no reason for thinking that the unjust balance has become any less
abominable to the Lord because the eager and relentless competition of modern
industrial life has multiplied, while it has refined, the methods of fraud, and
has created a condition of things in which, as so many people urge, questionable
practices have become actually necessary for one who would keep his head above
water. We have no reason to think that God regards it as at all essential that
any of us should keep his head above water. The warm and honourable reception
given to Lazarus in heaven, when his head had gone under the waters on earth,
might lead us to think that what we call failures here may possibly be regarded
as grand successes there. But we have every reason to think that double dealing,
no matter what may be the plea, is abominable in the sight of the Lord.

It is in vain to point to the great prosperity which has fallen to the lot of
some whose dishonourable practices have been notorious. It is beyond a doubt
that knavery may be successful in its way and a clever rogue may outdistance an
honest dullard. The proverb "Honesty is the best policy" is not, as some people
seem to think, in the Bible; honesty may or may not be the best policy,
according to the object which you have in view. If your object is simply to
amass wealth, the saying will read, "Honesty is the best policy; and where it is
not, be dishonest." God does not judge in the least by worldly prosperity. From
the parable just alluded to one would conclude that it is, in heaven, a certain
presumption against a man; there may yet prove to be truth in the hard saying,
"He that dies rich is damned." If God hates these questionable practices which
are said to exist in modern trade, and if He enters them all in His black books,
they who prosper by employing them are none the less failures: their ruin is
sure; their remorse will be as inevitable as their recovery will be impossible.

Third. I come therefore now to urge upon all of you that you should order all
your business ways as in the sight of God, and concern yourselves chiefly with
the thought how they may be in conformity with His holy Will. Do not be content
with estimating your conduct by the judgment which other men would pass upon it.
While such an estimate might reveal many things which would not pass muster, it
is doubtful whether their problematical censure will afford an adequate motive
for reform, and it is sure to overlook many of the evils which they are bound to
wink at, because their own hands are not clean. Do not be content even with
estimating your conduct by the standard of your own unaided conscience. Your
conscience may at any given time be in a degraded state; in order to keep it
quiet you may have brought it down to the level of your conduct. A thief's
conscience seldom troubles him unless his theft is unsuccessful, in which case
it reproaches him for not being more careful and more skilful. You may, like St.
Paul, know nothing against yourself and yet not be thereby justified. For
doubtless most of the evil practices of our time represent a conscience that has
been stupefied with sophistry and deadened with selfishness, so that the worst
culprits are the first to put on an air of injured innocence, and those who are
least guilty suffer most just because the conscience is still sensitive and has
not yet been seared with the usual hot iron.

No, the only safe and effectual method is to bring all your business habits, all
the practices of the counter and the counting-house, under the searching eye of
the All-seeing One. Unless you realize that He sees and knows, and unless you
humbly submit everything to His judgment, you are sure to go wrong; your
standard will insensibly fall, and you will insensibly fall away even from the
fallen standard. It is said that peculiar difficulties beset you in the present
day; it is said that it was never so hard to be straightforward and aboveboard
in commercial dealings; it is said that the insane Moloch of competition
imperatively demands the blood of our youth, and even makes assaults on the
established virtues of maturity. It may be so, though we are generally inclined
to exaggerate the peculiar temptations of our own time in comparison with those
of a former age; but if it is so, then there is all the more urgent a necessity
that you should bring your affairs to God's judgment, seek diligently to
understand His will, and then ask Him for a peculiar strength to enable you to
overcome these peculiar temptations. You will not alter His judgment of your
conduct by attempting to ignore it. But by seeking to understand it, and by
laying your heart open to be influenced by it, you will find that your conduct
is perceptibly altered and apparent impossibilities are overcome, because "by
the fear of the Lord men depart from evil." [477]
__________________________________________________________________

[460] Prov. xv. 33.

[461] Prov. xvi. 1.

[462] Prov. xvi. 2.

[463] Prov. xvi. 3.

[464] Prov. xvi. 4. See note 430, p. [4]201.

[465] Prov. xvi. 5.

[466] Prov. xvi. 6.

[467] Prov. xvi. 7.

[468] Prov. xvi. 9. Cf. Prov. xix. 21: "There are many devices in a man's heart;
but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand."

[469] Prov. xvi. 20.

[470] Prov. xviii. 18. John Paton, the missionary to the New Hebrides, uncertain
whether to go back to Scotland and plead for more missionaries, and receiving no
light from human counsel, says, "After many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I
went alone before the Lord, and on my knees cast lots with a solemn appeal to
God, and the answer came 'Go home.' In my heart I believe that ... the Lord
condescended to decide for me the path of duty, otherwise unknown; and I believe
it the more truly now, in view of the aftercome of thirty years of service to
Christ that flowed out of the steps then deliberately and devoutly taken." See
the Autobiography, Second Part (Hodder and Stoughton, 1889).

[471] Prov. xvi. 33.

[472] Deut. xxv. 13-16.

[473] Lev. xix. 33, 36.

[474] Eccles. vii. 15.

[475] Isa. xxviii. 23-29.

[476] It seems impossible that a general and perfect morality in business can
ever be attained apart from this apprehension of an Omniscient Mind weighing and
judging, as well as accurately observing, everything done even in secret. In
mediæval Europe, when this faith was practically unquestioned, there was a
certain honesty and sincerity in handicrafts and in general dealing, until the
Church made the fatal blunder of granting indulgences for men's peccadilloes,
and professing to exonerate them from the consequences of the truth which she
herself in theory held.

[477] Prov. xvi. 6.
__________________________________________________________________

XVII.

FRIENDSHIP.

"A friend loveth at all times, and as a brother is born for adversity."--Prov.
xvii. 17. (This rendering, based upon the margin of the R.V., yields a much
better sense than the loosely connected, "And a brother is born for adversity.")

One of the most striking contrasts between the ancient and the modern world is
in the place which is given to Friendship by moralists and religious teachers.
In Aristotle's famous treatise on Ethics two books out of nine are devoted to
the moral bearings of Friendship, and these books form the climax of the work,
and are the natural transition to the work on Politics, or the science of the
State. This central position given to the subject by the greatest and most
systematic teacher of antiquity, compared with the very subordinate part which
friendship plays in Christian ethics, is calculated to make us reflect and
enquire. Is not the explanation probably this? Our Lord gave a great new
commandment to His disciples, that they should love one another; and though
Christian men have as yet but imperfectly understood what He meant, or carried
out what they have understood, an ideal was created which far transcended that
lower relationship of antiquity. Greek friendship was to be merged in Christian
love. The meaning of such a change will appear if we remember two
characteristics of mere friendship, on which Aristotle dwells. One is that it is
necessarily based upon selfishness; springing from a wish to realize oneself in
the life of another, fed by the benefit or pleasure derived from the mutual
intercourse, it lies under the necessary limitation that we shall not wish for
our friend a good which would remove him from us, or an improvement which would
raise him too far above us. For the second point is that friendship can only
exist between equals, and the best friendship is that between good men who stand
upon the same level of virtue. Christian love, on the other hand, springs from a
complete abnegation of Self. It seeks nothing: it gives all. So far from laying
stress upon the equality of conditions, it is never better pleased than when it
can raise another to a position of excellence far surpassing its own, and
instead of seeking its highest satisfaction in intercourse with its spiritual
peers,--the good, the great, the saintly,--it attains its apotheosis when it is
allowed to embrace the weak, the sinful, the fallen, and to lavish all its
Divine resources upon those who may never be able to repay it even with
gratitude.

It is obvious, then, that friendship is on a lower plane than Christian love,
and it marks a great advance in ideal ethics when the lesser star pales in
presence of the greater; but it may be urged with truth that friendship still
has its place in life, and deserves a more careful attention than it receives.
In the individual, as in the race, friendship may be a prelude and a practice of
the nobler and wider relation. And there is this further reason for trying to
understand the nature of friendship, that it is more than once in the Bible used
as a type and a figure of the relationship which may exist between the soul and
its God.

We will proceed then to examine some of the characteristics of friendship
referred to in the book of Proverbs.

Friends, according to the original sense of the Hebrew word, are those who
delight in one another's companionship; either they are useful to one another
because each possesses gifts which the other has not, or they are agreeable to
one another because they have certain tastes in common. Thus there may of course
be a friendship in evil, in vice, in destructive practices; thieves may enter
into a league to carry out their antisocial designs, and may be very true to one
another; vicious men may find a bond of friendship in the common indulgence of
their vices; and in this way friendship, so called, may be a means of ruining
the friends. "There are friends for mutual shattering," just as "there is a
lover that cleaves more than a brother." [478] There may also be an interested
comradeship which is entirely hypocritical; such a friendship is usually marked
by a loud and ostentatious demonstration: "He that blesseth his friend with a
loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him."
[479] But, in the main, friendship implies a certain amount of goodness; for it
is in itself a virtue. The suspicious, malignant nature of evil men speedily
snaps the ties which bind them together for a time; and where honour exists
among thieves it affords a strong presumption that the thieves are the product
of a wrong social state, rather than of a naturally evil disposition.

We may then practically, in thinking of friendship, confine our attention to
that which exists between well-meaning people, and tends on the whole to bless,
to strengthen, and to improve them. We may come to look at some of the uses and
the delights of friendship. "As in water face answers to face, so in the heart
man answers to man." [480] In the heart of our friend we see our own character
reflected just as gazing into a still pool we see the reflection of our own
face. It is in the frank and sympathetic intercourse of friendship that we
really get to know ourselves, and to realize what is in us. We unfold to one
another, we discover our similarities and mark our differences. Points which
remained unobserved in our own hearts are immediately detected and understood
when we see them also in our friends; faculties which remained unused are
brought into play to supplement the discovered defects in our friend's nature.
We hardly guess what a fund of happy humour is in us until we are encouraged to
display it by observing how its flashes light up the face we love. Our
capacities of sympathy and tenderness remain undeveloped until we wish eagerly
to comfort our friend in a sudden sorrow. In a true friendship we find that we
are living a life which is doubled in all its faculties of enjoyment and of
service; [481] we quite shudder to think what cold, apathetic, undeveloped
creatures we should have been but for that genial touch which unfolded us, and
warmed our hearts into genuine feeling while it brought our minds into active
play. This intellectual value of friendship is brought out in the happy saying:
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." [482]
A friendless person has a lack-lustre face; his talk has a dull edge; his
emotions a poor and feeble flow. That delightful readiness of thought and
expression which makes all the charm of social intercourse, the easy tact which
rubs off the angles and smooths all the relations of life, the bright
coruscations which seem like sunlight playing over summer seas, are usually the
result of close and intimate communion with congenial friends. Reading may make
a learned man, and without hard study few people can accomplish much permanent
good in the world, but reading does not necessarily make a really social man,
one who brings his fellow-creatures together in happy and helpful relationships;
that beautiful faculty is only acquired by the fostering and stimulating
influences of heart companionships. When we have real friends, though they be
only a few, we diffuse a friendly feeling amongst others, wherever we go.
Possibly also in the simile of the iron lies a reminder of the discipline which
friendship gives to character, a discipline which is not always unaccompanied by
pain. Friends "rub each other's angles down," and sometimes the friction is a
little distressing to both sides. The blades are sharpened, by a few
imperceptible filings being ground off each of their edges. The use of
friendship depends very largely on its frankness, just as its sweetness depends
upon mutual consideration. When the frankness hurts we have to remind ourselves
of the wholesome truth that the soft speaking is not always a token of love, and
the hard sayings of our friend may be uttered at a great personal cost, for our
good rather than his. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend: but the kisses of an
enemy are profuse." [483]

If, however, friendship ripens through many years of kindly growth, or if a
swift elective affinity forestalls at once the fruit of years, all the pain of
mutual counsel and correction disappears, and may be changed into a joy very
sweet to the soul. "Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the
sweetness of a man's friend that cometh of soul counsel." [484] It is a very
beautiful condition of things which is referred to in this proverb. Two people
have learnt thoroughly to understand one another, and have become in a certain
sense one. Each recognises the service that the other renders, and welcomes the
advice or even the rebuke which is made possible by their relationship. The
interchange of affection is naturally sweet, but as sweet, or even sometimes
sweeter, is the delicate aroma which arises when one sees a fault in the other,
and with a tenderness begotten of affection, and a humility which trembles to
presume, speaks gently but frankly to his friend. Never do the eyes more eagerly
respond to one another, never is the hand-clasp so firm and hearty, as after
such a passage between true friends.

But the decisive test and the most beautiful proof of real friendship will be
found in the day of adversity. A friend is never known till needed. [485] When
calamity falls upon us, false friends make excuses and go; lip-friends relapse
into silence; but we begin then for the first time to find out who is a friend
indeed. Then it appears that the true friend is entirely unchanged by the
changed aspect of affairs; it seems as if he had been born into a brotherhood
with us for this express occasion. There is no wish to cry off; he seems even to
press the brotherly tie in a way which we should not have presumed to expect,
and thus he contrives to lighten the oppressive burden of obligation for the
favour that he confers on us, by making it appear that he was bound to act as he
does by a necessity of kinship. This seems to be the meaning of our text. Such a
friend, if he be near at hand and in constant contact with us, is of more
service than our own brother; [486] and when through his timely aid or effectual
comfort we have come out of the furnace, and our tears are dried, we say
constantly to ourselves that we doubt whether our own brother would have clung
to us so faithfully, would have borne with our querulous murmurs so patiently,
or relieved our necessities so delicately and so liberally. [487]

If you have such a friend as this, your own or your father's, take care to
retain him; do not alienate him by negligence or a deficient consideration. Put
yourself out of the way to show that you appreciate and value him; do not allow
a false reserve or a foolish shyness to check your expression of gratitude. A
friendship is a delicate growth; and even when it has become robust, it can
easily be blighted. The results of years may be lost in a few days. And if a
root of bitterness springs up, if a division occurs, it may be quite impossible
by every effort in your power to heal the breach or to pluck up that obstinate
root. "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and such
contentions are like the bars of a castle." [488] The closer the intimacy had
been, the tenderer the friendship, so much the sterner will be these bars, so
much the more inexpugnable the castle. For it will be felt, if such
protestations, such interchange of affection, such mutual delights, could have
been deceptive, mere hypocrisies or delusions, what hope can there be that the
same things broken and patched up again can be of any worth? A difference with a
chance acquaintance is easily removed; further knowledge may improve our opinion
of one another, and even if we separate we have no deep resentment. But a
difference between true friends may quickly become irreparable. They feel that
there is no more to know; they have seen the best and that has proved
disappointing. The resentment springs from a sense of abused confidence and
injured love.

If you have real friends then, take pains to keep them. Watch carefully for the
small beginnings of a rupture and hasten to heal it. Think no effort is wasted,
and no apology or explanation is too humiliating, which may avert that great
calamity,--the loss of a true soul-comrade; one whom you have learnt to honour
with the name and dignity of friend.

"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,"

says our wise poet,

"Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel."

Such a friendship as we have been considering, rare and beautiful as it is,
forms a noble stepping-stone to the loftier relationship of Christian love. In
tone and quality it is almost the same; it differs only in its range and in its
motive. What one man feels to another in an ideal friendship, the Christian is
called upon, according to his capacity and opportunity, to feel to man as man,
to all his fellow-creatures. We cannot of course fulfil all the offices of
friendship to every one, and we are not as Christians required to abate one jot
of our love to those who are our friends by affinity and by choice. But where
the heart is truly Christian it will become more expansive, and it will be
conscious of the powerful claims which weakness, misery, solitude, or even moral
failings, make upon its friendship; it will shrink from the selfishness inherent
in all affections which are merely selective and exclusive; it will earnestly
desire to feel an affection which is inclusive and quite unselfish. Where is to
be found the motive for such an enlarged spirit of friendship? Whence is to come
the impulse to such a self-surrender?

Surely such a motive and such an impulse are to be discovered only in that
relation of friendship which God Himself deigns to sustain towards the human
soul. Jehoshaphat in his prayer appeals to God on the ground that He had given
the land to "Abraham His friend for ever." [489] And we read of Moses that "the
Lord spake unto him face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." [490] But
in this position of one who is called the father of the faithful, and of one who
was the leader of his people, we cannot but recognise a promise and a
foreshadowing of a relation with God which was meant to become more general. The
whole tendency of the Gospel is to put every believer in our Lord Jesus Christ
on a spiritual level with the most favoured and richly endowed of a former
dispensation. And since the Incarnate Son lived on earth, and called the simple
peasants of Galilee to be, not His servants, but His friends, if they did
whatsoever He commanded them, [491] we may without presumption--nay, we must if
we would not grieve Him by unbelief--accept the mysteriously dignified position
of God's friends. The feeblest and the poorest, as well as the strongest and
most gifted, believing in Jesus Christ, in proportion as he heartily accepts the
authority and obeys the commandment of his Lord, is a friend of God. It is a
very unequal friendship, as we must all feel. He has all the strength, all the
wisdom, all the goodness, all the gifts; but the sense of inequality is removed
by His own gracious friendliness: He attaches such importance to a heartfelt
love that He is willing to accept that as the fair equivalent of all that He
does and gives to us; and He remedies the terrible inferiority of His friends by
realizing His own life in them and merging their imperfection in His
perfectness, their limitations in His infinity.

Now, shall we venture to assume that you and God are friends; that the beautiful
relation which we have examined, the delight in mutual companionship, the
interchange of thought and feeling, the quick and quickening response of love
and comprehension, exist between you and Him? Come and read some of these
sayings again and apply them to Him. You may gaze into the heart of God, and as
face answers to face in a quiet pool, you may find yourself in Him,--a larger
self, a truer self, a holier self, than you could ever find in any human
fellowship, or than you had ever dared to imagine. This familiar intercourse
with God, which has its roots in a profound reverence and its fruits in an
unutterable joy, is the new creation of a human soul. A man will be known by his
friends, and most assuredly he will be known, if his Friend and most constant
Companion is God. He will regard that status as his highest title and
distinction, just as Lord Brooks was so proud of knowing Sir Philip Sydney that
he wished his epitaph to be "Here lies Sir Philip Sydney's friend."

Again, in this close fellowship with God, in His warnings and encouragements and
chastisements, even in the "faithful wounds" that He inflicts, does not the
heart perceive His sweetness as an ointment and perfume? Does not the quiet
place where these passages of tender friendship between your soul and God occur
become redolent with a precious fragrance, as of incense or of fresh flowers?

And then the deep meaning which the friendship of God brings into our text, "A
friend loveth at all times, and as a brother"--yes, our Divine Brother, the Lord
Jesus Christ--"is born for adversity;" or into that other saying, "There is a
lover that cleaves more than a brother"! Let us have no loud pharisaical ways in
blessing our Friend, [492] but let no effort seem too exacting to retain
unbroken this priceless blessing of the Divine Communion!

Now, where the soul counts God its nearest and dearest Friend,--the Friend of
whom nothing in life or death can rob it,--this effect follows by a beautiful
necessity: the chief and all-inclusive friendship being secured, we are at
leisure from ourselves to soothe and sympathise, we are able to extend our
thoughts and our ministries of love to all around us, and to reflect in our
relations with men that exquisite relation which God has deigned to establish
with us. Our own private friendships then produce no exclusiveness, but rather
they become the types of our feelings to others, and the ever-springing
fountainhead of friendly thoughts and courteous deeds; while these private
friendships and our wider relations alike are all brought up into the lofty and
purifying friendship which we hold with our God and He with us.
__________________________________________________________________

[478] Prov. xviii. 24. This sense is obtained by what appears a necessary change
in the text; we must read ys for 'ys. A similar error occurs 2 Sam. xiv. 19 and
Micah vi. 10.

[479] Prov. xxvii. 14.

[480] Prov. xxvii. 19.

[481] "Sorrows by being communicated grow less and joys greater."--Bacon.

[482] Prov. xxvii. 17.

[483] Prov. xxvii. 6.

[484] Prov. xxvii. 9.

[485] "Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur."--Cicero.

[486] Prov. xxvii. 10.

[487] Prov. xviii. 24.

[488] Prov. xviii. 19.

[489] 2 Chron. xx. 7.

[490] Exod. xxxiii. 11.

[491] John xv. 14.

[492] Prov. xxvii. 14.
__________________________________________________________________

XVIII.

THE EVIL OF ISOLATION.

"He that separates himself follows after his own desire, but against all sound
wisdom he shows his teeth."--Prov. xviii. 1.

From the value of friendship there is a natural and easy transition to the evil
of isolation. We must try to fathom the profound meaning which is hidden under
this simple but striking proverb. To begin with, what are we to understand by
"one that separates himself"? This same word occurs in 2 Sam. i. 23 concerning
Saul and Jonathan, that "in their death they were not separated." Theirs was a
togetherness which accompanied them to the grave. On the other hand, there are
people who shun all togetherness in their lives,--they are voluntarily,
deliberately separated from their kind, and they seem for the first time to
blend with their fellows when their undistinguished dust mixes with the dust of
others in the common grave. We are to think of a person who has no ties with any
of his fellow-creatures, who has broken such ties as bound him to them, or is of
that morbid and unnatural humour that makes all intercourse with others
distasteful. We are to think more especially of one who chooses this life of
solitariness in order to follow out his own desire rather than from any
necessity of circumstance or disposition; one who finds his pleasure in ignoring
mankind, and wishes for intercourse with them only that he may vent his spleen
against them; in a word, we are to think of a Misanthrope.

We must be careful in catching the precise idea, because there are men who shut
themselves off from their kind, rightly or wrongly, in order to seek the common
welfare. A student or an inventor, sometimes even a teacher or a preacher, will
find the solitude of the study or the laboratory the only condition on which he
can accomplish the work to which he is called. The loss of domestic life or of
social pleasures, the withdrawal from all the "kindly ways of men," may be a
positive pain to him, a cross which he bears for the direct good of those whose
company he forswears, or for the cause of Truth, in whose service alone it is
possible to permanently benefit his fellows. Such a "separation" as
this--painful, difficult, unrewarded--we must exclude from the intention of our
text, although possibly our text might convey a warning even to these benevolent
eremites, that unless the heart is kept warm by human sympathies, unless the
mind is kept in touch with the common cares and joys of our kind, the value of
even intellectual work will be considerably diminished, while the worker himself
must inevitably and perhaps needlessly suffer. But, on the whole, we must except
these nobler instances of isolation, if we would feel the full force of the
judgment which is pronounced in the text.

The misanthrope is one who has no faith in his fellows, and shrinks into himself
to escape them; who pursues his own private ends, avoiding all unnecessary
speech with those who are around him, living alone, dying unobserved, except for
the mischief which consciously or unconsciously he does to those who survive
him. Such an one is aptly described as showing his teeth [493] in an angry snarl
against all the approaches of a true wisdom.

Shakespeare might have had this proverb before him in that grim delineation of
Richard the Third, who boasts that he has neither pity, love, nor fear. He was,
he had been told, born with teeth in his mouth.

"And so I was," he exclaims; "which plainly signified

That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog."

And then he explains his terrible character in these significant lines:--

"I have no brother, I am like no brother:

And this word Love, which greybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me; I am myself alone." [494]

Yes, Love can only exist among men who are like one another; and no more damning
indictment can be brought against a human being than this, that he is himself
alone.

The truth is that every man is not only a "self," a personality, but he is a
very complex being made up of many relations with other men. He is a son, a
brother, a friend, a father, a citizen. Suppose him to be stripped of all
sonship, brotherhood, friendship, fatherhood, and citizenship; there is left,
not a man, but a mere self, and that is his hideous condemnation. In the same
way, a woman that is neither daughter, nor sister, nor wife, nor friend, nor
ministrant, does not deserve the grand name of woman; she is a mere self, a
point of exigent and querulous desires. The most appalling discovery in a great
city is that multitudes have become mere selves,--hungry, hollow, ravening,
thirsty, shrivelled selves. The father and mother are dead, or left far away,
probably never known; no one is brother to them, they are brothers to no one.
Friend has no significance to their understanding, or means only one who, from
most interested motives, ministers to their craving appetites; they are not
citizens of London, nor of any other city; they are not Englishmen, though they
were born in England, nor have they any other nationality,--hideous, clamorous,
esurient selves, nothing more. An old Greek saying declared that one who lives
alone is either a god or a wild beast; [495] while, as we have already seen,
there are a few of the isolated ones who are isolated from noble and even Divine
motives, the vast majority are in this condition because they have fallen from
the level of humanity into the roving and predatory state of wild animals, that
seek their meat by night and lurk in a lonely lair by day.

The "sound wisdom" against which the isolated rage is nothing less than the
kindly law which makes us men, and ordains that we should not live to ourselves
alone, but should fulfil our noble part as members one of another. The Social
Instinct is one of two or three striking characteristics which mark us out as
human: a man by himself is only an animal, and a very poor animal too; in size
he is far beneath the greatest of the creatures that inhabit land and sea; he is
not as swift as the winged denizens of the air; his strength in proportion to
his bulk is debility compared with that of the tiniest insects. His distinction
in the creation, and his excelling dignity, are derived from the social
relations which make him in combination strong, in the intercourse of speech and
thought, wise, and in the loving response of heart to heart, noble. If by some
unhappy accident a human being wanders early from his place into the forests, is
suckled by wild beasts, and grows up among them, the result is an animal
inconceivably repulsive, fierce, cunning, and ugly; vulpine, but without the
wolf's agile grace; bearish, but without the bear's slow-pacing dignity.

The "sound wisdom" is the wisdom of the Creator, who from the beginning
determined that it is not good for men to live alone, and marked His conception
of the unity which should bind them together by the gift of the woman to the
man, to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

It becomes therefore a necessity to every wise human being to recognise, to
maintain, and to cultivate all those wholesome relationships which make us truly
human. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from
his place." [496] Sometimes when a great ship is far off in mid-ocean, a tired
land-bird will fall panting and exhausted upon the deck: the wings can beat no
longer; the eyes glaze; and the eager wanderer fails and dies. The true
bird-life is the life of the woods, of the toilsomely-woven nest, of the mate
and the brood and the fledglings. In the same way on those ocean steamers--ay,
and in many a weary bye-path and lonely desert of the earth--may be found men
who have broken away from the ties which formed their strength and their truer
being, and now fall, faint and purposeless, to languish and to die. For true
human life is the life of our fellows, of the diligent laborious housebuilding,
of the home, of the young, of the rising nestlings which are to form the next
link in the long chain of the generations.

Neighbourliness is the larger part of life; we are not to go to our distant
"brother's house in the day of our calamity, for better is a neighbour that is
near than a brother far off." [497] Our life is rich and true and helpful just
in proportion as we are entwined with those who live around us in bonds of
mutual respect and consideration, of reciprocal helpfulness and service, of
intimate and intelligent friendship.

It is hardly necessary to say that there is neighbourliness and neighbourliness.
Our relation to our neighbours may be that of mere busybodies, tattlers, and
whisperers; it may be devoid of tact and consideration: there is need therefore
of a warning to "hold back thy foot from thy neighbour's house; lest he be sated
with thee, and hate thee." [498] But this possible abuse does not affect the
broad and salutary principle: we are meant to live in one another; our nature
can realize itself, and accomplish its mission, only in generous and noble
relations with those who are about us. The home is at the foundation of all; a
good son or daughter will generally make a good man or woman; good brothers will
prove good citizens, good sisters good ministrants and teachers to the poor and
the ignorant; good fathers will be the best rulers in Church and State. The home
will be the preparation for the larger life of the town, or the social circle,
or the state. And thus from the cradle to the grave no man should live alone,
but every one should be a member of a larger body, holding a definite place in a
system or organism, depending on others, with others depending on him. Nerves
should run through the body politic, motor nerves and sensory nerves; the joys
and pains of a community should be shared, the activities of a community should
be united. No one should live to himself; all should live, and rejoice to live,
in the great co-operative society of the world, in which personal interests are
mutual interests and the gains of each are the gains of all.

But we can hardly probe to the depths of this Proverbial Philosophy without
becoming aware that we are touching on an idea which is the mainspring of
Christianity on its earthly and visible side. We seem to have detected in all
the preceding discussion echoes, however faint, of the Apostolic teaching which
gave practical shape and body to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The relation of Christ, as the Son of God, to the human race as a whole,
immediately opened up the possibility of a world-wide society in which all
nations, all classes, all castes, all degrees, all individualities, should be
not so much merged as distinctly articulated and recognised in a complete and
complex whole. The kingdom of heaven, while borrowing its terminology from
earthly kingdoms, was unlike any one of them because it was to include them all.
Into that kingdom all the peoples, nations, and languages should pass.

The Catholic Church, as the first attempt to realize this grand idea, presented
for a time a certain faint and wavering reflection of the image in the heavens.
The fault of seeking the unity of the race in a priesthood instead of in the
people was of course a fatal one to its own ultimate success, but at least one
great service was rendered to humanity; the idea became familiar of a Unity, in
which the narrower unities of the family, the social circle, and the nation were
to find their completion. And when the intelligence and the faith of men broke
with the Catholic Church, it was not a breach with the Catholic idea, but merely
a transition to a nobler and a more living realization of the idea. At present
the idea is daily clearing and assuming vaster proportions; humanity is seen to
be one; the Great Father presides over a family which may be sundered, but
cannot be really parted; over a race which is divided, but not actually
separated.

Strange and rapturous have been the emotions of men as they have entered into
the realization of this idea, and the thrill of their vast fellowship has passed
through their hearts. Sometimes they have turned away in bitterness of revolt
from the Christian Church, which with harsh dogmatisms and fierce anathemas,
with cruel exclusiveness and sectarian narrowness, seems rather to check than to
further the sublime thought of the One Father, of whom all the family is named
in heaven and in earth. But whatever justification there may be for complaint
against the Church, we cannot afford to turn our thoughts from the Son of Man,
who has redeemed the race to which we belong, and who, as the Divine Power, is
alone able to carry out in effect the great conception which He has given us in
thought.

And now I am going to ask you for a moment to consider how the text reads in the
light of the work and the presence and the person of Jesus Christ, who has come
to gather together in one those that are scattered abroad.

The person of Christ is the link which binds all men together; the presence of
Christ is the guarantee of the union; the work of Christ, which consists in the
removal of sin, is the main condition of a heart-unity for all mankind. When
therefore you put your trust in Christ and your sinful nature is subdued, you
are incorporated into a body of which He is the head, and you must pass out of
the narrow self-life into the broad Christ-life; you can no longer live for
yourself alone, because as the member of a body you exist only in relation to
all the other members. "But," it is said, "am I not to seek my own salvation,
and then to work it out with fear and trembling? am I not to withdraw from the
world, and to labour hard to make my calling and election sure?" In a certain
sense, the answer to that question is, Yes. But then it is only in a certain
sense; for you make sure of your own salvation precisely in proportion as you
are really incorporated into Christ, and are made a genuine member of the body:
as St. John says, "We know that we are passed from death unto life because we
love the brethren," and "if we walk in the light we have fellowship one with
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." We work out
our salvation therefore only by losing the self in others; we withdraw from the
world and make our calling sure, just as our thoughts become identified with
God's thoughts, and as our lives are passed in cheerful and victorious service.

If, then, on the ground of our humanity we are cautioned against separating
ourselves, because by so doing we set our teeth against all sound wisdom, on the
ground of our Christianity we must be warned not to separate ourselves, because
that means to harden our hearts against the faith itself. When we say to
ourselves, "We will live our Christian life alone," that is equivalent to
saying, "We will not live the Christian life at all." We do not know what the
life in heaven may be,--though from the casual glimpses we obtain of it, we
should say that it is a great social gathering, at which we shall sit down with
Abraham and all the saints of God, a kind of marriage festivity to celebrate the
union of the Lord with His bride,--but it is plain that the Christian life, as
it is revealed to us here, must be the life of a community, for it is likened to
a vine, from which all dead branches are cut off, and plainly all cut-off
branches are dead.

"But," say many people amongst us, "we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ;
we trust to Him; why should you impose any further conditions?" Do they put
their faith in Him? Does not faith imply obedience? Did He not require His
disciples to be united in a fellowship, and did He not give His body and His
blood as a symbol of this fellowship, and command them to take the symbols in
remembrance of Him until He comes? Are these isolated believers obeying Him, or
are they not cutting at the root of His glorious purpose of human fellowship in
the Divine Head? And if they are thus breaking His expressed commandment, has He
not warned them that He will say, "I never knew you, depart from Me," although
they have taught in His name, and even cast out devils and done many wonderful
works?

And in thus reminding you of our Lord's thought, I am not speaking only of what
we call the fellowship of the Church; for there are many who are merely nominal
members of the Church, and though their names are enrolled they "separate
themselves" and live the life of unhallowed isolation, just as they did before
they professedly entered into the Christian society. This is a larger question
than that of Church membership; Church membership derives its vast importance
from being a part of this larger question. Will you, therefore, let me close
with a personal appeal addressed to each one of you?

You know that the Son of Man would make men one; you know that He calls His
disciples into a holy family of mutual love and service, so that men may know
that they are His, and may recognise Him because they love one another. Are you
venturing to disregard His commandment and to frustrate His will by separating
yourself for your own desire? have you fallen out of all relations with His
family, so that the sonship, the brotherhood, the friendship, the fatherhood,
the citizenship, of the heavenly kingdom are as good as meaningless to you? If
so, may I say in the words of the text, you are setting "your teeth against all
sound wisdom"?
__________________________________________________________________

[493] See note on htnl in Lecture XV., p. [5]205.

[494] III. King Henry VI., Act v., Sc. 6.

[495] e theos e therion.

[496] Prov. xxvii. 8.

[497] Prov. xxvii. 10.

[498] Prov. xxv. 17.
__________________________________________________________________

XIX.

HUMAN FREEDOM.

"The foolishness of man subverteth his way;

And his heart fretteth against the Lord."--Prov. xix. 3.

There is such a valuable expansion and commentary on this proverb in the book of
Ecclesiasticus that it seems worth while to quote it in full: "Say not, it is
through the Lord that I fell away, for the things He hates thou shalt not do.
Say not, it is He that caused me to err, for He has no use for a sinful man.
Every abomination the Lord hates, neither is it lovely to those that fear Him.
He Himself at the outset made Man, and left him in the power of his own control,
that, if thou wilt, thou shouldst keep His commandments, and to do faithfully
what is pleasing to Him. He set fire and water before thee, that thou shouldst
stretch out thy hand to which thou wilt. In front of men is life and death, and
whichever a man pleases shall be given to him. Because wide is the wisdom of the
Lord; He is mighty in power, beholding all things; and His eyes are upon them
that fear Him, and He Himself will take note of every work of man. He never
enjoined any one to do wickedly, and He never gave to any one licence to sin."
[499]

It is our constant tendency to claim whatever good we do as our own doing, and
to charge whatever evil we do on causes which are beyond our control,--on
heredity, on circumstances of our birth and upbringing, or even on God. The
Scriptures, on the other hand, regard all our good deeds as the work which God
works within us, when our will is given to Him, while all our evil is ascribed
to our own foolish and corrupt will, for which we are, and shall be, held
responsible. This is certainly a very remarkable contrast, and we shall do well
to take account of it. It is not necessary to run into any extreme statement, to
deny the effects either of taints in the blood which we receive from our
parents, or of early surroundings and education, or even the enormous influence
which other people exercise over us in later life; but when all allowance is
made for these recognised facts, the contention of the text is that what really
subverts our lives is our own folly,--and not uncontrollable circumstances,--and
our folly is due, not to our misfortune, but to our fault.

Now we will not attempt to deal with all the modifications and reservations and
refinements which ingenuity might offer to this doctrine; however charity may
require us to make allowance for others on the ground of disadvantages, it is
questionable whether we help them, and it is certain that we weaken ourselves,
by turning attention constantly from the central fact to the surrounding
circumstances; we will therefore try to steadily look at this truth of
Individual Responsibility, and lay it to heart. When we have acquitted ourselves
of blame, and have obtained a discharge in the forum of our own conscience, it
will be time to seek other causes of our guilt, and to "fret against the Lord."

But before we turn inwards and appeal to our own consciousness, may we not
observe how absurd it is that the Lord should be charged with responsibility for
our sins? What do we know of the Lord except that He hates and abominates sin?
It is as the Hater of sin that He is revealed to us in ever-clearer forms from
the first page of revelation to the last. But more, the most powerful proof that
we possess of His existence is to be found in the voice of conscience within us;
we instinctively identify Him with that stern monitor that denounces so
vigorously and unsparingly all our offences against holiness. The God of
revelation is from the first declared to be "He who will by no means clear the
guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." The God of
conscience is by the very nature of the case identified with the uncompromising
sentence against evil; is it not then obviously inconsistent to lay our sins to
the charge of God? We are more assured of His Holiness than of His omnipotence;
we cannot therefore bring His omnipotence to impeach His holiness. We see Him as
the Avenger of sin before we see Him in any other capacity; we cannot therefore
bring any subsequent vision of Him to discredit the first. It is surely the
dictate of plain common sense, as St. James says, that "God cannot be tempted
with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man: but each man is tempted, when he is
drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived,
beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death." [500]

Now our actual responsibility for our own sins, and the troubles which result
from them, will perhaps come out in the clear light of conscience, if we regard
our conduct in the following way. We must make an appeal to consciousness. There
are actions which, consciousness tells us, rest entirely on our own choice, and
concerning which no sophistry, however ingenious, can furnish an adequate
exculpation. There was in these cases, as we well remember, the plain offer of
an alternative "Fire or Water, Life or Death." We knew at the time that we were
equally able to take either of them; we felt no compulsion; there was, it is
true, a great tumult of conflicting motives, but when the motives were balanced
and the resulting verdict was declared, we were perfectly conscious that we
could, if we chose, reverse the verdict and give our judgment against it. Our
first deviations from truth, from purity, from charity, come up before us as we
reflect; the struggle which went on survives vividly in memory; and when we
yielded to the evil power we were conscious at the time, as we remember still,
that our will was to blame. As the lie glided from the lips, as the unhallowed
thought was allowed to pass into act, as the rein was thrown on the neck of the
evil passion, we knew that we were doing wrong, we felt that by an adequate
exercise of the will we could do right. Cast your eye back on the steps by which
your character was formed, on the gradual destruction of your finer feelings, on
the steady decline of your spiritual instincts, on the slow deadening and
searing of your moral sense. Do you not remember how deliberately you submitted
to the fascinations of that dangerous friend, whom your conscience entirely
disapproved? how wilfully you opened and perused the pages of that foul book,
which swept over your soul like a mud-torrent and left its slimy sediment there
ever after? how you consciously avoided the influence of good people, made every
excuse to escape the prayer, the reading, the sermon, which was to you a
conscience-stirring influence, an appeal of God to the soul?

As you retrace those fatal steps, you will be surprised to discover how entirely
your own master you were at the time, although the evil deeds done then have
forged a chain which limits your freedom now. If at any of those critical
moments some one had said to you, Are you free to do just which of the two
things you please? you would have replied at once, Why, of course I am. Indeed,
if there had been any compulsion to evil, you would have rebelled against it and
resisted it. It was really the complete liberty, the sense of power, the delight
in following your own desire, that determined your choice. The evil companion
persuaded, your conscience dissuaded, neither compelled; when the balance hung
even you threw the weight of your will into the scale. The book lay open;
curiosity, prurience, impurity, bade you read; your best conviction shamed you
and called you away: when the two forces pulled even, you deliberately gave your
support to the evil force. The solemn voice of prayer and worship called you,
moving you with mystical power, waking strange desires and hopes and
aspirations; the half-mocking voice of the earth was also in your ear, tempting,
luring, exciting, and when the sounds were about balanced, you raised up your
own voice for the one and gave it the predominance.

Or if now in the bondage of evil you can no longer realize that you were once
free, you can look at others who are now where you were then; notice even when
you try to tempt your younger companions into evil, how the blush of shame, the
furtive glance, the sudden collapse of resistance, plainly proves that the
action is one consciously determined by an evil choice; notice how your first
blasphemies, your first devil-born doubts, suggestions, and innuendoes, bring
the pained expression to the face, and raise a conflict which the will has to
decide. In this appeal to consciousness or to observation we must be
scrupulously honest with ourselves; we must take infinite pains not to garble
the evidence to suit a foregone conclusion or to excuse an accomplished fall. I
think we may say that when men are honest with themselves, and in proportion as
they are pure and innocent, and not yet bound hand and foot by the bondage of
their own sins, they know that they have been free, that in the face of all
circumstances they still stood uncommitted; that if they yielded to temptation
it was their own "foolishness that subverted their way."

But now we may pass from these inward moral decisions which have determined our
character and made us what we are, to the ordinary actions which form the
greater part of our everyday conduct. Here again we are generally inclined to
take credit for every course which has a happy issue, and for every unfortunate
decision to cast the blame on others. We are reminded, however, that our
misfortunes are generally the result of our own folly; we are too impatient, too
hasty, too impetuous, too self-willed. "Desire without knowledge is not good,
and he that hasteth with his feet misseth the way." [501] If we look back upon
our mistakes in life, it is surprising to see how many were due to our own
headstrong determination to follow our own way, and our complete disregard of
the prudent counsels which our wiser friends ventured to offer us. "The way of
the foolish is right in his own eyes: but he that is wise hearkeneth unto
counsel." [502] "Where there is no counsel, purposes are disappointed: but in
the multitude of counsellors they are established." [503] "Hear counsel," is the
command of this chapter, "and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in
thy latter end." [504] "Every purpose is established by counsel,"--affairs of
state, whether civil [505] or military, [506] --and so by counsel a man is made
strong and is able to carry out the warfare of his own personal life. [507] It
is well for us therefore not only to accept counsel which is proffered to us,
but to be at pains to get it, for it often lies, like the waters of a well, deep
down in a man's mind, and requires some patience and skill in order to elicit
it. [508]

Our false steps are due to a rash precipitancy which prevents us from looking at
the question on all its sides, and learning the views of those who have had
experience and know. The calamities which befell us were foreseen by many
onlookers, and were even foretold by our friends, but we could accept no advice,
no warning. And while therefore it is perfectly true that our own judgment was
not sufficient to ward off the evil or prevent the faux pas, we are none the
less to blame, our own foolishness has none the less subverted our way, for it
was our own fault that we refused to be advised, it was our own incredible folly
that made us form so wrong an idea of our wisdom.

Suppose then that in our retrospect of life and in the estimation of our errors,
we mark off all those sins for which our conscience duly charges us with direct
responsibility, and all those blunders which might have been avoided if we had
wisely submitted to more prudent judgments than our own, what is there that
remains? Can we point out any group of actions or any kind of errors which are
yet unaccounted for, and may possibly be charged on some other person or thing
than ourselves? Is there yet some opening by which we may escape responsibility?
Are there any effectual and valid excuses that we can successfully urge?

Now it appears that all these possible excuses are netted and completely
removed--and every avenue of escape is finally blocked--by this broad
consideration; God is at hand as the wisest of Counsellors, and we might by
simple appeal to Him, and by reverently obeying His commandments, avoid all the
evils and the dangers to which we are exposed. So far from being able to excuse
ourselves and to lay the blame on God, it is our chief and all-inclusive fault,
it is the clearest mark of our foolishness, that we do not resort to Him for
help, but constantly follow our own devices; that we do not rely upon His
goodness, but idly fret against Him and all His ordinances. "There are many
devices in a man's heart," but over against these feeble, fluctuating, and
inconsistent ideas of ours is "the counsel of the Lord, which shall stand."
[509] "The fear of the Lord tendeth to life: and he that hath it shall abide
satisfied; he shall not be visited with evil." [510] There is a way of life,
there is a plain commandment, a law of God's appointing: "He that keepeth the
commandment keepeth his soul: but he that is careless of his ways shall die."
[511] It is simply our own carelessness that is our ruin; if we would pay the
slightest heed, if there were one grain of seriousness in us, we should be wise,
we should get understanding, and so find good in the salvation of the soul;
[512] we should not, as we so often do, "hear instruction, only to err from the
words of knowledge." [513]

We may wonder at the strong conviction with which this truth was urged even
under the Jewish law; it may seem to us that the requirements then were so
great, and the details so numerous, and the revelation so uncertain, that a man
could scarcely be held responsible if he missed the way of life through
inadvertence or defective knowledge. Yet even then the path was plain, and if a
man missed it he had but himself and his own folly to blame. But how much more
plain and sure is everything made for us! Our Lord has not only declared the
way, but He is the Way; He has not only given us a commandment to keep, but He
has Himself kept it, and offers to the believing soul the powers of an inward
life, by which the yoke of obedience becomes easy, and the burden of service is
made light. He has become "the end of the law to every one that believeth." He
has made His offer of Himself not only general, but universal, so that no human
being can say that he is excluded, or murmur that he is not able to "keep his
soul." His word is gone out into all the world, and while they who have not
heard it, being without a law are yet a law unto themselves, and are responsible
by virtue of that self-witness which God has given everywhere in Nature, in
Society, and in the conscience of man, how can we sufficiently emphasize our own
responsibility, to whom God has spoken in the latter days by His own Son! Surely
"whoso despiseth the word bringeth destruction on himself." [514]

If even in that old and darker dispensation the light was so clear that it was
chargeable to a man's own folly when he disobeyed,--and "judgments were prepared
for scorners, and stripes for the backs of fools," [515] --what must come upon
us who have the clearer light if we wilfully and foolishly disobey? The counsel
of the Lord stands sure: "There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel
against the Lord." [516] No authority of wise men, no sneers of wits, no devices
of the clever, can in the least avail to set aside His mighty ordinance or to
excuse us for disregarding it. "The horse is prepared against the day of battle:
but victory is of the Lord." [517] There can be no evasion, no escape. He
Himself, by His own invincible power, will bring home to the hearts of the
rebellious the evil of their rebellion, and will send the cruel messenger
against them. [518]

Does it not behove us to remember and to consider? to remember our offences, to
consider our guilt and the Lord's power? Here is a way of life marked out before
you, and there is the way of death; here is the water held out to you, and there
is the fire; and you may choose. The way of life is in the Gospel of God's dear
Son; you know that its precepts are perfect, converting the soul, and that
Christ Himself is holy, such an one as the earth never bore before or since; you
know too that this Holy One came to give His life a ransom for many, that He
invited all to come unto Him, and promised to all who came everlasting life. You
know that He did give His life a ransom,--as the Good Shepherd He gave Himself
for the sheep, and then took again the life which He laid down. You know that He
ever liveth to make intercession for us, and that His saving power was not
exercised for the last time years and years ago, but this very day, probably
just at the moment that I am now speaking to you. The way is plain, and the
choice is free; the truth shines, and you can open your eyes to it; the life is
offered, and you can accept it. What pretext can you give for not choosing
Christ, for not coming to the truth, for not accepting the life?

Is it not clear to you that if you refuse Him that speaketh, and your way is
thus subverted,--as indeed it must be,--it is your own folly that is to blame?
You fret against the Lord now, and you charge Him foolishly, but some day you
will see clearly that this is all a blind and a subterfuge; you will admit that
the choice was open to you, and you chose amiss; that life and death were
offered to you, and you preferred death.

If any question might be entertained about those who have only the light of
conscience to guide them, and have not heard of the direct relation of succour
and support which God is ready to give to those who depend upon Him, there can
be no doubt of the complete freedom of every human being, who hears the message
of the Gospel, to accept it. You may put it aside, you may decline to accept it
on the ground of disinclination, or because you consider the historical evidence
insufficient, but you will be the first to admit that in doing so you exercise
your discretion and consciously choose the course which you take.

Nay, leaving all metaphysical discussion about the freedom of the will, I put it
to you simply, Can you not, if you choose, come to Christ now?

Oh, hear counsel and receive instruction: is not the Spirit pleading with you,
counselling, teaching, warning you? Do not harden your heart, do not turn away.
Attend to Christ now, admit Him now, that you may be wise in your latter end.
[519] __________________________________________________________________

[499] Eccles. xv. 11-20.

[500] James i. 13-15.

[501] Prov. xix. 2.

[502] Prov. xii. 15.

[503] Prov. xv. 22.

[504] Prov. xix. 20.

[505] Prov. xi. 14.

[506] Prov. xx. 18.

[507] Prov. xxiv. 5, 6.

[508] Prov. xx. 5.

[509] Prov. xix. 21.

[510] Prov. xix. 23.

[511] Prov. xix. 16.

[512] Prov. xix. 8.

[513] Prov. xix. 27.

[514] Prov. xiii. 13.

[515] Prov. xix. 29.

[516] Prov. xxi. 30.

[517] Prov. xxi. 31.

[518] Prov. xvii. 11.

[519] Prov. xix. 20.
__________________________________________________________________

XX.

IDLENESS.

"After the autumn gathering the slothful does not plough; he asks in the
harvest, and there is nothing."--Prov. xx. 4.

We have already in the sixth lecture caught a glimpse of the sluggard, and in
the ninth we have seen in passing that diligence in work is enjoined by the
teacher; but we must give a more concentrated attention to this subject if we
would realize the stress which this book of Wisdom lays on work as the grand
condition of life in this earnest world. They who will not work have no place in
an order of things which is maintained by work, and in which the toil itself is
the great discipline of character and the preparation of joy. It is no churlish
or envious spirit which pronounces a doom on the idle, but it is the very
necessity of the case; that idleness which in moments of excessive strain we so
eagerly covet is, if it is accepted as the regular and continuous state of the
soul, a more ruinous and miserable curse than the hardest labour. By a law which
we all break at our peril, we are required to have an honest end and a strenuous
occupation in our life; and we are further required to labour diligently for the
end, and to spare no pains to achieve it. We have many faculties lying dormant,
and we must wake them into activity; we have many gifts half used or not used at
all; we must turn them all to account, if we would be wholesome, happy, and in
the true sense successful.

First of all, let us look at the portrait of the sluggard as it is delineated in
some of these proverbial sayings. We see him in bed, at the board, in the house,
out of doors. He will not get up in the morning; he turns from side to side,
just like a door which swings backwards and forwards on its hinges, but of
course never gets any further. [520] "Yet a little sleep," he says, "a little
slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep." [521] Or when at last he has
brought himself to get up and to sit down to table, he is too lethargic even to
eat: "He buries his hand in the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his
mouth again;" [522] or if he raises the morsel to his lips, he does it with an
air of indescribable languor and weariness. [523] Then the time comes for him to
go out to his daily duties. But he has a number of ingenious, though utterly
absurd, excuses why he should not leave the house: "There is a lion in the
streets," he says, "a lion in the way;" [524] "There is a lion without; I shall
be murdered in the streets." [525] When he is told that this is a delusion, he
is prepared to argue the matter, and to show that his fear is well grounded; he
is quite scornful of all the people who assure him to the contrary, because they
have been out and seen for themselves: "The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes
than seven men that can render a reason." [526] And when at length he is
launched on the business of the day, arriving late, his wits gone
wool-gathering, his will as inactive as his mind is inattentive, he drags
through every duty with the air of one who is walking "through a hedge of
thorns." [527] Where another person would proceed with easy alacrity, he seems
held back by invisible obstacles; his garments are always getting caught in the
briars; there is not impetus enough to carry him over the slightest difficulty;
and after frequent and somnolent pauses, the end of the day finds him more weary
than the busiest, though he has nothing to show but futile efforts and abortive
results.

That is a complete picture of the sluggard. We do not of course see him fully
developed very often; but we recognise at once the several tendencies in our own
characters--the slothfulness, the listlessness, the idle procrastination, the
inertia--which may, if unresisted and unconquered, gradually bring us nearer to
this finished portrait.

The result of this sluggishness must now be sketched. "Love not sleep," we are
told, "lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied
with bread." [528] The means of subsistence in this world are the result of
labour; toilers win them from the reluctant earth and sea; the only condition on
which we can partake in them is that we should toil, either directly in
producing the means of subsistence, or indirectly in doing for the producers
helpful service for which they are willing to exchange the fruits of their
labour. One who sleeps away the golden hours of work, cast by slothfulness into
a deep sleep, has no claim whatever on the earth or the community for daily
food; he shall suffer hunger. [529] And if by craft or chance he is able to get
his bread without any service rendered to the workers, he shall suffer from a
soul-hunger more terrible than starvation--the unutterable ennui, weariness,
disgust, and self-loathing which an idle and useless life inevitably produces.

As the text reminds us, there is an alternation of seasons. There is a time to
plough, when the earth has yielded her full autumn fruits; there is a time to
sow; there is a harvest. If a man is too lazy to plough at the right time and to
sow at the right time, his fields will of course give him no crops:
"Slothfulness catcheth not his prey." [530] Nor must we think that God in any
grudging spirit has ordered this law of the seasons. The appetite which forces
us to labour, because "our mouth craves it of us," [531] the apparent rigour
with which nature requires us to be up betimes and not to let the opportunity
slip, and the threat of poverty which hangs over our heads if we neglect her
requirements, are all parts of a beneficent law,--the law that by work itself
our life is sweetened and our spirit is developed. They are not to be
congratulated who, escaping the spur of appetite, and liberated by the toil of
others from the rigorous edicts of nature which require the laborious ploughing
and sowing, are enabled to eat the bread of idleness. The hardest worker, worn
to the bone and ill-remunerated, is really more enviable than they. The
abundance of food is a poor equivalent for the loss of discipline which the
desire of food was designed to exact through honest and earnest work. Men come
to us and say in effect, "Behold after the autumn gathering we did not plough,
and we asked in harvest, and got all that our hearts desired," and we are
constrained to pity rather than to congratulate them. It is not good for men to
slip through the laws of God and nature thus, for their chastisement is heavier
in the end than in the beginning.

The truth of this appears when we remember that a worse result of slothfulness
than poverty is the spiritual rust, decay, and degradation which slothfulness
itself implies: "The desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands refuse to
labour;" [532] "He also that is slack in his work is brother to him that is a
destroyer." [533] It is indeed a strange illusion which makes man desire
idleness. Idleness is ruin; the soul rusts away like the sword in Hudibras,
which--

"... ate into itself, for lack

Of something else to hew and hack."

It is death, it is deadly; the idle soul slowly dies, and spreads destruction
around it. It is the same with a country. Idleness is its ruin: whether it be
that the generosity of nature removes the necessity of work, as in the South
Seas, where the missionaries find one of their chief difficulties in the
absolute laziness resulting from the softness of the climate and the fertility
of the soil; or that the vast accumulations of wealth procure idleness for its
possessors, and enforce idleness on thousands of the unfortunate
unemployed,--the melancholy result ensues in the enervation of manhood and the
corruption of womanhood. On the other hand, as Thucydides observed in the case
of Attica, a rigorous climate and a niggardly soil, eliciting all the energies
of the people in order to improve their condition or even to live, have been
found favourable to the development of a noble nationality. Slackness of work,
from whatever cause it may arise, brings its victims into this sorrowful kinship
with the destroyer.

It may be noted that the idle, whether they be rich or poor, are denominated
"vain persons," and sensible people are cautioned solemnly to avoid their
society, as their emptiness is contagious, and the habits which are quickly
acquired in their company lead straight to ruin: "He that tilleth his land shall
have plenty of bread, but he that followeth after vain persons is void of
understanding;" [534] "He that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty
enough." [535]

The truth which is here enforced receives ample illustration in our own society.
Two centuries ago Daniel Defoe defined the English as the "most lazy diligent
nation" in the world. Hard work is common; idleness is equally common. Our
people are on the whole highly gifted, and produce rapidly when they give their
attention to their work; but we seem to have a strange vein of dissoluteness and
laziness running through us, and consequently the worst and most shameful
idleness is often found amongst the best workmen, who through their own bad
habits have missed their opportunities, and become a burden to themselves and to
the community. In no country is the leisured class, of those who do nothing at
all, or pass their aimless days in a round of engagements which are only
strenuous idleness, so large; in no country is the unemployed or the pauper
class so ruinously great in proportion to the population. Hence this curious
paradox: the foreigner hears that England is the richest and the most
industrious country in the world; he comes to our shores expecting to see cities
of gold and fields teeming with produce. On his arrival he becomes aware of a
degrading poverty such as cannot be matched in the poorest country on earth; he
finds a vast population of the unemployed rich lounging in the streets and the
parks, and of the unemployed poor hanging about the doors of the innumerable
drink-shops, and infesting every highway and byway of the country. He finds the
land of the agricultural districts often lying idle and unproductive; those who
till it untaught, ill-fed, and discontented; those who possess it discontented,
though well fed and instructed. Our subject does not lead us to inquire into the
deeper causes of these anomalies, but it leads us to this observation: we are a
"lazy diligent nation" because we have not yet learned, or have forgotten, that
the thing most to be dreaded is not poverty, but idleness; and the thing most to
be desired is not wealth, but strenuous, earnest, and useful toil. Our desperate
and eager work is not for the work's sake, but in order to get rich; our
ambition is to be idle rather than to be employed, to be raised above the
necessity of labour which is our health by the possession of wealth which is our
ruin. We have cherished the fatal and foolish error that work was degrading, and
have ranked those highest who did the least. "Where no oxen are," we have said
in our fastidious way, "the crib is clean," forgetting the other side of the
matter, that "much increase is by the strength of the ox." [536] Thus we have
ignorantly despised the workers who make us rich, looking down upon trade, upon
business, and more than all upon manual labour; and have with strange fatuity
admired most those who were most useless, whose peculiar boast would be that
they never did a day's work in their lives.

Happily now there are signs of a revolution in our thought. We are beginning to
see that work is good, not for what it earns, but for the occupation and the
training which it gives to the body and the mind; and that idleness is an evil,
not only where work is a necessity, and the appetite craves it of us, but
everywhere and under all circumstances. In useful employment we find our life;
in the sluggard's life we see our death.

We must observe then the good effects which result from honest and earnest toil.
But, first, we cannot help noticing what an important place is here given to
agriculture. This is not accidental to the time in which the book was written.
It is an eternal principle. Out of the soil comes our wealth; by the soil
therefore we live; and accordingly God has ordained that in the tilling of the
ground man shall find his wholesomest, sweetest, and most strengthening
employment--that no community shall inwardly flourish when its agricultural life
declines; and that therefore the happiest and soundest society will be that in
which the largest proportional number are engaged in producing the fruits of the
earth, and are directly and vitally attached to their mother soil. "He that
tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread." [537] When a nation is in the case
of the sluggard, when you pass by its fields and its vineyards and see them
grown over with thorns and nettles and its stone walls broken down, you will
find Pauperism coming as a robber, and Want, gaunt and hideous, stalking through
the land like an armed man. [538] "Be thou diligent," therefore we are told, "to
know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds"--(take care that no
foolish pride or negligence prevent you from seeing that the agricultural life
is properly maintained, for it is the only sure basis of prosperity); "riches
are not for ever, and even the government of kings does not endure to all
generations." But in the sweet ordinances of nature the great Giver provides His
unfailing wealth: "The hay is carried, and immediately the tender grass begins
to grow again, and even the barren mountains yield their herbs for ingathering.
The lambs appear every spring with their wool for our clothing, and the field
will maintain goats equal in value to its own price. And from these miraculous
sources of eternal reproduction our food and our maintenance are to be drawn."
[539]

Thus at the foundation of all industries is the agricultural industry. At the
root of all social and economical questions is the land question. When you wish
to commend diligence and to discourage idleness in a nation that is "lazy
diligent," the first thing is to inquire into the condition or the use of the
land. The land is God's gift to a people. English land is God's gift to the
English people. If it is misapplied, ill-used, neglected; if it does not produce
its full tale of wealth; if it does not support its full burden of living
creatures, and give employment to its full number of hands, we are flying in the
face of God's ordinances; we must not expect to prosper; His gracious will is
frustrated, and we must have the shame and sorrow of seeing our million of
paupers, and our second million of enforced idlers, and our myriads of lazy
cumberers of the ground, and our whole population disorganized and unsettled,
torn with the frenzy of insane work, or gangrened with the corruption of
destroying idleness. For the gifts of God are without repentance, and the abuse
of His gifts is without remedy.

But turning now to the good effects which result from honest and earnest toil,
we are taught to distinguish three more particularly--plenty, power, and
personal worth.

First, Plenty. "The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing, but the soul
of the diligent shall be made fat." [540] Nor must we think that diligence is
only manual; it is also mental. It implies thought, forethought, planning,
arranging. We have a contrast drawn between the really diligent man, whose
prudence foresees, and whose reflection orders his work for the best ends, and
the fussy, unreflecting activity of one who is always busy, but never
accomplishes anything. It is only the diligence of the first kind that leads to
the desired end; the diligence of mere restlessness is not much better than
idleness. We learn that "the thoughts of the diligent tend only to
plenteousness, but every one that is hasty hasteth only to want." [541]
Effectual labour implies thought; only a wise man, with all his faculties
brought into full and harmonious play, can work with any good result, or can
thriftily use the fruits of his labour; a foolish, thoughtless, witless person
may work hard and earn a good deal of money, but it is gone even faster than it
came. Thus "there is precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but
a foolish man swalloweth it up." [542] There are exceptions, no doubt; but the
general rule is borne out by experience, that they who honestly and earnestly
use the gifts of mind and body which God has given them, obtain the things which
are needful in this life, if not to overflowing, yet in sufficiency; and where
means fail we generally have to admit that our own industry or prudence was at
fault.

Then, secondly, it is industry rather than genius which commends us to our
fellow-men, and leads us to positions of influence and power: "Seest thou a man
diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before
mean men;" [543] "The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful
shall be put under task-work." [544] It is this golden faculty of persistence,
concentration, diligence, which makes every great ruler and leader of men, and
raises even the very ordinary person out of the drudgery of mere task-work into
the dignity of large and noble and delightful toil.

For, thirdly, it is diligence, the capacity of taking pains, that gives to a man
his actual worth, making him compact and strong and serviceable: "The precious
substance of men is to be diligent." [545] It is the quality itself which is all
important. The greatest gifts are of little worth, unless there is this
guarantee of the conscientious and intelligent employment of them. While if the
gifts with which God has endowed us are of the simplest order, if we can only
use a spade or a saw or a broom effectively, that faculty diligently exercised
is our value to the world; and a great value it is--greater than the value of
high genius which is erratic, unbridled, undirected, and uncertain. Of every man
or woman in this world the highest praise which can be uttered is that which
underlies the commendation of the good wife: "She looketh well to the ways of
her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." [546] There is the epitome
of all trustworthy and honourable character.

We have been dwelling all this time on a simple virtue of a very mundane type.
But all that has been said may be immediately raised to a higher plane by one
observation. Our Lord and Master was diligent about His Father's business, and
has left on record this saying: "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while
it is called to-day; for the night cometh, in which no one can work." As each
one of us comes under His influence and passes into His faith and obedience, the
joyful seriousness of our life-work deepens; it is lit by the rich glow of a
sunset glory. We want to do diligently what our hand finds to do--to do it
earnestly as unto the Lord. By patient and industrious exercise of every faculty
which He has given us, we wish to be prepared for any task which He may appoint
here or hereafter. Some of us He only apprentices in this world; and according
to the faithfulness with which we discharge our humble and unnoticed duties will
be the service to which He will one day appoint us. Others are called out of
apprenticeship into the rough and eager work of the journeyman, and His eye is
always upon us as He tries us to find whether we may ever be appointed over one,
or five, or ten cities. A few supreme souls have been called even on earth to
shape, to create, to control; a Paul, an Augustine, a Luther, can work with an
emancipated hand. But the law is one all through the workshops, the fields, the
vineyards of our Lord. The diligent shall stand before Him, and the slothful
shall be shamed. He that does not plough will not reap. Wasted opportunities
vanish for ever, and leave only their doleful record in the emasculated and
nerveless soul.
__________________________________________________________________

[520] Prov. xxvi. 14.

[521] Prov. xxiv. 34.

[522] Prov. xix. 24.

[523] Prov. xxvi. 15.

[524] Prov. xxvi. 13.

[525] Prov. xxii. 13.

[526] Prov. xxvi. 16.

[527] Prov. xv. 19.

[528] Prov. xx. 13.

[529] Prov. xix. 15.

[530] Prov. xii. 27.

[531] Prov. xvi. 26.

[532] Prov. xxi. 25.

[533] Prov. xviii. 9.

[534] Prov. xii. 11.

[535] Prov. xxviii. 19.

[536] Prov. xiv. 4.

[537] Prov. xxviii. 19.

[538] Prov. xxiv. 30-34.

[539] Prov. xxvii. 23-27.

[540] Prov. xiii. 4.

[541] Prov. xxi. 5.

[542] Prov. xxi. 20.

[543] Prov. xxii. 29.

[544] Prov. xii. 24.

[545] Prov. xii. 27.

[546] Prov. xxxi. 27.
__________________________________________________________________

XXI.

WINE.

"He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man:

He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich."

Prov. xxi. 17.

The Septuagint translation has an interesting addition to the proverb in xii.
11. After "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that
followeth after vain persons is void of understanding," it adds, "He who is
sweet in pastimes of wine-drinking shall leave dishonour in his strongholds."
Drinking is the natural opposite of hard and honest work. When the love of it
takes possession of a man he is sure to become a useless and unproductive member
of society. A drunken people are in the end an incapable people; their wealth
declines, their industries pass over to soberer rivals, their qualities of brain
and muscle gradually disappear. This is partly owing to the deterioration of
mind and body which results from the excessive use of stimulants; but it is
still more due to a wider cause: drinking in all its branches is indulged in as
a pleasure. Why do we not admit it? why do we always try to present it in
another light, saying that it is for health's sake, by a doctor's orders; or for
work's sake, by a proved necessity? Is it not that we are secretly conscious of
taking the drink because we like it? We know it is a self-indulgence, and we are
a little ashamed of it; and as self-indulgence is always fatal in the long run
to all the habits and activities which men very properly honour, we should
dearly like to screen it under a decent pretext which might preserve our
self-respect. We know quite well that "he that loveth pleasure shall be a poor
man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich." [547] Drinking is after all
only a pronounced symptom of a large vice--self-indulgence.

A great step is taken when we have learnt to quietly and candidly face this
fact: we drink, as a society, as a nation,--each of us drinks in public or in
private,--simply because it is pleasant. It is a habit governed by one supreme
and absolute law--we like it. We know quite well that alcohol is not a food;
that is proved by the most irrefragable scientific evidence; and if in alcoholic
drinks there are certain nutritive elements, we could if we chose secure the
benefit of them without any admixture of alcohol. We know that in many cases the
alcohol is actually deleterious, that it produces specific and very terrible
diseases, that it lowers the tone of the whole system and makes us liable to all
kinds of secondary troubles. We may urge that alcohol is a medicine, and a
useful medicine; but it is not as a medicine we use it. If a doctor prescribes
castor-oil, or quinine, we throw aside the medicine on the first opportunity,
often before it has done its work. Alcohol is the only medicine which we
continue to take for a lifetime because the doctor prescribed it for a month.
Would it not be better then to clear our minds of cant, and to set the whole
matter on its right basis? Intoxicants are drunk as a form, as the most
universal form, of self-indulgence. In some mysterious way, for some mysterious
reasons which we cannot fathom, they gratify an instinctive appetite, they are
naturally and generally attractive, they exercise a spell over the physical
system. If the taste is, as some people say, acquired, it was acquired by
mankind in prehistoric times, and is part of our inherited constitution as men.
For instance, Mr. Gaule, a police-court missionary in Birmingham, relates a
recent experience, one out of many in his fourteen years of labour. A young
married woman, twenty-eight years of age, died a shocking death from drinking.
Up to the age of twenty-six she had been a teetotaller, and did not know what
the taste of drink was. She was a leading member of the Gospel Temperance
Mission, and sang the solos at the meetings. Then she was taken ill, the doctor
ordered brandy, and it proved like the first taste of blood to a tame tiger. She
could never again be kept from it, and at last it killed her. The craving there
must have been in the very blood.

We have a taste for these intoxicants, latent or realized. The stimulating
influence is pleasant, the narcotic influence is pleasant. The immediate effect
on the body is pleasant, the immediate effect on the mind is pleasant. Drink
produces a sense of great self-satisfaction, promotes a flow of conversation and
a feeling of good fellowship; it quickens at first several of our mental
faculties; it excites the imagination, and carries its devotee far away from the
actual, which is painful and harassing, into a kind of ideal world, which is
cheerful and agreeable. So powerful is its temporary influence that in the
"words of King Lemuel" there is positively a recommendation to "give strong
drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul; let
him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more." [548] An
injunction which must not of course be mistaken for a Divine precept, but only
for a reminder of the fact--a fact which may be observed without any moral
judgment being passed upon it--that while men who require all their mental and
moral faculties to be in full activity [549] must eschew the use of intoxicating
drinks, the dying, the despairing, the very poor and miserable, may find a
certain relief in drinking. Men who are in the enjoyment of health, and wish to
discharge effectively the day's duties, have no excuse for the employment of an
agent which only serves to lull the mind into forgetfulness and to reduce the
pain of consciousness to the lowest possible point.

Strange to say, while men are thus naturally inclined to use intoxicants, nature
has been most lavish in pandering to their tastes. There are trees in tropical
climates which have but to be gashed, and an intoxicating juice flows out ready
at once for use. Almost every natural juice ferments if it is left alone. The
palm-tree, the potato-plant, the sugar-cane, beet-root, the cereals, as well as
the grape, yield readily these intoxicating drinks, at a surprisingly low cost.
Very little human labour is needed, very simple apparatus will suffice, so that
a very few enterprising firms can deluge a whole continent with fiery
intoxicants.

We drink because we like it,--not for our good, as we pretend, but for our
pleasure, as we are half ashamed to confess. The taste is natural to
us,--natural to savages, natural to civilised men, natural, so far as we know,
to men of all climates and all races. And nature has made it singularly easy to
gratify the taste.

Now one might almost suppose that the conclusion to be drawn would be, "Let us
drink, let us take this element as a good gift of God." And that was the feeling
of more primitive times. In the Vedas, for instance, Indra is praised as reeling
with the intoxicating Soma which his worshippers have offered to him;
drunkenness is regarded as a kind of inspiration. But no; as wisdom asserts
herself, and demands a hearing, she more and more decisively classes this taste
for intoxicants with certain other tastes which are natural to us, but none the
less dangerous; and she treats the bountiful provision which nature has made for
the gratification of the taste as one of those innumerable temptations with
which men in this present life are surrounded,--in conflict with which they
prove their manhood,--by victory over which they acquire strength of moral
principle and consistency in virtue.

As the reason within gathers power and authority, and as her clear light is
replenished by the revelation of Divine Wisdom, all the spurious attractions of
drinking are weakened, the glamour is destroyed, and the truth is recognised
that "wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whosoever erreth thereby is
not wise;" [550] more and more it appears that the power of wine is the power of
the animal within us, and that the widespread influence of it is a sign that the
animal within us dies slowly; we learn to measure the growth of reason by the
degree of mastery which has been obtained over the low appetite; and we
understand that striking antithesis of the New Testament religion, "Be not drunk
with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit."

The way then in which we are brought to look at the drink question is this: here
is a powerful natural temptation, a seduction which nature herself offers to the
body, a foe which always has a traitor in collusion with it inside the assaulted
citadel. This enemy is ingenious in its argumentation: it approaches usually
under the guise of a friend; it says--and not without truth--that it comes to
give pleasure to poor harassed and toilworn mortals; it persuades them that it
is a wholesome food, and when that contention is shattered it would have them
believe that it is a medicine. When it has gained an entrance into the fortress,
by fair means or foul, it at first proceeds very doucely, and seems to justify
its presence by numberless obvious benefits. Sometimes it will successfully hide
all the evil it is working, as if its purpose were to beguile new victims and to
acquire a more unbounded sway over the old.

As religious men, as spiritual beings, whom God claims to become His children,
we are called upon to face this subtle, powerful, and all-persuasive foe. We are
to do our best to understand its ways--we look to science to help us and to
teach us. We are then to take every weapon within our reach to resist its
approach,--argument, persuasion, entreaty; we are to lose no opportunity of
unveiling the tactics of the foe, and rousing those who are imperilled to a
sense of their danger; then as Christian citizens we are bound to use all the
influence we possess to hold this terrible natural temptation within the
straitest limits, and to fortify all the powers of resistance in our fellow-men
to the highest possible degree.

In such a crusade against the enemy of our race, few things are more effectual
than a vivid and accurate delineation of the effects which drink produces--such
a delineation, for instance, as that which is given in chap. xxiii. 29-35. Let
us proceed to examine this remarkable passage.

"Whose is Oh? whose is woe?" asks the Teacher. Who is it whose constant and
appropriate language is that of lamentation--the piteous cry of pain, the
agonised exclamation of remorse? "Whose are contentions?" Who is it that lives
in an atmosphere of perpetual strife and loud quarrellings? "Whose is
groaning?"--that sustained sigh of desponding and irremediable misery. "Whose
are causeless wounds?"--not only the bruise and the gash which result from
furious sparrings or unforeseen falls, but also wounds of the spirit,
self-loathing, and shame, the thought of what might have been, the realization
of a ruined home, and of suffering wife and little ones, and the conviction that
the evil can now never be undone. "Whose is the darkling of the eyes?" [551] Who
is it whose eyes have that horrible inflamed, lack-lustre look, which is the
exact opposite of the light and clearness and sparkle proper to the human eye?

The answer to these questions is given in a sentence, "Theirs who tarry over the
wine, theirs who go to try the mixture." It is not of course suggested that all
who drink wine, nor even all who take it habitually, fall into the horrible
condition which has just been described; this condition is the result of
lingering over the drink, spending hours in tippling, devoting time and thought
to tasting various brands and samples, becoming a connoisseur of strong
beverages, allowing the subject to occupy an appreciable proportion of one's
time. It is not the use, but the abuse, of the thing which in this passage is
reprobated. But now we are reminded of the great difficulty which occurs in
distinguishing between the use and the abuse. There is no sharply-defined limit.
There is no mechanical monitor which at once reminds us, "Here use ceases and
abuse begins." Almost the only rule that can be given is, that whenever the cup
seems in the least degree attractive, then danger is near and it is necessary to
abstain. "Look not on wine when it reddens, when it gives its gleam in the cup;
it goes down so smoothly!" It is the peculiarity of this substance that it can
only be taken safely when it has comparatively no attractions, when it is taken
under orders, and as it were against the grain. If it is really pleasant to us,
we can never tell where the pleasantness melts into a dangerous fascination,
where the colour and the sparkle and the agreeable tingle which make it pass so
easily down the throat have become the lure and the spell of a poisonous
reptile. For this pleasant indulgence, which seems to be perfectly innocent,
what is the issue of it? "Its end--like a serpent it bites, and like a basilisk
it stings." One evil result of it is that it rouses into perilous activity the
dormant passions; even pure men and women under this potent influence become
impure. The eyes which are excited with wine will turn readily to loose and
degraded women. [552] The fall which might have been easily avoided in a state
of sobriety will be inevitable when the reason is silenced, the will enfeebled,
and the desire inflamed by this seductive poison.

Another evil effect is that the sense of truth entirely disappears. What a
misleading maxim is that of the Romans, In vino veritas! While it is a fact that
the intoxicated man will blab many things which were best kept concealed, there
is nothing which deteriorates truthfulness so rapidly as the use of alcohol. The
drinker becomes crafty and deceitful and untrustworthy. The miserable brain is
haunted with chimæras, the imperious appetite suggests all kinds of subterfuges
and evasions, the very "heart speaks frauds." Yes, nothing could be more
accurate than this: the effect of drink is not so much to make the lips lie, as
to make the inner man essentially insincere and deceptive. No man admits that he
is a drunkard, even to his own heart; long after all his friends know it, and
are beginning to despair of him, even when he has had several attacks of
delirium tremens and is a confirmed dipsomaniac, the most he will allow is that
he has sometimes taken a little more than is good for him, but so very little
seems to upset him. Ah, "thine heart shall utter froward things," i.e., frauds.
Every one who has had any dealings with the miserable victims of drink will
sorrowfully confirm this statement.

The insecurity of the habit is incredible. It leads to the destruction of every
faculty which God has mercifully given us to protect us from danger and guide us
through life. The ready perception of things is marred, the quick rallying of
the attention is delayed, the exercise of the understanding is prevented, the
will is paralysed, the conscience dies. "Thou shalt be as he who lieth down in
the heart of the sea,"--as one in a calenture who strides into the merciless
waves under the impression that he is walking on flowery meadows. Thou shalt be
"as he that goeth to bed on the mast's head,"--where the position is precarious
even if the sea be perfectly calm, but becomes sure destruction if the winds
awake and the ship begins to climb large billows and to plunge down into their
unquiet troughs.

And then, worst of all, when there is a temporary recovery from this abominable
state of drunkenness, and the feeble wails of repentance begin to be heard, what
can be more disconnected--more futile--more abject--more irrational than his
words? "They have smitten me," he says; "I have not been sick,"--as if forsooth
he were the victim of some violence offered to him by others, instead of being
the author of his own stripes; as if he were quite right and well, and the
disease were not deep in his own passion-haunted heart. "They have stricken me,"
he continues to whine, "I have not known it." Footpads have attacked him, he
would have us believe, and that is the explanation of his begrimed and
blood-smeared face, his torn clothes, and his empty pockets. "When shall I
awake?" he mutters, as the swimming sensation in the head, and the unsteady
stagger in his step, remind him that he is not quite himself. And then--is it
possible? Yes, his next remark is, "I will seek it again." I will go and get
another drink. His miserable mind, the victim and the mint of lies, having
persuaded him that all the mischief came from some cause other than himself, and
had nothing to do with the one degrading habit which really produced it, he
proposes at once to seek the very agent which is his undoing, to heal his
intoxication by getting drunk again. [553]

This vivid and forcible picture of the miserable sufferings, the contemptible
vices, and the helpless bondage which result from intoxicating drinks, is all
the more impressive because there is no attempt made to enforce total abstinence
as a principle. If however it is duly considered and understood, it is very
likely to produce total abstinence as a practice, just as the object lesson of
the drunken helot led every Spartan youth to turn with unspeakable loathing from
the embruting vice. Modest minds, observing how the mighty are fallen, how this
one cause has ruined the strongest, the best, and the most attractive of their
fellow-creatures, insidiously leading them on, mocking them, and luring them
into dangerous and poisonous marshes, will be inclined to say, as Daniel said,
"I will abstain; I may be safe or I may not; if I am safe all I gain is a
certain amount of animal pleasure; if I am not, what I lose is health, honour,
wealth, even life itself,--not the body only, but the soul too." The gain from
the use of these things is very measurable and insignificant; the loss from
their abuse is immeasurable, and the passage from use to abuse escapes at once
our observation and control.

But, after all, wisdom urges temperance in drinking only as a part of a much
larger principle. If temperance in drinking stands alone and unconnected with
this larger principle, it is a blessing of a very doubtful kind, so doubtful
indeed that the pharisaism, the intolerance, the dogmatism, which are able to
subsist with "Temperance" in the limited sense, have often been the most serious
hindrance to temperance in its larger and nobler meaning.

It is the desire of pleasure which is at the root of the mischief: "He that
loveth pleasure shall be a poor man." Men are "lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God." [554] The appetites which are natural to us hold undisputed
sway, they are fleshly; the great spiritual appetites, which are supernatural,
are quite feeble and inoperative. Men ask for that which is pleasant, and even
when they become religious it is only to obtain pleasure, a greater and a more
lasting pleasure; thus there is an intemperance, which we call fanaticism, even
in religious beliefs and in religious practices. But what men need is that the
desire of God, for His own sake, should be so inflamed in them as to burn up all
other desires. And this desire can only be created by His Holy Spirit. The
competing and manifold desires of pleasure can only be mastered and expelled
when that great, absorbing, and embracing desire of God has been securely
settled in the human heart by the Holy Spirit. True temperance is really one of
the ninefold fruits of the Spirit, and is of little value, a mere spurious
product, unless it is accompanied by love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, and meekness. Such passages as we have been considering
in the book of Proverbs may give us a wholesome horror and hatred of
drunkenness, and may even lead us to a prudential temperance--they may even make
us as sober as pious Mohammedans or Buddhists; but if we are to become really
temperate a higher power must intervene, we must be "born of the Spirit." Is it
not remarkable how nothing short of the highest remedy--the new birth--is
effectual for curing even the slightest of human infirmities and sins?
__________________________________________________________________

[547] Prov. xxi. 17.

[548] Prov. xxxi. 6, 7.

[549] Prov. xxxi. 4, 5.

[550] Prov. xx. 1.

[551] The difficulty of the word chkllvt, which means "dimming," is that in the
only other place where it occurs (Gen. xlix. 12: "His eyes shall be red with
wine, and his teeth white with milk") the redness is evidently regarded as an
advantageous attribute. But perhaps the explanation is to be sought in the fact
that the immediate effect of wine upon the eye is to darken it in one sense, and
the ultimate effect is to darken it in another. In the first moment of
excitement the pupil of the drinker's eye dilates and flashes with a darkling
fire; but it is not long before the eye becomes heavy, dim, watery, and maudlin.
It is in this last sense that we must understand the word here.

[552] Prov. xxiii. 33. zrvt must, as in xxii. 14, be rendered "strange women"
(Bertheau). The alternative rendering, "the strange, or the rare" (Nowack) is
logically inadmissible, because the verse is obviously describing the moral
effects of drink, and no one can say that to see strange or rare visions is a
moral effect to be specially deprecated.

[553] "The primary discomforts of an act of drunkenness," says Dr. G. W.
Balfour, "are readily removed for the time by a repetition of the cause. Thus
what has been an act may readily become a habit, all the more readily that each
repetition more and more enfeebles both the will and the judgment."--Art.
"Drunkenness" in Encycl. Brit.

[554] 2 Tim. iii. 4--philedonoi mallon e philotheoi, pleasure-loving rather than
God-loving; which means, not that men place pleasure before them consciously as
a substitute for God, but only that the instinctive desire of pleasure has not
been mastered by the love of God.
__________________________________________________________________

XXII.

THE TREATMENT OF THE POOR.

"The rich and the needy meet together; the Lord is the maker of them
all."--Prov. xxii. 2.

"He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed, for he giveth of his bread to
the poor."--Prov. xxii. 9.

"He that oppresseth the poor, it is for his increase; he that giveth to the
rich, it is for want."--Prov. xxii. 16.

"Rob not the poor because he is poor, neither oppress the humble in the gate,
for the Lord will plead their cause and despoil of life those that despoil
them."--Prov. xxii. 22, 23.

If we would understand and lay to heart the very striking lessons of this book
on the treatment of the poor, it will be well for us to observe that there are
four words in the Hebrew original which are rendered by our English words "poor"
or "needy." These words we will try to discriminate and to use with more
exactness in the present lecture, that we may not miss any of the teaching by
the blur and obscurity of careless language. First, there is a word (dl) for
which we will reserve our English word "poor"; it signifies a person who is weak
and uninfluential, but not necessarily destitute or even in want. The "poor" are
those who form the vast majority of every society, and are sometimes described
by the word "masses." Secondly, there is a word (rs) which may be rendered
"needy." It covers those who are in actual want, people who through bereavement,
or infirmity, or unavoidable calamity are unable to secure a sufficiency of the
necessaries of life. Thirdly, there is a word (ny) which we may perhaps render
by "humble," for though it more literally describes the afflicted and sad, it
contains within it a hint of moral commendation which suggests a transition from
the idea of simple weakness and helplessness to that of patient and humble
dependence on God. Lastly, there is a word ('kyvn) which we will render
"destitute." If we keep these notions--"poor," "needy," "humble,"
"destitute"--distinct, and yet combined, to form one conception, we shall find
that the proverbs before us refer to that large section of mankind who are in a
worldly and material sense considered the least fortunate; those to whom it is a
lifelong effort merely to live; those who have no margin of security on which to
fall back in case of disaster or sickness; those who are engaged in precarious
employments or in casual labour; those who may keep their heads above water by
diligence and unremitting exertions, but may at any time go under; those who
owing to this constant pressure of the elementary needs have but little leisure
to cultivate their faculties, and little opportunity to maintain their rights.
We are to think of the large class of persons who in more primitive times are
slaves, who in feudal times are serfs, who in modern times are called the
proletariate; those in whose interest the laws of society have not hitherto been
framed, because they have not until quite recently been admitted to any
substantial share in the work of legislation; those who have always found it
peculiarly difficult to secure justice, because justice is a costly commodity,
and they have no means to spare, since "the destruction of the poor is precisely
their poverty." [555] We are not to think of the idle and the vicious, who are
so often classed with the poor, because they, like the poor, are without
means,--we must rigorously exclude these, for they are not in the mind of the
writer when he gives us these golden precepts. We must remember that it is part
of our peculiar English system, the result of our boasted Poor Law, to discredit
the very word poverty, by refusing to discriminate between the poor in the
scriptural sense, who are honourable and even noble, and the pauper in the
modern sense, who is almost always the scum of a corrupt social order, in four
cases out of five a drunkard, and in the fifth case the product of some one
else's moral failings. It requires quite an effort for us to see and realize
what the Scriptures mean by the poor. We have to slip away from all the wretched
associations of the Poor House, the Poor Law, and the Guardians. We have to
bring before our minds a class which in a wholesome state of society would be a
small, numerable minority, but in our own unwholesome state of society are a
large and well-nigh innumerable majority,--not only the destitute and the
actually needy, but all the people who have no land on which to live, no house
which they can call their own, no reserve fund, no possibility of a reserve
fund, against the unavoidable calamities and chances of life, the people who are
trodden down--who tread each other down--in the race of competition; all those,
too, who, according to the godless dogma of the day, must go to the wall because
they are weak, and must give up the idea of surviving because only the fittest
must expect to survive. There rise up before our imagination the toiling
millions of Europe--of England--worn, pale, despondent, apathetic, and resigned;
or bitter, desperate, and resentful; not destitute, though they include the
destitute; not needy, though they include the needy; but poor, without strength
except in combination, and often when combined without light or leading.

I. Now the first thing we have to observe is that the poor, in the sense we have
tried to define, are a special concern to the Lord. "Rob not the poor," says the
text, "because he is poor, neither oppress the humble in the gate, for the Lord
will plead their cause, and despoil of life those that despoil them." "Remove
not the ancient landmark, and enter not into the fields of the fatherless; for
their Redeemer is strong, He shall plead their cause against thee." [556] "The
Lord will establish the border of the widow." [557] So intimate is the
connection between the Lord and His poor creatures that "he that oppresseth the
poor reproacheth his Maker, but he that hath mercy on the destitute honoureth
Him." [558] "Whoso mocketh the needy reproacheth his Maker, and he that is glad
at calamity shall not be unpunished." [559] On the other hand, "He that hath
pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and his good deed will He pay him
again." [560]

Not, of course, that there is any favouritism with God, not that He has an
interest in a man because of his means or lack of means; but just because of His
large and comprehensive impartiality. "The needy man and the oppressor meet
together; the Lord lighteneth the eyes of them both." [561] "The rich and the
needy meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all." [562] His special
interest in the poor arises only from their special need, from the mute cry
which goes up to Him, from the appeal to Him as their only friend, deliverer,
and protector: just as His lesser interest in the rich arises from their
self-satisfied independence of Him, from their infatuated trust in themselves,
and from their conviction that already all things belong to them. We should make
a mistake if we supposed that the Lord recognises any class distinctions, or
that He valued a man because he is poor, just as we value a man because he is
rich. The truth rather is that He absolutely ignores the class distinctions,
regarding the mingled mass of human beings, rich and poor, oppressor and
oppressed, as on a plane of dead equality, and then distinguishing between them
on a totally different principle,--on a moral, a spiritual principle; and, if
there is any preference, it is on the ground of certain valuable moral effects
which poverty sometimes produces that He takes the poor into His peculiar and
tender care, honouring them with so close a friendship that service to them
becomes service to Him.

This is certainly good news to the masses. "You are undistinguished, and
unobserved,"--the voice of wisdom seems to say,--"In this world, with its false
distinctions and perverted ideals, you feel at a constant disadvantage. You dare
hardly claim the rights of your manhood and your womanhood. This great
personage, possessing half a city, drawing as much unearned money every day as
you can earn by unremitting toil in fifteen or twenty years, seems to overshadow
and to dwarf you. And there are these multitudes of easy, comfortable,
resplendent persons who live in large mansions and dress in costly garments,
while you and your family live in a couple of precarious rooms at a weekly
rental, and find it all you can do to get clean and decent clothes for your
backs. These moneyed people are held in much estimation; you, so far as you
know, are held in none. Their doings--births, marriages, deaths--create quite a
stir in the world; you slip into the world, through it, and out of it, without
attracting any attention. But be assured things wear a different appearance from
the standpoint of God. Realize how you and your fellow-men appear to Him, and
you at once recover self-respect, and hold up your head in His presence as a
man. That simple truth which the Ayrshire peasant sang [563] you may take as
God's truth, as His revelation; it is the way in which He habitually thinks of
you."

How the scales seem to fall away from one's eyes directly we are enabled to see
men and things as God sees them! The sacred worth of humanity shines far
brighter than any of its tinsel trappings. We learn to estimate ourselves
aright, undisturbed and unabashed by the false estimates which are current in
the world. Our true distinction is that we are men, that we belong to a race
which was made in the image of God, was dear to His heart, and is redeemed by
His love. The equality we claim for men is not a levelling down--it is quite the
reverse; it is raising them up to the higher level which they have deserted and
forgotten; it is teaching them to live as men, distinguished not by their
accidental circumstances or possessions, but by their manhood itself. It is
giving men self-respect instead of self-esteem, teaching them not to vaunt
themselves as one against another, but to claim their high and honourable title,
one and all, as the sons of God.

II. But now it follows that, if the Lord Himself espouses the cause of the poor,
and even identifies Himself with them, ill-treatment of them, injustice to them,
or even a wilful neglect of them and disregard of their interests, must be a
sin, and a very terrible sin. "He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth; but he
that hath pity on the humble, happy is he." [564]

In the East to this day the proverb, "He that withholdeth corn, the people shall
curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it," [565]
has its full significance. But even in the West, where the name of Christ is
borne by the nations, it is a common thing for one or two greedy and selfish
capitalists to form a "corner"--as the commercial slang of the day denominates
it--in some article of industry, i.e., to secure all the raw material in the
market, and to hold it until a famine price can be demanded. Meanwhile, the
mills are idle, the looms are silent, the workpeople are unemployed, and their
families suffer. Our moral sense is not yet sufficiently cultivated to condemn
this hideous selfishness as severely as it deserves, and to regard the
perpetrators of it as enemies of the human race. "The people curse" them, that
is all. But as we have seen that the cause of the wage-earners is the cause of
the Lord, we may rest quite confident that He to whom vengeance belongs enters
every action of the kind in His unerasable accounts, and reserves the inevitable
punishment for these "oppressors of the poor."

There is another evil of modern industrial life which is alluded to in the
Proverbs before us. No oppression of the poor is more terrible than that which
is exercised by those who themselves are needy. The system which results from
necessity of this kind is termed "sweating." The hungry contractor undertakes
the job at the lowest possible price, and secures his profit by getting hungrier
and weaker creatures than himself to do the work at a price lower than possible,
literally at starvation wages. What force, then, to modern ears is there in the
saying, "A needy man that oppresseth the poor is like a sweeping rain which
leaveth no food"! [566]

The Divine oversight of these industrial abuses is not, as we sometimes suppose,
pretermitted. Wisdom and Justice and Love hold the reins, and though the
rapacity and cupidity of men seem to have a wide range, they are inevitably
pulled up in the end, if not in this partial and transient life, yet in that
long Eternity through which the Eternal will work out His purposes. As He
Himself sides with the poor and pities them, and turns with indignation against
their oppressors, it follows necessarily that "he that augments his substance by
usury and increase gathereth it for him that pities the poor." [567] In fact,
the merciful and pitiful nature has all the forces that rule the universe on its
side, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary: "The merciful man doeth good
to his own soul, but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh." [568]

It is the strange paradox of all selfishness that the selfish man is really
quite blind to his own true interests. He most conscientiously lives for
himself, and seeks his own good, but the good he sought proves to be his evil,
and of all his innumerable foes he finds at last that he himself is the worst.
The selfish man is always coming to want, while the unselfish man whose whole
thought has been for others is richly provided for. "He that giveth unto the
needy shall not lack, but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse."
[569] "There is that scattereth and increaseth yet more, and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want." [570]

"He that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse!" Yes, nothing is more striking
than this truth, that not only positive oppression of the poor, but mere
indifference to their state, mere neglect of their sufferings, involves us in
sin. There are many who can honestly say that they have not deliberately wronged
their fellow-men, and will on that ground plead innocent; but that is not
enough. We are as members one of another responsible in a degree for all the
injustice and cruelty which are practised in the society to which we belong. If
we are drawing an income from invested money, we are responsible for the cruel
exactions of excessive work, for the heartless disregard of life and limb, and
for the constant under-payment of the workers which makes the dividends so
princely. [571] Nay, when we buy and use the cheap goods, which are cheap
because they have been made at the cost of health and happiness and life to our
brothers and our sisters, their blood is upon our heads, though we choose to
forget it. For listen--"Whoso stoppeth ears at the cry of the poor," whoso tries
to ignore that there is a labour question, and that the cry for increased or
even regular wages, and for tolerable homes, and wholesome conditions of work,
is a reality, and in form of unions, or strikes, or low wails of despair, is
addressed to us all--"he shall cry and shall not be heard." [572] Such is the
inexorable law of God. And again: "Deliver those that are carried away unto
death,"--those who are sacrificing the sweetness of life, the sap of the bones,
the health of the marrow, to the ruthless exigencies of the industrial machine;
"and those tottering to slaughter see thou hold back,"--not leaving them to
"dree their own sad weird," helpless and unregarded. "If thou say, Behold we
knew not this man,"--how could we make ourselves acquainted with all the toiling
masses of the city by whose labour we lived and were maintained in
comfort?--"Doth not He that weigheth the hearts consider it; and He that keepeth
thy soul, doth not He know it, and shall not He render to every man according to
his work?" [573] That is to say, if we plead, "When saw we Thee ahungred, or
athirst, or sick and in prison, and came not to Thee?" our Lord will say,
"Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me."
And we "shall go away" into everlasting punishment, while the righteous go into
life eternal.

III. For it follows, from the whole consideration of this subject, that those
who make their life a ministry to the poor obtain a blessing,--yes, the only
true and permanent blessing that life is capable of yielding. "He that hath a
bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor." [574]
The very form of the saying is significant. Does it not imply: "It is obvious
that to give our bread to the poor is a blessing to ourselves, so obvious that
it needs only to be stated to be admitted, and therefore, as the bountiful eye,
the philanthropic observation, the readiness to see suffering and to search out
the sufferers, necessarily leads to this generous distribution, it must be a
blessing to its possessor." Indeed, this is a true test of righteousness, as the
Lord teaches in the parable just quoted. It is "the righteous that takes
knowledge of the cause of the poor, while the wicked understands not to know
it." [575] A religion which takes no knowledge of the masses is a false
religion; a Church and a Ministry which "understand not to know" the condition
of the people and the needs of the poor are not Christ's Church and Christ's
Ministry, but flagrantly apostate; and nothing is plainer than this--that from
such a Church and Ministry He will accept no orthodoxy of belief or valiant
defence of the creed in lieu of obedience to all His plain and unmistakable
commandments.

If we look at governments, the test is practically the same. "The king that
faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established for ever." [576]
And it is because the Messianic King, alone of all sovereigns and governments,
rightly and fully understands and maintains the cause of the poor, that He alone
of sovereigns shall be established for ever, and of the increase of His
government there shall be no end. And for the flagrant neglect of this vital
question on the part of all governing persons and assemblies, that King will
call to account those pompous and wordy magnates who have borne the sword in
vain, considering all interests rather than those of the poor, whom they were
specially appointed to judge; and of the needy, to whose succour they were
peculiarly bound to run.

And what holds in the state holds in the family. The virtuous woman, and head of
the household--she whom God can approve and welcome into everlasting
habitations--is emphatically not she who is always striving for social
aggrandisement, always seeking for her children wealthy settlements and spurious
honours; but is one who "spreadeth out her hand to the poor, yea, she reacheth
forth her hands to the needy." [577]

Well may we try to take God's view of this question, to understand what He means
by the poor, and how He regards them, and how He expects us to treat them. For
this, if it is not the secret and the centre of all true religious life, is at
least the infallible test of whether our religious life is true or not. By our
treatment of His poor, the Son of Man, who is to judge the world, declares that
we shall be judged. "By that we shall be condemned or by that we shall be
acquitted." __________________________________________________________________

[555] Prov. x. 15.

[556] Prov. xxiii. 10, 11.

[557] Prov. xv. 25.

[558] Prov. xiv. 31.

[559] Prov. xvii. 5.

[560] Prov. xix. 17.

[561] Prov. xix. 13.

[562] Prov. xxii. 2.

[563]

"What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hoddin-grey, and a' that;

Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine,

A man's a man for a' that.

For a' that and a' that,

Their tinsel show and a' that,

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that."

[564] Prov. xiv. 21.

[565] Prov. xi. 26. The following description of Persia, in the Missionary
Review of the World, October, 1889, p. 782, aptly illustrates the practices
against which the text inveighs:--"The sole end for which the Persian Government
exists is the collection of the revenue, the fleecing of the people. Large
portions of the land, confiscated from time to time, belong to the Sovereign,
and are farmed out on terms well-nigh ruinous to the tenant. Even where property
belongs to the subject, it is taxed to the last degree as a starting-point,
while the successions of sub-rulers and collectors make still further drains
upon the moiety that must save the labourer's family from absolute want. The
whole burden of taxation thus comes really upon the labouring class. Added to
this extortion is the constant uncertainty as to whether the planter will be
permitted to reap his crop at all. Downright robbery of fields or households by
the retainers of petty chiefs is of frequent occurrence, and the poor are liable
any day to be deprived of their very last resource. Agriculture and other
industries so discouraged and paralysed barely sustain the lives of the people
at the best, and when drought is added thousands must perish." In times of
scarcity, "The king sets the example--locks up his granaries, and withholds
every kernel of wheat except at famine prices. Every nabob and landowner who has
a stock on hand follows this example. Rapacity and cupidity rule; money is
coined out of the sufferings of the poor."

[566] Prov. xxviii. 3. Oddly enough the commentators, who seem never to have
heard of "sweating," propose to read for rs, either syr = rich, or rs = r's =
head, for the head of the State; an example of conjectural emendation which may
well make us cautious of the mere scholar's method of treating the sacred text.
"The cruellest landlords, receiving 10, 20, and 30 per cent. from detestable
habitations (in London), are nearly connected by birth and circumstance to those
they oppress" (Lecture delivered at Essex Hall, November 18th, 1889, by Thomas
Locke Worthington).

[567] Prov. xxviii. 8. The difficult verse Proverbs xxii. 16 should find a place
here, "He that oppresses the poor to increase for him, he that gives to the rich
only for need," but it is impossible to accurately determine its meaning. If the
rendering of the English Bible is correct, we may interpret the proverb as a
statement of the folly of oppression which leads to want as inevitably as the
more obvious folly of giving to the rich. But possibly Nowack is right in an
interpretation which gives quite another turn to the saying, and makes it not a
condemnation of the oppressor, but a suggestion of the advantage which may be
gained from the oppression by the oppressed. "He who oppresses the poor--it
turns to his (viz., the poor man's) gain," because it calls out all his energy
and endurance, "while he who gives to the rich--it turns only to want," because
it still further enervates and unfits him for the duties of life. This is not
very satisfactory, and is decidedly far-fetched; but it is better than
Delitzsch's suggestion, which strips the proverb of all moral significance,
viz., "He that oppresses the poor, it is at any rate for his own gain; but he
who gives to the rich, it is only to get want." The conclusion from this would
be, that it is better to oppress the poor than to give to the rich, a sentiment
quite out of harmony with the ethical teaching of the Proverbs. In a case like
this we can only suppose that the saying has reached us in a mutilated form.

[568] Prov. xi. 17.

[569] Prov. xxviii. 27.

[570] Prov. xi. 24.

[571] Can the shareholders of the G. W. R., for instance, hold themselves free
from responsibility in the case referred to in the following paragraph from the
Journal of the People's Palace? "The Saturday Review, always trustworthy and
read-worthy on subjects of law, calls attention to a case which concerns a great
many. It is a case in which the decision is most unfortunate to the interests of
all working men. One Membery was employed at Paddington to shunt trunks: he was
taken on by a contractor, but his real employers were the G.W.R. The trucks were
drawn by a horse, and the horse ought to have had a boy to hitch on or off at a
moment's notice: but the contractor refused to supply boys. Membery in vain
asked for one, pointing out the great dangers to which he was exposed. He
complained on the very day of the accident by which he was knocked down and
injured seriously. He sued the Company; he won his case with damages; the
Company, being a rich body, appealed. Now, considering the vexation, the
anxiety, and the expense of carrying on such a case, a Company which appeals
ought in justice to have the damages doubled if it loses. The Company lost. They
appealed to the Lords, still on the principle of being rich and their opponent
poor. This time the Company won. The Lords have ruled that the Company did not
employ Membery, and that he was not obliged to work without a boy: he might have
refused to work at all. Indeed! Then, if he refused to work, what about the
children at home? A more mischievous doctrine was never upheld. Why, there are
thousands and thousands of men and women who work daily under ineffectual
protest,--who work at trades unwholesome, for wages inefficient, and for
excessive hours; yet they work because they must--because they must. Membery
worked without a boy, knowing that he would some day be run over and perhaps
killed, because he must: he had no choice. When all the Trade Unions are merged
into one immense Trade Union, it will not be the wages alone that will be
determined, but the cases of such unfortunate men as Membery."

[572] Prov. xxi. 13.

[573] Prov. xxiv. 11, 12.

[574] Prov. xxii. 9.

[575] Prov. xxix. 7.

[576] Prov. xxix. 14. Has William II. of Germany been considering this text? If
so, it is full of promise for the prosperity of Germany and of Europe?
(International Labour Conference, March 1890.)

[577] Prov. xxxi. 30.
__________________________________________________________________

XXIII.

EDUCATION: THE PARENT'S THOUGHT OF THE CHILD.

"Train up a child according to his way, and even when he is old he will not
depart from it."--Prov. xxii. 6.

"Withhold not correction from the child; if thou beat him with the rod he shall
not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul from
Sheol."--Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.

In Lecture IV. we examined two of the main principles which should be inculcated
on children in a Christian home. In the present lecture we approach the question
of education again. It is necessary for us to examine two features of parental
training on which the book of Proverbs lays repeated stress. First, the need of
method in bringing up the young; and second, the way of punishing their
delinquencies.

In the first we have an eternal principle, which applies and must apply as long
as human nature endures, a principle which is even emphasized by the demands of
our Christian faith. In the second we have a principle which is so modified and
altered by the Christian spirit, that unless we make the largest allowance for
the change, it may be, as it often has been, misleading and hurtful in a high
degree. If we could trace out all the dark cruelties and injustice, the
vindictiveness, the stupidity of parents, guardians, and teachers, who have
sheltered themselves under the authority of the text, "Foolishness is bound up
in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him,"
[578] we might read with a new application our Saviour's stern censure of
accepting the letter of Scripture in place of coming to Him and learning of Him
who is meek and lowly of heart. [579]

But our first duty is to understand the wholesome and eternally valid teaching
that is here given us about education. "Train up a child in the way he should
go." We gain a good deal in vividness if we go back to the meaning of the word
which is rendered "train." Derived from a noun which signifies the palate and
the inner part of the mouth, its literal meaning is "to put into the mouth." The
metaphor suggested is that of feeding an infant. Every parent recognises the
necessity of giving to the helpless children suitable nourishment. At first the
mother feeds the babe at the breast. After the weaning she still feeds it with
food carefully chosen and prepared. As the child grows older she changes the
food, but she does not relax her care; and the father admits the responsibility
of procuring the necessary diet for his little one, a responsibility which does
not cease until the child is fully grown, fully formed, and fully able to
provide for himself. Here is the suitable analogy for mental, moral, and
spiritual teaching. The parents must feed their child with morsels suitable to
his age, with the "milk of the word" at first, afterwards with strong meat. It
all requires infinite care and forethought and wisdom, for there is a certain
way of development, a certain ideal which the child must realize, and if the
training is to be on the lines of that development, according to that "way," if
it is to achieve that ideal, the teaching must all be accurately adapted to the
age or stage of development, and to the particular character and disposition of
the child. If the preliminary work of the parents is wisely done, if the
influence exercised by them while their child is still entirely in their hands
is exactly what it ought to be, there is no fear for the rest of life--"when he
is old he will not depart from it." A great master of modern literature, who
wandered through many ways of thought far from the opinions and faith of his
parents, when in his old age he sat down to write the reminiscences of his life,
discovered that the original bent given to his mind by his peasant parents had
remained unexhausted to the end. [580] Many beliefs currently held had faded and
grown dim, much of the historical foundation of his religion had crumbled away,
but there was a truth which he had learned from his mother's lips and had seen
exemplified in his father's life, and it returned to him in its full force, and
remained unsubmerged in the tides of doubt, unaffected by the breath of change,
it even acquired a fresh hold upon him in the decline of his days:--The chief
end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.

It is a good illustration of the unrivalled power of the parents over a man's
life. "The Lord hath given the father honour over the children, and hath
confirmed the authority of the mother over the sons," says Ecclesiasticus. [581]
It is a rare opportunity which is given to parents. No sphere of influence which
they may acquire can be like it; it may be wider, but it can never be so intense
or so decisive. A father who abdicates the throne on which God has set him, who
foregoes the honour which God has given him, or turns it into dishonour, must
one day answer for his base renunciation before the Eternal Father. A mother who
uses the authority over her sons which God has given her, merely to gratify her
own vanity and selfishness, and to retain a love which she has ceased to
deserve; or one who wantonly throws away the authority because its exercise
makes large demands upon the spirit, has much to answer for at the Divine
judgment-seat. Parental powers are so absolute, parental possibilities are so
great, parental joys are so rare and wonderful, that they must of necessity be
balanced by corresponding disadvantages in case of failure. "He that begetteth a
fool doeth it to his sorrow, and the father of a fool hath no joy." [582] "A
foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him."
[583] It must therefore constantly press upon all wise parents, how are they to
act, what methods are they to adopt, in order to rightly discharge their duties,
and to win that precious reward of "a wise son"? [584] "My son, if thy heart be
wise, my heart shall be glad, even mine, yea, my reins shall rejoice when thy
lips speak right things." "The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice,
and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him." [585]

The answer which is constantly suggested by the book of Proverbs, and especially
by our text, is this:--A successful parent will be one who makes the training of
the children a constant and religious study. It is the last subject in the world
to be left to haphazard. From the first a clear aim must be kept in view. "Is my
great object that this boy shall be a true, a noble, a God-fearing man, serving
his day and generation in the way God shall appoint? Is this object purged of
all meaner thought? Can I renounce the idea of worldly success for him, and be
indifferent to wealth and reputation, to comfort and ease for him?" When this
question is satisfactorily settled, then comes a second, How is the aim to be
realized? Is not the parent at once driven to God with the cry, "Who is
sufficient for these things?" A mistake may be so fatal, and it is so hard to
clearly see, to rightly judge, to firmly act, that nothing can avail but the
direct teaching, inspiration, and power of the Spirit of God. Happy are the
father and the mother who have been forced in their helplessness to seek that
Divine help from the very first!

If we only knew it, all education is useless apart from the Spirit of God.
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And liberty is just what is
most needed. Mechanical schemes, cut-and-dried precepts, are quite insufficient.
Moving in the liberty of the Spirit you have insight and adaptiveness; at once
you perceive that each child is a separate study, and must be approached in a
different way. One is sanguine and over-confident, and he must constantly be
humbled; another is diffident and desponding, and must be encouraged with the
bright word of sympathy, spoken at the right moment. "I see it all, my child; I
know what a fight it is in which you are engaged." [586] One is a born sceptic,
and would know the reason why; he must be met with patient and comprehending
arguments according to his mental powers. Another has no speculative instincts,
and questions have to be raised, doubts suggested, in order to save him from
drifting into the easy-going acceptance of everything which he is told. One
seems naturally inclined to be religious, and must be carefully watched lest the
sensitiveness should become morbid, and a dominant thought should lead to mania,
melancholy, or a possible reaction. Another seems to have no religious instinct,
and the opportunity must be sought for awaking the sense of need, rousing the
conscience, opening the eyes to God.

But again, in proportion as parents are led by the Spirit, and make their sacred
charge a matter of constant and beseeching prayer, they will in their own person
and conduct represent God to the children, and so supplement all the possible
defects of the express training and discipline. If the command "Be thou in the
fear of the Lord all the day long" [587] is to have any weight with a child, he
must live with those who themselves are in the fear of the Lord all the day
long. A man must live near to God if he is to make God real to his children. A
mother must hold very real converse with her Lord if His reality is to become
obvious to her little ones. "As a child," says one, [588] "I always had a
feeling that God and Jesus were such particular friends of mamma's, and were
honoured more than words could tell." If such an impression is to be created,
depend upon it God and Jesus must be particular friends of yours. No talk,
however pious, can create that impression unless the hallowed friendship
actually exists.

Again, led by the Spirit, we are filled with Divine love; and no training of
children can have any valuable or permanent effect which does not issue from,
which is not guided by, and does not result in, love. For love is the Divine
educator. It is this which accounts for the frequently observed anomaly that
children who seem to have inferior home advantages and very inadequate education
turn out better than others for whom no labour or expense or care seems to be
grudged. If love is not there, all the efforts will fail. Love is the only
atmosphere in which the spirits of little children can grow. Without it the
wisest precepts only choke, and the best-prepared knowledge proves innutritious.
It must be a large love, a wise love, an inclusive love, such as God alone can
shed abroad in the heart. Love of that kind is very frequently found in "huts
where poor men lie," and consequently the children issuing out of them have been
better trained than those whose parents have handed them over to loveless tutors
or underlings.

And this may perhaps fitly lead us to consider the other point which is before
us--the prominence which is, in the Proverbs, given to chastisement. "He that
spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes."
[589] "Chasten thy son, seeing there is hope, and set not thy heart on his
destruction." [590] "Stripes that wound are a cleansing of evil, strokes of the
recesses of the belly." [591] "Withhold not correction from the child; when thou
beatest him with a rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and
shalt deliver his soul from Sheol." [592] "The rod and reproof give wisdom, but
a child left to himself causeth shame to his mother." [593] "Correct thy son and
he shall give thee rest, yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul." [594]

Corporal punishment seems to the Christian, and to the common sense of a society
which is the product of the Christian spirit, degrading, brutalising, and
essentially futile! It can only have even a modicum of good effect where it is
inflicted by a loving hand, and in a loving spirit, without a trace of temper or
cruelty, and obviously costing more to inflict than to bear. But even with all
these conditions granted it is a most unsatisfactory method of punishment; it
arouses vindictive feelings and savage passions. A whipped boy is almost sure to
bully the next creature weaker than himself that he encounters; and acting only
as a deterrent, it never reaches the conscience, or creates a sense of revolt
from the sin for the sin's sake, which is the object of all wise, or at least of
all paternal, punishment. We can only, therefore, set aside the precept to use
the rod as one which was in harmony with darker and harder times before the
Saviour of the world had come to reveal the inner life and to teach us how we
are to deal with those mysterious and wonderful beings, our fellow-creatures.

But with this modification, and substituting "wise and merciful punishments" for
"rod and stripes," these teachings remain of permanent validity. Our Heavenly
Father chastens His children; by most gracious punishments He brings home to
them the sense of sin, and leads them to repentance and amendment. [595] And
earthly parents, in proportion as they are led by the Spirit and filled with
love, will correct their children, not for their own pleasure, but for their
children's good. The truth which underlies these apparently harsh injunctions is
this: Love inflicts punishments, nor are any punishments so severe as those
which Love inflicts; and only the punishments which Love inflicts are able to
reform and to save the character of the delinquent.

We all of us know that weak and sentimental nature--too common among modern
parents--which shrinks from inflicting pain under all circumstances. Seizing on
the ill-understood doctrine that Love is the sovereign power in life and in
education, it pleads in the name of Love that the offender may be spared, that
he may escape the due penalty of his fault. That is not a love like God's love:
and if you are careful to observe, it has not the remedial or saving effect
which the love of God has. "He that declines to punish his child hates him; he
that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." In the poor child's heart so much
foolishness is bound up, so much wilfulness and temper, so much vanity and
pride, so much sensuality and selfishness, so much unwholesome craving for
amusement, it is so natural to the child to make pleasure the be-all and the
end-all of life, that, if all this foolishness is to be driven away, there must
be much sharp discipline and painful correction. The Divine method of punishment
seems to be to let men eat of the fruit of their doings until they loathe it.
They rebelliously call out for meat in the wilderness, and it turns into a
satiety, a bitterness, and a plague, while it is between their teeth. Is it
possible that parents too, under the guidance of the Spirit, may chasten their
children in the same way, bringing home to the wilful the painful effects of
wilfulness, to the vain the ridiculous effects of vanity, to the selfish the
disastrous issue of selfishness, to the sensual the ruin and the misery of
sensuality? Might not the most effectual punishment for every fault be an
enforced quiet in which the culprit is confronted with the inevitable outcome of
the sin? Does not even the hardest heart begin to melt, does not the dullest
conscience begin to grow sensitive, when the sure results of evil are aptly
pourtrayed before the mind? What pride would have courage to grow if it had a
glimpse of the hard, dry, loveless, unloved, heart which is its inevitable
fruit? What young man would venture to take the first downward steps in impurity
if he had ever formed a conception of the devastation of brain and heart and
life which must ensue?

The rod cannot open the eyes; it can but set the cunning intellect to work to
find a way of enjoying the sin and escaping the rod. But the opening of the
eyes--at which all true punishment must aim--reveals a rod which is bound up
with the sin, sure as the sin itself. It is the parents' solemn task--and many
an inward sorrow must it cost--to bring home to his child's heart these truths
of experience which the child cannot at present know. Wise penalties and
"reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself causeth shame to his mother."
[596]

There is a voice, the voice of Divine Wisdom, which speaks continually to every
parent, to every teacher of youth: "Incline thine ear," it says, "and hear the
words of the wise, and apply thy heart unto my knowledge"--without attention and
application this heavenly wisdom cannot be known. "For it is a pleasant thing,"
so the voice continues, "if thou keep these words within thee, if they be
established together upon thy lips. That thy trust may be in the Lord,"--without
whom the best-meant efforts will fail,--"I have made them known to thee this
day, even to thee. Have not I written to thee excellent things of counsels and
knowledge, to make thee know the certainty of the words of truth, that thou
mayest carry back words of truth to them," those helpless and ignorant children
whose needs "send thee" to me for instruction? [597]

The failures are numerous, disastrous, heart-breaking, but they are unnecessary.
Your children are holy; they belong to the Saviour in whom you yourselves
believe. Grasp that truth; go to Him in sublime faith. "Lord, it is not with
Thee to save a part, to choose this one and save that. Thou wilt glorify Thyself
in every one." [598] Surrender yourself to Him that He may use you to exhibit
His Divine graces and saving love to the children. Live with Him daily, that the
glory of the communion may not pass away from your face, or appear only by fits
and starts--and so train up your child according to his way; and when he is old
he will not depart from it.
__________________________________________________________________

[578] Prov. xxii. 15.

[579] John v. 39.

[580] "I am the eldest child, born in 1795, December 4th, and trace deeply in
myself the character of both parents, also the upbringing and example of
both."--Carlyle's Reminiscences, vol. i., p. 54.

[581] Eccles. xxx. 2.

[582] Prov. xvii. 21.

[583] Prov. xvii. 25, xix. 13, 26.

[584] Prov. xv. 20. Cf. x. 1, xxvii. 11, xxix. 3.

[585] Prov. xxiii. 15, 16, 24.

[586] See that invaluable little book, "The Education of a Christian Home,"
edited by Ella S. Armitage.

[587] Prov. xxiii. 17.

[588] "The Education of a Christian Home."

[589] Prov. xiii. 24.

[590] Prov. xix. 18.

[591] Prov. xx. 30.

[592] Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.

[593] Prov. xxix. 15.

[594] Prov. xxix. 17.

[595] Lev. xxvi. 41: "If then their uncircumcised heart be humbled, and they
then accept of the punishment of their iniquity, then will I remember My
covenant with Jacob."

[596] Prov. xxix. 15.

[597] Prov. xxiii. 17-21.

[598] "The Education of a Christian Home."
__________________________________________________________________

XXIV.

FORGIVING.

"Be not a witness against thy neighbour without cause, and deceive not with thy
lips. Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me; I will render to the
man according to his work."--Prov. xxiv. 28, 29.

"Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thy heart be glad when he is
overthrown, lest the Lord see it and it displease Him, and He turn away His
wrath from him."--Prov. xxiv. 17, 18.

"He that is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished."--Prov. xvii. 5.

"If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him
water to drink; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord
shall reward thee."--Prov. xxv. 21, 22.

There is no subject on which the teaching of the Proverbs more strikingly
anticipates the morality of the New Testament than that of forgiveness to our
enemies. Our Lord Jesus Christ could take some of these sayings and incorporate
them unchanged into the law of His kingdom, for indeed it is not possible to
surpass the power and beauty and truth of the command to feed those who have
injured us if they are hungry, to give them drink when they are thirsty, and in
this Divine way to kindle in them repentance for the injury which they have
done. This is the high-water mark of moral excellence. No better state can be
desired. When a human spirit is habitually in this tender and forgiving mood, it
is already united with the Father of spirits, and lives.

It is almost superfluous to point out that even the saints of the Old Testament
fall very far short of the lofty standard which is here set before us. The
Psalmist, for example, is thinking of coals of a quite different sort when he
exclaims: "As for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief of
their own lips cover them. Let burning coals fall upon them; let them be cast
into the fire; into deep pits that they rise not up again." [599] That is the
old elemental hate of human nature, the passionate, indignant appeal to a
righteous God against those who have been guilty of a wrong or an injury. Even
Jeremiah, one of the latest, and certainly not the least holy, of the prophets
could cry out concerning his enemies: "Yet, Lord, Thou knowest all their counsel
against me to slay me; forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin
from Thy sight; but let them be overthrown before Thee; deal Thou with them in
the time of Thine anger." [600] Words painfully natural, words echoed by many a
persecuted man of God, but yet quite inconsistent with the teaching of the
Saviour in the Sermon on the Mount, the teaching already foreshadowed in this
beautiful proverb.

But it may not be superfluous to notice that the Proverbs themselves, even those
which stand at the head of this chapter, do not all touch the high-water mark of
xxv. 21. Thus, for example, the motive which is suggested in xxiv. 18 for not
rejoicing in the fall of an enemy is none of the highest. The idea seems to be,
if you see your enemy undergoing punishment, if calamity is falling upon him
from the Lord, then do not indulge in any insolent exultation, lest the Lord
should be offended with you, and, in order to chastise your malignity, should
cease to plague and trouble him. In such a view of the question, God is still
regarded as a Nemesis that will resent any unseemly rejoicing in the calamity of
another; [601] in proportion therefore as you wish to see your enemy punished,
you must abstain from that joy in his punishment which would lead to its
diminution. From a precept of that kind there is a vast moral stride to the
simple prohibition of retaliation, announced without any reason given or
suggested in xxiv. 29--"Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me, I
will render to the man according to his work." And from this again there is an
incalculable stride to the positive spirit of love, which, not content with
simply abstaining from vindictiveness, actually turns the tables, and repays
good for evil, looking with quiet assurance to the Lord, and the Lord alone, for
recognition and reward. Our wonder is occasioned not because all the Proverbs do
not reach the moral altitude of this one, but rather that this one should be so
high. When an ideal is set up far in advance of the general practice and even of
the general thoughts of the time, we can ascribe it only to the promptings of
the Holy Spirit.

It needs no proof that forgiveness is better than revenge. We all know that--

"Revenge, at first though sweet,

Bitter ere long back on itself recoils." [602]

We all know that the immediate effect of forgiving our enemy is a sweet flow of
tenderness in the soul, which surpasses in delight all the imagined joys of
vindictiveness; and that the next effect is to soften and win the foe himself;
the scornful look relents, the tears of passion give place to those of
penitence, the moved heart is eager to make amends. We all know that nothing
more powerfully affects our fellow-men than the exhibition of this placable
temper. [603] We all know that in forgiving we share God's prerogative, and come
into harmony with His Spirit.

Yet here is the melancholy fact that notwithstanding this proverbial truth,
taken up into the teaching of our Saviour, and echoed in the writings of His
Apostles, [604] even in a Christian society, forgiveness is almost as rare as it
was in the days of King Solomon. Men are not ashamed--even professing Christians
are not ashamed--to say about their enemies, "I will do so to him as he has done
to me, I will render to the man according to his work." We even have a lurking
admiration for such retaliatory conduct, calling it spirited, and we still are
inclined to contemn one who acts on the Christly principle as weak or visionary.
Still the old bad delight in seeing evil fall on the head of our enemies glows
in our hearts; still the act of vengeance is performed, the bitter retort is
given, the abusive letter is written, with the old sense of unhallowed pride and
triumph. How is this? Ah, the simple truth is that it is a small matter to get
right principles recognised, the whole difficulty lies in getting them
practised. We need a power which can successfully contend against the storm of
passion and self-will, in those terrible moments when all the calm lights of
reason are quenched by the blinding surf of passion, and all the gentle voices
of goodness are drowned by its roaring waves.

Sometimes we hear it said that the moral teaching of Christ is not original, but
that all His precepts may be found in the words and writings of ancient sages,
just as His teaching about forgiveness is anticipated by the proverb. Yes, but
His claim does not rest upon His teaching, but upon the Divine and supernatural
power which He has at His command to carry out His doctrines in the conduct of
His disciples. This is the point which we must realize if this sweet and
beautiful ideal is to be worked out in our lives. We have but touched the fringe
of the question when we have conned His words, or shaped conceptions of what a
life would be passed in conformity to them. The centre of Christian doctrine is
power, the power of Christ, the fountain of living waters opened in the heart,
the grafting of the withering branches upon a living stock, the indwelling of
Christ Himself, as the spring and principle of every holy action, and the
effectual restraint on all our ungovernable passions.

But before looking more closely at this, we ought to pay some attention to the
constant motive which our Lord, even in His teaching, presents for the practice
of a forgiving disposition. He always bases the duty of forgiveness on the need
which we have of God's forgiveness; He teaches us to pray, "Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us;" and in the moving
story of the unmerciful servant, who demanded the full payment from his
fellow-servant just when his lord had pitifully remitted his own debt, He tells
us that forgiveness of our enemies is an indispensable condition of our being
forgiven by God. "His lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till
he should pay all that was due. So shall also My Heavenly Father do unto you, if
ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts." [605] It is not
therefore only, as it is sometimes stated, that we ought to be moved to pity by
remembering what God has done for us. No, there is a much sterner thought in our
Lord's mind; it is that if we do not forgive we shall not and cannot be
forgiven. The forgiving spirit manifested to our fellow-men is that without
which it is vain for us to come near and to ask God for pardon. If we have come,
and are just about to offer our prayer, and if we then remember that we have
aught against a brother, we must go first and be reconciled to him, before our
prayer can be so much as heard.

Here is certainly a motive of a very powerful kind. Which of us would dare to
cherish the bitter thought, or proceed with our plan of vengeance, if we
remembered and realized that our vindictiveness would make our own pardon at the
hands of God impossible? Which of the countless deeds of retaliation that stain
with blood the pages of history would have been perpetrated, and which of the
perpetrators would not have tremblingly relinquished all thought of reprisals,
if they had seen that in those savage acts of vengeance they were not, as they
supposed, executing lawful justice, but actually cutting off their own hope of
pardon before the throne of God?

If we avenge ourselves, if society is constantly torn by the quarrels and the
mutual recriminations of hostile men whose one thought is to give as good as
they have got, it can only be because we do not believe, or do not realize, this
solemn teaching of the Lord. He seems a faint and doubtful voice compared with
the loud tumult of passion within; His authority seems weak and ineffectual
compared with the mighty domination of the evil disposition. Powerful,
therefore, as the motive is to which He constantly appeals, if He had left us
nothing but His teaching on the subject we should not be materially better off
than they who listened with attention to the teaching of the wise authors of
these ancient Proverbs. What more has He left us?

It is His prerogative to give to those who believe in Him a changed heart. How
much is meant by that, which only the changed heart can know! Outwardly we seem
much alike; outwardly there is little sign of an inward transformation; but far
as the east is from the west is the unregenerate heart from the regenerate, the
Christless heart from one which He has taken in His hands, and by His great
redemption created anew. Now without stopping to follow the processes of faith
by which this mighty change is effected, let us simply mark the characteristics
of the change so far as it affects the matter in hand.

The first and most radical result of the New Birth is that God takes the place
which Self has occupied. All the thoughts which have clustered about your own
being now turn to His Being, as stray fragments of iron turn to the magnet.
Consequently, all the emotions and passions which are stimulated by self-love
give place to those which are stimulated by the love of God. It is as if the
pipes of your aqueduct had been changed at the fountain head, disconnected from
the malarious waters of the marsh, and connected with the pure and sparkling
water of the hills. God's ways of regarding men, God's feelings towards men, His
yearning over them, His pity for them, flow into the changed heart, and so
preoccupy it that resentment, hatred, and malice are washed out like the sour
dregs in a cup which is rinsed in a running stream.

There is the man who did you the wrong--very cruel and unpardonable it
was!--but, as all personal elements are quite out of the question, you regard
him just as if you were not the injured being. You see him only as God sees him;
you trace all the malignant workings of his mind; you know how the fire of his
hate is a fire which burns the heart that entertains it. You see clearly how
tormenting those revengeful passions are, how the poor soul mastered by them is
diseased, how the very action in which it is triumphing now must become one day
a source of bitter regret and implacable self-reproach; you soon begin to regard
the ill deed as a shocking wound inflicted on the doer of it, and the wells of
pity are opened. As if this enemy of yours had been quite innocent of all
ill-will, and had been overtaken by some terrible calamity, your one instinctive
thought is to help him and relieve him. Out of the fulness of your heart,
without any sense of being magnanimous, or any thought of a further end,--simply
for the pity of it,--you come to proffer him bread in his hunger and water in
his thirst.

Yes, it is in the atmosphere of pity that personal resentment dies away, and it
is only by the power of the Son of Man that the heart can be filled with a pity
large enough to pardon all the sins of our kind.

It is this thought--though without any definite statement of the means by which
it is produced--that finds expression in Whittier's touching lines:--

"My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

So turning gloomily from my fellow-men,

One summer Sabbath day I strolled among

The green mounds of the village burying-place;

Where pondering how all human love and hate

Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,

Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,

And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of a common grave,

Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,

Awed for myself, and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

Swept all my pride away, and, trembling, I forgave."

Yes, one who is touched by the spirit of the Son of Man finds too much to pity
in the great sorrowing world, and in its fleeting and uncertain life, to cherish
vengeful feelings. Himself redeemed by the untold love of His Father, by the
undeserved and freely offered pardon in Christ Jesus his Lord, he can feel for
his enemies nothing but forbearance and love; if they too are Christians, he
longs to win them back to the peace and joy from which their evil passion must
have driven them; and if they are not, his eyes must fill with tears as he
remembers how brief is their apparent triumph, how unsubstantial their gleam of
joy. The desire to save them immediately masters the transitory wish to punish
them. The pity of men, for the sake of the Son of Man, wins the day.

And now we may just glance at the effect which the Christly conduct has upon the
offender, and the reward which God has attached to its exercise.

It is one of the most beautiful traces of God's likeness in even bad men, a
characteristic to which there is no parallel in the animal creation, that though
passion awakes passion, wrath wrath, and vengeance revenge--so that savages pass
their whole time in an unbroken series of blood feuds, the hideous retaliation
bandied from tribe to tribe and from man to man, generation after
generation--the spirit of meekness, proceeding not from cowardice, but from
love, disarms passion, soothes wrath, and changes vengeance into reconciliation.
The gleam of forgiveness in the eye of the injured is so obviously the light of
God that the wrongdoer is cowed and softened before it. It kindles a fire in his
spirit, his heart melts, his uplifted hand falls, his angry voice grows tender.
When men are so dehumanised as to be insensible to this softening effect, when
they interpret the gentleness as weakness, and are moved by the forgiving spirit
simply to further injury and more shameless wrong, then we may know that they
are possessed,--they are no longer men,--they are passing into the category of
the lost spirits, whom the forbearance of God Himself leads not to repentance
but only to added sin.

But if you have ever by the sweet spirit of Christ so mastered your natural
impulse as to return good for evil lovingly and whole-heartedly, and if you have
seen the regenerating effect in the beautiful subjugation of your foe and his
transformation into a friend, it is not necessary to say much of the reward
which God has in store for you. Do you not already possess it?

Yet the reward is certainly greater than you are able at once to apprehend. For
what a secret is this which you possess, the secret of turning even the
malignity of foes into the sweetest affection, the secret which lay in the heart
of God as the spring and the means of man's redemption. [606] The highest reward
that God can give to His creatures is to make them partakers of His nature as He
has made them in His own image. When we share in a Divine attribute we enter so
far into the Divine bliss; and in proportion as this attribute seems removed
from our common human nature, our spirit must exult to find that it has been
really appropriated. What further reward, then, can he who avenges not himself
desire? The pulse of the Divine heart beats in him; the tides of the Divine life
flow through him. He is like God--God who opposes to man's ingratitude the ocean
of His pardoning love; he is conscious of that which is the fountain of joy in
the Divine Being; surely a man must be satisfied when he awakes in God's
likeness! And that satisfaction comes to every one who has heaped coals of fire
on his enemy's head by feeding him in his hunger, and giving him water when
athirst. Say not, "I will do so to him as he has done to me, I will render to
the man according to his work." Love your enemies; pray for them which
despitefully use you.
__________________________________________________________________

[599] Psalm cxl. 9, 10.

[600] Jer. xviii. 23.

[601] Prov. xvii. 5b.

[602] Paradise Lost, ix., 171.

[603] Burke said of Pitt after his fall, that the manner in which he made his
own justification, without impeaching the conduct of his colleagues or taking
any measure that might seem to arise from disgust or opposition, set a seal upon
his character. (Lecky, "England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iii., 61.)

[604] See Rom. xii. 20.

[605] Matt. xviii. 35.

[606] Cf. the proverb, "When a man's ways please the Lord He maketh even his
enemies to be at peace with him" (Prov. xvi. 7).
__________________________________________________________________

XXV.

THE KING.

"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of kings is to search
out a matter.

The heaven for height and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is
unsearchable.

Take away the dross from the silver, and there cometh forth a vessel for the
finer;

Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established
in righteousness.

Put not thyself forward in the presence of the king, and stand not in the
presence of great men:

Far better is it that it be said unto thee, Come up hither, than that thou
shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have
seen."--Prov. xxv. 2-7.

It will be remembered that in the book of Samuel there are two accounts of the
monarchy and its origin lying side by side,--different, and to all appearance
irreconcilable. One set of passages seems to imply that the king was appointed
by God's holy purpose to fulfil the objects of His government. But another set
of passages seems to represent the outcry for a king as a rebellion against the
sovereignty of the Lord, and the appointment of a king as a punishment for the
people's sin. It is in agreement with the first idea that provision is made in
the Law for a monarchical government; but it is in agreement with the second
idea that the actual kings prove to be for the most part incompetent and
faithless rulers, "who do evil in the sight of the Lord," and that even the best
of them fall into gross sins, or are at any rate guilty of grave errors. Thus
David stumbled into a miry pit; Jehoshaphat experienced defeat in his alliance
with Ahab; Josiah was slain at the battle of Megiddo; Uzziah was smitten with
leprosy; and Hezekiah committed an imprudence which incidentally brought the
great calamity upon his country. So it is all through.

Now the only satisfactory explanation that this twofold aspect of the kingship
seems to admit of is one which goes deep down into the prophetic and inspired
character of Israel and its history. The king in his ideal aspect is throughout
a type and a foreshadowing of the Anointed One that was to come; and the actual
failure of all the kings to realize the ideal, to govern wisely, to establish
righteousness, or even to observe the moral law in their own persons,
necessarily threw men's thoughts forward to Him who should sit upon the throne
of David, and carry out in ways not yet realized or even conceived the noble and
exalted ideas which clustered round the theocratic throne. Many hasty critics
have been swift to see and to censure the ignoble failures of the men who sat
upon the thrones of Judah and Israel; some critics have developed with
sufficient clearness the noble ideal which always underlay the monarchy even in
the moments of its deepest decline. But comparatively few have seen the
significance of this contrast between the ideal and the actual; and consequently
only a few have perceived with what a prolonged and emphatic voice the whole
story of the Kings spoke of Christ.

The contrast just pointed out in the historic books appears with equal
distinctness in this book of Wisdom; the proverbial sayings about the king
exhibit the twofold thought; and the reconciliation is only found when we have
realized the Kingship of Christ and can bring that idea to explain the ancient
forecast. Thus the study of the things concerning the king is to the thoughtful
reader of the Proverbs a study of the things concerning Christ. The ideal
elements speak of Him; the actual shortcomings cry out for Him.

First we will review what is said to the glory and honour of the king. He comes
before us as the embodiment of righteousness. [607] "It is an abomination to
kings to commit wickedness, for the throne is established by righteousness.
Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him that speaketh right."
[608] "A king that sitteth on the throne of judgment winnoweth away all evil
with his eyes.... A wise king winnoweth the wicked and bringeth the threshing
wheel over them." [609] As he purges the wicked, so he encourages the righteous:
"He that loveth pureness of heart hath grace on his lips, the king shall be his
friend." [610] There is a great severity in his government: "The wrath of a king
is as messengers of death; and a wise man will pacify it." [611] "The king's
wrath is as the roaring of a lion." [612] On the other hand, his mercy is one
with his severity: "His favour is as dew upon the grass." [613] "In the light of
the king's countenance is life, and his favour is as a cloud of the latter
rain." [614] "Mercy and truth preserve the king, and his throne is upholden by
mercy." [615] The fact is that his government is a viceroyalty. He is the human
instrument of the Divine Will. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; as
the watercourses"--which the farmer directs and leads over his fields according
to his purpose--"he turneth it whithersoever he will." [616] Thus the king
expresses precisely "the Lord's favour towards a servant that dealeth wisely,
and the Lord's wrath against him that causeth shame." [617] The king manifests
the Lord's spirit in dealing with the subject, judging the cause of the poor as
the Lord does. "The king that judgeth faithfully the poor, his throne shall be
established for ever." [618] He is, in a word, a manifestation--a revelation--of
God Himself. "The glory of God is to conceal a thing," i.e., to be unsearchable
and unknowable, "and the glory of kings is to search a matter out;" the king,
searching the deep things of God, and becoming the interpreter of the Divine
will to men, is Himself in the place of God to us. "The heaven for height and
the earth for depth, and the heart of kings there is no searching." Reflecting
the righteousness, the mercy, the power of God, his throne is bathed in the
celestial light. "Take away dross from the silver, and there cometh forth a
vessel for the finer; take away evil from before the king, and his throne shall
be fixed in justice." [619]

In the presence of such a sovereign the subject may well abase himself, even the
greatest and wisest may count himself small. "Glorify not thyself before a king,
and in the place of the great do not stand. For better is it that it be said to
thee, Come up hither, than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of a
prince whom thine eyes have seen." [620]

Rebellion against such a sovereign is the merest infatuation. "Against him there
is no rising up." [621] "The terror of the king is as the roaring of a lion, he
that provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own life." [622] "My son, fear
thou the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them who are given to change;
for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction of them
both." [623]

It is evident that in all this we have an ideal picture. No king that ever sat
on an earthly throne, no David or Hezekiah, no Antoninus or Trajan, no
Charlemagne or St. Louis, no Alfred or Edward the First, ever in the faintest
degree approached the fulfilment of the ideal. The divinity which hedged them
was of quite a different kind from this open vision of God, this human
mediatorship, this absolute subjection to the Divine will. And when we leave the
select class of great and good kings, and look at the ordinary type of the
strong and capable ruler, Saul or Ahab, Alexander or Cæsar, Constantine or
Diocletian, Clovis or Rollo, William the Conqueror or Henry II., Louis XIV. or
Frederick the Great, the Czar Peter or Napoleon, we see at once that we have
passed into a region of thought and action where the description of the Proverbs
becomes unreal and visionary.

There is but one way of explaining the language before us. It points to Christ.
In Him alone is it or can it be realized. He is the only sovereign that has any
union with God which is at all like identity. He is the only Ruler who blends
with absolute infallibility severity and mercy. Of what other king could it be
said that "purity of heart" secures His friendship? What other king has made it
his first and supreme object to judge faithfully the poor? What other government
but His has sought its security in that essential duty and its fulfilment? It is
Christ alone whose favour descends on the heart like dew on the grass, or as a
cloud of the latter rain. His is the only rule against which rebellion is more
than a political crime, and becomes an actual sin. Of Him alone can it be said
with any breadth of meaning or certainty of fulfilment, "Let no falsehood from
the tongue be spoken to the King, and no falsehood shall go out of his mouth. A
sword is the king's tongue, and that not of flesh." [624] It is only a king
absolutely righteous and absolutely merciful that can ever bear down with
effective force upon lies and liars. It is only He that would see in lying the
prime sin, the incurable disease, the unpardonable treason.

The King is Christ. Before He came there was in the line of His foreshadowing a
typical Divine right of kings. But since His coming all such kingships have been
anachronisms. The appeal which used to be made to the Old Testament to support
that famous political dogma was indeed its surest refutation and condemnation.
For all that is said there of the indefeasible prerogative, coupled as it is
with an infallibility of judgment, a perfect moral goodness, and an irresistible
power, applied and could apply only to Christ. Where absolute monarchy is not
Christship it becomes, as so many familiar passages in the Old Testament show, a
tyranny and an oppression, a cause of national corruption and decay.

Now this leads us, in the second place, to notice how the actual failure and
consequent mischief of the kingship are reflected in the proverbs, and
especially those later proverbs which date from the decline and fall of the
monarchy. We have only to glance over the books of Samuel and Kings to see what
kind of men the occupants of the throne were; few of them show any marked
ability, most of them by their folly and stupidity lead their people with
hurried strides towards the threatened catastrophe. So far from acting as
vicegerents of the Lord, it is their special characteristic that they are the
authors of the prevailing religious apostasy. Even the more favourable
exceptions, the kings who in the main did what was right in the eyes of the
Lord, had not spiritual energy enough to purify the worship and restore the
allegiance of their people to the Lord. Now it would be some insolent and
witless tyrant who would desolate the country and drive his subjects into
revolt. "A raging lion, a ravening bear, a wicked ruler over a poor people. O
prince, that lackest understanding and art a great oppressor, he that hateth
rapine shall prolong his days." [625] Now it would be a headstrong prince who
would scorn all counsel, and, refusing to be advised, would himself retire from
the helm of the state. "Where no wise steering is, the people falleth; but in
the multitude of counsellors there is safety." [626] Setting aside the maxim,
"Every purpose is established by counsel, and by wise guidance make thou war,"
[627] his purposes would be disappointed. [628] Now the earth would be burdened
and tremble with the portent of a servant as king, [629] one who as a servant
might be excellent, but once on the throne would reveal all the weaknesses and
vices which are essentially servile. [630] Now a liar would occupy the throne,
and lying lips ill become a prince. [631] And now, owing to the weakness and
folly of the prince, the state would fall into pieces and be torn with wildly
contending factions: "For the transgression of a land many are the princes
thereof, but by a man of understanding and knowledge right will be prolonged."
[632] Under the rule of the wicked, population disappears. [633] And while "in
the multitude of people is the king's glory, in the want of people is the
destruction of the prince." [634] Under the tyrant's sway "the people sigh."
[635] Their persons are insecure, and their property is taken from them in the
form of forced gifts or benevolences. [636] And as the king, such are his
servants; his readiness to hearken to falsehood renders them all wicked. [637]
The atmosphere of the court becomes corrupt: all truth, sincerity, purity
disappear. The courtier is afraid to speak his mind, lest jealous listeners
should report the words to the monarch's suspicious ear. The very freedom of
social life disappears, and the table of the king becomes a trap to the unwary.
"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently him that is before
thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite; be not
desirous of his dainties, seeing they are deceitful meat." [638]

Here is the complete and absolute corruption of the Divine royalty. The
description holds true age after age; suggested by the decline of the monarchy
in Israel, it applies accurately to the Imperial government at Rome, and it
might have been written to describe the character and the government of the
Stuarts in England. Strong in what they supposed to be their Divine Right, they
became liars and hearkened to falsehood; their servants became wicked; their
government perished from its own inherent rottenness. The description holds too
of the French monarchy from the time of Louis XIV. to its fall. And it would
seem, as indeed we may confidently believe, that the slow and imperceptible
decay of the faith in the divine right of kings has been in God's hands a long
preparation for the reign of Him whose right it is to reign, Jesus Christ, the
true King of men.

But there is still one other characteristic cause of the perverted kingship, to
which attention is drawn in xxxi. 2-8: "Give not thy strength unto women, nor
thy ways to that which destroyeth kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is
not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink? Lest
they drink and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any that is
afflicted." These fleshly vices are peculiarly common and peculiarly ruinous to
kings, preventing them from pleading "the cause of such as are left desolate,"
and from "ministering judgment to the poor and needy." [639] It is in realizing
the private life of kings, and in observing how seldom they have practised
temperance, chastity, self-control, and how readily their contemporaries and
even posterity have dispensed them from these primary obligations, that we
plainly recognise the broad divergence between the facts of earthly monarchies
and the description of the heavenly monarchy, and thus are prepared to recognise
with gratitude and awe the sole sovereignty of Christ. The cry of the
Florentines under the temporary excitement created by Savonarola's preaching
was, "Jesus is our King, only Jesus." That is the constant and ever-swelling cry
of human hearts. The types and shadows fall away; through the forms the spirit
becomes apparent. It is Christ that claims and wins and enchains our loyalty. We
are His subjects, He is our absolute Lord; we have no king but Jesus.

There is in every human heart a loyalty which seeks for a fitting object; if it
finds no lawful king, it will attach itself to a pretender. What pathos there is
in the sacrifice which men have made, and in the deeds which they have dared,
for Pretenders who have had no claim upon their devotion or allegiance! "Show me
my rightful sovereign," seems to be the implicit demand of us all. And the
answer has been given, "Behold, your king cometh unto you," in the lowly person,
but commanding majesty, of Jesus. Many have accepted this and have cried,
"Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord." [640]

Shall we not bring our loyalty to Him, recognising the One whom prophets and
wise men foretold, and acknowledging in His sway the authority which all other
governments, even the best of them, lack? Let no false shame or fear restrain
our homage; let not the sneers of those over whom "other lords have dominion"
keep our knees from bending, and our tongues from confessing, "The fear of man
bringeth a snare; but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. Many
seek the ruler's favour,"--their whole thought is to stand well with the powers
that be, and to secure the recognition of the Pretender who happens at any given
moment to be directing the affairs of the world,--"but a man's judgment cometh
from the Lord," his rightful King, [641] and to stand right with Him is all that
need concern us. How well the King of men understood that because He came in
humility--His birthplace a manger, His throne a fishing-boat or a wayside well,
riding not in chariots of state, "but on an ass, and the foal of an ass;"
because His appeal would be, not to the eye, but to the heart; not to the
outward, but the inward; not to the temporal, but to the eternal,--men, with
their perverted and misapplied loyalties, would reject Him and be ashamed to
confess Him. False kingships have dazzled our eyes, and hidden from us the
grandeur of a Sovereign who is among us as one that serveth. From the touch of
His humiliation we shrink.

But if the heart recognises and owns its lawful Sovereign; if, captivated by His
indescribable beauty and bowed before His indisputable authority, it seeks only
in profound obeisance and absolute surrender, to worship and adore and serve,
how royal is His treatment, how unstinted are His largesses. "Come up hither,"
He says, bringing the soul higher and higher, into fuller vision, into more
buoyant life, into more effectual service. The evil ruler, we saw, made all his
servants wicked. Christ, as King, makes all His servants holy, dwelling in them,
and subduing their hearts to Himself in ever truer devotion; He through them
carries out His vast designs of love in those portions of His dominion where
rebels still rise up against Him, and where poor deluded hearts still fretfully
cry, "We will not have this Man to rule over us." "In the multitude of people is
the king's glory." May God hasten the time when all peoples and tongues shall
bow down to and worship our King!
__________________________________________________________________

[607] It will be observed that, speaking generally, the early proverbs present
the more favourable side of the kingship, and the later proverbs suggest a
period of decline (see [6]Introduction). Possibly the same test may serve to
distinguish the passages in Deuteronomy and the book of Samuel; the brighter
thought that the king was originally intended by God may come from the early
days when the kings still promised well, and the darker thought which crosses
the optimistic picture may emanate from the period when their failure and
decline were unmistakable.

[608] Prov. xvi. 12, 13.

[609] Prov. xx. 8, 26.

[610] Prov. xxii. 11.

[611] Prov. xvi. 14.

[612] Prov. xix. 12.

[613] Prov. xix. 12.

[614] Prov. xvi. 15.

[615] Prov. xx. 28.

[616] Prov. xxi. 1.

[617] Prov. xiv. 35.

[618] Prov. xxix. 14.

[619] Prov. xxv. 2-5.

[620] Prov. xxv. 6, 7.

[621] Prov. xxx. 31.

[622] Prov. xx. 2.

[623] Prov. xxiv. 21, 22.

[624] The LXX. of xxiv. 23, which adds a passage not appropriate to Christ,
"Whosoever is delivered up to him shall be crushed. For if his temper be
exasperated, he consumes men, sinews and all, and crunches their bones, and
burns them up as a flame, so that they are uneatable to the young of eagles."

[625] Prov. xxviii. 15, 16.

[626] Prov. xi. 15. The image from steering survives in our own governor
(gubernator).

[627] Prov. xx. 18.

[628] Prov. xv. 22.

[629] See 1 Kings xvi. 7.

[630] Prov. xxx. 22.

[631] Prov. xvii. 7.

[632] Prov. xxviii. 2.

[633] Prov. xxviii. 12.

[634] Prov. xiv. 28.

[635] Prov. xxix. 2.

[636] Prov. xxix. 4.

[637] Prov. xxix. 12. Cf. Ecclesiasticus x. 2: "As the judge of the people is
himself, so are his officers; and what manner of man the ruler of the city is,
such are they also that dwell therein."

[638] Prov. xxiii. 1-3. Cf. the Eastern adage, "Dainties of a king burn the
lips." It was a common occurrence at the court of Pope Alexander VI. to invite
an obnoxious person to the Papal table and there dispose of him by means of
poisoned food.

[639] Prov. xxxi. 8, 9.

[640] Luke xix. 38.

[641] Prov. xxix. 25, 26.
__________________________________________________________________

XXVI.

THE FOOL.

"As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a
fool....

A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the back of fools.

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off his own feet, and
drinketh in damage.

The legs of the lame hang loose: so is a parable in the mouth of fools.

As a bag of gems in a heap of stones, so is he that giveth honour to a fool.

As a thorn that goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable in the
mouth of fools.

As an archer that woundeth all, so is he that hireth the fool and he that hireth
them that pass by.

As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is a fool that repeateth his folly.

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of
him."--Prov. xxvi. 1, 3-12.

This passage points out certain characteristics of the fool, a term which occurs
so frequently in the book of Proverbs that we must try to conceive clearly what
is to be understood by it. The difficulty of forming a distinct conception
arises from the fact that there are three different words, with different shades
of meaning, all rendered by the one English expression, fool or folly. For want
of carefully distinguishing these delicate varieties of the original, some of
the proverbs appear in English tautological and almost meaningless. We must try
then to separate and to understand these several terms.

The Hebrew word which most frequently occurs in the book to designate fool,
'vyl, together with its derivative, which is the usual word for folly, 'vlt,
signifies weakness. We are to think of that ignorant, inconsiderate, sanguine,
and self-confident temper which eschews counsel, which will have its own way,
which declines to be governed by reason, which forms fond expectations and
baseless hopes, and which is always sure that everything will turn out according
to its wish, though it takes no means to secure the desired result. Perhaps the
simplest way of describing the habit of mind and the type of character intended
by the Hebrew is to use the word infatuation. This would not do as a translation
in all the passages where it occurs, but it will serve to point out the
underlying idea.

The word which comes next in frequency, kmyl,--the word used uniformly
throughout the particular passage before us,--has at its root the notion of
grossness, the dull and heavy habit of one whose heart has waxed fat, whose ears
are slow to hear, and whose higher perceptions and nobler aspirations have
succumbed to the sensual and earthly nature. We have to think of moral, as well
as mental, stupidity, of insensibility to all that is true and good and pure.
The fool in this sense is such a dullard that he commits wickedness without
perceiving it, [642] and utters slanders almost unconsciously; [643] he does not
know when to be silent; [644] whatever is in him quickly appears, [645] but when
it is known it is very worthless; [646] nor has he the sense to get wisdom, even
when the opportunity is in his hand; [647] his best advantages are quickly
wasted and he is none the better. [648] Perhaps the English word which best fits
the several suggestions of the Hebrew one is senseless.

The third term, nvl, occurs only four times in the book. It is derived from a
verb signifying to fade and wither. It describes the inward shrinking and
shrivelling of a depraved nature, the witlessness which results from wickedness.
It contains in itself a severer censure than the other two. Thus "He that
begetteth a senseless man (kmyl) doeth it to his sorrow, but the father of the
bad fool (nvl) hath no joy." [649] In the one case there is trouble enough, in
the other there is nothing but trouble. Thus it is one of the four things for
which the earth trembles when a man of this kind is filled with meat. [650] This
third character is sketched for us in the person of Nabal, whose name, as
Abigail says, is simply the Hebrew word for fool in its worst sense, which fits
exactly to its bearer. But dismissing this type of folly which is almost
synonymous with consummate wickedness, of which indeed it is the outcome, we may
turn to the distinction we have drawn between infatuation and senselessness in
order to explain and understand some of the Proverbs in which the words occur.

First of all we may notice how difficult it is to get rid of the folly of
infatuation: "Though thou shouldest bray a person possessed of it in a mortar
with a pestle among bruised corn, yet will it not depart from him." [651] "It is
bound up in the heart of a child," [652] and the whole object of education is to
get it out; but if childhood passes into manhood, and the childish wilfulness,
self-confidence, and irrationality are not expelled, the case is well-nigh
hopeless. Correction is practically useless; "He must be a thorough fool," it
has been said, "who can learn nothing from his own folly;" but that is precisely
the condition of the infatuated people we are considering; the only correction
of their infatuation is a further increase of it. [653] The reason is
practically choked; the connection between cause and effect is lost: thus every
ill consequence of the rash act or of the vicious habit is regarded as a
misfortune instead of a fault. The wretched victim of his own folly reviles
fortune, nature, men, and even God, and will not recognise that his worst enemy
is himself. Thus, while the wise are always learning and growing rich from
experience, "the infatuation of senseless men is infatuation still." [654] It is
this which makes them so hopeless to deal with; their vexation being quite
irrational, and always refusing to recognise the obvious facts, is worse than a
heavy stone or the piled-up overweight of sand for others to bear. [655] If a
wise man has a case with such a person, the ill-judged fury and the misplaced
laughter alike make it impossible to arrive at any sound settlement. [656]

The untrained, undisciplined nature, which thus declines the guidance of reason
and is unteachable because of its obstinate self-confidence, is constantly
falling into sin. Indeed, strictly speaking, its whole attitude is sinful, its
every thought is sin. [657] For reason is God's gift, and to slight it is to
slight Him. He requires of us a readiness to be taught, and an openness to the
lessons which are forced upon us by Nature, by experience, by our own human
hearts. This flighty, feather-brained, inconsequential mode of thinking and
living, the wilful neglect of all the means by which we might grow wiser, and
the confident assurance that, whatever happens, we are not accountable for it,
are all an offence against God, a failure to be what we ought to be, a missing
of the mark, a neglect of the law, which is, in a word, sin.

But now let us look at the fool in the second signification, which occurs in
this twenty-sixth chapter so frequently,--the man who has become spiritually
gross and insensible, unaware of Divine truths and consequently obtuse to human
duties. We may take the proverbs in the order in which they occur. "As snow in
summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool." It is a
melancholy fact that the kind of person here referred to is too often found in
positions of honour among men. Men rise to distinction in an artificial order of
society, not by wisdom, but by the accident of birth and opportunity; and not
unfrequently the ill-placed honour itself leads to that insensibility which is
so severely censured. The crass dulness, the perversity of judgment, the
unfeeling severity, often displayed by prominent and distinguished persons, are
no matter of surprise, and will not be, until human society learns to bring its
honours only to the wise and the good. "Delicate living is not seemly for such
persons." [658] It is precisely the comfort, the dignity, the exaltation, which
prove their ruin. Now it is true that we cannot always trace the effects of this
misplaced honour, but we are reminded that it is out of the course of Nature's
eternal laws, incongruous as snow in summer, hurtful as rain in harvest.
Consequently the due penalty must inevitably come. According to one reading of
ver. 2, this penalty which overtakes the exalted fool is thus described: [659]
"As the sparrow in her wandering, and the swallow in her flying, so a gratuitous
curse shall come upon him." In any case ver. 3 states clearly enough what will
eventually happen: "A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for
the back of fools." It is not, of course, that this penalty can be remedial, but
Nature herself prepares a "rod for the back of him that is void of
understanding;" [660] "As judgments are prepared for scorners, so are stripes
for the back of fools." [661] Nor must we only understand this of fools that
attain to unnatural honour: there are many dullards and insensates who are not
made such by the stupidity of misdirected admiration, but by their own moral
delinquencies; and as surely as the sparrow after flitting about all day returns
to her nest in the dusk, or as the swallow in the long summer flight arrives at
her appointed place, the punishment of folly will find out the delinquent. It
may be long delayed, but an awakening comes at last; the man who hardened his
heart, who turned away from the pleadings of God and mocked at His judgments,
who chose the vanishing things of time and scorned the large fruition of
eternity, discovers his incredible stupidity, and the lash of remorse falls all
the more heavily because it is left in the hand of conscience alone. [662] We
must never lose sight of the fact that by the fool is not meant the simple or
the short-witted; there is in this folly of the proverbs a moral cause and a
moral responsibility which involve a moral censure; the senseless of whom we are
speaking are they whose "heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of
hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest haply they should perceive with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart." [663]

We are in the main obliged to leave the insensate to God and their conscience,
because it is well-nigh impossible for us to deal with them. They are
intractable and even savage as wild animals. "Let a bear robbed of her whelps
meet a man, rather than a fool in his infatuation." [664] They are irritated
with any suggestion of spiritual things, indignant with any hint of their own
case and its responsibilities. If, on the one hand, you try to approach them on
their own ground, to realize their motives and work upon the base ideas which
alone influence such minds, you seem to lose all power over them by coming down
to their level. "Answer not a fool according to his infatuation, lest thou also
be like him." [665] If, on the other hand, you feel bound to convict him of his
folly, and to humble him to a sense of his position, you are obliged to use the
language which will be intelligible to him. "Answer a fool according to his
infatuation, lest he be wise in his own eyes." [666] I recollect one Sunday
afternoon passing by a large village public-house, and it chanced that a little
group of street preachers were doing their best to make known the Gospel to the
idlers who were sitting on the benches outside. Going up to interest the men in
what was being said, I was confronted by the landlord, who was in a state of
almost frenzied indignation. He denounced the preachers as hypocrites and
scoundrels, who lived on the honest earnings of those whom he saw around him.
Every attempt to bring him to reason, to show that the men in question spent
their money on drink and not on the preachers, to secure a patient hearing for
the gracious message, was met only with violent abuse directed against myself.
The man was precisely what is meant in these verses by a fool, one in whom all
spiritual vision was blinded by greed and sensuality, in whom the plainest
dictates of common sense and human courtesy were silenced; to answer him in his
own vein was the only way of exposing his folly, and yet to answer him in such a
way was to come down to his own level. What could be done except to leave him to
the judgments which are prepared for scorners and to the stripes which await the
back of fools? A fool uttereth all his anger, and facing the torrent of angry
words it is impossible to effectually carry home to him any wholesome truth.
[667]

We have seen how the kind of man that we are describing is in an utterly false
position when any dignity or honour is attributed to him; indeed, to give such
honour is much the same as binding a stone in a sling to be immediately slung
out again, probably to some one's injury; [668] but he is almost equally useless
in a subordinate position. If, for instance, he is employed as a messenger, he
is too dull to rightly conceive or correctly report the message. He will almost
certainly colour it with his own fancies, if he does not pervert it to his own
ends. To receive and to deliver any message accurately requires a certain
truthfulness in perception and in speech of which this unfortunate creature is
entirely devoid. Thus any one who employs him in this capacity might as well cut
off his own feet, as he drinks damage to himself. [669]

It is the awful punishment which comes to us all, when we allow our heart to wax
gross, that wisdom itself becomes folly in our lips, and truth herself becomes
error. Thus if we know a proverb, or a text, or a doctrine, we are sure to give
it a lame application, so that, instead of supporting what we wish to enforce,
it hangs down helpless like a cripple's legs. [670] In this way the insensate
corruptness of the Mediæval Church tried to justify the abuse of giving great
ecclesiastical preferments to young children by quoting the text, "Out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise." Sometimes the result
of this culpable stupidity is far more disastrous; it is like "a thorn which
runs up into a drunkard's hand," visiting with terrible condemnation those who
have misused and perverted the truth, [671] as when Torquemada and the
administrators of the Inquisition based their diabolical conduct on the gracious
words of the Lord, "Compel them to come in." No, the fool's heart can give no
wholesome message; it will turn the very message of the Gospel into a curse and
a blight, and by its dull and revolting insensibility it will libel God to man,
suggesting that the Infinite Father, the Eternal God, is altogether such an one
as these who profess to speak in His name.

The offence of the fool then cannot be condoned on the ground that he is only an
enemy to himself. It is his master that he wrongs. As the proverb says, "A
master produces all things, but a fool's wages and hirer too pass away." [672]
The fool loses what he earns himself: that is true, but he undoes his employer
also. One is our Master, even Christ; He hires us for service in His vineyard;
when we suffer our heart to wax dull, when we grow unspiritual, unresponsive,
and insensate, it is not only that we lose our reward, but we crucify the Son of
God afresh and put Him to an open shame.

And the worst, the most mournful, feature about this fool's condition is that it
tends to a perpetual self-repetition: "As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so
a fool is always repeating his folly." [673] Every hardening of the heart
prepares for a fresh hardening, every refusal of truth will lead to another
refusal. Last Sunday you managed to evade the message which God sent you: that
makes it much easier to evade the message He sends you to-day. Next Sunday you
will be almost totally indifferent. Soon you will get out of reach altogether of
His word, saying it does you no good. Then you will deny that it is His word or
His message. You pass from folly to folly, from infatuation to infatuation,
until at last you can with a grave face accept the monstrous self-contradiction
of materialism, or wallow unresisting in the slime of a tormenting sensuality.
"As the dog returns to his vomit"!

It must be owned that the condition of the fool seems sufficiently sad, and the
gloom is deepened by the fact that our book knows nothing of a way by which the
fool may become wise. The Proverbs uniformly regard the foolish and the wise as
generically distinct; between the two classes there is a great gulf fixed. There
is the fool, trusting in his own heart, incurring stripes, not profiting by
them, always the same incorrigible and hopeless creature; and there is the wise
man, always delivered, learning from experience, becoming better and better.
[674] The only suggestion of hope is a comparative one: "Seest thou a man wise
in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him." [675] But there
is no tone of confidence about this assurance, because, as we have repeatedly
seen, the case of the proud or conceited man is regarded as practically
desperate.

No, for comfort and hope in this matter we have to turn away from the Ancient
Wisdom to the revealed Wisdom, Christ Jesus. It is He and He alone who
practically forbids us to be hopeless about any one. A noble Roman in the time
of the Punic Wars received an honourable recognition from the Senate because he
had not in the darkest times despaired of the Republic. That is the kind of debt
that we owe to the Saviour. He has not despaired of any human being; He will not
let us despair. It is His peculiar power, tried and proved again and again, to
turn the fool into the wise man. Observing the threefold distinction which is
hidden under the word we have been examining, Christ is able to arouse the weak,
fond, infatuated soul to a sense of its need. Could there be a better instance
than that of the woman at the well,--a foolish creature living in conscious sin,
yet full of specious religious talk? Did He not awake in her the thirst for the
living water, and satisfy the craving which He had excited? Christ is able to
transform the dull and heavy soul, that has suffered itself to be mastered by
greed and petrified by selfishness. Was not this what He did to Zaccheus the
publican? And even with that worst kind of fool, whose heart is withered up
within him by reason of sin, and who has learnt to say in his heart that there
is no God, [676] the Lord is not helpless. We do not see such an one in the
pages of the New Testament, because the folly of Atheism was not among the
follies of those times. But in our own day it is an experience by no means
uncommon; when an avowed infidel comes under the power of the Gospel, Christ
enters into him with the overwhelming conviction that there is a God; Christ
shows him how it is sin which has thus obscured the elementary conviction of the
human spirit; and, by the direct power of Christ, his heart comes to him again
as that of a little child, while in the rapturous joy of believing he lays aside
the folly which made him doubt along with the sin which made him unwilling to
believe. __________________________________________________________________

[642] Prov. x. 23.

[643] Prov. x. 18.

[644] Prov. xii. 23.

[645] Prov. xiv. 33.

[646] Prov. xiv. 7.

[647] Prov. xvii. 16.

[648] Prov. xxi. 20.

[649] Prov. xvii. 21.

[650] Prov. xxx. 22.

[651] Prov. xxvii. 22.

[652] Prov. xxii. 15.

[653] Prov. xvi. 22.

[654] Prov. xiv. 24. This seems simpler than supposing that the clause 'vlt 'vlt
kmylym contains a play upon the possible double meaning of 'vlt, which, though
it yields an excellent sense,--"the power of fools is only folly," i.e., when
they have power they turn it only to a foolish account (cf. xxvi. 1),--must be
regarded as very obscure, especially seeing that we have no positive instance of
'vlt as a derivative of 'vl in the sense of "power."

[655] Prov. xxvii. 3.

[656] Prov. xxix. 9.

[657] Prov. xxiv. 9.

[658] Prov. xix. 10.

[659] This is reading lv for l', a constant source of confusion and interchange
in Hebrew MSS.

[660] Prov. x. 13.

[661] Prov. xix. 29.

[662]

"Quos divi conscia facti

Mens habet attonitos et surdo verbere cædit,

Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum."

--Juv., Sat., xiii., 193.

[663] Matt. xiii. 15.

[664] Prov. xvii. 12.

[665] Prov. xxvi. 4.

[666] Prov. xxvi. 5.

[667] Prov. xxix. 11.

[668] Prov. xxvi. 8.

[669] Prov. xxvi. 6.

[670] Prov. xxvi. 7.

[671] Prov. xxvi. 9.

[672] Prov. xxvi. 10. This rendering Delitzsch obtained by altering the vowel
points in the first skr into skr, and the sense is good, if a little
far-fetched. On the other hand, the received reading gives a plain though a
somewhat insipid meaning: "Much produces all,"--whoever has a little and uses it
well quickly gets more,--"but he that hires a fool is as he who hires passers
by," i.e. the employment of a fool is a barren undertaking which practically
leads to nothing.

[673] Prov. xxvi. 11.

[674] Prov. xxviii. 26; cf. ix. 8 and xxiii. 9.

[675] Prov. xxvi. 12.

[676] nvl, Psalm xiv. 1.
__________________________________________________________________

XXVII.

LIVING DAY BY DAY.

"Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day will bring
forth."--Prov. xxvii. 1.

"The grave and destruction are never satisfied; and the eyes of men are never
satisfied;" and LXX. adds, "An abomination to the Lord is he who sets his eye,
and undisciplined men uncontrolled in tongue."--Prov. xxvii. 20.

"Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof, so he that waits on his
Lord eats of the honour."--Prov. xxvii. 18.

Here is a wholesome lesson for us. We are to trust no future, however pleasant;
we are to dwell in no past, however honourable. Life consists of a present,
given to us day by day; this is our whole wealth; squandered, it cannot be
recovered; neglected, it withers as a leaf. Titus, the Roman Emperor, would say
in the evening, when he had omitted his duties or failed in his purposes,
Perdidi diem, "I have lost a day;"--yes, that lost day is lost for ever; other
days may come, but not that one; the duties of that day may be performed
afterwards or by other hands, but still the day is lost, because it passed away
empty. The thief which cheats us of our days, and beggars us of our wealth, is
the specious thought that to-morrow belongs to us. The illusion is as old as the
world, but is to-day as fresh and powerful as ever. We have to shake ourselves
free of a spell, and awake out of a dream, to see that when to-morrow comes it
is already to-day.

We only begin to live in any true and satisfactory sense when we have learnt to
take each day by itself, and to use it as if it were our last, and indeed as if
it were our all; dismissing the thought of to-morrow as a mere phantom which for
ever evades our grasp. Life is a mosaic, a large work shaping on the wall or in
the dome of some vast cathedral which eye hath not yet seen; and it can only be
effectually wrought if, with minute and concentrated care, the little piece of
coloured glass which we call To-day is duly fixed into its bedding and fitted
exactly to its immediate neighbours. "Why do you work with such intensity?" the
great artist was once asked; "Because I work for eternity," was the answer. And
that is why each day is of such importance; that is why each day demands all our
thought and care: eternity is made up of days, and the present day is all of
eternity that we can ever possess.

It is well for us then each morning to take the day fresh from God's hands, and
at once to throw our whole soul into it, and to live it with a pure intensity, a
sense of solemn and joyful responsibility.

"Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,

A mite of my twelve-hours' treasure,

The least of thy gazes or glances

(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above measure),

One of thy choices or one of thy chances

(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks of thy pleasure),--

My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,

Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me." [677]

But it may be said, Is not this the life of a mere butterfly? Is it not the mark
of a prudent man to work with his eye on the future,--"Prepare thy work without,
and make it ready for thee in the field, and afterwards build thine house"?
[678] Is it not just what we have to complain of in the foolish man that he
ignores to-morrow,--"A prudent man seeth the evil and hideth himself, but the
simple pass on and suffer for it"? [679]

Here is an apparent contradiction which requires reflection. And the difficulty
increases when we remember that most worthy works are the labour of years: an
architect lays his plans for a great building which he can hardly hope to see
finished in his own lifetime; an author spends days and months and years in the
preparation of materials, and must depend on the uncertain future for a time to
shape them into a book; a statesman, in proportion as he is wise, avoids what is
called a hand-to-mouth policy, and lays his plans with his eye on distant
possibilities, well knowing that his immediate actions are liable to
misunderstanding, and may prove to be a complete failure unless the opportunity
is accorded him of realizing his far-reaching schemes. And, in the same way,
youth is spent in education which derives all its value from the expected years
of manhood, and all the days of a good life are necessarily a preparation for
that which is to come after: we must study in order that we may teach; we must
train ourselves for duties which will come upon us, as we may reasonably
suppose, in some distant future. Yet our to-morrow is unknown; we are not to
boast ourselves of it; we cannot tell what a day may bring forth, and must
therefore live only in to-day.

Now the solution of this difficulty leads us to one of the profoundest of all
spiritual truths. It is this: No life can be worth anything at all apart from
the Eternal God, and faith in Him. Life cannot be really lived if it is merely
"a measure of sliding sand" taken "from under the feet of the years." Our swift
days cannot be effectually and wisely used unless we are linked with Him who
embraces in Himself the past, the present, and the future. Our work, whatever it
may be, cannot be rightly done unless we are, and know ourselves to be, in the
great Taskmaster's sight. The proper use of each day can only be made if we are
confident that our times are in His hands; only in this quiet assurance can we
have composure and detachment of spirit enough to give our whole strength to the
duty in hand. We must be sure that the Master-Artist knows the whole mosaic, and
is ordering all the parts, before we can surrender ourselves to the task of
putting to-day's piece into its place; we must have complete faith in the
Architect who is designing the whole structure, before we can have our mind at
leisure from itself to chip our block of stone or to carve our tiny gurgoyle. We
can only live in the present, making the most of that which is really ours, on
condition that we have God as our Future, relieving us of all anxious care, and
assuring to us just strength for to-day.

Thus our text has an implied contrast, which we may draw out in this way: "Boast
not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;" but
boast thyself in God all the day long, [680] for thou knowest that He will bring
forth righteousness, wisdom, and love continually.

Now let us follow out some of the consequences of this spiritual attitude.
Examine the condition of these restless human hearts all around us without God.
They are all toiling for to-morrow. Here is one making money, as it is called;
he is looking forward to laying aside so many thousands this year; in a few more
years he hopes to realize a round sum which will relieve him from the necessity
of toil and of further money-making. His eye is set upon that goal. At last he
reaches it. Now his desire should be satisfied, but no, "Sheol and Abaddon are
never satisfied, and the eyes of man are never satisfied." [681] He does not
stay a night at the desired goal; he is off before sunset; all the strain and
the fret must be faced over again. Or look at the boundless ambition which
possesses godless men; honours achieved only whet their appetite for more. We
need not assume that the ambition is unworthy; all we have to notice is its
insatiability; in politics, in literature, in art, in social distinction, it is
like Sheol and Abaddon,--a maw that ever opens; a gulf that can swallow anything
and everything, yet never be filled. The LXX. addition [682] seems to regard
this uncontrolled desire as the mark of deficient culture; and, spiritually
speaking, no doubt it is. Men without God are always uncultured; they have not
found the centre of their being, they have not procured the key-stone to their
accumulated knowledge, and it is in consequence, not an arch through which they
can travel to any goal, but a confused pile which blocks the way. These
desperate strivings and loud-tongued, undisciplined desires are an abomination
to the Lord, because they mar His mighty plan and introduce disorder where He
intended order, discord where He intended harmony, deformity where He intended
beauty. They are the work of egoism instead of theism.

It is needless to dwell upon the heart-sores and the disappointments which fall
to the lot of the people whom we are thinking of. What ghastly mockery the
morrows on which they counted prove to be! In some lonely and rocky island,
girdled by the moaning of the dreary seas, and cut off from all the interests
which gave to life its excitement, egotism ends its days. Or it is on some
restless couch, surrounded by all the outward trappings of wealth and power,
that the dying spirit cries, "My kingdom for an inch of time!" The man who by
his brilliant genius has drawn all his generation after him passes, bearing
"through Europe the pageant of his bleeding heart," to a hopeless grave. The
woman who has achieved the end of her ambition, ruling the courts of fashion,
the acknowledged queen of salons, ends her days with a sense of frustration,
cynical in her contempt for the world which was foolish enough to follow and
admire her.

But, on the other hand, here is one who boasts himself in God.

"Lord, it belongs not to my care,"

is the language of his spirit,

"Whether I die or live;

To love and serve Thee is my share,

And that Thy grace must give."

The first thing that strikes you in him in his perfect peace. His mind is stayed
on God. The future has no terrors for him, nor has it any joys. God is all in
all to him, and God is his now. His treasure is in possession, and moth and rust
do not corrupt it, nor can thieves break through or steal. To say that he is
contented seems too mild a term for so positive and joyous a calm. But in
contrast with the discontent which prevails everywhere outside of God, it is
worth while to dilate on this passive virtue of contentment. That endless worry
about little things has ceased: he is not annoyed because some one fails to
recognise him; he is not affected by the malicious or scandalous things which
are said about him; he is not anxious for human recognition, and is therefore
never distressed because others are more courted than he is; he knows nothing of
that malignant passion of jealousy which is worse than the cruelty of wrath and
the flooding of anger; [683] he does not want wealth and he does not dread
poverty. He says:--

"Some have too much, yet still do crave;

I little have, and seek no more:

They are but poor though much they have,

And I am rich with little store:

They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;

They lack, I leave; they pine, I live." [684]

When we have entered into this Divine content and are made by our absolute trust
in God free from care for the future, it is wonderful how quick we become to see
good in apparent evils. To the world this is so incredible that it suspects
insincerity, but there is nothing more sincere and more real. A poor child who
was blind found the greatest blessing in the affliction, saying, "You see, I can
give more to the Missionary Society than the other children, because I can knit
in the dark, and have not to spend money on candles." You go to one of God's
children expecting to find him broken down and rebellious under some great and
undeserved calamity, but you find that he has discovered a blessing in the loss
before you get there, and is actually rejoicing, or at any rate he is replying
to all provocations, "The Lord gave and the Lord took away; blessed be the name
of the Lord." He is afflicted, but you cannot think of him as afflicted, for
"all the days of the afflicted are evil, but he that is of a cheerful spirit
hath a continual feast." [685]

Yes, it is that illusive and imaginary morrow that robs us of our peace; it is
the misgiving, the anxious care, the dark foreboding. But when we put God our
Father in place of the morrow, and know that He comprehends and sees all that we
have need of, the peace which passes all understanding settles down upon our
spirit, and steals into our eyes, and breathes on our lips, and men perceive
even in us why our Father is called "the God of Peace."

The second thing which strikes us in those who have learnt to make their boast
in God rather than in the morrow is the service which they render to their
fellows. This is not only because they are able to turn their undivided
attention to the duty which lies nearest, and to do with all their heart what
their hand finds to do, but the very spirit of serenity in which they live is a
constant help and blessing to all who are around them. It may have been given to
you to come into contact with such a soul; in his presence your restlessness
dies away, it seems as if your burning brow had been touched with a soothing
hand; perhaps "with half-open eyes you were treading the borderland dim 'twixt
vice and virtue," and that quiet spirit seemed like a clear shaft of the dawn
revealing where you trod; perhaps you were heart-broken with a great sorrow, and
the restfulness and confidence of that strong soul gave you an indefinable
consolation, hope broke into your heart, and even joy. In receiving that help
from what the man was rather than from what he gave, you became aware that this
was the highest service that any human being can render to another. It is a
great thing to succour the physical and material sufferings of men; it is a
greater to bring them clear truths and to give them some stimulus and guidance
in the intellectual life; but it is greatest of all to communicate spiritual
sustenance and power, for that means to bring souls into actual and conscious
contact with God.

One of the noblest examples of this service to humanity is furnished in the life
and the writings of St. Paul. His personal presence became the new creation of
that ancient heathen civilisation, and countless individual souls were, through
the inner life which he presented, brought to a complete change and made new
creatures in Christ. His writings have been, ever since he died, a constant
source of life and strength to many generations of men. He has been
misunderstood, "the ignorant and unstedfast have wrested" what he wrote, but
none the less he has been to the Church a perpetual regenerator, and, as a great
writer [686] of our own day has declared, "The doctrine of Paul will arise out
of the tomb where for centuries it has lain covered; it will edify the Church of
the future; it will have the consent of happier generations, the applause of
less superstitious ages." Now what is the secret of this power? It is given in
his own words, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." [687] He was
able to fling himself with that passionate temerity into the present duty, he
was able to preach the word with that victorious vigour in season and out of
season, just because the whole burden of the unknown future was rolled away from
him, and he, more than any man that ever lived, understood what it is to live
just for to-day.

Every Christian may possess the same secret; it is the open secret of the Sermon
on the Mount; as our gracious Lord told us, we may be as the lilies of the field
and as the birds of the air, without anxiety or misgiving, knowing that our
Heavenly Father cares for us. It is not given to us all to be great
philanthropists, great reformers, great preachers, but it is put within the
reach of all to render to others the sweet service of abiding always in trustful
and loving submission to God's will, and of shedding upon all the light of our
peace.

And this leads us to notice one last feature of this true spiritual life. It has
an honour of its own, though it is not an earthly honour; it has a reward,
though it is not a material reward. "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the
fruit thereof, and he that waiteth on his master eats of the honour." [688] That
is a saying which can only apply in a very modified degree to earthly service
and human masters. How many loyal servants of kings have been deserted by their
lords at the critical moment, and left to eat the fruit of disgrace and
ignominy! But the saying applies in its fulness to our Master Christ and His
service. Think of the Christian life under this simple figure; it is like the
careful cultivation of the fruit tree. He is the Vine. Our sole concern is to
keep in touch with Him, to sit at His feet, to watch for His fruit, to see that
no other concern disturbs the quiet relation of perfect loyalty and devotion to
Him. Our aim is not to do our own business or seek our own ends, but to be sure
that we are always awake to His purposes and obedient to the demands which He
makes upon us. It is not ours to reason why, but it is ours to do at all costs
whatsoever He bids us do to-day. We have nothing to do with to-morrow; we have
no responsibility for the fruit, for no fruit-bearing power lies in us. All we
have to do is to keep the fig tree. Now when we abide in this concentrated and
whole-hearted devotion to our Master,--when for us to live is Christ,--then
honour comes to us unsought, but not unwelcome. The fruit of service is to the
taste of the true servant the highest honour that he can imagine. We need no
apocalyptic vision to assure us. His word is enough, confirmed as it is by a
constant and growing experience. The servants of our Lord already stand before
Him, holding in their hands the talents which they have gained for Him; already
they hear His gracious "Well done," and the sound of it is more musical in their
ears than all the acclamations of their fellow-creatures. This is their honour;
what could they have more? they are counted one with Christ; they shared His
travail, and now they share His satisfaction and His joy.

And thus those who make their boast in God, and do not boast of the morrow, find
that the morrow itself becomes clear to them in the light of His countenance;
they do in a sense know what it will bring forth: it will bring forth what they
desire, for it will bring forth their Father's will; it will bring forth the
victory and the glory of Christ. "Henceforth ye shall see Him coming in the
clouds of heaven." Is not that enough? When our hearts have learnt to hanker
only after God's will, to desire only Christ's victory, they may boast
themselves even of to-morrow; for to-morrow holds in its bosom an assurance of
blessing and joy.
__________________________________________________________________

[677] Browning, Pippa Passes.

[678] Prov. xxiv. 27.

[679] Prov. xxii. 3; xxvii. 12.

[680] Psalm xliv. 8.

[681] Prov. xxvii. 20.

[682] See heading of chapter.

[683] Prov. xxvii. 4.

[684] Sir Edward Dyer (b. 1540).

[685] Prov. xv. 15.

[686] Matthew Arnold.

[687] Phil. i. 21.

[688] Prov. xxvii. 18.
__________________________________________________________________

XXVIII.

AN ASPECT OF ATONEMENT.

"He that hideth (mksh) his transgressions shall not prosper; but whoso
confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy."--Prov. xxviii. 13.

"Happy is the man that feareth alway; but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall
into mischief."--Prov. xxviii. 14.

"The fear of the Lord tendeth to life, and he that hath it shall abide
satisfied. He shall not be visited with evil."--Prov. xix. 23.

"By mercy and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord men
depart from evil."--Prov. xvi. 6.

The Hebrew word (kphr) which is used for the idea of atonement is one which
originally signifies to cover. Sin is a hideous sore, a shocking deformity,
which must be hidden from the eyes of men, and much more from the holy eyes of
God. Thus the Old Testament speaks about a Robe of Righteousness which is to be
thrown over the ulcerated and leprous body of sin. Apart from this covering, the
disease is seen working out its sure and terrible results. "A man that is laden
with the blood of any person shall flee unto the pit: let no man stay him,"
[689] and though blood-guiltiness appears to us the worst of sins, all sin is
alike in its issue; every sinner may be seen by seeing eyes "fleeing unto the
pit," and no man can stay him or deliver him. Or, to vary the image, the sinful
man is exposed to the violence of justice, which beats like a storm upon all
unprotected heads; he needs to be covered; he needs some shelter, some
hiding-place, or he must be swept away.

But the objection which immediately occurs to us is this: what is the use of
covering sin if the sin itself remains? The disease is not cured because a
decent garment is drawn over the suffering part; indeed, it is not hard to
conceive a case in which the covering might aggravate the mischief. If the idea
of covering is to be of any service, it must be cleared from all misconception;
there is a kind of hiding which may be ruinous, a garment which may drive the
disease inward and hasten its deadly operation, a covert from the storm which
may crush and stifle the person whom it professes to protect. "He that covereth
his transgressions," in that way, "shall not prosper." Every attempt to conceal
from God or from man or from oneself that one is diseased with sin is
ineffectual: every lame excuse which seeks to palliate the guilt; every
hypocritical pretence that the thing done has not been done, or that it is not
what men usually suppose it to be; every ingenious argumentation which seeks to
represent sin as something other than sin, as a mere defect or taint in the
blood, as a hereditary and unavoidable weakness, as an aberration of the mind
for which one is not responsible, or as a merely conventional and artificial
offence,--all such attempts at hiding must be failures, "covering" of that kind
can be no atonement. Quite the reverse; this trifling with conscience, this
deluded self-righteousness, is the worst possible aggravation of the sin. Hidden
in that way, though it be, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, sin becomes a
poisonous gas, more noxious for confinement, and liable to break out in awful
and devastating explosions.

The covering of sin [690] which is spoken of in xvi. 6 is of a very different
and of a quite particular kind. Combining this verse with the others at the head
of the chapter, we may observe that every effectual "covering" of sin in God's
sight involves three elements,--confession, forsaking, and a changed practice.

First, there is confession. This appears on the face of it to be a paradox: the
only way of covering sin is to uncover it. But it is strictly true. We must make
a clean breast of it; we must acknowledge its full extent and enormity; we must
spare the patient ear of God no detail of our guilt. The foul, explosive gases
must be let out into the open, since every attempt to confine them increases
their destructive power. The running sore must be exposed to the Physician's
eye, since every rag put over it to hide it becomes steeped in its defiling
tides. It is true, confession is a painful and a weary task: it is like removing
a heap of dust and refuse by spadefuls,--each bit as it is disturbed fills the
atmosphere with choking particles and noisome smells; worse and worse is
revealed the farther we go. We came to confess a single fault, and we found that
it was but a broken sherd lying on the foul and pestilential heap. Confession
leads to confession, discovery to discovery. It is terribly humiliating. "Am I
then so bad as this?" is the horrified cry as each candid admission shows only
more and worse that must be admitted. True confession can never be made into a
priest's ear,--to men we can only confess the wrongs which we have done to men;
but true confession is the awful tale of what we have done to God, against whom
only we have sinned and done evil in His sight. It is sometimes urged that
confession to a priest gives the penitent relief: possibly, but it is a false
relief; since the eye of the priest is not omniscient, the sinner confesses only
what he chooses, brings the broken sherd, and receives absolution for that in
lieu of removing the whole heap of abominations that underlie. When we have gone
as far as we can in laying ourselves bare to man, there remain vast untraversed
tracts of our life and our mind which are reserved; "Private road" is written on
all the approaches, and trespassers are invariably prosecuted. It is only to God
that a real confession can be made, because we know that to Him all is
necessarily evident; with Him no subterfuges avail; He traverses those
untraversed tracts; there are no private roads from which He is excluded; He
knoweth our thoughts afar off.

The first step in the "covering" of sin is to realize this. If our sins are to
be really covered they must first be laid bare; we must frankly own that all
things are open to Him with whom we have to do; we must get away from the
priests and into the hands of the High Priest; we must abjure the confessional
and bring God Himself into the secret places of our hearts to search us and try
us and see if there be any evil way in us. The reserve, and the veilings, which
every individual cannot but maintain between himself and all other individuals,
must be torn away, in full and absolute confession to God Himself.

Secondly. There is a confession, especially that fostered by the habit of
confessing to priests, which is unaccompanied by any forsaking of the evil, or
any departing from iniquity in general. Many times have men gone to their
priests to receive absolution beforehand for the sin which they intended to
commit; or they have postponed their confession to their deathbeds, when there
will be, as they suppose, no further sins to turn from. Confession of that kind
is devoid of all significance; it covers no sins, it really only aggravates
them. No confession is of the least avail--and indeed no real confession can be
made to God at all--unless the heart turns away from the evil which is
confessed, and actually departs at once, so far as it knows and is able, from
all iniquity.

The glib language of confession has been and is a deadly snare to multitudes.
How easy it is to say, or even to musically chant, "We have done that we ought
not to have done; we have left undone that which we ought to have done." There
is no pain in such a confession if we once distinctly admit that it is a normal
and natural state of mind for us to be in, and that as we say it to-day, so we
shall say it to-morrow, and again the next day to the end. But real confession
is so painful, and even heart-rending, because it is only of value when we begin
from that moment onwards "to do what we ought to do, and to leave undone what we
ought not to do." It is well for us, perhaps, to confess not so much sin in the
abstract as our own particular transgressions. Sin is too shadowy a monster for
us to definitely avoid and forsake; like death, its kinsman,--Death of whom
Milton says:--

"What seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on,"--

Sin is formless, vague, impalpable. But our own individual transgressions can be
fixed and defined; bringing ourselves to the test of the Law, we can say
particularly, "This practice of mine is condemned, this habit of mine is sinful,
this point of my character is evil, this reticence, this indolence, this
reluctance, in confessing Christ and in serving His cause, is all wrong;" and
then we can definitely turn our back on the practice or the habit, we can
distinctly get rid of the blot in our character, we can fly this guilty silence,
rouse ourselves from our selfish indolence. "We live to grow less like what we
have been;" and it is this act of the will, this resolute purpose, this loathing
what once you loved, and turning towards that which once you ignored,--it is, in
a word, the twin process of repentance and conversion, that constitutes the
second act in this "covering" of sin. Not, of course, that in a moment the
tyranny of old habits can be broken, or the virtue of new activities acquired;
but "the forsaking" and "the departing from" are instantaneous exertions of the
will. Zaccheus, directly the Lord speaks to him, stands forth, and breaks with
his sins, renounces his extortions, resolving to make amends for the past, and
enters on a new line of conduct, promising to give the half of his goods to the
poor. That is the essential seal of every true confession: "Whoso confesseth and
forsaketh" his transgressions.

Thirdly. This has led us to see that the confession of sins and the conversion
from them must issue in a positive practice of mercy and truth, in order to make
the process of which we are speaking complete: "By mercy and truth iniquity is
atoned for."

It is this part of the "covering" which is so easily, so frequently, and so
fatally overlooked. It is supposed that sins can be hidden without being
removed, and that the covering of what is called imputed righteousness will
serve instead of the covering of actual righteousness. To argue against this
view theoretically is at the present day happily quite superfluous; but it is
still necessary to contend against its subtle practical effects. There is no
verity more wholesome and more needed than the one contained in this proverb.
Sin may be summed up in two clauses: it is the Want of Mercy and it is the Want
of Truth. All our illconduct to our fellow-men comes from the cruelty and
hardness of our selfish nature. Lust and greed and ambition are the outcome of
pitilessness; we injure the weak and ruin the helpless, and trample on our
competitors, and stamp out the poor; our eye does not pity. Again, all our
offence against God is insincerity or wilful lying. We are false to ourselves,
we are false to one another, and so we become false to the unseen verities, and
false to God. When a human spirit denies the spiritual world and the spiritual
Cause which can alone account for it, is it not what Plato used to call "a lie
in the soul"? It is the deep inward and vital contradiction of consciousness; it
is equivalent to saying, "I am not I," or, "That which is, is not."

Now when we have lived in sin, without mercy or without truth, or without both;
when our life up to a certain point has been a flagrant selfishness of absolute
indifference to our fellows, or a flagrant lie denying Him in whom we live and
move and have our being; or when, as is so often the fact, the selfishness and
the falseness have gone together, an inextricable and mutually dependent pair of
evils, there can be no real covering of the sin, unless selfishness gives place
to mercy and falsehood to truth. No verbal confession can possibly avail, no
turning from the past iniquities, however genuine for the time, can have any
permanent significance, unless the change is a reality, an obvious, living, and
working fact. If a man supposes that he has become religious, but remains cruel
and selfish, pitiless, unmerciful to his fellow-men, depend upon it that man's
religion is vain; the atonement in which he trusts is a fiction, and avails no
more than the hecatombs which Carthage offered to Melcarth availed to gain a
victory over Rome. If a man counts himself saved, but remains radically untrue,
false in his speech, insincere in his professions, careless in his thought about
God, unjust in his opinions about men and the world, he is certainly under a
lamentable delusion. Though he has, as he thinks, believed, he has not believed
to the saving of his soul; though he has undergone a change, he has changed from
one lie to another, and is in no way better off. It is by mercy and truth that
iniquity can be covered.

Now it will be generally admitted that we do not take the course which has just
been described unless we have the fear of God before our eyes. Nothing but the
thought of His holiness and the awe which it inspires, and in some cases even,
nothing but the absolute terror of Him who can by no means clear the guilty,
moves the heart of man to confession, turns him away from his sins, or inclines
him to mercy and truth. When the fear of God is removed from men's eyes they not
only continue in sin, but they quickly come to believe that they have no sins to
confess; for indeed when God is put out of the question that is in a certain
sense true. It is a mere fact of observation, confirmed now by many changing
experiences of humanity, that it is "by the fear of the Lord men depart from
iniquity;" and it is very significant to notice how many of those who have
entirely put away the fear of the Lord from their own eyes have strongly
advocated keeping it before the eyes of others as the most convenient and
economical police resource. [691] Many fervent free-thinkers are thankful that
their opinions are only held by a minority, and have no wish to see the whole of
society committed to the cult which they would have us believe is all that their
own religious nature requires.

But supposing that any one of us is led into the position of confession and
conversion and amendment which is described in these Proverbs: what follows?
That person, says the text, "shall obtain mercy." The gracious Father
immediately, unconditionally, and absolutely pardons. This is the burden of the
Old Testament, and it is certainly not repealed by the New. "If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." "Repent, and be
converted," said St. Peter to the crowd at Pentecost, "that your sins may be
blotted out." The New Testament is indeed on this point the louder and the
clearer echo of the Old. The New Testament explains that saying which sounds so
strange in the mouth of a perfectly just and Holy God, "I, even I, am He that
blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake." [692] Human theologies have
imagined obstacles in the way, but God never admitted them for a moment. Clear
as the truth that the soul which sins should die, was the promise that the soul
which turned from its sin, and did that which is righteous in the eyes of the
Lord, should live. No earthly father, frankly and unconditionally forgiving his
penitent, sobbing child, could be so prompt, so eager as God. While the prodigal
is yet a great way off the Father runs to meet him, and hides all his broken
confessions in the rush of His embrace.

But we hesitate to admit and rejoice in this grand truth because of an uneasy
fear that it is ignoring what is called the Atonement of Christ. It is a very
proper hesitation, so long as we settle it within ourselves that these sweet and
beautiful utterances of the Old Testament cannot possibly be limited or reversed
by that Gospel which came to give effect and fulfilment to them. Is not the
solution of any difficulty that has occurred to us to be found here? The
sacrifice and the work of Christ create in the human soul those conditions which
we have been considering. He came to give repentance unto Israel. It is His
patient love in bearing all our infirmities and sins, His mysterious
self-offering on the Cross, that can effectually bring us to confession,
conversion, and amendment. Our hearts may have been hard as the nether
millstone, but at the Cross they are broken and melted. No stern denunciation of
sin has ever moved our stubbornness; but as we realize what sin did to Him, when
He became sin for us, the fear of the Lord falls upon us, we tremble, and cry,
What shall we do to be saved? Then again, it is His perfect holiness, the beauty
of those "stainless years He passed beneath the Syrian blue," which wakes in us
the hankering desire for purity and goodness, and makes us turn with a genuine
disgust from the sins which must seem so loathsome in His sight. His "neither do
I condemn thee; go, and sin no more," gives us a more burning hatred of sin than
all the self-righteous censures and condemnations of the Pharisees. It is in the
pages of the Gospels that we have first understood what concrete goodness is; it
has risen upon our night like a clear, liquid star, and the passion of it has
entered into our souls. And then, finally, it is the Risen Lord, unto whom all
power is given in heaven and in earth, that can really transform our nature,
flood our heart with love, and fill our mind with truth, so that, in the
language of the proverb, mercy and truth may atone for iniquity.

Is it not because Christ by His coming, by His living, by His dying, by His
risen power, produces in the believer repentance and confession of sins,
conversion and departing from sin, regeneration and actual holiness, that we say
He has covered our sins? What meaning can be attached to Atonement apart from
its effects? And in what other way, we may ask, could He really give us such a
covering or atonement, than by creating in us a clean heart and renewing a right
spirit within us? Sometimes, by a not unnatural confusion of language, we speak
of the sacrificial death of our Lord as if it, apart from the effects produced
in the believing heart, were in itself the Atonement. But that is not the
language of the New Testament, which employs the idea of reconciliation [693]
where the Old Testament would employ the idea of atoning; and clearly there can
be no reconciliation accomplished between man and God until, not only God is
reconciled to man, but man also is reconciled to God. And it is when we come to
observe more accurately the language of the New Testament that this statement of
the Proverbs is seen to be no contradiction, but an anticipation, of it. Only
the regenerate soul, that in which the graces of the Christ-life, mercy and
truth, have been implanted by Christ, is really reconciled with God, i.e.,
effectually atoned. And though the framer of the proverb had but a dim
conception of the way in which the Son of God would come to regenerate human
hearts and make them in harmony with the Father, yet he saw clearly what
Christians have too often overlooked, and expressed tersely what theology has
too often obscured, that every effectual Atonement must include in itself the
actual, moral regeneration of the sinner. And further, whoever wrote the verse
which stands at the head of our chapter understood what many preachers of the
Gospel have left in perplexing obscurity, that God would necessarily, from His
very nature, provide the offering and the sacrifice on the ground of which every
repentant soul that turns to Him could be immediately and freely forgiven.
__________________________________________________________________

[689] Prov. xxviii. 17.

[690] It may be necessary to point out to the reader that in approaching the
subject of atonement from the standpoint of the book of Proverbs, and merely in
the expository treatment of the passages before us, the so-called objective
ground of atonement in the sacrifice of Christ does not come into view, but its
necessity becomes manifest as each step in the exposition reveals how impossible
it would be for us, apart from the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, to realize
those conditions which are here laid down as indispensable to pardon and
acceptance with God.

[691] Voltaire rose once from the table at Ferney, where some atheists were
discussing their views. He said he could not let his servants hear this talk,
for they would rob and murder him if that was true.

[692] Isa. xliii. 25.

[693] See Rom. v. 11. This is the only place in the New Testament where even in
the Authorised Version the word "atonement" occurs. But the contention of the
text is not one of words, but of facts. Whatever terms are used, the Gospels and
the Epistles all agree in identifying the salvation of God with an actual and
practical righteousness wrought out by the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who
believe in Christ as their Saviour.
__________________________________________________________________

XXIX.

THE NEED OF REVELATION.

"Where no vision is, a people casts off restraint, but he that keepeth the law
is happy."--Prov. xxix. 18.

The form of the proverb shows that we are not to treat the vision and the law as
opposite, but rather as complementary terms. Visions are, it is true, especially
the mark of the prophets, and the law is often confined in a special sense to
the Pentateuch; but there is a much wider usage of the words, according to which
the two together express, with tolerable completeness, what we mean by
Revelation. The vision means a perception of God and His ways, and is quite as
applicable to Moses as to Isaiah; and, on the other hand, the law covers all the
distinct and articulate instruction which God gives to His people in any of His
ways of self-communication. "Come ye," says Isaiah, [694] "and let us go up to
the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us
of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the
law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem;" where the whole context shows
that, not the Mosaic Law, but rather a new and particular declaration of the
Lord's will, is referred to.

But while the vision and the law are not to be treated as opposites, it is
possible to distinguish between them. The vision is the actual contact between
God and the human spirit, which is the necessary condition of any direct
revelation; the law is the recorded result of such a revelation, either passed
from mouth to mouth by tradition, or written permanently in a book.

We may then a little amplify the proverb for the sake of exposition: "Where
there is no living revelation, no perceived contact between man and God, there
the bonds which hold society together are relaxed or broken; but he that holds
by the revelation that has been given, obeying the law, so far as it has been
presented to him, happy is he."

Man has need of a revelation; that is the assertion. Society, as an ordered and
happy body of men in which each person is rightly subordinated to the whole, and
in which law, as distinct from individual caprice, prevails, requires a revealed
law. The light of nature is good, but it is not sufficient. The common sense of
mankind is powerful, but not powerful enough. In the absence of a real and valid
declaration of God's will times must come when the elemental passions of human
nature will break out with unrestrained violence, the teachings of morality will
be disputed, their authority will be denied, and their yoke will be broken; the
links which hold the state and the community together will snap, and the slow
growths of ages may disappear in a moment. It is not difficult to show the truth
of this assertion from experience. Every people that emerges from barbarism has
a vision and a law; a certain revelation which forms the foundation, the
sanction, the bond of its corporate existence. When you can point to a tribe or
a group of tribes that know nothing of God, and therefore have no idea of
revelation, you at once assure us that the people are sunk in a hopeless
savagery. We are, it is true, inclined to deny the term revelation to those
systems of religion which lie outside of the Bible, but it is difficult to
justify such a contraction of view. God has not left Himself anywhere without a
witness. The more closely we examine the multitudinous religions of the earth,
the more clearly does it appear that each of them had at its origin a definite,
however limited, revelation. The idea of One all-powerful, good, and wise, God
is found at the beginning of each faith that can be traced back far enough, and
the actual condition of heathen systems always suggests a decline from a higher
and a purer religion. We may say, then, with much plausibility, that no lasting
and beneficial form of human society has ever existed apart from a vision and a
law.

But leaving the wide field of comparative religions, do we not see an
illustration of the truth of the text in the European countries which are more
subject to our observation? In proportion as a people loses its faith in
revelation it falls into decay. This was made manifest in the experience of the
French Revolution. When the Jacobins had emancipated themselves from the idea of
God, and had come out into the clear light of reason, so terribly did they "cast
off restraint" that their own leader, Robespierre, endeavoured with a feverish
haste to restore the recognition of God, assuming himself the position of high
pontiff to the Supreme Being. The nearest approach that the world has probably
ever seen to a government founded on Atheism was this government of the French
Revolution, and a more striking commentary on this text could hardly be desired.

But the need of a revelation can be apprehended, apart from all appeals to
history, by simply studying the nature of the spirit of man. Man must have an
object of worship, and that object must be such as to command his worship.
Auguste Comte thought to satisfy this need of the heart by suggesting Humanity
as the Grand Être, but Humanity was and is nothing but an abstraction. Feeling
this himself, he recommended the worship of woman, and he prostrated his heart
before Clotilde de Vaux; but sacred and beautiful as a man's love of a woman may
be, it is no substitute for worship. We must have quite another than ourselves
and our own kind, if our hearts are to find their rest. We must have an
Almighty, an Infinite; we must have one who is Love. Until his spirit is
worshipping, man cannot realize himself, or attain the height of his intended
stature.

Again, man must have an assurance of his own immortality. While he believes
himself to be mortal, a creature of a day, and that an uncertain day, it is
impossible for him to rise much above the level of other ephemeral things. His
pursuits must be limited, and his aims must be confined. His affections must be
chilled by the shadow of death, and in proportion as he has nobly striven and
tenderly loved, his later years must be plunged in hopeless gloom, because his
efforts have been ineffectual and his beloved have gone from him. No juggling
with terms; no half-poetic raptures about "the choir invisible," can meet the
mighty craving of the human heart. Man must be immortal, or he is not man. "He
thinks he was not made to die."

But to meet these demands of the spirit what, apart from revelation, can avail?
That metaphysics is futile practically all men are agreed. Only the philosopher
can follow the dialectics which are to prove the existence of God and the
immortality of the soul. And even the philosopher seems to grow pale and wizened
in the process of his demonstration, and wins at last a vantage-ground of cold
conviction, to find that there is no comfort there. But can science offer the
assurance which philosophy was unable to give? Let us listen to the conclusion
of a scientific writer on this subject, one who has lost his hold on revelation
and can realize a little of what he has lost.

"The highest and most consoling beliefs of the human mind," he says, "are to a
great extent bound up with the Christian religion. If we ask ourselves frankly
how much, apart from this religion, would remain of faith in a God, and in a
future state of existence, the answer must be, very little. Science traces
everything back to primeval atoms and germs, and there it leaves us. How came
these atoms and energies there, from which this wonderful universe of worlds has
been evolved by inevitable laws? What are they in their essence, and what do
they mean? The only answer is, It is unknowable. It is "behind the veil," and
may be anything. Spirit may be matter, matter may be spirit. We have no
faculties by which we can even form a conception, from any discoveries of the
telescope or microscope, from any experiments in the laboratory, or from any
facts susceptible of real human knowledge, of what may be the first cause
underlying all these phenomena.

"In like manner we can already, to a great extent, and probably in a short time
shall be able to the fullest extent to trace the whole development of life from
the lowest to the highest; from protoplasm, through monera, infusoria, mollusca,
vertebrata, fish, reptile and mammal, up to man; and the individual man from the
microscopic egg, through the various stages of its evolution up to birth,
childhood, maturity, decline, and death. We can trace also the development of
the human race through enormous periods of time, from the modest beginnings up
to its present level of civilisation, and show how arts, languages, morals, and
religions have been evolved gradually by human laws from primitive elements,
many of which are common in their ultimate form to man and the animal creation.

"But here also science stops. Science can give no account of how these germs and
nucleated cells, endowed with these marvellous capacities for evolution, came
into existence, or got their intrinsic powers. Nor can science enable us to form
the remotest conception of what will become of life, consciousness, and
conscience, when the material conditions with which they are always associated,
while within human experience, have been dissolved by death, and no longer
exist. We know as little, in the way of accurate and demonstrable knowledge, of
our condition after death as we do of our existence--if we had an
existence--before birth." [695]

Science frankly confesses that she can tell us nothing of the things which it
most concerns us to know. On those things she is no farther advanced than she
was in the days of Aristotle. Never do we feel how much men need a revelation so
vividly as when we have grasped the first principles of such a great scientific
thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer, and realize how far he is able to take us and
how soon he has to leave us. How does it meet the craving of the soul for God to
show us the slow stages by which man became a living soul? As well might you try
to satisfy the musician's ear by telling him how his art had grown from the
primitive tom-tom of the savage. How can it help the life to be lived wisely,
lovingly, and well, in the midst of the uncertainty of the world, and confronted
by the certainty of death, to be told that our physical structure is united by a
thousand immediate links with that of other mammals. Such a fact is
insignificant; the supreme fact is that we are not like other mammals in the
most important respects; we have hearts that long and yearn, minds which enquire
and question--they have not; we want God, our heart and our flesh crieth out for
the living God, and we demand an eternal life--they do not.

How can science pretend that what she does not know is not knowledge, while she
has to confess that she does not know precisely the things which it most
concerns us as men to know? How can the spirit of man be content with the husks
which she gives him to eat, when his whole nature craves the kernel? What
probability is there that a man will close his eyes to the sun because another
person, very clever and industrious, has shut himself up in a dark cellar, and
tries to persuade him that his candle is all the light he may legitimately use,
and what cannot be seen by his candle is not real?

No, science may not prove revelation, but she proves our need of it. She does
her utmost, she widens her borders, she is more earnest, more accurate, more
informed, more efficacious than ever; but she shows that what man most wants she
cannot give,--she bids him go elsewhere.

But now it may be said: It is one thing to prove that man needs a revelation,
and another to show that a revelation has been given. That is perfectly true,
and this is not the place to adduce all the evidence which might prove that
revelation is a reality; but what an advance we have made on the cold,
self-satisfied deism of the eighteenth century, which maintained that the light
of nature was enough, and revelation was quite superfluous, when the truest and
most candid voices of science are declaring with such growing clearness that for
the knowledge which revelation professes to give, revelation, and revelation
alone, will suffice!

We Christians believe that we have a revelation, and we find that it suffices.
It gives us precisely those assurances about God and about the soul without
which we falter, grow bewildered, and begin to despond. We have a vision and a
law. Our Bible is the record of the ever-widening, ever-clearing vision of God.
The power and authority of the vision seem to be the more convincing, just
because we are permitted to see the process of its development. Here we are able
to stand with the seer and see, not the long æonian stages of creation which
science has been painfully tracking out in these later days, but the supreme
fact, which science professes herself unable to see, that God was the Author of
it all. Here we are able to see the first imperfect conception of God which came
in vision and in thought to the patriarch or sheikh in the earliest dawn of
civilisation. Here we can observe the conceptions clearing, through Moses,
through the Psalmists, through the Prophets, until at last we have a vision of
God in the person of His Son, who is the brightness of the Father's glory, the
express image of His countenance. We see that He, the unseen Creator, is Love.

Our Bible, too, is the record of a law,--a law of human conduct, the will of God
as applied to earthly life. At first the law is confined to a few primitive
practices and outward observances; then it grows in perplexity and
multiplication of details; and only after a long course of discipline, of effort
and apparent failure, of teaching and deliberate disobedience, is the law laid
bare to its very roots, and presented in the simplified and self-evidencing form
of the Sermon on the Mount and the apostolic precepts.

It is not necessary to start with any particular theory about the Bible, any
more than it is necessary to know the substance of the sun before we can warm
ourselves in his beams. It is not necessary to look for scientific accuracy in
the histories and treatises through which the vision and the law are
communicated to us. We know that the vessels are earthen, and the presupposition
all through is that the light was only growing from the glimmer of the dawn up
to the perfect day. But we know, we are persuaded, that here, to seeing eyes and
humble hearts, is the revelation of God and of His will.

Nor is it only in the Bible that God speaks to us. There have been times in the
history of Christendom--such times as the middle of the eighteenth century--when
though the Bible was in men's hands, it seemed to be almost a dead letter.
"There was no vision, and the people cast off restraint." It is by living men
and women to whom He grants visions and reveals truths, that God maintains the
purity and power of His revelation to us. He came in vision to Fox and the early
Friends, to Zinzendorf and the early Moravians, to Wesley and the early
Methodists. Seldom does a generation pass but some seers are sent to make the
Word of God a living influence to their age. The vision is not always unmixed
with human error, and when it ceases to be living it may become obstructive, a
cause of paralysis rather than of progress. But Augustine and Jerome, Benedict
and Leo, Francis and Dominic, Luther and Calvin, Ignatius Loyola and Xavier,
Fénélon and Madame Guyon, Jonathan Edwards and Channing, Robertson and Maurice,
Erskine and MacLeod Campbell, are but examples of God's method all down the
Christian ages. The vision comes pure and fresh as if straight from the presence
of God. Traditionalism crumbles away. Doubt retreats like a phantom of the
night. Mighty moral revolutions and spiritual awakenings are accomplished by the
means of His chosen ones. And it should be our desire and our joy to recognise
and welcome these seers of God.

"He that keepeth the law, happy is he." It is a mournful thing to be without a
revelation, and to grope in darkness at midday; to hold one's mind in melancholy
suspense, uncertain about God, about His will, about the life eternal. But it is
better to have no revelation than to have it and disregard it. Honest doubt is
full of necessary sorrow, but to believe and not to obey is the road to
inevitable ruin. [696] "He that keepeth"--yes, he that looks into revelation,
not for curiosity, but for a law by which to live; who listens to the wise
precepts, not in order to exclaim, "How wise they are!" but in order to act on
them.

There are many professing Christians who are constantly plunged in gloom.
Unbelievers may point the finger at them, and say, "They believe in God, in
salvation, and in heaven, but see what an effect it has on them. Do they really
believe?" Oh, yes, they really believe, but they do not obey; and no amount of
faith brings any lasting happiness apart from obedience. The law requires us to
love God, to love men; it requires us to abstain from all appearance of evil, to
touch not the unclean thing; it bids us love not the world, it tells us how
impossible the double service of God and mammon is. Now though we believe it all
it can give us nothing but pain unless we live up to it. If there is a vision
and we shut our eyes to it, if there is a law and we turn away from it, woe unto
us! But if we receive the vision, if we loyally and earnestly keep the law, the
world cannot fathom the depth of our peace, nor rise to the height of our joy.
__________________________________________________________________

[694] Isa. ii. 3.

[695] "Modern Science and Modern Thought" (pp. 289, 290), by S. Laing. Chapman &
Hall: 1890.

[696] Cf. Prov. xxviii. 4, 9:--

"They that forsake the law praise the wicked:

But such as keep the law contend with them.

He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law

Even his prayer is an abomination."
__________________________________________________________________

XXX.

THE WORDS OF AGUR.

The rendering of the first verse of this chapter is very uncertain. Without
attempting to discuss the many conjectural emendations, we must briefly indicate
the view which is here taken. A slight alteration in the pointing (l'yty 'l
instead of the Masoretic reading l'yty'l) changes the proper name Ithiel into a
significant verb; and another slight change (v'kl for v'kl) gives us another
verb in the place of Ucal. To remove the difficulty of the word "oracle," a
difficulty which arises from the fact that the chapter which follows is not a
prophetic utterance of the kind to which that word might be applied, it is
necessary, with Grätz, to make a more serious change, and to read hmsl for hms'.
And to explain the word hnvr, which occurs in a similar connection in Numb.
xxiv. 3, 15, and 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, we must suppose that some relative clause
defining the nature of "the man" has been dropped. The great uncertainty of the
text is witnessed by the LXX., who place this passage after xxiv. 23, and give a
rendering which has very little resemblance to our present Hebrew text. It is
highly probable, both from the subject matter and from the numerical
arrangements, which are thoroughly Rabbinical, that this chapter and chap. xxxi.
are of late origin, and represent the last phase of the proverbial literature of
Israel in the days after the return from the Exile. If this be so, the obscurity
and uncertainty are characteristic of an artificial period of literature, and of
a decay in literary taste. Adopting, then, the alterations which have been
mentioned, we obtain the following result:--

"The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the proverb-writer:

The utterance of the man [who has questioned and thought]: I have wearied after
God, I have wearied after God, and am faint, for I am too stupid for a man, and
am without reason, and I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the
All Holy," etc.

This chapter is full of curious interest. It is a collection of sayings which
are apparently connected only by the circumstance that they were attributed to
one person, Agur, the son of Jakeh. Whoever Agur was, he had a certain marked
individuality; he combined meditation on lofty questions of theology with a
sound theory of practical life. He was able to give valuable admonitions about
conduct. But his characteristic delight was to group together in quatrains
visible illustrations of selected qualities or ideas.

It may be well for us to glance at these picturesque groups, and then to return
to the more philosophical and religious sentiments with which the chapter opens.

"Slander not a servant to his master," says Agur, "lest the servant curse thee,
and thou be held guilty." Even underlings have their rights; the Lord makes
their cause His own, and a curse from them falls with as much weight on a
slanderer as the words of more influential people. It is one of the surest tests
of a man's character to see how he treats servants; if he is uniformly
courteous, considerate, just, and generous in his treatment of them, we may
safely infer that he is a noble character; if he is haughty, domineering,
revengeful, and malicious to them, we need not attach much importance to his
pleasing manners and plausible services to those whom he considers his equals.

Now follow two of these singular quatrains. There are four kinds of men pointed
out, and held up, not to our abhorrence, that is unnecessary, but simply to our
observation: the unfilial, the self-righteous, the haughty, and the rapacious
who devour the poor and the needy. It is not necessary to say anything about
these persons. Their doom is stamped on their brows; to name them is to condemn
them; to describe them is to write out their sentence.

Again, there are four things which like the bloodsucking horse-leech are always
insatiable. The vampire has her daughters in the earth; it is, as Professor
Cheyne says, "a quasi-mythical expression." These daughters are two, nay, they
are three, nay, they are four; and they are, as it were, the representatives of
all creation: [697] Sheol, the invisible world, which draws into itself the
countless generations of the dead; the generative principle, which never wearies
of producing new generations of the living; the earth, which is for ever
absorbing the cadent waters of heaven; and the fire, which will consume all the
fuel that is given to it.

Now follows a further comment upon unfilial conduct: the eye is regarded as the
instrument by which a son shows his feelings to his parents; he has not perhaps
gone the length of uttering a curse against them, still less of raising his hand
to ill-treat them, but his eye flashes derision upon his father, and by its
haughty obstinacy declares that it will not obey his mother. The offending
member shall be picked out by the clamorous ravens, and eaten by the young of
the soaring eagle.

Next we have four more quatrains. First, there are the four wonders which baffle
Agur's understanding; wonders which are comprehensible only to God, as the Vedic
hymn says,--

"The path of ships across the sea,

The soaring eagle's flight he knows."

The wonder seems to be in the reality and power of impalpable things. How little
of all that passes in the universe is open to observation, or leaves a track
behind. The eagle mounts through the air as if he marched on a solid beaten
road; the serpent, without limbs, glides over the smooth rock where feet would
slip, and leaves no trace behind; the ship ploughs the deep, and over trackless
waters follows her track which is invisible; a man and a maid meet, swift
glances pass, hearts blend, and that is done which can never be undone; or on
the evil side, the bad woman follows her illicit and hidden courses, while to
all appearance she is a faithful wife and mother.

Secondly, there are four human conditions which are intolerable to society,
viz., an essentially servile spirit put into the place of authority; a fool who,
instead of being corrected, is confirmed in his folly by prosperity; a marriage
where the wife is hated; and a slave girl in the position which Hagar occupied
with relation to Sarah her mistress.

Thirdly, there are four kinds of animals which illustrate that size is not
necessarily greatness, and that it is possible to be insignificant and yet wise.
The tiny ants are a model of intelligent mutual cooperation and prudent thrift.
The little jerboas seem helpless enough, but they are sensible in the choice of
their homes, for they dwell securely in rocky fastnesses. The locusts seem as
weak and inoffensive as insects can be, yet they form a mighty army, ordered in
battle array; "they run like mighty men; they climb the wall like men of war;
and they march every one in his ways, and they break not their ranks." [698] The
lizard seems but a plebeian creature; you can seize it with your hands; it is
defenceless and devoid of natural capabilities; and yet with its swift crawlings
and tireless dartings it will find its way into kings' palaces, where greater
and stronger creatures cannot enter.

Lastly, there are four things which impress one with their stateliness of
motion; the lion, the creature that is girt in the loins, whether a war-horse or
a greyhound, the he-goat, and--surely with a little touch of satire--the king
when his army is with him.

Then the collection of Agur's sayings ends with a wise and picturesque word of
counsel to exercise a strong restraint over our rising passions.

But now we may turn back to the passage with which the chapter opens. Here is
the cry of one who has sought to find out God. It is an old and a mournful cry.
Many have emitted it from the beginning; many utter it now. But few have spoken
with more pathetic humility, few have made us feel with so much force the
solemnity and the difficulty of the question as this unknown Agur. We see a brow
wrinkled with thought, eyes dimmed with long and close observation; it is not
the boor or the sot that makes this humiliating confession; it is the earnest
thinker, the eager enquirer. He has meditated on the wonderful facts of the
physical world; he has watched the great trees sway under the touch of the
invisible wind, and the waves rise up in their might, lashing the shores, but
vainly essaying to pass their appointed boundaries; he has considered the vast
expanse of the earth, and enquired, on what foundations does it rest, and where
are its limits? He cannot question the "eternal power and divinity" which can
alone account for this ordered universe. He has not, like many thinkers ancient
and modern, "dropped a plummet down the broad deep universe, and cried, No God."
He knows that there is a God; there must be an Intelligence able to conceive,
coupled with a power able to realize, this mighty mechanism. But who is it? What
is His name or His Son's name? Here are the footsteps of the Creator, but where
is the Creator Himself? Here are the signs of His working on every hand. There
is an invisible power that ascends and descends on the earth by staircases
unseen. Who is He? These careering winds, before which we are powerless, obey
some control; sometimes they are "upgathered like sleeping flowers;" who is it
that holds them then? These great waters sway to and fro, or they pour in
ceaseless currents from their fountains, or they gather in the quiet hollows of
the hills; but who is it that appoints the ocean, and the river, and the lake?
Who feeds them all, and restrains them all? Whose is the garment which holds
them as a woman carries a pitcher lashed to her back in the fold of her dress?
The earth is no phantom, no mirage, it is solid and established; but who gave to
matter its reality, and in the ceaseless flux of the atoms fixed the abiding
forms, and ordered the appropriate relations? Ah! what is His name? Has He a
son? Is man, for instance, His son? Or does the idea of the Eternal and
Invisible God imply also an Eternal Son, a Being one with Him, yet separable,
the object of His love, the instrument of His working, the beginning of His
creation? Who is He? That He is holy seems an inevitable conclusion from the
fact that we know what holiness is, and recognise its sovereignty. For how, in
thinking of the mighty Being who made all things, dare I give Him a lower
attribute than that which I can give to my fellow-men? How dare I withhold from
Him that which I know of the Highest and the Best? But though I know that He is
holy, the All Holy One I do not know. My weak and sinful nature has glimpses of
Him, but no steady visions. I lose Him in the confused welter of things. I catch
the gleam of His face in the hues of the rainbow and in the glow of the eternal
hills; but I lose it when I strive to follow among the angry gatherings of the
stormclouds, in the threatening crash of the thunder, the roar of the avalanche,
and the rent ruins of the earthquake.

And the man, considering all things, questioning, seeking, exclaims, "I am weary
and faint." The splendours of God haunt his imagination, the sanctities of God
fill his conscience with awe, the thoughts of God lie as presuppositions behind
all his thinking. But he has not understanding; baffled and foiled and helpless,
he says that he is too brutish to be a man. Surely a man would know God; surely
he must be but one of the soulless creatures, dust of the dust, for he has not
the knowledge of the Holy One.

To this impetuous hail of questions an answer comes. For indeed in the fact that
the questions are put already the answer lies. In the humble cry that he is too
stupid to be a man is already the clearest proof that he is raised incalculably
above the brute.

But who is it that offers the answer in vv. 5-9? It would seem as if Agur
himself has suggested the question--a question borrowed probably from some noble
heathen thinker; and now he proceeds to meet the wild and despairing outcry with
the results of his own reflection. He does not attempt the answer on the lines
of natural religion. His answer in effect is this: You cannot know God, you
cannot by searching find Him unless He reveals Himself; His revelation must come
as an articulate and intelligible word. As the Psalm says--for it seems to be a
quotation from Psalm xviii. 30--"Every word of God is tried: He is a shield unto
them that trust in Him." Agur appeals to a written revelation, a revelation
which is complete and rounded, and to which no further addition may be made
(ver. 6). It was probably the time when Ezra the scribe had gathered together
the Law and the Psalms and the Prophets, and had formed the first scriptural
canon. Since then a great deal has been added to the canon, these words of Agur
among the rest, but the assertion remains essentially true. Our knowledge of God
depends on His self-revelation, and the method of that revelation is to speak,
through the lips of God-possessed men, words which are tried by experience and
proved by the living faith of those who trust in God. "I am that I am" has
spoken to men, and to Him, the Eternally-existent, have they ascribed the
visible universe. "The God of Israel" has spoken to men, and they have learnt
therefore to trace His hand in history and in the development of human affairs.
The Holy One has in prophets and poets spoken to men, and they have become aware
that all goodness comes from Him, and all evil is hateful to Him. And lastly,
His Son has spoken to men, and has declared Him in a way that never could have
been dreamed, has shown them the Father, has revealed that new unutterable Name.

The answer to the great cry of the human heart, the wearied, fainting human
heart, is given only in revelation, in the tried word of God, and completely
only in the Word of God that was made flesh. The proof of that revelation is
furnished to all those who trust in the God so revealed, for He becomes a shield
to them; they abide under the shadow of His realized presence. It is not
possible to add unto the words of God; our speculations lead us farther, but
they only lead us into error; and by them we incur His reproof, and our fictions
become disastrously exposed. The answer to philosophy is in revelation, and they
who do not accept the revealed answer are left asking eternally the same weary
and hopeless question, "What is his name, and what is his son's name?"

And now, with a quaint and practical homeliness which is very suggestive, Agur
notices two conditions, which he has evidently observed to be necessary if we
are to find the answer which revelation gives to the enquiry of the human heart
after God. First of all we must be rid of vanity and lies. How true this is! We
may hold the Bible in our hands, but while our hearts are void of seriousness
and sincerity we can find nothing in it, certainly no word of God. A vain person
and an untruthful person can receive no genuine revelation; they may believe, or
think that they believe, the current religious dogmas, and they may be able to
give a verbal answer to the question which we have been considering, but they
cannot have the knowledge of the Holy One. More than half the godlessness of men
is due simply to want of earnestness; they are triflers on the earth, they are
painted bubbles, which burst if any solid thing touches them; they are drifting
vapours and exhalations, which pass away and leave not a wrack behind. But there
are many men who are serious enough in their search for knowledge, and yet are
vitiated through and through by a radical want of truthfulness. They are
prepared for facts, but only facts of a certain sort. They want to know God, but
only on condition that He shall not be supernatural. They want to study the
truths of the spiritual world, but only on condition that the spiritual shall be
material. O remove far from me vanities and lies!

Then there is a second condition desirable for the due appreciation of religious
truth, a social and economical condition. Agur might have known our modern world
with its terrible extremes of wealth and poverty. He perceived how hard it is
for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven; and, on the other hand, how
probable it is that hungry men will be seduced into stealing and betrayed into
blasphemy. That there is much truth in this view we may easily satisfy ourselves
by considering the wealthy classes in England, whose question, urged through all
their pomp and ceremonial of heartless worship, is practically, "Who is the
Lord?" and by then looking at the eight hundred thousand paupers of England,
amongst whom religion is practically unknown except as a device for securing
food.

And when we have duly weighed this saying of Agur's, we may come to see that
among all the pressing religious and spiritual problems of our day, this also
must be entertained and solved, How to secure a more equable distribution of
wealth, so that the extremes of wealth and poverty should disappear, and all
should be fed with the food that is needful for them.
__________________________________________________________________

[697] Cf. the Sanscrit Hitopadesa, "Fire is never satisfied with fuel, nor the
ocean with rivers, nor death with all creatures, nor bright-eyed women with
men;" also the Arabic proverb, "Three things are of three never full, women's
womb of man, wood of fire, and earth of rain."

[698] Joel ii. 7.
__________________________________________________________________

XXXI.

A GOOD WOMAN.

"O woman-hearts, that keep the days of old

In living memory, can you stand back

When Christ calls? Shall the heavenly Master lack

The serving love, which is your life's fine gold?

"Do you forget the hand which placed the crown

Of happy freedom on the woman's head,

And took her from the dying and the dead,

Lifting the wounded soul long trodden down?

"Do you forget who bade the morning break,

And snapped the fetters of the iron years?

The Saviour calls for service: from your fears

Rise girt with faith, and work for His dear sake!

"And He will touch the trembling lips with fire,--

O let us hasten, lest we come too late!

And all shall work; if some must 'stand and wait,'

Be theirs that wrestling prayer that will not tire."

R. O.

The last chapter of the book of Proverbs consists of two distinct compositions,
and the only connection between them is to be found in their date. The words of
King Lemuel, "a saying which his mother taught him," [699] and the description
of a good woman, [700] must both be referred to a very late epoch of Hebrew
literature. The former contains several Aramaic words [701] and expressions
which connect it with the period of the exile; and the latter is an alphabetical
acrostic, i.e., the verses begin with the successive letters of the alphabet;
and this artificial mode of composition, which appears also in some of the
Psalms, is sufficient of itself to indicate the last period of the literature,
when the Rabbinical methods were coming into use.

About the words of Lemuel, of whom it may be observed we know nothing at all,
enough has been said in previous lectures. We need here only notice that the
mother's influence in the education of her son, even though that son is to be a
king, comes very suitably as the introduction to the beautiful description of
the good woman with which the chapter closes. It is said that the mother of
George III. brought him up with the constantly-repeated admonition, "George, be
a king," and that to this early training was due that exalted notion of the
prerogative and that obstinate assertion of his will which occasioned the
calamities of his reign. Kings have usually been more ready to imbibe such
lessons than moral teaching from their mothers; but whatever may be the actual
result, we all feel that a woman is never more nobly occupied than in warning
her son against the seductions of pleasure, and in giving to him a high sense of
duty. It is from a mother's lips we should all learn to espouse the cause of the
helpless and the miserable, and to bear an open heart for the poor and needy.
[702]

But now before coming to examine in detail the poem of the virtuous woman, let
us briefly recall what the book hitherto has taught us on the subject of
womanhood. It began with solemn and oft-repeated warnings against the "strange
woman," and echoes of that mournful theme have accompanied us throughout: the
strange woman is a deep ditch, a narrow pit; he that is abhorred of the Lord
shall fall therein. [703] And even where the woman's nature is not corrupted by
impurity we are several times reminded how she may destroy the peace of man's
life by certain faults of temper. If she is contentious and fretful she can make
the house utterly unbearable; it will be better to live in a corner of the
housetop or in a desert land, exposed to the continual downpour of the autumn
rains, than to be assailed by her tongue. [704] The attempt to restrain her is
like trying to grasp the wind, or to seize an object which is smeared with oil.
[705] We are reminded too how incongruously sometimes great beauty of person is
combined with inward faults. "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a
fair woman which is without discretion." [706]

But we must distinctly understand that these severe strictures on woman
corrupted and woman imperfect are only so many witnesses to her value and
importance. The place she fills in life is so supreme that if she fails in her
duty human life as a whole is a failure. In her hands lie the issues of life for
mankind. "The wisdom of woman builds her house, and the folly of woman plucks it
down with her hands." [707] What the homes of a nation are, the nation is; and
it is woman's high and beautiful function to make the homes, and within her
power lies the terrible capacity for marring them. She, much more than the king,
is the fountain of honour. [708] The honour she gives and the honour she
commands will decide the whole tone of society. Pure, true, and strong, she
makes men worship purity, truth, and strength. Corrupt, false, and vain, she
blights and blasts the ideal of man, lowers all his aspirations, excites his
evil passions to a frenzy of iniquity, degrades his soul to a level below the
brutes.

The condition of woman is the touchstone of a civilised society.

Again, there is a sense in which woman is an interpreter and revealer of God to
the human race. She has religious intuitions and spiritual susceptibilities in
which the other sex is usually deficient. Most religious systems in the world's
history have overlooked her, and have suffered accordingly. The religion of
Jesus Christ recognised her, claimed for her her rightful place, and to this day
does much of its best work in the world through her gracious ministrations,
through her unquestioning faith, through her unquenchable love. It is as a
foreshadowing of this religious significance which Christ was to give to
womanhood that the Proverbs recognise the beautiful direct relation between God
and the possession of a good wife. "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing,
and obtaineth favour of the Lord." [709] Wealth, as it is ordinarily understood,
is of the earth,--it can be derived from ancestors by inheritance, or it can be
earned by toil of hand and brain,--but every wife worthy of the name is far
above all wealth: she cannot be earned or inherited; she comes, as the mother of
mankind came, direct from the hand of the Lord. [710] The marriage tie is a
thought of God's heart. He Himself has arranged the exquisite blending of life
with life and spirit with spirit; He has fitted man to woman and woman to man,
so that the perfect man is not the man alone, the perfect woman is not the woman
alone, but the man and woman one flesh, mystically united, the completeness each
of the other; not two, but a single whole.

We may now examine in detail this connected description of the virtuous woman,
whose value is not to be measured by material wealth, and who yet, from a merely
material point of view, is a source of wealth to those who are fortunate enough
to call her theirs.

She is a wife. The modern conception of a woman as an independent person,
standing alone, engaged in her own business or profession, and complete in her
isolated life, is not to be looked for in the book of Proverbs. It is the
creation of accidental circumstances. However necessary it may be in a country
where the women are largely in excess of the men, it cannot be regarded as final
or satisfactory. In the beginning it was not so, neither will it be so in the
end. If men and women are to abide in strength and to develop the many sides of
their nature, they must be united. It is not good for man to be alone; nor is it
good for woman to be alone. There are some passages in the New Testament which
seem to invalidate this truth. The advocates of celibacy appeal to the example
of Christ and to the express words of St. Paul. But the New Testament, as our
Lord Himself expressly declares, does not abrogate the eternal law which was
from the beginning. And if He Himself abstained from marriage, and if St. Paul
seems to approve of such an abstention, we must seek for the explanation in
certain exceptional and temporary circumstances; for it is precisely to Christ
Himself in the first instance, and to His great Apostle in the second, that we
owe our loftiest and grandest conceptions of marriage. There was no room for a
personal marriage in the life of Him who was to be the Bridegroom of His Church;
and St. Paul distinctly implies that the pressing troubles and anxieties of his
own life, and the constant wearing labours which were required of the Gentile
Apostle, formed the reason why it was better for him, and for such as he, to
remain single.

At any rate the virtuous woman of the Proverbs is a wife: and the first thing to
observe is the part she plays in relation to her husband. She is his stay and
confidence: "The heart of her husband trusteth in her." She is his natural
confidante and counsellor; her advice is more valuable than that of much
cleverer people, because it is so absolutely disinterested; the hearts are in
such vital contact that the merely intellectual communications have a quality
all their own. One may often observe in an ideal marriage, though the husband
seems to be the stronger and the more self-reliant, the wife is really the
pillar of strength; if death removes her, he is forlorn and bereft and helpless;
the gradual work of the years has led him to depend on her more and more, to
draw from her his best inspirations, and to turn instinctively to her for advice
and direction.

"She doeth him good, and not evil, all the days of her life." [711] It is not
only when she comes as a young bride into his house, bright with youth,
encircled with the glamour of early love,--then, it is true, the thought of her
nerves his endeavours and quickens his eager steps as he turns homeward in the
evening,--it is not only while her fresh charms last, and her womanly beauty
acts as a spell on him, while the desire to retain her love disciplines and
strengthens whatever is good in his character; but right through to the end of
her life, when she has grown old, when the golden hair is grey, and the blooming
cheeks are wrinkled, and the upright form is bent,--when other people see
nothing beautiful about her except the beauty of old age and decay, he sees in
her the sweet bride of earlier years, to him the eyes appear unchanged and the
voice thrills him with happy memories; she ministers to him still and does him
good; not now with the swift alacrity of foot and the deft movement of the hand,
but with the dear, loyal heart, with the love which the years have mellowed and
the trust which the changing circumstances of life have tested and confirmed.

It is this strong, sweet core of life in the home which gives the man dignity
and honour in public. She is a crown to her husband. [712] His influence in the
life of his town or of his country is not always directly traced to its true
source. But it is that woman's noble sway over him, it is the constant spur and
chastening of her love, which gives him the weighty voice and the grave
authority in the counsels of the nation. "Her husband is known in the gates,
when he sitteth among the elders of the land." [713] He can make but a poor
return to her for all her quiet unobtrusive and self-sacrificing help year after
year and on to the end, but he can at least repay her with growing reverence and
loyalty; he can tell her, as it were with the impassioned lips of a lover, what
he owes to her; when her children rise up and call her blessed, he can praise
her, saying, "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."
[714] Indeed it will be his growing conviction that of all the daughters of
woman there is none equal to his wife. Her charms have grown upon him, her
character has ripened before his eyes, her love has become at once stronger and
more precious every year. It is no flattery, no idle compliment of
courting-days, no soft word to win the coy heart of the maiden, but it is his
own deep and sincere feeling; it is said to her who is his and has been his for
years, and in whose assured possession he finds his greatest peace: "I do not
question that other women are good and true, but I am sure that you are better
than all." And so she is. Every true wife is the best wife.

The next point in the virtuous woman to which our attention is drawn is her
unflagging industry. Her husband "shall have no lack of gain." [715] In addition
to all those treasures of mutual love and spiritual converse, all those
invaluable services of counsel and guidance, of criticism and encouragement, she
is a positive source of wealth to him. She is the house-manager. If he earns the
bread in the first instance, it is in her hands that it seems to be miraculously
multiplied. If he brings home the money which is enough for their wants, it is
she who turns the silver into gold and makes the modest means appear great
wealth. The fact is her hands are always busy. The spindle, the distaff, the
loom, are within her reach and are constantly plied. While she unravels the
knotted cares of her husband in the evening with her bright and cheery talk,
while she encourages him in all his plans and heartens him for all his duties,
her busy fingers are making clothes for the children, repairing, adapting,
improving, or else are skilfully constructing ornaments and decorations for the
household, turning the poor room into a palace, making the walls beam with
beauty and the hearts of all within laugh for joy.

There is something quite magical and impressive in woman's economy: "She is like
the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar." [716] No one knows how it
is done. The table is well spread, the food is daintily served, on infinitesimal
means. She finds out by the quick intuitions of love how to get the things which
the loved ones like, and by many a little sacrifice unperceived she produces
effects which startle them all. She has a secret of doing and getting which no
one knows but she. Early passers-by have seen a light in the house long before
the day dawns; she has been up preparing the breakfast for the household, and
mapping out the work for all, so that no hours may be wasted and no one in the
family may be idle. [717] Her boundless economies produce astonishing results.
One morning she has to announce to the husband and the children that she has
managed to put together a little sum which will purchase the freehold of their
house and garden. [718] Her husband exclaims, Why, how has it been done? Where
has the money come from out of our little income? She smiles significantly and
will not tell; but the tears moisten his eyes as he looks into her face and
reads the story of self-denials, and managings, and toils, which have issued in
this surprise. And the children look up with a sense of awe and wonder. They
feel that there is something of the supernatural about mother; and perhaps they
are right.

She has all the delicacy and even weakness of a woman, but the life of constant
activity and cheerful toil preserves her health and increases her strength. Idle
women, who lounge their days away in constant murmurings over their ailments,
speak contemptuously about her,--"She has the strength of a horse," they say,
"and can bear anything." They do not know, they do not wish to know, that she is
the author of her own strength. It is her own indomitable will, her own loving
heart, which girds her loins with strength and makes strong her arms. [719]
There are others who carp at her on different grounds; they do not understand
how one with her husband's income can keep so comfortable a household or dress
her children as she does. Those cushions of tapestry, that clothing of fine
linen and purple, are an offence to her critics. "How she does it I am sure I
don't know," says one, implying that there is something quite uncanny and
disreputable about it. "She works like a slave," says another, with the tone of
scorn that one would employ for a slave. But that is the truth: "She perceiveth
that her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by night." [720] She
is indeed indefatigable. She actually makes garments which she can sell, girdles
for the merchants, [721] in addition to looking well to the ways of her
household. Certainly she does not eat the bread of idleness. [722]

She can, however, very easily bear the contemptuous criticisms of others. The
practical results of her life are sufficiently satisfying to make her a little
independent. She has secured herself and her household against the contingencies
which harass other housewives. The approach of winter has no alarms for her: all
the children and servants are warmly and sufficiently clad. [723] The uncertain
future has no terrors for her: she has made ample provision for it, and can
regard the unknown chances with a smile of confidence. [724] And indeed,
whatever detractors may say behind her back, it is not easy for any one to say
anything severe in her presence. For the same loving, earnest, diligent ways
which have made her household comfortable and secure have clothed her with
garments better than scarlet and linen. "Strength and dignity are her
clothing,"--robes so gracious and beautiful that criticism is silenced in her
presence, while the hearts of all good and honest people are drawn out to her.

But here is another characteristic of the virtuous woman. Economy and generosity
go hand in hand. Frugal livers and hard workers are always the largest givers.
This woman, whose toil late at night and early in the morning has enriched and
blessed her own, is ready to help those who are less fortunate. "She spreadeth
out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy." [725]
Most women are naturally pitiful and shrink from the sight of suffering; but
while idle and self-indulgent women try to avoid the painful sight, and turn
their flow of pity into the channels of vapid sentimentality, the good woman
trains her sense of pity by coming into contact with those who deserve it, and
only seeks to avoid the sight of suffering by trying everywhere and always to
relieve it.

Among all the noble and Christlike offices of woman this is the one which most
strikingly connects her with the human life of our Lord. It is her function to
excite and to cherish the quality of compassion in the human heart, and by her
trained skill and intuitive tact to make the ministrations of the community to
the poor truly charitable instead of dangerously demoralizing. Man is apt to
relieve the poor by the laws of political economy, without emotion and by
measure: he makes a Poor Law which produces the evil it pretends to relieve; he
degrades the lovely word Charity into a badge of shame and a wanton insult to
humanity. It is woman that "spreads out her palm and reacheth forth her hand" to
the poor, bringing her heart into the work, giving, not doles of money, but the
helpfulness of a sister's love, the tenderness of a mother's solicitude, the
awakening touch of a daughter's care. And the hand which is thus held out to the
poor is precisely the hand which has been laid on the distaff and the spindle;
not the lazy hand or the useless hand, but the hand which is supple with toil,
dexterous with acquired skill.

There are two reflections which must have occurred to us in following this
description of the good woman. Her portrait has risen before our eyes, and we
ask, Is she beautiful? We have watched her activities, their mode and their
result, and we wonder whether she is religious. "Favour is deceitful and beauty
is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be praised." [726] That
this woman has a beauty of her own seems clear, and that she fears the Lord is a
fair inference to make. It is idle to declaim against the charms of personal
beauty; we may call it deceitful and vain, but it will not cease to be
attractive. Men will not be reasoned or ridiculed out of that instinctive homage
which they pay to a lovely face; the witchery of bright eyes and arch looks, the
winsomeness of sweet contours and delicate hues, will last, we may surmise, as
long as the sun and moon endure; and why should we dishonour God by supposing
that He did not make the beauty which attracts and the attraction which the
beauty excites? But it is not impossible to open men's eyes to the beauty of a
less transient and more satisfying kind which lies in the character and conduct
of women. If mothers accustom their sons to see those sterling attractions which
permanently secure the affection and the devotion of a husband, the young men
will not be content with superficial beauties and vanishing charms in the women
whom they choose.

And is not the beauty of woman--such beauty as we have been contemplating--the
result of fearing the Lord? Is it possible, apart from a living faith in a
living God, to maintain that lovely wifeliness, that self-sacrificing, diligent
love, that overflow of pity to the poor and needy, which constitute grace and
loveliness of character? Has any one succeeded in even depicting an imaginary
woman devoid of religion and yet complete and beautiful? We have already noticed
how suited the woman's nature is to receive religious impressions and to
communicate religious influences; we may now notice, in concluding, that this
very characteristic renders a woman without God even more imperfect and
unsatisfying than a man without God. She is naturally inclined to cling to a
person rather than to an idea, to follow a person rather than a theory. The only
Person to whom she can cling with absolutely good and hallowing results is God;
the only Person whom she can follow and minister to without detriment to her
womanhood and with gain to her spirit is Christ. A godless woman makes a sore
shipwreck of life, whether she becomes sensual and depraved, or ambitious and
domineering, or bitter and cynical, or vain and conventional. In her ruin there
is always a power as of a fallen angel, and she can drag others with her in her
fall.

If a man is wise then in choosing for himself a wife, the first thing he will
demand is that she shall be one that fears the Lord, one who shall be able to
lead him and help him in that which is his truest life, and to maintain for him
a saving intercourse with the world of spiritual realities. He may be assured
that in her love to God he has the best guarantee of her love to him, and that
if she does not fear and love God the main sanction for their wedded happiness
will be wanting.

Finally, where the woman who has been described is actually found in real life
it is for us to recognise her and to reward her. Let society take note of her:
"Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates."
The great Greek historian said that woman's highest praise consisted in not
being mentioned at all. That is not the teaching of Revelation. Woman's best
work is often done in silence and without observation, but her highest praise is
when the seeds sown in silence have grown into flowers of loveliness and fruit
that is sweet to the taste, and the whole community is forced to yield her the
honour which is her due, exalting, with heartfelt admiration and with deep
gratitude to God, the Wife, the Mother, the Ministrant to the Poor.
__________________________________________________________________

[699] Prov. xxxi. 1-9.

[700] Prov. xxxi. 10-31.

[701] E.g., br ver. 2 and mlkyn ver. 3: cf. the strange expressions klbnyny and
klbny hlvph in vv. 5, 8.

[702] Prov. xxxi. 8, 9.

[703] Prov. xxii. 14, xxiii. 27.

[704] Prov. xix. 13, xxi. 9, xxv. 24, xxi. 19, xxvii. 15.

[705] Prov. xxvii. 16.

[706] Prov. xi. 22.

[707] Prov. xiv. 1.

[708] Prov. xi. 16.

[709] Prov. xviii. 22.

[710] Prov. xix. 14. In the LXX. this clause is beautifully rendered para de
kuriou harmozetai gune andri. By the Lord's ordinance woman and man are
dovetailed together in a complete harmony. The thought is well expanded in
Ecclesiasticus (xxvi. 1-3): "Blessed is the man that has a virtuous wife, for
thereby his life is doubled. A woman made for a man rejoices her husband, and he
shall fulfil the years of his life in peace. A virtuous wife is a good portion,
in the portion of them that fear the Lord shall she be given."

[711] Prov. xxxi. 12.

[712] Prov. xii. 4.

[713] Prov. xxxi. 23.

[714] Prov. xxxi. 29.

[715] Prov. xxxi. 11.

[716] Prov. xxxi. 14.

[717] Prov. xxxi. 15.

[718] Prov. xxxi. 16.

[719] Prov. xxxi. 17.

[720] Prov. xxxi. 18.

[721] Prov. xxxi. 24.

[722] Prov. xxxi. 27.

[723] Prov. xxxi. 21.

[724] Prov. xxxi. 25.

[725] Prov. xxxi. 20.

[726] Prov. xxxi. 30.
__________________________________________________________________

INDEX OF TEXTS IN PROVERBS QUOTED OR EXPOUNDED.

verses page

i.-ix. [7]7 7 [8]9, [9]15, etc. 11-14 [10]26, [11]27 13 [12]32 17 [13]34 19
[14]30, [15]33 24-31 [16]35, [17]36 25 [18]34 31 [19]34, [20]37 32 [21]25,
[22]34

1-10 [30]37 6 [31]46 8 [32]39 12 [33]50 13-15 [34]48 16 [35]50 18 [36]49 27
[37]43 28 [38]43 29 [39]41 31 [40]50 33 [41]41 35 [42]51


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 2: CHAPTER V: 3-20               [54]27
========================================================================

1-7 [43]52 8, 9 [44]55 12 [45]64 14 [46]56 16, 17 [47]26, [48]63 18 [49]63 19
[50]62 20-23 [51]57 24 [52]59 25-27 [53]61

3-20 [54]27 8 [55]66 9 [56]72 10 [57]72 11 [58]72 12-14 [59]28, [60]72 15-19
[61]69 21 [62]62, [63]72 22 [64]29 23 [65]73


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: CHAPTER VII: 1-5                [80]93
========================================================================

1-5 [66]80 6-8 [67]83 12-15 [68]84 16-19 [69]88 20-23 [70]91 24-35 [71]27 25
[72]68 26 [73]72, [74]75 27, 28 [75]71 32 [76]29 33 [77]72 34 [78]72 35 [79]72

1-5 [80]93 4 [81]94 5-27 [82]27, [83]95, etc. 8 [84]95 9 [85]94 14 [86]124 15
[87]68 16, 17 [88]68 22 [89]99


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 4: CHAPTER IX: 1-3                [102]123-[103]4
========================================================================

1-6 [90]107 7-9 [91]108 10-16 [92]109 15-16 [93]4 17 [94]110 18 [95]109 20
[96]108 22 [97]110 22-31 [98]112, etc. 26 [99]110 29 [100]111 30-36 [101]120

1-3 [102]123-[103]4 4 [104]122 5 [105]124 6 [106]125 7 [107]125 8 [108]348 9
[109]127 10 [110]9, [111]127 12 [112]37, [113]131 17 [114]68


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: CHAPTER XI: 1                  [134]215
========================================================================

1 [115]306 2 [116]135, [117]141 4 [118]139 12 [119]209 13 [120]342 14 [121]164
15 [122]138, [123]290 17 [124]181 18 [125]339 19 [126]171 22 [127]142 23
[128]111, [129]156, [130]338 28 [131]150 29 [132]155 30 [133]150

1 [134]215 2 [135]183 3 [136]151 4 [137]142 5 [138]150 6 [139]149, [140]150 7
[141]151 8 [142]152 9 [143]169, [144]176 10 [145]154 11 [146]154 12 [147]177 13
[148]169 14 [149]256 15 [150]80, [151]332 16 [152]399 17 [153]297 18 [154]150 19
[155]151 20 [156]155 21 [157]151 22 [158]398 24 [159]146, [160]298 25 [161]146
26 [162]294 27 [163]152 28 [164]140 30 [165]152 31 [166]154


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: CHAPTER XIII: 1                  [214]125, [215]179, [216]181
========================================================================

1 [167]163, [168]181 2 [169]155 4 [170]4, [171]402 5 [172]177, [173]198 6
[174]163, [175]169, [176]176 7 [177]150, [178]151 8 [179]42 9 [180]139 11
[181]152, [182]267, [183]275 13 [184]152, [185]163, [186]164 14 [187]163 15
[188]183, [189]256 16 [190]163, [191]166 17 [192]91, [193]163, [194]167 18
[195]163, [196]164, [197]167, [198]172 19 [199]89, [200]163, [201]168 21
[202]152 22 [203]163, [204]168 23 [205]163, [206]339 24 [207]272 25 [208]163,
[209]173 26 [210]153, [211]154 27 [212]265, [213]273

1 [214]125, [215]179, [216]181 2 [217]164 3 [218]150, [219]171 4 [220]271 5
[221]108 6 [222]152 8 [223]138 9 [224]151 10 [225]179, [226]183, [227]184 11
[228]141 12 [229]193, [230]194 13 [231]179, [232]181, [233]184, [234]259 16
[235]171 17 [236]182 18 [237]140, [238]179 19 [239]192 22 [240]141, [241]153 24
[242]309 25 [243]152


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: CHAPTER XV: 1                  [288]172, [289]203
========================================================================

1 [244]398 3 [245]165, [246]176, [247]186 4 [248]269 5 [249]91, [250]176 6
[251]126 7 [252]171, [253]339 9 [254]156 10 [255]191, et seq. 11 [256]150 12
[257]65, [258]151 13 [259]191, [260]195 14 [261]152 15 [262]177 16 [263]186 17
[264]205 19 [265]153 20 [266]138, [267]139 21 [268]294 22 [269]152 23 [270]171
24 [271]141, [272]340 25 [273]91, [274]176 26 [275]152 27 [276]15 28 [277]332 29
[278]205 30 [279]210 31 [280]143, [281]291 32 [282]153 33 [283]171, [284]339 34
[285]4, [286]154 35 [287]328

1 [288]172, [289]203 2 [290]171 3 [291]197 4 [292]172, [293]203, [294]210 6
[295]141, [296]142, [297]216 7 [298]175 8 [299]156, [300]181 9 [301]155 11
[302]198 12 [303]126 13 [304]195 15 [305]195, [306]357 16, 17 [307]143 18
[308]203 19 [309]264 20 [310]181, [311]306 22 [312]256, [313]332 23 [314]165,
[315]173 25 [316]187, [317]291 26 [318]155, [319]172 27 [320]145 28 [321]151,
[322]169, [323]176 29 [324]156 30 [325]196 31 [326]184 32 [327]181 33, etc.
[328]4, [329]184, [330]215


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER XVII: 1                  [371]143
========================================================================

1 [331]178 1-7 [332]4, [333]216 2 [334]198 4 [335]201 5 [336]151, [337]187 6
[338]226, [339]362 7 [340]324 8 [341]142 9 [342]216 11 [343]215 12 [344]327 13
[345]153, [346]327 14 [347]328 15 [348]328 16 [349]142 17 [350]152 18 [351]180
19 [352]180 20 [353]4, [354]179, [355]183, [356]188, [357]216 21 [358]175 22
[359]340 23 [360]175 24 [361]173 25 [362]151 26 [363]265 27 [364]154 28 [365]169
29 [366]27 30 [367]85 32 [368]209 33 [369]4, [370]217

1 [371]143 2 [372]184 3 [373]198 4 [374]177 5 [375]143, [376]291, [377]314,
[378]316 6 [379]53, [380]143 7 [381]332 8 [382]138 9 [383]169 10 [384]182 11
[385]259 12 [386]204, [387]343 14 [388]205, [389]208 15 [390]155 16 [391]339 17
[392]227 18 [393]80 19 [394]185 20 [395]165 21 [396]306, [397]339 22 [398]194,
[399]195 24 [400]61 25 [401]306 26 [402]153, [403]155 27 [404]177, [405]205 28
[406]177


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: CHAPTER XIX: 1                  [434]142, [435]165
========================================================================

1 [407]205, [408]239, etc. 2 [409]171 3 [410]154 4 [411]165 5 [412]155 6
[413]165 7 [414]165 8 [415]169 9 [416]167, [417]266 11 [418]138 12 [419]180,
[420]189 13 [421]170 14 [422]194 15 [423]127 16 [424]138 18 [425]217 19 [426]234
20 [427]164 21 [428]164 22 [429]4, [430]399 23 [431]139 24 [432]229, [433]233

1 [434]142, [435]165 2 [436]256 4 [437]138, [438]139 5 [439]91, [440]167 6
[441]138 7 [442]3, [443]139, [444]166 8 [445]258 9 [446]91 10 [447]342 11
[448]205 12 [449]328 13 [450]292, [451]306, [452]398 14 [453]4 15 [454]265 16
[455]152, [456]258 17 [457]146, [458]291 18 [459]309 19 [460]206 20 [461]256,
[462]261 21 [463]216, [464]257 22 [465]165, [466]198 23 [467]258, [468]362 24
[469]263 25 [470]126 26 [471]306 27 [472]258 28 [473]167 29 [474]258, [475]342


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: CHAPTER XXI: 1                  [504]4, [505]328
========================================================================

1 [476]279 2 [477]329 3 [478]205 4 [479]262 5 [480]256 7 [481]153 8 [482]327 9
[483]198 10 [484]215 11 [485]153 12 [486]197 13 [487]204 14 [488]86 15 [489]142,
[490]176 16 [491]80 17 [492]168 18 [493]256, [494]332 19 [495]169 21 [496]145 22
[497]210 23 [498]215 24 [499]198 26 [500]327 27 [501]198 28 [502]328 30 [503]310

1 [504]4, [505]328 2 [506]151, [507]198 3 [508]156 4 [509]188 5 [510]272 6
[511]141 7 [512]150 8 [513]151 9 [514]398 10 [515]151, [516]179 12 [517]155 13
[518]299 14 [519]138 15 [520]151, [521]152 17 [522]276 18 [523]152 19 [524]398
20 [525]140, [526]272, [527]339 21 [528]152 23 [529]165 24 [530]180 25 [531]266
26 [532]145 27 [533]156 28 [534]165, [535]167 29 [536]187 30 [537]259 31
[538]259


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER XXIII: 1-3                [573]333
========================================================================

1 [539]143 2 [540]143, [541]288, [542]292 3 [543]352 4 [544]140, [545]188 6
[546]303 7 [547]139 8 [548]151 9 [549]146, [550]288, [551]300 10 [552]126 11
[553]153, [554]165, [555]327 12 [556]155 13 [557]263 14 [558]283, [559]398 15
[560]304, [561]340 16 [562]141, [563]288, [564]297 17, etc. [565]4 18 [566]165
22 [567]4, [568]288 23 [569]288 24 [570]204 26, 27 [571]80 29 [572]272

1-3 [573]333 4 [574]145 5 [575]140 9 [576]125, [577]170, [578]348 10 [579]291 11
[580]291 13-14 [581]303-[582]310 15 [583]306 16 [584]166, [585]306 17 [586]151,
[587]308 17-21 [588]313 18 [589]151 21 [590]140 24 [591]306 26-28 [592]123 27
[593]398 29-35 [594]4, [595]76, [596]281


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: CHAPTER XXV: XXV.-XXIX.         [629]5
========================================================================

1 [597]151 5 [598]256 6 [599]256 7 [600]177 9 [601]126, [602]341 11, 12 [603]5,
[604]155, [605]197, [606]299 15 [607]26, [608]151 16 [609]151 17 [610]314 18
[611]314 19 [612]151 20 [613]151 21 [614]5, [615]329 22 [616]329 23 [617]330
23-34 [618]3, [619]5 24 [620]154 25 [621]154 26 [622]176 27 [623]352 28 [624]314
29 [625]314 30-34 [626]82, [627]270 34 [628]263

xxv.-xxix. [629]5 2 [630]169 6, 7 [631]5 8 [632]208 9 [633]208 11 [634]174 12
[635]164, [636]175 14 [637]180 17 [638]244 18 [639]167 20 [640]174 21, 22
[641]6, [642]314 23 [643]169 24 [644]398 26 [645]153 28 [646]206


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: CHAPTER XXVII: 1                  [666]350
========================================================================

1 [647]340 2 [648]168 3-12 [649]341-[650]349 10 [651]346 12 [652]180 13 [653]263
14 [654]263 15 [655]263 16 [656]263 18 [657]170 19 [658]170 20 [659]169 21
[660]166, [661]204 22 [662]169 23-28 [663]168 24 [664]151 26 [665]151

1 [666]350 2 [667]180 3 [668]341 4 [669]356 5 [670]182 6 [671]232 8 [672]5,
[673]243 9 [674]232 10 [675]233, [676]244 11 [677]306 12 [678]352 13 [679]80 14
[680]229, [681]237 15 [682]398 16 [683]398 17 [684]231 18 [685]350, [686]360 19
[687]230 20 [688]350, [689]354 21 [690]182 22 [691]340 23-27 [692]5, [693]140,
[694]270


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: CHAPTER XXIX: 1                  [727]88
========================================================================

xxviiii. generally [695]5 1 [696]155 2 [697]332 3 [698]296 4 [699]154, [700]385
6 [701]142 8 [702]141, [703]297 9 [704]156, [705]385 11 [706]143 12 [707]154,
[708]332 13 [709]362 14 [710]362 15 [711]332 16 [712]332 18 [713]152 19
[714]267, [715]270 20 [716]145 22 [717]145 23 [718]168, [719]175, [720]182 26
[721]38, [722]183, [723]348 27 [724]146, [725]298 28 [726]154

1 [727]88 2 [728]5, [729]154, [730]332 3 [731]306 4 [732]332 5 [733]168 6
[734]152 7 [735]300 8 [736]204 9 [737]341 11 [738]166, [739]205, [740]345 12
[741]333 14 [742]328 15 [743]310 16 [744]151 17 [745]310 18 [746]375 20 [747]170
22 [748]204 23 [749]180 25 [750]335 26 [751]335 27 [752]148


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: CHAPTER XXXI: XXXI. GENERALLY    [766]6, [767]397
========================================================================

xxx. generally [753]6, [754]386 1-4 [755]390, [756]392 5-9 [757]393 8 [758]146 9
[759]146 13 [760]89 22 [761]332, [762]339 25, 27 [763]83 31 [764]329 32, 33
[765]167

xxxi. generally [766]6, [767]397 1 [768]397 2-8 [769]334 3 [770]397 4 [771]278 5
[772]278 6 [773]278 7 [774]278 8 [775]176 9 [776]176 10-31 [777]400, [778]410 27
[779]273 30 [780]302
__________________________________________________________________

GENERAL INDEX.

Agassiz, [781]144.
Agriculture, [782]140, [783]269.
Agur, [784]386.
Anger, [785]205.
Ant, the, [786]83.
Atheism, unknown to Israel, [787]11, [788]18.
Atonement, meaning of, [789]362, [790]371.
Bacon, [791]16, [792]230.
Bible, its character, [793]382.
Buddha, his teaching quoted, [794]71.
Burns, quoted, [795]293.
Carlyle, [796]305.
Catholic, the Catholic Church, [797]246.
Chastening, [798]51.
Christ, [799]93, [800]103, [801]107, [802]117, [803]120, [804]133,
[805]148, [806]212, [807]227, [808]247, [809]258, [810]273, [811]318,
[812]326, [813]330, [814]335, [815]348, [816]360, [817]383.
---- His use of the Proverbs, [818]124, [819]126, [820]127, [821]128,
[822]130, [823]159, [824]314.
Church, the, [825]247.
Coleridge, [826]16.
Commercial life, [827]41, [828]86, [829]218, [830]226.
Competition, [831]31.
Confession, [832]364.
Conscience, [833]225, [834]252, [835]343.
Contentment, [836]356.
Conversion, [837]104, [838]212, [839]287, [840]320.
"Corners," [841]295.
Covetousness, [842]30.
Creation, the poem of, [843]112.
Criticism, [844]181.
Dandy, the, [845]95.
Darwin, [846]16.
Death, not terrible, [847]41.
Diligence, [848]139, [849]262 et seq.
Distribution, economic, [850]136.
Donatello, [851]183.
Drink, [852]275 et seq.
Drunkard, the, [853]76, [854]277.
Ecclesiastes, quoted, [855]10.
Ecclesiasticus, [856]9, [857]12, [858]22, [859]81, [860]139, [861]144,
[862]169, [863]184, [864]218, [865]250, [866]306, [867]400.
Education, [868]52 et seq., [869]303 et seq.
Equality, [870]294.
Evolution, [871]113.
Faith, the life of, [872]356.
Fanaticism, [873]287.
Fitness, in speech, [874]170, [875]174.
Flattery, [876]168.
Folly, [877]67, [878]92, [879]122, [880]131, [881]205.
Fool, the, [882]337 et seq.
Forgiveness, [883]314 et seq.
---- God's, [884]370.
Francis, St., [885]190.
Friendship, [886]227 et seq.
Gambling, [887]32.
God, His existence, [888]391.
---- men need Him, [889]43.
---- relation with human life, [890]47, [891]155, [892]197, [893]199,
[894]217, [895]236, [896]252, [897]291, [898]353.
Gregg, quoted, [899]73.
Health, result of wisdom, [900]39.
Heathenism, [901]158, [902]377.
Heaven, [903]59, [904]162, [905]274.
Hell, [906]59, [907]73.
Henry II., [908]106.
Home, [909]53.
Honesty, [910]224.
Hudibras, quoted, [911]266.
Humility, [912]44, [913]127, [914]184, [915]189.
Idleness, ruinous, [916]266.
Immortality, [917]378.
Impurity, [918]25, [919]27, [920]29.
Indra, drunk, [921]279.
Inspiration of the book of Proverbs, [922]157.
Inwardness, [923]60.
Jahveh, [924]15, [925]21.
Jakeh, [926]6.
Joy, [927]193.
Justification, [928]161.
King, the, [929]326 et seq.
---- Divine right of, [930]331.
Land, the land question, [931]270.
Lanfranc, anecdote of, [932]205.
Law, [933]113.
Lemuel, [934]6, [935]396.
Liberality, [936]43, [937]145.
Lies, [938]89, [939]130, [940]167, [941]330.
Livingstone, [942]59.
Lot, the, use of, [943]217.
Love, [944]209, [945]235, [946]311.
Man, [947]114.
Marriage, [948]69, [949]401.
Massa, Gen. xxv. 14, [950]6.
Meekness, [951]172, [952]210.
Milton, quoted, [953]59, [954]69, [955]111, [956]133, [957]316,
[958]367.
Misanthrope, the, [959]240.
Misapplication of Scripture, [960]346.
Morality, relation to science, [961]116.
Mother's influence, [962]397.
---- neglect, [963]53.
Murder, [964]90.
Nabal, [965]339.
National righteousness, [966]154.
Neighbourliness, [967]244.
Obedience, [968]385.
Parents, duties of, [969]306.
Paton, John, [970]54, [971]217.
Paul, St., [972]359.
Pauperism, [973]290.
Plain speaking, [974]65, [975]102.
Pleasure, [976]276.
Poor, the, [977]43, [978]141, [979]143, [980]176, [981]288 et seq.
Positivism, [982]378.
Pride, [983]89, [984]179 et seq., [985]210.
Proverbs, book of, its limitations, [986]22, [987]211, [988]316,
[989]347.
Punishment, [990]87, [991]309 et seq.
Quarrelling, [992]166.
Rashness, [993]170.
Realism, [994]66, [995]92.
Reason, [996]341.
Remorse, [997]77.
Repetition of Proverbs, [998]2 (note).
Reproof, [999]175.
Revelation, necessary, [1000]20, [1001]375 et seq., [1002]393.
Revenge, [1003]316.
Robespierre, [1004]377.
Rubies, valley of, [1005]49.
Science, depends on theology, [1006]113.
---- its limitations, [1007]379, [1008]380.
Scorner, the, [1009]125, [1010]129.
Servants, treatment of, [1011]387.
Shakespeare, quoted, [1012]73, [1013]86, [1014]234, [1015]241.
Sin, its nature, [1016]363, [1017]367.
---- its results, [1018]71, [1019]74, [1020]101.
---- its seductions, [1021]68.
Sister, [1022]94.
Sluggard, the, [1023]82, [1024]263.
Socialism, [1025]137, [1026]147, [1027]395.
Solomon, not the author of the whole book, [1028]2, [1029]106.
Speech, its power, [1030]164.
Suretiship, [1031]80.
Sweating, [1032]31, [1033]296.
Sympathy, [1034]196.
Theism, necessary to knowledge, [1035]19.
Temper, [1036]203, [1037]207.
Temperance, [1038]280, [1039]286.
Tennyson, quoted, [1040]67.
Truth, injured by drink, [1041]283.
Wealth, [1042]135 et seq.
---- true, [1043]356.
Wife, the, [1044]399 et seq.
Will, freedom of, [1045]251 et seq.
Wisdom, meaning of, [1046]10.
---- person of, [1047]92, [1048]108, [1049]123.
---- rewards of, [1050]37, [1051]109.
---- the book of, [1052]9, [1053]10.
---- the book of, quoted, [1054]118.
Woman, [1055]96, [1056]132, [1057]396.
Work, its blessings, [1058]268.
Worthless man, the, [1059]84.
Youth, dangers of, [1060]34.
Zacchæus, [1061]367.
Zola, [1062]67.
__________________________________________________________________

Indexes __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

Proverbs

[1063]1 [1064]2 [1065]3 [1066]4 [1067]5 [1068]6 [1069]7 [1070]8 [1071]9 [1072]10
[1073]11 [1074]12 [1075]13 [1076]14 [1077]15 [1078]16 [1079]17 [1080]18 [1081]19
[1082]20 [1083]21 [1084]22 [1085]23 [1086]24 [1087]25 [1088]26 [1089]27 [1090]28
[1091]29 [1092]30 [1093]31
__________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

[1094]i [1095]iii [1096]iv [1097]1 [1098]2 [1099]3 [1100]4 [1101]5 [1102]6
[1103]7 [1104]8 [1105]9 [1106]10 [1107]11 [1108]12 [1109]13 [1110]14 [1111]15
[1112]16 [1113]17 [1114]18 [1115]19 [1116]20 [1117]21 [1118]22 [1119]23 [1120]24
[1121]25 [1122]26 [1123]27 [1124]28 [1125]29 [1126]30 [1127]31 [1128]32 [1129]33
[1130]34 [1131]35 [1132]36 [1133]37 [1134]38 [1135]39 [1136]40 [1137]41 [1138]42
[1139]43 [1140]44 [1141]45 [1142]46 [1143]47 [1144]48 [1145]49 [1146]50 [1147]51
[1148]52 [1149]53 [1150]54 [1151]55 [1152]56 [1153]57 [1154]58 [1155]59 [1156]60
[1157]61 [1158]62 [1159]63 [1160]64 [1161]65 [1162]66 [1163]67 [1164]68 [1165]69
[1166]70 [1167]71 [1168]72 [1169]73 [1170]74 [1171]75 [1172]76 [1173]77 [1174]78
[1175]79 [1176]80 [1177]81 [1178]82 [1179]83 [1180]84 [1181]85 [1182]86 [1183]87
[1184]88 [1185]89 [1186]90 [1187]91 [1188]92 [1189]93 [1190]94 [1191]95 [1192]96
[1193]97 [1194]98 [1195]99 [1196]100 [1197]101 [1198]102 [1199]103 [1200]104
[1201]105 [1202]106 [1203]107 [1204]108 [1205]109 [1206]110 [1207]111 [1208]112
[1209]113 [1210]114 [1211]115 [1212]116 [1213]117 [1214]118 [1215]119 [1216]120
[1217]121 [1218]122 [1219]123 [1220]124 [1221]125 [1222]126 [1223]127 [1224]128
[1225]129 [1226]130 [1227]131 [1228]132 [1229]133 [1230]134 [1231]135 [1232]136
[1233]137 [1234]138 [1235]139 [1236]140 [1237]141 [1238]142 [1239]143 [1240]144
[1241]145 [1242]146 [1243]147 [1244]148 [1245]149 [1246]150 [1247]151 [1248]152
[1249]153 [1250]154 [1251]155 [1252]156 [1253]157 [1254]158 [1255]159 [1256]160
[1257]161 [1258]162 [1259]163 [1260]164 [1261]165 [1262]166 [1263]167 [1264]168
[1265]169 [1266]170 [1267]171 [1268]172 [1269]173 [1270]174 [1271]175 [1272]176
[1273]177 [1274]178 [1275]179 [1276]180 [1277]181 [1278]182 [1279]183 [1280]184
[1281]185 [1282]186 [1283]187 [1284]188 [1285]189 [1286]190 [1287]191 [1288]192
[1289]193 [1290]194 [1291]195 [1292]196 [1293]197 [1294]198 [1295]199 [1296]200
[1297]201 [1298]202 [1299]203 [1300]204 [1301]205 [1302]206 [1303]207 [1304]208
[1305]209 [1306]210 [1307]211 [1308]212 [1309]213 [1310]214 [1311]215 [1312]216
[1313]217 [1314]218 [1315]219 [1316]220 [1317]221 [1318]222 [1319]223 [1320]224
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[1329]233 [1330]234 [1331]235 [1332]236 [1333]237 [1334]238 [1335]239 [1336]240
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[1361]265 [1362]266 [1363]267 [1364]268 [1365]269 [1366]270 [1367]271 [1368]272
[1369]273 [1370]274 [1371]275 [1372]276 [1373]277 [1374]278 [1375]279 [1376]280
[1377]281 [1378]282 [1379]283 [1380]284 [1381]285 [1382]286 [1383]287 [1384]288
[1385]289 [1386]290 [1387]291 [1388]292 [1389]293 [1390]294 [1391]295 [1392]296
[1393]297 [1394]298 [1395]299 [1396]300 [1397]301 [1398]302 [1399]303 [1400]304
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[1441]345 [1442]346 [1443]347 [1444]348 [1445]349 [1446]350 [1447]351 [1448]352
[1449]353 [1450]354 [1451]355 [1452]356 [1453]357 [1454]358 [1455]359 [1456]360
[1457]361 [1458]362 [1459]363 [1460]364 [1461]365 [1462]366 [1463]367 [1464]368
[1465]369 [1466]370 [1467]371 [1468]372 [1469]373 [1470]374 [1471]375 [1472]376
[1473]377 [1474]378 [1475]379 [1476]380 [1477]381 [1478]382 [1479]383 [1480]384
[1481]385 [1482]386 [1483]387 [1484]388 [1485]389 [1486]390 [1487]391 [1488]392
[1489]393 [1490]394 [1491]395 [1492]396 [1493]397 [1494]398 [1495]399 [1496]400
[1497]401 [1498]402 [1499]403 [1500]404 [1501]405 [1502]406 [1503]407 [1504]408
[1505]409 [1506]410 [1507]411 [1508]412 [1509]413 [1510]414 [1511]415 [1512]416
[1513]417 [1514]418
__________________________________________________________________

This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College,
http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#iv-p4.1 22.
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file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#iv-p1.1 25.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#iv-p1.1 26.
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file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p1.1 28.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#iv-p31.2 29.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p1.1 30.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p1.1 31.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p34.1 32.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p12.1 33.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p43.2 34.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p38.2 35.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p43.2 36.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p41.2 37.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p28.1 38.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p28.1 39.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#v-p18.1 40.
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file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#iv-p9.1 48.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#vi-p41.2 49.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#vi-p41.2 50.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#vi-p37.2 51.
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file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_386
1483.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_387
1484.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_388
1485.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_389
1486.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_390
1487.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_391
1488.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_392
1489.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_393
1490.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_394
1491.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxii-Page_395
1492.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_396
1493.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_397
1494.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_398
1495.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_399
1496.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_400
1497.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_401
1498.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_402
1499.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_403
1500.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_404
1501.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_405
1502.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_406
1503.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_407
1504.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_408
1505.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_409
1506.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiii-Page_410
1507.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiv-Page_411
1508.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiv-Page_412
1509.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiv-Page_413
1510.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiv-Page_414
1511.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxiv-Page_415
1512.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxv-Page_416
1513.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxv-Page_417
1514.
file:///ccel/h/horton/expositorprov/cache/expositorprov.html3#xxxv-Page_418


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/the-expositor-s-bible-the-book-of-proverbs/
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