122 Sermon Illustrations on Wisdom

The Rev. Philip Henry used to give two pieces of advice to his children and others, in reference to marriage. One was, "Keep within the bounds of profession." The other was, "Look at suitableness in age, quality, education, temper," etc. He used to observe, from Gen. ii. 18, "I will make him an help meet for him;" that where there is not meetness, there will not be much help. He commonly said to his children, with reference to their choice in marriage, "Please God, and please yourselves, and you shall never displease me;" and greatly blamed those parents who concluded matches for their children without their consent. He sometimes mentioned the saying of a pious gentlewoman, who had many daughters: "The care of most people is how to get good husbands for their daughters; but my care is to fit my daughters to be good wives, and then let God provide for them."

God's wisdom is laid up for those having spirit of a child. (v. 7-9). See Lk. 10:21. Necessity of feeling own insufficiency. Wisdom an object for prayer (v. 9. Jas. 1:5)

We were so sure in the Philippines that we could not get too much light that we built our houses to admit it in floods, and contemptuously disregarded the English and Dutch experience of two centuries. We called people lazy if they hid themselves at midday, and we bravely went abroad in the full glare of the light. Even the heavily pigmented Filipinos darkened their houses, and were astounded at our foolishness in doing what they did not dare to do. Collapse always came in time--if not a real collapse, at least a degree of destruction of nervous vigor which demanded a return to darker climates to escape chronic invalidism or even death.--Major CHARLES E. WOODRUFF, _Harper’s Weekly_.

Not very long ago a lawyer accompanied his wife to a Harlem market in New York, and while she made some purchases, he watched a woman beside him select meats for an unusually large order. So extensive were her purchases that he grew interested. Later he found himself forgetting quantity in admiration for the judgment and care she was exercising in her buying. After she left, his curiosity got the better of him. “Do you mind telling me,” said he to the clerk, “who that woman was? I think I never saw one who bought so well.”

“Not at all,” was the answer. “She’s Mrs. X, and she keeps a boarding-house on Y Street,” naming a number almost opposite the man’s home. “She personally inspects every piece of meat she serves on her table, and I tell you her boarders get the best. You can’t fool her.”

“I’ve found a place to take our meals in the next domestic crisis,” was the thought that flashed into the man’s mind. This kind of boarding-house keeper was not the sort he had known in the days of his bachelor wanderings.--_The Evening Post._

In the Newark, N. J., public library is a statue of Benjamin Franklin carved in Carrara marble. It embodies an incident in his life. When a lad he bought a whistle from a playmate, giving all the coppers he possest for it. He whistled all over the house, until his brothers and sisters told him he had paid too much for the whistle, laughing at him until he cried from mortification and chagrin.

Franklin was not the first nor the last to pay too much for the whistle. Music is not the only thing that may come at too high a price.

To Hierocles, who lived in the sixth century, is attributed a book called “Asteia,” which contains twenty-one jests, the most of which are now alive, and passing themselves off as “real, original Jacobs.” Among them is the man who would not venture into the water until he had learned to swim; the man whose horse died just as he had taught it to live without eating; the other who stood before the mirror with his eyes shut, to see how he looked when asleep; the other who apologized for a negligence by saying, “I never received the letter you wrote me”; the other who kept a crow expressly to satisfy himself if the creature did live to the age of two hundred years; and the old philosopher who carried a brick about as a specimen of the house he desired to sell. But, older than Hierocles--old as Horace--is the stupid fellow who, wanting to cross a stream, sat down upon the bank to wait for all the water to run by. The French king who said, “After me, the deluge,” was thought to be original, but the phrase is found in the Greek of two thousand years ago; as is also the proverb, “There is many a slip between the cup and the lip,” which was the appropriate inscription upon the drinking cup of a rich Greek. Every one knows the lady who insists that her age is but thirty, and whose friend asserts that he believes her, because he has heard her say so “any time these ten years.” Bacon, in his “Apothegms,” asserts that the same anecdote is told of Cicero.--EDMUND KIRKE, _North American Review_.

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In morals, quite as truly as in physics, the profitable time to deal with any evil is in its incipient stage:

The diseases that occupy the physician most are maladies that have reached an advanced stage, when it is not easy to combat them. On the other hand, the study of diseases at their outset, when they yield best to treatment, is almost neglected. It is certain that if every physician were also a trained physiologist, watching to relieve the slightest functional troubles, he would often be able to recognize small changes that are the common preludes to grave maladies.--_Revue Scientifique._

The Rev. C. A. S. Dwight, in an article on “Timing the Sun,” writes as follows:

There is a story of a punctilious Yankee who was fond of boasting that his watch had never been slow or fast for forty years. One morning he rose to see the sun rise. He kept looking at his wonderful watch and consulting at the same time a farmers’ almanac. There was a pause in the dawn. The Yankee grew impatient. Tapping his watch, he exclaimed: “If that sun ain’t over the hill in a minute and a half he’ll be late!”

Some men have “views” which they have carefully carried with them for years, as that Yankee did his watch. If events do not square with their views, so much the worse for the events. All such measurings of the eternal by the local tests of human opinion or of conventional standards is vain. The sun knows what he is about. It is the part of wisdom to correct one’s timepiece by the sun and not to try to run unassisted the astronomical machinery of the whole universe.

A gentleman had a fine setter-dog who was accustomed to take his daily bone, with due allowance of meat adhering, to the lawn to enjoy at his leisure. On one occasion he observed several magpies planning to get a share of the dainty. They quietly approached the dog and placed themselves one at the head, about two feet from the animal, who was too busy to notice them, a second near the tail, and one or two by his side. When all were placed, the bird near the dog’s tail gave a sudden nip to that member. The dog, of course, wheeled to catch the offender, who fled, while his hungry comrades rushed to the bone, hastily snatching what they could. The fleeing magpie led the outraged dog to some distance, drawing him on by fluttering as if injured, without really taking flight.--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our Brother.”

The best strategy in life is frequently to take advantage of an enemy’s mistakes.

In Mark Twain’s “Autobiography,” in the _North American Review_, is General Grant’s own opinion in regard to the inception of Sherman’s march to the sea.

“Neither of us originated the idea of Sherman’s march to the sea. The enemy did it,” said Grant.

He went on to say that the enemy necessarily originated a great many of the plans that the general on the opposite side gets the credit for. In this case, Sherman had a plan all thought out, of course. He meant to destroy the two remaining railroads in that part of the country, and that would finish up that region. But General Hood made a dive at Chattanooga. This left the march to the sea open to Sherman, and so, after sending part of his army to defend and hold what he had acquired in the Chattanooga region, he was perfectly free to proceed with the rest of it through Georgia. He saw the opportunity, and he would not have been fit for his place if he had not seized it.

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This is the fable of a spider as quoted from _Blackwood’s Magazine_:

A spider, it seems, had occasion to borrow a sum of money. A journey round to the generously disposed brought him two thousand cowries each from the cat, the dog, the hyena, the leopard, and the lion. When pay-day came round, the spider remained at home to receive the visits of the creditors in a certain prearranged order. First came the cat to claim repayment of his loan. “Hush!” said the spider. “I hear a noise outside--it is a dog come to see me; you must hide under this calabash for safety.” The cat was scarcely hidden when the dog, coming in, made a similar request for his money. Says Master Spider, “There is a cat under that calabash; take him, and consider the debt paid.” No sooner said than done. Just then a snuffling and scraping were heard at the door. The third creditor, the hyena, had arrived. “Don’t be alarmed, my dear dog, but hide here till he has left,” and the spider bustled him under the calabash. “I smell a dog,” said the hyena, routing about. “Under that calabash,” the spider replied. “Eat him up, and your debt is paid.” The dog paid the penalty of his simplicity, and all was quiet once more. The hyena was preparing to leave, when he heard an ominous sound that sent him crouching against the wall. It was the pattering of the leopard’s feet at the door. “Quick! Under this calabash,” cried his host, and the hyena curls up in the fatal cache, only to meet a like fate from his more courageous enemy. “My debt is repaid!” said the leopard, and ran against the lion coming in. A terrible fight ensued, for the leopard and the lion are equal in strength, so the natives say. While blood and dust make havoc in the house, and both animals are exhausting their strength, the spider is busy at the fire. Seizing a pot of boiling grease, he pours it over the clawing mass. Leopard and lion roll apart in their death agony, and the spider has only to straighten and clean up before resuming once more the humdrum life of fly-catching.