Studies in Life from Jewish Proverbs

by W. A. L. Elmslie

III

In the third place, the words of the Wise were given an honoured place in the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. To some that may be an unexpected statement. It is well-known that Jesus was intimately familiar with the doctrine of the Prophets, and many have perceived how conscious He was of all that is admirable in the Law, the spiritual essence of which He fulfilled. But, though His interest in the Wise is seldom noted, it is no less true that He had considered deeply and sympathetically the idea of the Divine Wisdom, and was familiar with the famous proverbs that sought to apply its guidance alike to the greatest and the least of our affairs. Just how often a memory of Wisdom is traceable in the recorded words of Jesus cannot be determined with certainty. Verbatim allusions are rare, perhaps because the ideas of the Wise and their more memorable sayings had become so familiar in our Lord’s time as to be common ground between hearer and teacher, so that often it was only the point made by the Wise that was hinted at, or caught up and given some new turn and emphasis. But echoes from the thoughts and images of the proverbs are so frequent in the Gospels that together they furnish ample evidence of His having known and valued the ancient treasury of Wisdom. The evidence is, of course, cumulative, and its strength must not be judged by the following few illustrations.[99]

No fewer than seven of the eight Beatitudes (Matt. 53ff) recall proverbs of the Wise; what had been, as it were, a seed of thought in the proverb finding ripe expression in the Beatitude. For instance, Blessed are the poor (i.e., humble) in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, said Jesus—Better, said the Wise, is it to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the spoil with the proud (Pr. 1619). With Jesus’ condemnation of mischievous talk, Every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement; for by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned (Matt. 1236, 37), compare Pr. 1820, 21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof (also Pr. 132, 154, 2123, etc.). With the teaching, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth ... but in heaven, compare Pr. 114, 28, 1516, 168, etc. Give us this day our daily bread seems to echo Pr. 308: Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the bread that is needful for me. In the command for generous dealing, Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away (Matt. 542), there is perhaps a precise reminiscence of Pr. 328: Say not unto thy neighbour, “Go and come again” when thou hast it with thee (cp. also Pr. 1917 with Matt. 2540); and again when Jesus encouraged His disciples saying Be not anxious how or what ye shall speak.... For it is not ye that speak but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you (Matt. 1019, 20), perhaps the very words of Pr. 161 were in His memory: The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord?

Some of the immortal images in our Lord’s parables may have been painted from the thought suggested by a proverb. In the parable of Luke 147-11, the command not to seek the highest seats at the banquet may originate in the saying of Pr. 256 as much as in the concrete examples of the failing which contemporary life no doubt afforded. So also the famous parable of the two houses, one built on rock, the other on sand, perhaps goes back to the seed-thought in Pr. 127: The wicked are overthrown and are not, but the house of the righteous shall stand; and the proverb Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day will bring forth, Pr. 271, might be text for Christ’s parable of the rich man and his barns (Luke 1216-21). Again when Jesus, speaking of the kingdom of heaven, likens it to a marriage feast (Matt. 221-14; etc.) and elsewhere compares it in its infinite value to a hidden precious pearl, there are details in the language used which suggest that the picture of Wisdom’s banquet (Pr. 91-5), and the proverbs on the incomparable worth of Wisdom were not far distant from His mind.

More important than even the certain or possible verbal reminiscences of the proverbs is the resemblance between the manner of Jesus’ teaching and the manner of the Wise. Like them, He also taught in the streets, seeking the people where they were most easily to be found; and though His words were infinite in depth of insight and spiritual grandeur, He was wont to clothe them in simple language—now quoting a telling proverb, Physician, heal thyself, now kindling imagination by a familiar but graphic metaphor or comparison that went home to the heart, and challenged the conscience, and was comprehensible to learned and unlearned equally. Like the Wise, He spoke constantly on those simple but supreme issues which concern every man that cometh into the world; and His highest doctrine was often cast, like the lessons of ancient Wisdom, in brief sentences that refused to be forgotten: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God—He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it. Many readers will realise that the deepest thing concerning the relation between Jesus Christ and Wisdom has not yet been referred to, but that we deliberately reserve. Enough has been said for the present purpose.

Who in face of all these facts would dare to maintain that the Wise-men toiled to no purpose. Their love’s labour was not lost. In the issue of the struggle with Hellenism and the revival of the Jewish national consciousness with its unique moral and religious features, some of them witnessed a result such as their teaching, whether they were fully conscious of the fact or not, had tended to achieve.

But also there came gradually in later generations, and in lands of which they had not so much as heard, a rich reward of which the end is not yet in sight. Could they but have foreseen even a small corner of this ultimate harvest field, how completely depression would have vanished, and all mistrust of God’s dealings with faithful men been lifted from their minds! Their proverbs were laid on the foundation of a religious and ethical idealism, and if some have proved to be only wood, hay and stubble, others were gold, silver and costly stones, and these have obtained a place in the temple of eternal Truth. Doubtless the imperfections of the Wise were great and their failures and disappointments many, but all the time they were building far better than they knew. Is it not always so with every courageous effort after righteousness, every honest search for the kingdom of the living God?

CHAPTER XII
Values

Our fathers required no volumes on the Humanism of the Bible. They felt themselves close-linked with its heroes; Patriarchs, Judges, Warriors, Kings, and Prophets were their kith and kin, not in blood, but in the nearer relationship of human experience. Saul, in his pride, his jealousy and desolate death, stood in warning beside them; David, pattern of faith and fortitude in adversity, was at their right hand, so that in their distresses men would take courage, remembering that David also had cried unto the Lord and been delivered. But the perspective of the years has ceased to be foreshortened, and between our generation and the old world of the Bible a great gulf now seems fixed. Nevertheless our fathers were right, and we are wrong. Saul and David and the men of the Bible are not separated from us by 3,000 years, nor yet by one year, for difference of race and custom are trivialities compared with the fundamental conditions of life and the unalterable principles of character. Our predecessors may have made too light of the differences, but that is a small fault compared with the modern tendency to ignore the resemblances: not to ask “What do these men and these events say to us concerning the eternal things we share with them?” is to miss the one thing needful.

To illustrate the argument, recollect that skeleton of dates, William the Conqueror 1066 ... which not so long ago did duty in our schools for the record of the glory of England. What could have been more ineffective for revealing the soul of history? Now-a-days, the tale is better told but, even so, be the events narrated never so graphically, unless they are conceived in relation to ourselves we are little benefited. To use the famous simile of the prophet, bone may come to its bone, and sinews be upon them, and flesh come up and skin cover them above, until the very semblance of men rises before our eyes; but there will be no breath in them. Only when it is realised how out of the living past has grown the living present, only then enters the breath of God into the men of old and they live and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army—to our aid in the shaping of what is to be. History is profitable in so far as its significance for the present is understood.[100] Thus, with fine insight, the Jews perceived that even their majestic Law would be of no avail if it were heard only as the recital of words delivered long ago at Sinai, and accordingly the exhortation ascribed to Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy comes to its climax in this deep saying: The commandment is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say “Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it down unto us, and make us hear it, that we may do it?”... But the Word is very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.[101]

And so also in like manner this account of the history behind the Jewish proverbs has not been told in order to evoke for a brief moment nerveless phantoms of the Wise in ancient Israel, but with the hope that a voice would be heard saying even of this Word “It is very nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.” What is the significance for us of these men and their experiences?

Consider some of the features of this Movement, if so precise a term may for convenience be applied to the easy, natural, teaching of Wisdom. In the first place observe the thorough and effective contact established by the teachers of Wisdom with the people they sought to reach. One of the main problems confronting Christianity is the severance of the potential influence of its Churches from the life of the people; verily Mahomet sits waiting for the mountain. What then? Ought the Churches to be abandoned, and men go a-worshipping in the market-place? “Impractical—at the best it would soon lose its effect—the experiment has been made, with sadly limited results”: a thousand valid objections! But the problem must not be dismissed so lightly with a bare consideration of its obvious difficulties, for the issues at stake are too serious; the bulk of the population live perilously free from the stimulus of any Ideal, whether self-sought or impressed from without by the teaching of others. Seeing then that the Wise succeeded where we have missed the mark, their ways must at least deserve a scrutiny; here is a method by which the poor were preached to, and religion stood daily in the streets and morals in the market-place; here is idealism put in language the unlearned could both comprehend and recollect. Indeed the proverb was wonderfully suited to their needs, for even its riddles were easily solved, not darkening counsel but devised only to awaken curiosity and so assist the slow and simple mind. Of course a slavish imitation of the Wise-men’s procedure is out of the question in modern circumstances, but slavish imitation is not suggested. Said Sir Joshua Reynolds when urging the students of the Royal Academy to the study of the Old Masters, “The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.” There is a force of idealism latent in almost all men, but it requires to be brought to the surface, examined, criticised and judiciously directed to the attainment of practical objects; otherwise the greater part of its potential energy will never be brought into action; and in this easy-going land of ours there is more than normal scope for increased discipline of the mind. We can afford to think much harder than we have ever yet done without losing the virtue of humorous, tolerant good-nature. As Mr. Clutton Brock has said recently, “The fact that some thinking is bad is not a reason why we should not think at all. The Germans have been encouraged by their bad thinking to exercise certain virtues perversely and to bad ends, but still to exercise them in a manner which has astonished the world; while we have been little encouraged by thinking, good or bad, to exercise any virtues.”[102] There is ample room for more outspoken interest in the ends and principles of human life, more earnest and stringent consideration of the problems of social organisation—provided our discussions be undertaken, not in the spirit of silly contention, mere bolstering up of unconsidered prejudice, but in a sincerity that will be both more critical and yet more humbly eager, for truth’s sake, to learn one from another. For it is not division of opinion, or even real conflict of interest that prevents and retards reform, so much as the dead weight of ignorance, of indifference and of paltry pride in argument—the very sins which in the past were the prime cause of the evils that call for remedy.

No less than the ancient Hebrews we moderns stand in need of the exhortation to let Wisdom enter into our hearts and knowledge be pleasant unto our souls (cp. Pr. 210). Neither with all our heart, nor even with all our mind, far less with all our soul, have we yet sought her whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace (Pr. 317); nor have we understood sufficiently that she is a tree of life to all that lay hold on her, and happy is every one that retaineth her (Pr. 318). Says a later Jewish proverb, Lackest thou Wisdom, what hast thou acquired? Hast acquired Wisdom, what lackest thou? (C. 93.)

Secondly, the constant intimate contact that the Wise maintained with the actualities of men’s ordinary experience was beneficial not only to the taught but to the teachers. It kept the Wise in touch with work-a-day problems (the most difficult of tasks for the idealistic thinker), and so helped to make their toil productive. It taught them how to bring Heavenly Wisdom down from the right hand of God that she might dwell with men, and make their homes pure and loving, and their business just, and their pleasures clean. And herein is a thought of no little encouragement for preachers and teachers in these days of not overcrowded Churches. Somehow it seems that personal contact is invaluable in the moral and spiritual education of man. That is why the leading article, with its scores of thousands of readers, may sometimes have less effect than a good sermon heard by a few hundred. The Press addresses us from an Olympian but distant Fleet Street, thundering at us—but in cold print; whereas the parson and the teacher, if he is a true man, somewhere and to some few is a neighbour and a friend. However excellent the Manual of Ethics, it will not serve to influence the lives of many. The Son of Man, it seems, must come eating and drinking and teaching in our streets.

In the next place, this Movement is an interesting and important example of independent as opposed to systematic instruction, illustrating both the weaknesses as well as the strength of pronounced individualism, and supporting the opinion that, if only one safeguard be present, the advantages of individualism outweigh its dangers. Teachers less restricted than the Wise it is difficult to imagine. Each was free to develop his own opinions on the nature of life and the principles of success and failure, even to the point of open agnosticism. What prevents such licence from becoming chaos? The reply indicated by the Wisdom Movement is that freedom, even extreme freedom, of judgment in matters of conduct and faith will not result in chaos provided there is an underlying unity of aim. All the Wise were lovers of Wisdom. They conceived their theme in different fashions, but they had all the same intention—to teach and to practise Wisdom and not Folly; hence, despite the diversity in their proverbs, the shifting standpoints, the variety of ethical standards, even the contradictions of advice, their teaching was ultimately effective. If we had had space to consider their work in relation to other movements in the intellectual life of that period, both in Palestine and also in the wider world, it would have been easy to show that the immaturities in the Wise-men’s thoughts, the uncertainties of their faith and ethic (the very points on which the cynical would pounce as evidence of failure) on a wider and wiser survey of the facts were in reality co-operating influences, clearing the way for a deeper, fuller, faith. Truth is eternal, but men’s apprehension of it is progressive; and it should be insisted that, given the presence of one fundamental purpose so that an ultimate unity of spirit must necessarily exist, divergence of opinion, even on matters of high importance, does not indicate weakness or indecision or decay, but rather is a sign of vitality and hope. The reason for this is obvious. Final statements can be made only with regard to the conceptions of the abstract sciences, such as mathematics, or to the judgments we can sometimes pass on lost causes; and on the other hand power to perceive the imperfection of present attainment has ever been, and still is, the prime condition of human progress: “God,” said John Robinson, minister of the Pilgrim Fathers, “has yet more truth to break forth out of His Word.”

The bearing on modern Christianity is not far to seek. A doctor recently remarked to the present writer that one had only to enter the several Churches of a certain town to discover that Christians were now in hopeless confusion, ignorant as to what they did or did not believe, and that if the professed followers of the faith could not state their doctrine coherently, others might well be excused from attempting the task of ascertaining what Christianity now meant. The argument is not unusual, but it is profoundly mistaken. It might have been retorted that divergencies of medical opinion (and many patients will bear witness that they are neither slight nor few) are no indication whatever of the essential unsoundness of the science of medicine, but rather the guarantee of its advance into more accurate knowledge. Moreover had the critic been in actual touch with the feeling and activities of the Churches in question, he would have recognised that the points of disagreement, though important, were not upon the vital question of faith in God and general attitude towards life; so that whilst he personally might still have been unable to accept Christian belief, he could not possibly have formulated such an indictment as appears above. The real peril of Christian theology has not been vagueness, but the Hellenic tendency to essay the definition of all things to the last iota. But from the perils inherent in that attitude Christianity has been delivered by the passionate instinct of mankind for truth, and by the reforming energy of great individuals; and will be delivered, so long as the Church has faith in the guiding Spirit of God.

There is value in the Wise-men’s witness to the intimate relation between faith and morality. The religion of Israel in its higher development is magnificent in its clear recognition that the claim of God upon man is absolute, complete and not partial—if there be one God, Creator of heaven and earth, then certainly He besets us behind and before and lays His hand upon us—and that the love of God and the love of our fellow-men must be indissolubly related, faith being the inspiration of morality, and moral action the necessary outcome of faith. With these sublime beliefs, proclaimed by Prophets and Psalmists, the Wise were in accord: they also in their more homely fashion recognised the universality of the Divine claim, and its operation in the realm of moral duty. Perhaps those thoughts may seem to some readers only elementary and obvious ideas on spiritual things. But they ought to be regarded not as elementary (and therefore of small account) but as fundamental and vital conceptions. Every student of comparative religion would testify how great and terrible a gulf in human life was crossed when first a Hebrew Prophet conceived the thought that God desireth mercy and not sacrifice, not ceremonial worship but philanthropy (in the true sense of the word), and how glorious a hope for the future of religion then dawned upon our race. Moreover the fact remains that, even if to many these thoughts of God and the nature of His service may be no novelty, even if they have grasped the idea in its full significance and are conscious of its exact bearing on manifold contemporary affairs, there is still room for its reaffirmation. Said a soldier in France, after a discussion about Christianity to which he had listened intently and with some surprise, “But, as I understand it, religion is all talk about heaven. What’s it got to do with morality?” Religion has got to do with morality, and morality, like the demand for truth and the instinct for the beautiful, penetrates life through and through to its least details. Christianity is not a bargain with the Deity entailing magical immunity from hardship in this life and special privileges in the next. It is such an attitude of the essential personality as should wholly determine our activities in each and every aspect life can present to us, both now and hereafter. The scope of religion is as wide as our interests; and what could serve more happily to remind us of that fact than these Jewish proverbs which, beginning with the fear of God, range from kings to labourers, from merry men to broken hearts, from dreams of perfect justice to cynical observations on the uses and advantages of bribes? Wisdom is indeed ubiquitous: Divers weights and false balances are an abomination unto the Lord, say the Wise in the busy mart; and then in the hour of leisure and of plenty It is not good to eat much honey—and all this in the name of transcendent Wisdom, whose fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; Wisdom that was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.

Incidentally we have also to note how thoroughly these proverbs, by reason of the range of interest of which we have just been speaking, and by the sensible attitude they endeavour to preserve, illustrate the Humanism of the Bible; for surely the most ungenerous of critics would not accuse them of being unpractical or absorbed in supra-mundane matters. The point has already been emphasised, and therefore we will not dwell upon it again, except to remark its importance as one instance of a general principle: that Idealism to be effective must needs grow out of the soil of commonsense. There is a degree beyond which existing facts must not be disregarded. For example, men have not mastered the art of flight by ignoring gravitation, but by having studied its laws and conquered the difficulties they present. In the admirable words of a friend of the writer, “Christian opinion is peculiarly liable to the danger of running counter to the average common sense in the midst of which it finds itself; that is a natural alternative to simply falling into line with current common sense views.... Thought that has its head in the clouds must have its feet planted firmly in sound common sense, if its heart is to be in the right place.... No one can think of Jesus as the devotee of a faddist cult. He entered whole-heartedly into the common joys and sorrows and into the common interests of the people: their wedding-feasts and their mourning for dead friends and their longing for freedom from the Roman yoke.... He entered by the open door of common sense, and led out the spirit of man into a larger life than it had ever conceived.”[103] Omitting the superlative “ever,” these words in italics are wonderfully apposite in reference to the genius of the Wisdom Movement in Israel.

There is value for us in the confidence which the Wise-men showed in their attitude towards life. They, like ourselves, lived in an age when all things were being put to trial, and doubt and perplexity were rife. They were aware that even their instinctive fundamental ideas were under challenge, aware that the path they followed was unfinished; and yet, as the general tone of the proverbs indicates, they lived with firmness and decision, and therefore achieved much. They were wise indeed in that they perceived the issue between good and evil to be clear enough for a man to choose which of the twain he will pursue. Having chosen, these men did not content themselves with expressing a timorous hope that the moralistic view of life might ultimately be proved correct; they did battle for righteousness, valiantly and practically. So with ourselves. Stringent and systematic application of the test of reason is a most necessary attitude to preserve, but it is not a whit less necessary, despite our uncertainty regarding ultimate problems of existence, early in life to form a definite idea whither we wish to direct our steps. To do so is the only highway to an effective life. Nor is it unreasonable to demand from men that much resolution, for Good and Evil do present themselves quite distinctly as alternative routes. Of course, all the coward in us and all the sluggard prompts a protest for delay: we see a hundred reasons for postponing judgment, or for arranging a compromise between the claimants; “our philosophy is unsettled; we have neither proved God to our complete satisfaction, nor has He clearly justified His ways to us: so that surely it is not reasonable to insist that we make choice (and therefore, we take it, the subsidiary matter of our unwillingness need not arise)—let us drift a little longer through these puzzling mists.” Nothing but a bold decision for Wisdom or for Folly ever clears those mists away. To shirk the challenge (as some do all their lives) is easy and at first may seem the natural course to adopt, but it entails a heavy penalty. It deprives us of any firm criterion of judgment, and we must needs go fumbling with the golden opportunities which come but return not. Take then the Wise for an example. Uncertainty they felt, but uncertainty did not paralyse their power, because they met perplexities in the open field of action. From us, as from them, many secrets of creation are concealed; but some things are certainly evil and some are pure and good. A blessing and a curse are set before us, and the difference between them is in no way obscure. We ought to choose the blessing; and then, in faith that the Good is really and ultimately the True, act vigorously in support of our belief. Wisdom we know and Folly we know; Christ we have seen and the fruits of wickedness: in the name of sanity how much clearer need the issue be?

Passing from the methods and manner of the Movement, it is encouraging to turn for a moment to the thought of its success. When we measure the might of the forces making against Wisdom, the numbers and influence of those bent on pleasure or on riches with scant regard, or none at all, for nobler possibilities in life, it is wonderful that the ideals of the Wise should have become known to vast numbers of men in alien lands, and that, enshrined in the Bible, their influence should still remain unexhausted. Had the memory of them continued in honour only for a century or two and been restricted to the limits of the Jewish communities, even that would have been a result exceeding what had once seemed probable. For Hellenism was a monstrous flood apparently capable of sweeping away far larger obstacles than all Judaism combined—priests, prophets, and Wise-men—could raise against its onset. But Wisdom and Law and Prophets survived the deluge, quite unharmed and indeed strengthened by the trial they had undergone. Why was it so? How comes it to pass that the Wise after all do not toil in vain; that the Crucified conquers; that St. Paul, who in his lifetime can establish no more than a few struggling Churches, eventually commands the intellect of Greece and subdues the power of Rome? Surely because, in the words of yet another great passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, Elisha’s vision in beleaguered Dothan was no mirage in the eyes of a famine-haunted man, but truth of truth, and the mountains of Reality which compass the City of Human Faith are full of the chariots of the Lord of Hosts. Christianity is not dying, nor is the Church doomed, nor is the work of idealists in this generation of no avail. Rather he is blind that imagines so, blind to the armies that in the soul of Man do battle for the one eternal God.

Such are some of the reflections prompted by the history of the Wisdom Movement. We come now to what those unacquainted with the events we have been describing may have imagined to be the only, as it is the most obvious and perhaps the most important, gift the Jewish Sages have left for our inheriting—the proverbs themselves, considered apart from their origin or use in relation to any particular historical events. Not all the sayings are of value in themselves, for some are trivial and some are obsolete, some have been said better, and a few were better left unsaid. But there remain many having permanent interest, and many that speak deep and undying truth, truth which we, no less than our fathers, have need to learn, and which those who come after us will have to learn or suffer loss. Had we chosen to use such proverbs as texts whereon to build discussion, illustration or enforcement of their thoughts and counsels, they are enough to fill not one but many volumes of this size. For stirring subjects would open up on every side. How shrewd, for example, are these Jewish maxims in their insistence that principle should precede practice, that success in life is won not by experiment unguided by fixed purpose but by the early adoption of certain great principles which our experiences will continually test and interpret, clarify and confirm! How sensible in their demand for the use of unsparing criticism—both the discipline of self-imposed criticism, and the humility that will receive, and, if necessary, assent to the reproof of others! How true the instinct which taught them to feel that real Wisdom is not merely an intellectual affair; so that they bid men seek not learning but rather the power to use it for right purposes, not knowledge of fact so much as the understanding mind. It is of profound importance in life this distinction between intelligence and knowledge. As the late Lord Cromer remarked to one of his friends soon after the outbreak of the European war, “I believe that Germany will live in history as the supreme example of the failure to distinguish Wisdom from Learning.” It is Wisdom that the Jewish Sages preached. And how wise they were in the emphasis they lay on the necessity of application in the difficult task of awakening and cultivating the dormant powers of the mind.[104] Above all, how more than wise, how humane, are they in depicting Wisdom in lovely colours, not as cold and repellent, but as warm and welcoming, an infinitely desirable, compassionate Friend of Humanity! How much we have still to learn from them in that respect, we who are not yet wholly delivered from an age that of set purpose hid the fascinating light of knowledge under a bushel of dull and unimaginative discipline, making education seem a thing to be endured;—till we grew up—and depicting Morality as an All-seeing Eye, unblinkingly on the watch for our misdemeanours, a sort of inescapable Super-Spy! And again, treating the proverbs from this general point of view, what inexhaustible variety of themes would be at our disposal—education, commerce, responsibility, virtue and vice, hardships, luxury, marriage and friendship, idleness and diligence; in fact we might talk “of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings”; an embarras de richesses.

The remaining pages of this volume will be given to a review of certain of the Jewish proverbs, grouped under several topics. The principle on which these topics and the proverbs used in their illustration have been selected is chiefly the avoidance of repetition, so far as has proved reasonably convenient. Obviously, many most suitable subjects, such as the personal virtues, and many sayings that might fittingly be quoted in exposition of the themes actually chosen for the following pages, have already been utilised in our account of the Wisdom Movement. These then, with a few exceptions, will not be reproduced again, partly because there is little need to draw upon them, the stock of Jewish proverbs being far from exhausted, but mainly because it is to be hoped that their wit and wisdom for ourselves and for all men did not pass unnoticed and unconsidered in the historical setting. The sins of omission of which the following pages are guilty are patent even to the author. If they rouse the reader into making a better selection for himself, good and again good.

To preserve a thread of connection with what precedes, we may commence by reviewing first Nature and then Humour in the Jewish sayings, both of which subjects have not only a certain general interest, but will help further to show how the proverbs can contribute to our realisation of the Humanism of the Bible.

CHAPTER XIII
Nature in the Proverbs

In comparison with the Greeks and those peoples who have inherited something of the Grecian genius for form and colour in the world, it may fairly be said that the Hebrews were inartistic. When, however, they are charged with being “unresponsive to Nature,” or “lacking the artistic sense,” it is time to protest. For the Hebrews were not unobservant of Nature or unsympathetic, and the writers of the Old Testament make many allusions to the scenes and processes of the visible world, and they recognise its beauties and its marvels. The artist’s proper quarrel with the Hebrews is that very seldom did they see Nature in and for itself, but almost always through the medium of its relationship to the mental or physical interests of Man—how far does Nature threaten or encourage his faith and aspirations? What does it teach him? The Psalmist does not tell you “what a glorious night it is” or that “the sunset is magnificent”; he says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. We are bidden to lift our eyes to the hills, not to perceive the lights and shadows on their slopes, but because thence we may look to see the advent of our hope. Let us set two famous passages in contrast, the first from Greek literature, the second from the New Testament. In one of Pindar’s jewelled Odes, the poet—singing the praises of Iamos, a mortal born of the god Poseidon and a human mother—first paints in rich and glowing words a picture of the infant hero laid in a cradle among the rushes, “his soft body bedewed with light from the yellow and purple colours of the pansies,” and then goes on to show him, now grown to manhood and tasting the first fresh glory of his youth, “going down to the midst of the Alphæus stream, there to invoke the regard of his divine progenitor and to beseech of him the favour of a hero’s task—νυκτὸς, ὑπαίθρις, by night under the open sky.”[105] No one who has ever felt the magic of a star-filled night can miss the art that makes the passage culminate in those two words. Now compare this from the New Testament, of course in reference to the literary question only:— ... “So when he had dipped the sop, he taketh and giveth it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. And after the sop, then entered Satan into him. Jesus therefore saith to him, That thou doest, do quickly. Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him. For some thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus said unto him, Buy what things we have need of for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor. He then having received the sop went out straightway: and it was night.”[106] Here also is art, the highest art—it needed the darkness to cover Judas and make possible his sin—but the art is unconscious. The words are given only as a detail of fact, an indication of time, added without a thought of their effect on our emotions. The writer of the Gospel is altogether absorbed in the agonising human interest of the scene.

No expectation therefore should be entertained that Nature in the Jewish proverbs will be presented with unusual beauty or close observation. Nothing very wonderful is remarked of the world outside the little world of man, and the allusions almost always are made in relation to human hopes and fears and habits. But Nature has not been expelled from the proverbs; she crops out now and then, and, if we bear in mind this warning against undue hopes, the subject seems worth a brief examination. Well then, the following proverbs are assembled solely on account of their references to natural phenomena. That is the one and only pretext for their collocation. Some perchance may say that the excuse is insufficient—but they forget that “a touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.”

Since tradition saith of Solomon that “he spake of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes,” we can see where we ought to make a start.

We begin with the trees. The trees however will disappoint us. Wisdom, we are baldly told, is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her (Pr. 318), and it is said (Pr. 2718) Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof. Even if we get so far as to spy a little fruit upon a tree, and imagine that we have it safely gathered, lo! and behold! it rolls out of our fingers. For the famous proverb,

Like apples of gold in baskets of silver,
So is a word spoken in season (Pr. 2511),

is pretty but elusive, the truth being that the vague phrasing of the English Version is due to nobody knowing what the Hebrew really means! The best passage is this from Ben Sirach, As the flower of roses in the time of new fruits, as lilies at the waterspring, as the shoot of Lebanon in time of summer, ... as an olive tree budding forth fruit, and as an oleaster with branches full of sap (E. 508-10).

Here are the birds in proverbs:

In vain is the net spread in the eyes of any bird (Pr. 117).

As a bird that wandereth from its nest
So is a man that wandereth from his home (Pr. 278).

Birds resort unto their like,
And truth will return to them that practise it (E. 279).

The eye that mocketh at a father,
And despiseth an aged mother,
The ravens of the brook shall pick it out,
And the young eagles shall eat it (Pr. 3017).

The beasts may be divided into the wild creatures untamed by man, and the domestic animals. Some of the latter are to be seen wandering most naturally through this picture of the wise farmer:

Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks,
And look well to thy herds;
For riches endure not for ever,
Nor wealth to all generations.
When the hay is carried and the tender grass springeth,
When the grass of the mountains is gathered,
Then the lambs will supply thee with clothing
And the goats yield the price of a field,
And give milk enough for thy household,
Enough for the maintenance of thy maidens (Pr. 2723-27).

For the horse see Pr. 263, E. 308 and 336; of the dog, whom we shall meet again in the next chapter, there is a famous saying in Eccles. 94, Better a living dog than a dead lion.

Among the wild animals, the lion (Pr. 3030) and the bear enjoy the most fearsome reputation according to the proverbs—The king’s wrath is as the roaring of the lion (Pr. 1912)—As a roaring lion and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over a poor people (Pr. 2815). But there are worse things than either—Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in his folly (Pr. 1712)—I will rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than keep house with a wicked woman (E. 2516). The references to conies, locusts, and lizards in Pr. 3026f may be remembered (see p. 47). Wine, said the Wise, goeth down smoothly, but (was there gout, or worse, in those days?) at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder (Pr. 2332), and the serpent’s elusive track across the rock is mentioned in Pr. 3019. Perhaps these references to snakes should have been placed at the head of a paragraph on creeping things. However that may be, one of the creeping things, being “exceeding wise” (Pr. 3024), received an immortality in Proverbs:

Go to the ant, thou sluggard,
Consider her ways and be wise ... (Pr. 66).

Cannot one see a Sage in some leisure hour, bending down to watch the busy energetic little creature hurrying about its toil? And then—“Aha!” said he, “behold a proper scourge for lazy bones”!

The one reference to fishes makes one wonder whether the days of yore, like our own times, had their sea-serpent season. Says Ben Sirach,

They that sail on the sea tell of the danger thereof,
And when we hear it with our ears we marvel.
Therein be also those strange and wondrous works,
Variety of all that hath life, the race of sea-monsters (E. 4324, 25).

The proverbs may lack something as a text-book for young scientists; yet here is the very essence of the fact of gravitation observed and duly noted: He that casteth a stone on high casteth it on his own head (E. 2725).

Two or three features in what one may call civilised Nature, are worth recording here, although Man played the chief part in their appearing:—

A glimpse of a battlemented town:

A wise man scaleth the citadel of the mighty,
And bringeth down its strong confidence (Pr. 2122).

Of great ships on the sea:

She is like the merchant ships,
She bringeth her food from afar (Pr. 3114).

Of a prosperous dwelling-place:

Through Wisdom is an house builded
And by understanding it is established,
And by knowledge are the chambers furnished,
With all precious and pleasant riches (Pr. 243, 4).

Curiously enough, no reference to sun, moon or stars occurs in Proverbs[107], but there are several allusions in Ecclesiasticus, especially in one remarkable chapter of really poetic appreciation, which tells first of the wonder and the blazing intolerable heat of the sun (E. 431-5), and then celebrates the glories of moon and stars and rainbow—the moon increasing wonderfully in her changing, a beacon for the hosts on high, shineth forth in the firmament of heaven. The beauty of heaven is the glory of the stars, an array giving light in the highest heights of the Lord: at the word of the Holy One they stand in due order and sleep not in their watches. Look upon the rainbow and praise him that made it; exceeding beautiful in the brightness thereof. It compasseth the heaven round about with a circle of glory; the hands of the Most High have constructed it (E. 438-12). Again in a panegyric on the virtues of Simon, the son of Onias, the high-priest “great among his brethren, and the glory of his people,”[108] Ben Sirach says that, when the people gathered round him as he came forth out of the sanctuary, he was glorious

As the morning star from between the clouds;
As the moon at the full;
As the sun shining forth upon the Temple of the Most High;
And as the rainbow giving light in clouds of glory (E. 506, 7).

The elements and seasons, in one way or another, are referred to not infrequently. For instance, Pr. 2513, As the coolness of snow in time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him[109]: a proverb we might appreciate more fully if either we had to go harvesting under an eastern sun or if His Majesty’s postal system were suddenly abolished.

As clouds and wind without rain,
So is he that boasts of gifts ungiven (Pr. 2514).

—how tantalising to see the precious moisture far overhead and drifting hopelessly out of reach, in a land where rain was desperately needed!

One passage from the poetical chapter of Ecclesiasticus mentioned above has something of the Grecian charm, combining as it does grace of expression with precise observation of Nature. Save in the spring-song of Canticles, in one or two Psalms and in some exquisite chapters (e.g., chapters 28 and 38) of Job, it has few, if any, rivals in ancient Jewish literature. Mark the skilful transition from the raging of the tempest to the stillness of the snows:—

By His mighty power Jehovah maketh strong the clouds,
And the hailstones are broken small:
At His appearing the mountains shake,
And at His will the south wind rages,
And the northern storm and the whirlwind;
The voice of His thunder maketh the earth to travail.
Like birds flying down He sprinkleth the snow,
And as the lighting of the locust is the falling down thereof:
The eye will marvel at its white loveliness,
The heart be astonished at the raining of it.
So also the hoar-frost He spreads on the earth as salt,
And maketh the shrubs to gleam like sapphires (E. 4315-19).[110]

Some of the simplest allusions to natural phenomena are among the most memorable of these “Nature” proverbs perhaps because it happens that the clear and simple image from the world without is linked to some equally clear and simple, yet poignant, experience of human life:—

As cold waters to a thirsty soul,
So is good news from a far country (Pr. 2525).

As in water face answereth to face,
So answereth the heart of man to man (Pr. 2719).

As the sparrow in her wandering, as the swallow in her flying,
So the curse that is causeless alighteth not (Pr. 262).

Dreams give wings to fools (E. 341).

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
Shining more and more unto the perfect day (Pr. 418).

CHAPTER XIV
Humour in the Proverbs

Discretion counsels the suppression of this chapter. Justice insists that it shall be written, for the Hebrews, on the evidence of the Scriptures, have been accused of lacking humour; a much more serious offence than being inartistic. Humour, divine gift, is no merely ornamental or superfluous quality we can easily afford to do without, but is the active antagonist of many deadly sins. From inordinate ambitions and peacock vanity humour is a strong deliverer. If only Germany could have laughed at herself now and then these past thirty years! Of course the mere fact that the accusation has been levelled against the Hebrews is nothing serious, for the same charge has actually been made against the Scotch; but whilst the Scot is well able to take care of his own reputation, few have been concerned to defend the Hebrew on this score.

The Bible is on the whole a solemn book, but remember the nature of its subjects. British humour is plentiful enough; but you will seek it in the pages of Punch rather than in our volumes of jurisprudence or in official histories or in impassioned orations urging the redress of wrongs, or in The Book of Common Prayer, or in the hymnaries. It is not fair to expect that Hebrew humour will show itself to full advantage in the Scriptures. However, the least promising material has a way of supplying against its will one form of humour—the unintentional; we can all quote some examples from the hymn-book. Of this unconscious humour, the Bible has its share. Many no doubt will recall that stricken Assyrian army of whom it is naïvely said in the Authorised Version that “when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” So in the proverbs there are numerous sayings which to us are provocative of a laugh or a smile, or at least bring to memory certain amusing incidents of life, but which probably were uttered by their authors without a thought of anything comical in the words. Thus, the following, There is one that toileth and laboureth and maketh haste, and is so much the more behind (E. 1111), may be meant as a solemn inculcation of the doctrine “More haste, less speed,” but we conjure up a vision of our fussy friend and see the fun in it. Again the remark (Pr. 2617), He that passeth by and vexeth himself with strife not belonging to him is like one that taketh a dog by the ears (and then finds he dare not let go!), is to us amusing but to its author may have seemed merely a shrewd or apt comparison; and yet in this instance we may suspect the Sage also had a smile for the impulsive man’s predicament. Is the humour of this unconscious: Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord (Pr. 1914)? Far be it from a prudent man to say.

The question of Hebrew humour, however, goes much deeper. Doubtless there is a philosophy of laughter, and an ideal humour, possibly a standard joke to which all other jokes imperfectly conform; but what the definition of this perfect humour may be who dare yet say? At present the nations have each their own opinion and the divergencies are great. We must ask of the Hebrew no more than Hebraic humour, and it does not necessarily follow that his notion of fun will coincide with ours or even nearly resemble it. Was he humorous in an Eastern way?—nothing more can reasonably be required.

What then was the way of humour in the Semitic East? Fortunately life in Palestine has altered so little that modern observation can help us to an answer. “The first appearance of an Eastern”, writes Dr. Kelman[111], “is grave and solemn, with an element of contempt in it rather trying to the stranger. The Eastern does not understand chaff, his wildest outbreak of humour reaching no further than those solemn and laboured puns of which he has always been so fond.... Perhaps it is due to the ever-present remembrance of danger that the Eastern—especially if he be an Arab—so often assumes a show of superiority and bullying swagger, which seem to the uninitiated quite impervious to any thought of fun. But the mask is easily laid aside, and the gravest and most contemptuous Syrian will suddenly collapse into harsh laughter or forget himself in childish interest. Their notion of entertainment differs so much from ours that Eastern “festivities” may appear to us only wearisome or even ridiculous. On one occasion we arrived at our tents to find a ‘poet’ or improvisator, waiting for us. The minstrel seated himself on the ground, while we formed a wide circle round him, and the camp-servants stood behind. From a cloth-bag he produced an instrument which bore close resemblance to a domestic shovel, much the worse for wear and perforated with little irregular holes as if it had been shot. He began to play, and sang a selection which soon conquered any levity that may have greeted his beginning. He had but a few tunes and they all ended in the Minor doh si lah, the lah being prolonged, diminuendo and tremolo, in a long wail that had a sob in it. While the wail was dying away his head was thrown forward and his face uplifted, the upper lip quivering rapidly and the eyes rolling from side to side. Then just as he seemed to have reached silence, came a quick spasmodic outburst, very loud and clear, with vigorous accompaniment, which in its turn died off in the same long wail. All this must be imagined with a wonderful sunset of gold in a sky of indigo and grey, against which the figure of the Arab sat in dark silhouette.” A pleasure so ludicrously sad would certainly seem to imply a lack of humour in those who can enjoy it; but—“the minstrel whom we have described was quite open for joking when he had emerged from his ecstasy.... Often at night there is singing among the servants of the camp and outbursts of hilarity can be heard.... When a fantazia (to celebrate the gift of a fatted sheep) was held there was no possibility of mistake as to the mirth.” Thus there is good reason to mistrust appearances. And certainly it is inherently improbable that the Hebrews should have been devoid of humour; for, as Dr. Kelman goes on to insist, “the East is full of provocatives to mirth. Take the one instance of the camel. Much has been written about him from many points of view, but justice has never been done to the camel as a humorous animal. Yet he is the most humorous of all the inhabitants of the East. Beside him, with his sardonic pleasantry, the monkey is a mountebank and the donkey but a solemn little ass. He has been described as ‘the tall, simple, smiling camel’; but on closer acquaintance he turns out to be hardly as simple as he might be taken for, and if he smiles, he is generally smiling at you. The camels you meet in Syria are carrying barley with the air of kings and regarding their human companions with, at best, a contemptuous tolerance.” Dr. Kelman in conclusion comments on, and cites examples of the camel’s unsanctified capacity for conduct bearing a horrible resemblance to that abomination of human invention—the practical joke.

To sum up. Eastern humour is by no means non-existent, but being often deliberately concealed or restrained in the presence of strangers and being of a different temper from our own, it may easily fail to be observed by Western eyes. Generally speaking, it is apt to be of the most awkward Order of the Camel’s Hump, tending to other people’s disadvantage, fond of personalities, often coarse because primitive, and, it may be, cruel. This being so, it will now readily be understood that the Bible held for its contemporaries much more wit than we are wont to perceive in it. Thus to many a Hebrew the incidents of Jacob’s clever, and none too scrupulous, dealings narrated in Genesis would seem not only edifying but also extremely amusing. From this point of view such a saying as (Pr. 1712) Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in his folly is a merry jest; other examples from the proverbs will be given below.

But however plentiful this fierce and bitter kind of fun, the sting of the original accusation is not drawn. After all, our conviction remains deep-rooted that there is only one real humour—our humour; and no other brand is genuine. What men miss, and complain of missing, is that fine impartial sense of the ludicrous which is just as ready to see the disproportionate in ourselves as in others. The humour we demand is that kindly, tolerant, variety which can laugh at our own folly with profit and enjoyment, and at our neighbour’s without malice. But is even this best of all humour absent from the Bible? Rare it may be; absent altogether it is not, and with a certain triumph we venture to claim its presence in not a few of the Wise-men’s sayings, to which may be added an occasional proverb from the Rabbinic literature.

Beginning, however, with examples of the dry or caustic type of wit, camel-humour, let us take some of the sayings on Woman to illustrate the point. Doubtless the ladies had a great deal to say in reply, but with the customary meanness of man their remarks have been suppressed by the Sages:

As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout,
So is a fair woman without discretion (Pr. 1122).

It is better to dwell in the corner of the roof
Than in a wide house with a fractious woman (Pr. 2524; cp. 219).

A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike (Pr. 2715).

One saying there is on this topic, which comes nearer to our thought of humour, its bitterness being forgotten in the quaintness of the simile employed:

As the going up a sandy way is to the feet of the aged,
So is a wife full of words to a quiet man (E. 2520).

Some of the characters pictured in [Chapter VII]. lent themselves to sarcasm, particularly the Sluggard, and the Fool; but, if certain of the proverbs about them may seem too heavy-handed, touched with the camel brand of humour, others surely come near to being “the real thing.” Of the Sluggard the remark, He that is slack in his work is brother of him that is a destroyer (Pr. 189) is true, undeniably true, but a trifle icy in its wit. More amusing and much more genial were these sayings, which we may repeat from [Chapter VII].: The sluggard saith, “There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets” (Pr. 2613)—The sluggard burieth his hand in the dish, it wearieth him to bring it again to his mouth (Pr. 2615)—and, above all, the Sluggard’s Anthem, Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep (Pr. 2433). Of the Fool, some observations are almost savage, such as Pr. 1712 (quoted above), and this—Though thou bray a fool in a mortar ... yet will his folly not depart from him (Pr. 2722). The following are more subtle and on the whole more kind: The legs of the lame hang loose, so doth a story in the mouth of fools (Pr. 267)—The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth (Pr. 1724)—He that discourseth to a fool is as one discoursing to him that slumbereth; at the end of it he will say, “What is it?” (E. 228). But the Fool and Mr. Lazybones were ever an easy target: it needed a prettier wit to slay the Self-Advertiser with a word, but does not this saying despatch him neatly, It is not good to eat much honey; so for men to search out their own glory is not glory (Pr. 2527)?

Here is a pleasing pair of contrasts—to the disadvantage respectively of a would-be “silent Solomon,” and of a Chatterbox:

There is that keepeth silence, for he hath no answer to make;
And there is that keepeth silence as knowing his time (E. 206).
There is that keepeth silence and is found wise;
And there is that is hated for his much talk (E. 205).

In conclusion we give some proverbs that seem to the present writer still more clearly to come within the category of modern humour, whether by reason of their sly shrewdness or some droll comparison, or even a frank intention to rouse our sense of fun:

He that pleadeth his cause first seemeth just, but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him out (Pr. 1817).

Better is he that is lightly esteemed and hath a servant, than he that makes a fine show and lacketh bread (Pr. 129).

There is that buyeth much for a little and payeth for it again sevenfold (E. 2012).

In the city my Name, out of the city my Dress (C. 265).

Sixty runners may run, but they will not overtake the man who has breakfasted early (C. 86);

Thy friend hath a friend, and thy friend’s friend hath a friend (C. 258)—a canny hint on Gossip.

Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint (Pr. 2519).

If one person tell thee thou hast ass’s ears, take no notice;
Should two tell thee so, procure a saddle for thyself (C. 191).

If our predecessors were angels, we are human; if they were human, we are asses (C. 141)!

As for this last observation, it may have been well enough once upon a time, but of course one would not dream of asserting it now-a-days—as regards the present generation it would be, yes, altogether inappropriate. Well, let us not dispute the matter. Ancient and modern, East and West, we can all unite to enjoy the honest fun and good counsel of Ben Sirach’s advice (E. 1910) to that distracted individual the man with a secret:

Hast thou heard a word? Let it die with thee. Be of good courage, it will not burst thee!

CHAPTER XV
From Wisdom’s Treasury

WISDOM EXALTETH HER SONS, AND TAKETH HOLD ON THEM THAT LOVE HER:
HE THAT LOVETH HER LOVETH LIFE.
AND THEY THAT SEEK HER EARLY SHALL BE FILLED WITH GLADNESS:
HE THAT HOLDETH HER FAST SHALL INHERIT GLORY (E. 411, 12).

But Wisdom will brook nothing less than the full purport of those words—a diligent search, a genuine love, and an unrelaxing grasp—in exchange for her high rewards. And though it is better to find her late than not at all, as a rule it is true that only the life she has entered early is likely to know great happiness. Yet Wisdom makes no mystery of her treasures, nor hides them willingly.

Here are some of her most precious truths.

How simply told! How hard to make our very own!

As iron sharpeneth iron,
So man sharpeneth man.[112]

Faithful are the wounds of a friend.[113]

Who is ignorant of it? As Bacon says in his essay on Friendship, “There is no such flatterer as is a man’s self; and there is no such remedy against flattery as the liberty of a friend.” And yet how rarely, in actual experience, have men the grace to appreciate, or tolerate, even the kindliest of their critics.

* * * * *

A soft answer turneth away wrath.[114]

Have you tested the matter yet?

He whose spirit is without restraint is like a city that is broken down and hath no wall.[115]

* * * * *

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?
There is more hope of a fool than of him.[116]

Pride goeth before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before a fall.[117]

* * * * *

The wicked flee when no man pursueth.[118]

If a righteous man fall seven times, he riseth up again;
But the wicked are overthrown by calamity.[119]

* * * * *

He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.[120]

Be not wise in thine own eyes;
Fear the Lord and depart from evil.[121]

* * * * *

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;
But a wish fulfilled is a tree of life.[122]

Woe unto fearful hearts and to faint hands,
And to the sinner that goeth two ways!
Woe to the faint heart, for it believeth not;
Therefore shall it not be defended.
Woe unto you that have lost your patience!
What will ye do when the Lord shall visit you?[123]

There is no wisdom nor understanding,
Nor counsel against the Lord:
The horse is prepared for the day of battle,
But the victory is of the Lord.[124]

Truth stands:
Falsehood does not stand.[125]

* * * * *

This is a very long chapter;

Think on these things.

CHAPTER XVI
The Body Politic

The art of hurling texts dies out of fashion, is almost dead, perhaps because it yielded the delight of victory so seldom, but for deeper reasons also. It was ever a game at which two could play; the Scriptures proving so rich a quarry that your skilled antagonist would quote you text for text. Both Socialist and Individualist have found therein ammunition in plenty for their long quarrel, by reason of the disconcerting manner in which the Bible preaches both doctrines and gives its sanction to neither. Thus it never so much as questions the propriety of individual ownership, yet on the other hand continually and with awe-inspiring vehemence it is found denouncing the wickedness of individual owners and the wrongs arising from their sins and negligences. So for the unreflecting text-hunter confusion was apt to grow worse confounded. The existence of this impasse, which in reality pointed only to an error in method, has helped to create the notion, characteristic of the present time, that the Bible having failed to settle the difficulty, we ought to consider our problems entirely without its aid. So completely are we now supposed to be the sole arbiters of our conduct that, even if the Bible had been found to enjoin (or forbid) explicitly and beyond all possibility of doubt certain socialistic measures, it would in no way follow that what may have been right in Jerusalem long ago is right now, or what was wrong then wrong now. Up to a point this attitude is sound: not to consider our duties for ourselves, as if our ancestors or any external authority could rightly determine them for us without our active consent, is to fall into a sin that, however innocently committed, sooner or later benumbs the conscience and, if historical experience has any lesson whatsoever to teach, paralyses social progress.

But the legitimate distrust which the modernist feels for mere text-hunting can be, and often is, pushed too far. To construe it as a mandate contemptuously to ignore the thinking and ideals of the past is to be guilty of as foolish a blunder as ever was involved in the old method of determining an issue by proof-texts; for the relation between even the Old Testament and the social affairs of any modern community is far too valuable to be disregarded with impunity; and on these three grounds at least. First, the experiences of the Israelitish people constitute incomparably the most amazing national career the world has witnessed; and the story of their fortunes testifies for all time that one nation, situated in no secluded and sheltered corner of the globe, but occupying a little land encircled by vast and jealous Empires and covered time and again by the surge of successive civilisations, prolonged its life and in all essential respects maintained its identity, not by bread alone, but by words that proceeded out of the mouth of God. For, undeniably, Israel has preserved its continuity not merely through the stormy fourteen hundred years of which the Biblical records tell, but subsequently throughout the Christian era, in virtue of distinctive moral and religious qualities; and whatever view a man may hold regarding the truth of religion and the validity of morals, no serious student of human affairs can afford to overlook their practical effect in the history of the Jews. Secondly, in the course of that history (limiting our attention to the Old Testament literature) there appeared certain great personalities, in particular the true prophets, whose insight into the problems of society, whose enthusiasm for the welfare of men, and whose burning invective against all forms of injustice and oppression, ought to be familiar to every man who feels within him the sense of social obligation. The example of the Prophets of Israel and also, though less brilliantly, of her Psalmists, her Law-makers and her Wise-men, is a magnificent incentive to duty, quickening the conscience, stimulating one’s resolution under difficulties, and encouraging to good hope. In the third place, the record of these men’s thoughts frequently deserves our intellectual consideration. Modern industrialism has created unsolved problems of organisation and production, upon which it would be idle to contend that the conditions of life in the Judæan highlands offer valuable comment; but since modern commerce, for all its marvellous development of wealth and resources, has signally failed to remove the vast inequalities between man and man, indeed has only accentuated them and made the contrast still more bitter for the unskilled, the weakly, and the unfortunate, it follows that from the standpoint of human happiness the social problem is in its essence unchanged: the poor, in fact, are still with us, with their great virtues and also their shortcomings, their pathetic lack of opportunity, and often their failure to profit when they might, and above all, with their capacity for joy and sorrow and aspiration, which things they share with the richest in the land. No wonder that he who reads the Old Testament with intelligence and sympathy will constantly feel its words on the social needs of men not merely pricking his conscience but holding and challenging the intellect—how wealth is made, how rightly used, how kept, how lost; what it feels like to be poor; of the duties of him that hath to him that hath not; by what things a city is preserved, and of the power we each possess to make or unmake one another’s joy in life.

On these and kindred subjects the Jewish proverbs have a vast deal to say that is worthy of attention, but an outline of their comments and pleadings has been given in the description of the Wise-men’s ideals (Chap. VIII.). It may be hoped that the foregoing remarks will help to make more clear the bearing on present social duty of the teaching there related in reference to a distant past. Here then follow only a few considerations which will suggest how the subject might be developed, and will at the same time give opportunity for the quotation of some fine proverbs not mentioned in [Chapter VIII].

I. In dealing with the perplexities of organised society, we moderns possess the advantage of high and increasing skill in the use of classification, so that we are able to envisage our problems in abstract terms, analysing the population into reasonably exact groups, and considering the inter-relations of “classes” and the reconciliation of class interests one with another. This attempt, crude though it still may be, to employ scientific method in the treatment of humanity is all to the good; but if one thing more is forgotten, our best-laid schemes somehow refuse to work or are apt to work amiss. For—“the ‘masses’ and ‘the poor’ whom it is ‘our’ duty to keep are neither sycophants nor toadies nor sponges nor are all of them at the last gasp. They resent the control of their destinies by classes or persons who profess to know what is good for them. They will never become the passive instruments of anybody’s social theory. They will trust themselves only to those who love them. Individualists and socialists take note! Experts and doctrinaires, be warned in time!”[126] Now the Jewish proverbs, not of set purpose but by sound instinct, subtly and insistently remind us how personal all social questions ultimately prove to be. They think and speak with the individual in the foreground of the mind. They prefer the concrete to the abstract, with how great advantage! Contrast the effect of these two passages; the occasional, abstract type, Water will quench a flaming fire, and almsgiving will make atonement for sin (E. 330), with the much more frequent personal presentation: Incline thine ear to a poor man and answer him with peaceable words gently. Deliver him that is wronged from the hand of him that wronged him (E. 48, 9). We discuss “Capital and Labour”; but the Jewish proverb says (Pr. 222; cp. 2913)

The rich and the poor dwell together,
The Lord God made them both;

and how deep the proverb goes, how swiftly it strikes home and excites the imagination. Rich and poor together, yes, in a sense—united within one city’s bounds; and yet how far apart they dwell from one another. How tragically far apart! But are they so greatly sundered as at first thought one imagines? In the things that matter ultimately—their manhood, womanhood; their tears and laughter; their loves; their sinning and repenting; their strength and health; their death and immortality? Perhaps there is just one meeting-place where rich and poor unite and stand absolutely equal; but it is there where earth and heaven fade away—the great white throne of God.

Mark how the sense of the individual man, with whom eventually all our plans to remedy the mischiefs in the body politic must come to terms, permeates the following proverbs:—

A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children;
But the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the righteous (Pr. 1322).

(No pious platitude this, but a keen-sighted observation of fact. It is seldom indeed that wealth is handed down through many generations, except in a morally “good” family; and on the other hand the sinner’s undisciplined children can usually be depended on to make ducks and drakes of their inheritance).

Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor,
He also shall cry, and shall not be heard (Pr. 2113).

There is that scattereth and increaseth yet more;
And there is that withholdeth that which is meet, and it tendeth only to want (Pr. 1124).

Hast given the poor to eat and drink, accompany them on their way (C. 208).

In the recognition of personal faults as the bane of society:

He that covereth a transgression seeketh love,
But he that harpeth on a matter separateth chief friends. (Pr. 179).

For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty,
And drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags (Pr. 2321).

These few maxims might be multiplied with ease, but they are sufficient for our purpose. Is it not clear how profoundly humanistic are these Jewish proverbs in their outlook on social affairs? Except our science be tempered by the same redeeming grace, we shall succeed on paper but fail in fact.

2. The Jewish proverbs throw out a challenge to the present age in the demand they make for commercial honesty and consideration of the general welfare of the community. This claim is put forward in a variety of ways, and there is no mistaking its earnestness; as in the famous saying, A false balance is an abomination unto the Lord, and a just weight is His delight (Pr. 111), a maxim reiterated in similar language in Pr. 2010, 23. Again it is said, The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vapour driven to and fro: they that seek them seek death (Pr. 216)—Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity than he that is crooked in his ways though he be rich (Pr. 286); and memorably—Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice (Pr. 168); to which add this startlingly modern protest against the food-profiteer, He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it (Pr. 1126). “Ah! but the times have changed, and the complications and stringency of modern business often render the employment of perfectly honest methods impractical. In those byegone days a man of industry and ability had perhaps little temptation to double-dealing, or at least was not compelled to follow the tricks of the trade in order to squeeze out a livelihood.” But no! that shortcut out of the difficulty is barred. Ben Sirach puts the matter bluntly: A merchant, says he, shall hardly keep himself from wrong-doing, and a huckster shall not be acquitted of sin (E. 2629). “Well, then, have the proverbs any remedy to suggest? It is easy for the purist to talk. No one wishes to deny the courage of him who maintains a life-long protest against sharp practice, and we grant you the desirability of the protest; we can even admit the success of one here and there who has undertaken it. But it may seem doubtful if such unbending rectitude could be carried out generally; and at any rate, as matters stand, there must be thousands of well-meaning men who to keep themselves and their families from want and hunger must bow themselves slightly in the modern house of Rimmon”—so may a plea for a reasonable latitude be advanced.

What solution do the proverbs offer for the stern facts of present-day commerce? None; but that is no reason why we, following the spirit of their teaching, should not strive to find a remedy for our more complex problems, especially since the line along which progress can be made is surely not difficult to discover. The root of the matter is in the fact that whilst commercial dishonesty may benefit (in a material sense only) certain persons, it can only do so at the expense of the many, so that its elimination would necessarily conduce to the general welfare of organised society. Meantime it is hard for the individual to kick against the pricks of a system far greater than he, but it does not follow that the community of individuals is unable to fight the giant and slay him. Though the present situation is such that the guilt of the individual is lessened (it is of course still real), the guilt of the community in tolerating such a condition of affairs is the more increased. For union is immense strength. It is the imperative duty of modern man by collective action (which may require eventually to become world-wide) to check, diminish and abolish those evil and improvident conditions which now impose such pressure upon the integrity of individuals. A herculean task! What then? The resources of civilised man are already vast, and they increase with marvellous rapidity, We stand at the beginnings of organised achievement; yet already magnificent opportunities for the betterment of human life lie within our reach, and wait only the consent of mind and conscience for their realisation. False weights have continued, despite the Jewish proverb, these twenty centuries and more; it does not follow that they need continue to the twenty-first.

3. Much of the injustice and degradation still prevalent in our civilised society would be brought to an end by the force of public opinion, were it not for wide-spread ignorance of the facts. Sometimes the ignorance is wilful blindness and no true ignorance; men refuse to look or listen; but as a rule it is due to mere lack of interest and unimaginative carelessness. No decent man or woman could desire the appalling facts of child-labour in the mines and factories of this country during the first half of the last century, or, for the matter of that, the facts of sweated industries at the present day; but many respectable people wished not to know and vastly many more troubled not themselves to know, and so the horrible and disastrous iniquities went on year by year. Time and again the frank uncompromising proverbs of the Jews set us an example by their bold recognition of evil. They proclaim it for what it is, not mincing words but denouncing wickedness outspokenly and vehemently. A hundred illustrations could be taken from the maxims already quoted. Here, from sayings not yet mentioned, are three vigorous assaults on the hypocrite, the oppressor, and the morally perverted.

There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet are not washed from their filthiness.... There is a generation whose teeth are swords and their mouths armed with knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men (Pr. 3012, 14).

As one that killeth a son before his father’s eyes,
So is he that bringeth a sacrifice from the goods of the poor.
The bread of the needy is the life of the poor;
He that depriveth him thereof is a man of blood.
As one that slayeth his neighbour is he that taketh away his living;
And as a shedder of blood is he that depriveth a hireling of his hire (E. 3420-22).

He that saith unto the wicked “Thou art righteous,” peoples shall curse him and nations shall abhor him (Pr. 2424).

4. Of Riches and the deceitfulness thereof

Weary not thyself to be rich.... For riches certainly make themselves wings, like an eagle that flieth toward heaven (Pr. 234, 5).

“Believe not much them that seem to despise riches; for they despise them that despair of them.... Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.”[127]

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches (Pr. 221).

“I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. The Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.”

His riches are the ransom of a man’s life, but the poor heareth no threatenings (Pr. 138).

“But then you will say, they may be of use to buy men out of dangers or troubles. As Solomon saith, ‘Riches are as a stronghold, in the imagination of the rich man.’[128] But this is excellently expressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact. For certainly great riches have sold more men than they have bought out.”

Wealth gotten in haste shall be diminished, but he that gathereth slowly shall have increase (Pr. 1311).

“Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.”

Health and a good constitution are better than all gold, and a good spirit than wealth without measure (E. 3015).

Riches profit not in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivereth from death (Pr. 114)—

whereat the shallow-minded may smile if it please them.

5. “Most gracious God, we humbly beseech Thee, as for this Kingdom in general, so especially for the High Court of Parliament: that Thou wouldest be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations to the advancement of Thy glory, the good of Thy Church, the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and his Dominions; that all things may be so ordered and settled by their endeavours, upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations.”

How the Jewish proverbs would endeavour to give effect to the prayer for good government has been told already ([p. 152]), and it may be remembered that their teaching was described as a demand for a reign of justice extending from the highest to the lowest in the land. But that was an inadequate description. Examine more carefully what they say, and it will appear that the Jewish proverbs ask for more than bare justice; they enjoin mercy, they plead for honour, kindness, generosity, and affection between man and man; in a word they plead for humanity as the supreme solvent of human need. And are they not profoundly and rebukingly right therein? Justice may be the stones of the great building, but Love is the cement without which the fabric will not cohere. The stability of society depends on the good-will of well-intentioned men—By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, and it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked (Pr. 1111).

6. One other arresting feature concerning the relations of rich and poor. The poorer classes of Jerusalem must have had many faults, but the Wise were very gentle towards them; scarcely ever do they reproach the poor directly for their shortcomings. On the other hand they have no mercy for the sins of those in high places, their instinct seeming to be that the root of evil in the State is in the neglect of opportunity on the part of those who possess the means for well-doing: and this is the more significant and conscience-searching in that the speakers of these proverbs were themselves, as a rule, members of the “fortunate” classes. “The poor, forsooth, are thieves!” Are they? Then, why? If a ruler hearkeneth to falsehood, all his servants are wicked (Pr. 2912). “The poor are disloyal and jealous of their betters!” Are they? The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established for ever (Pr. 2914).

7. In conclusion, a few memorable proverbs that will repay consideration. Here is an ambiguous maxim—from one point of view a platitude, from another a deep saying:

Sovereignty is transferred from nation to nation Because of iniquity, violence and greed of gold (E. 108).

Does it mean that greed and evil ambitions incite nations to war, to conquest, and so to the acquisition of new territories? If so, we are none the better for the information. Yes, but sometimes the “transference” takes place the other way, and not as the covetous folk desire it should. There have been peoples whose blind lust for power overreached itself, to meet with disaster and condign punishment. Concerning them too might it be said, though with a different accent to our words, “Sovereignty is transferred from nation to nation, because of iniquities, violence and greed of gold.”

There is no ambiguity, and no indecision, in these fine sentiments, which are none the less admirable, because they do not tell us how to reach the Golden Age:

When the righteous prosper the city rejoices;
And when the wicked perish there are shouts of joy (Pr. 1110).

Righteousness exalteth a nation,
Whereas sin is a shame to any people (Pr. 1434).

But of all that the Jewish proverbs have to say on the duties of our interrelated lives, this is the best in that it does show the gateway to the Golden Age, and allows no man to pass by unchallenged,

If thou wilt lift the load I will lift it too;
But if thou wilt not lift it, I will not (C. 257).

CHAPTER XVII
A Chapter of Good Advice

Suppose A Lecture (subject, Good Advice) to be given in The Large Lecture Hall, to-night, by the Venerable Rabbi Wiseman. We go, but with mixed feelings, assuring ourselves we do not care a straw for his advice, but we have nothing much better to do, the man has a reputation, and we wonder whether the hall will really be full to hear him. Somewhat to our surprise, the hall does fill rapidly, is full! Extraordinary how a well-known name will draw: doubtless the man has got a “following” in every town, prepared to drink in every word he says. But that will not altogether account for it; there must also be a big number here to-night who have come, like ourselves, out of mere curiosity. We wait the great man’s arrival with impatience, uncomfortably conscious that we are meant to be edified, expectant that we shall be merely bored. (A lecture of “Good advice,” forsooth. As if we haven’t a right to our own opinions, and are not competent to advise ourselves: it will take him all his time to impress us!) The Rabbi arrives, to the usual clap-clapping of his admirers in the hall.... We are a little surprised at his appearance—a strong face, but his best friends would not call him handsome. At the same time, to give him his due, one could not call him pompous.... Why doesn’t the Chairman stop talking? Who wants to listen to him? Seeing that we are “in for it,” let’s hear what the speaker has to say, and so get it over—

At last the Rabbi rises, and proves wiser than we have expected; wise enough to be also wily. He begins with a touch of humour; we smile, are caught off our guard, and for a few moments (it was all he needed) he has captured our attention.

Here is the thread of his remarks:

Commend not a man for his beauty,
And abhor not a man for an ugly appearance.[129]

Be willing to listen to every godly discourse,
And let not the proverbs of understanding escape thee.
If thou seest a man of Wisdom get thee betimes unto him,
And let thy foot wear out the steps of his doors.[130]

But, Let thy foot be seldom in thy neighbour’s house,
Lest he be weary of thee and hate thee.[131]

Answer not a fool according to his folly,
Lest thou be like unto him.[132]

He that giveth answer before he heareth,
It is folly and shame unto him.[133]

Learn before thou speak; and have a care of thy health,
Or ever thou be sick.[134]

Prepare thy work without and make it ready for thee in the field; and afterwards build thine house.[135]

Hast spoiled thy work? Take a needle and sew.[136]

Boast not thyself of to-morrow;
For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.[137]

Change not a friend for the sake of profit,
Neither a true brother for the gold of Ophir.[138]

Laugh not a man to scorn when he is in the bitterness of his soul; for there is one who humbleth and exalteth.[139]

Reproach not a man when he turneth from sin;
Remember we are all worthy of punishment.
Dishonour not a man in his old age;
For some of us also are waxing old.
Rejoice not over one that is dead;
Remember that we die all.[140]

Do no evil, so shall no evil overtake thee;
Depart from wrong, and it shall turn aside from thee.
My son, sow not the furrows of unrighteousness,
And thou shalt not reap it sevenfold.[141]

Be not thou envious of evil men, neither desire to be with them, for their heart studieth oppression and their lips talk of mischief.[142]

Let not thine heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long; for surely there is a reward and thy hope shall not be cut off.[143]

Say not thou, “It is through the Lord that I fell away: for that which He hateth He made not.” Say not thou, “It is He that caused me to err, for He hath no need of a sinful man.”[144]

Say not, He will look upon the multitude of my gifts, and when I offer to the Most High God He will accept it.[145]

Keep thy heart with all vigilance,
For that is the way to life.[146]

Be not faint-hearted in thy prayer,
And neglect not to give alms.[147]

Commit thy ways unto the Lord,
And thy purposes shall be established.[148]

A brief lecture, but none the worse for that. Much Wisdom in small compass. Depart, as you must, whether touched or ostensibly indifferent. However that may be, whatever your feelings now, you cannot forget all his words; some of them are fastened in the memory. One day you may act upon them and discover that they were wise indeed, and then you will want yourself to move a vote of thanks to the lecturer.

CHAPTER XVIII
Conduct

This chapter will prove less ambitious than its title suggests. As the remarks made a few pages back, on The Body Politic were meant to be taken in conjunction with what was said in [Chapter VIII]. regarding social and family conduct, so here also only a few reflections will be given in summary or in supplement of the Wise-men’s ideal of personal character. It is perhaps as well that it seems superfluous to recapitulate the various attributes that the proverbs say are to be chosen or eschewed by the perfect man; for when the Vices have been assembled they form a dismal and depressing crowd, and when the Virtues are lined up over against them, they are a celestial host but they glitter on high beyond a modest man’s attainment. Moreover the art of noble living is best practised not by those who go spelling out the details, as if the Virtues were meant to be acquired singly or the Vices attacked and conquered one by one, but by those who from sound instinct or a wisely-trained intelligence have mastered a few great thoughts and assented to follow their guidance in the maze of life. It is the purpose of these pages to touch only on certain of these controlling facts, principles, or ideals of conduct. The task before us is therefore neither intricate nor long. It is simple, yet (for all its simplicity) serious.

There is one quality that is not so much a part of character as the very soil out of which it grows—Honesty of purpose; if absent or only fitfully present, moral growth is either stunted or cut off; if present, then a multitude of imperfections are found pardonable. Wise therefore is the Jewish proverb that says of Deceitfulness, using a realistic metaphor more eloquent than many words, Bread of falsehood is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel (Pr. 2017). Over against it set this strong simple plea for Sincerity: Strive for the truth, unto death, and the Lord God shall fight for thee (E. 428); and then consider the implication in the contrast of those maxims—that Evil is first sweet then bitter, and Good first painful then joyous. Sometimes those propositions are visibly, demonstrably, true in their entirety; sometimes the second part of them to be credited requires faith in the spiritual nature of man. But of the first part there can be no question; ’tis a matter of universal experience—moral victories at the first are difficult, moral defeats easy, The way of sinners is smooth without stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of Hades (E. 2110), a glissade to the precipice and over; facilis descensus Averno.

Setting aside for the moment the influence of religious belief on conduct (the next chapter will have something to say upon the point), it would seem that there is one outstanding quality to which the Jewish proverbs recur again and again, as if to tell us that here is the supreme secret. That quality may be called Receptivity, but it has many aspects for which other titles might more fittingly be used: it is the willing mind, the open eye and the hearing ear; in youth it is zeal to learn, in manhood more often the grace to profit by mistake. So from teachableness it is wont to pass into penitence, the recognition of error and imperfection—not passive penitence, however, but the active desire to improve—and then from this virile penitence it should rise into that disposition of Charity or Love towards others, which is the highest virtue, without which a man may have many talents and yet profit nothing. Let us trace the sequence in the proverbs, commencing with the desire for knowledge:

The fear of the Lord is the chief part of knowledge,
But the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father,
And forsake not the teaching of thy mother;
For they shall be a chaplet of grace unto thy head
And ornaments round thy neck (Pr. 17-9).

Yea, if thou cry after discernment,
And lift up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seek her as silver
And search for her as hid treasures ...
Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgement,
And equity, yea, every good path (Pr. 23, 4, 9).

To him that is willing to learn, the proverbs promise rich and wonderful reward, and the New Testament repeats the promise:

God scorneth the scorners,
But He giveth grace to the lowly (Pr. 334).[149]

If thou desire wisdom, keep the commandments,
And the Lord shall give it unto thee freely (E. 126).[150]

Thus far the subject is familiar. Twice already reference has been made to this virtue of Learning-Ever. Impenitently we bring it up again, seeing that the Jewish proverbs are most urgent on the matter and also that men to-day stand in no small need of the counsel. For all its vaunted liberty of thought, our age is by no means patient of personal criticism, doubtless because owing to the swift and amazing increase in control of material resources it has been peculiarly successful in certain directions (not, however, the most important); and the success has made us vain. To know a little about the universe (and we know no more) is a very dangerous thing.

But observe how from the initial grace of an eager, receptive attitude towards life, other virtues naturally appear. Frankly and patiently to recognise one’s errors is to increase in wisdom, to learn before it is too late, to see the pitfalls one has narrowly escaped, and so to be humbled, to feel the sense of a great forgiveness vouchsafed to the simple-hearted, and accordingly to be grateful and to be happy:

He that covereth his transgressions shall not prosper:
But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy.
Happy is the man that feareth alway:
But he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into calamity
(Pr. 2813, 14).

This experience, if at all intense, has a profound effect on character; he that knows he has been forgiven much will love much, and his gratitude towards the Giver of all mercy will spontaneously show itself in mercy towards other men. Others will wrong him and disappoint him often, but, remembering his own imperfections, he will want to judge them gently and never to despair of helping them; to him it seems as if “they know not what they do.” But this is the very disposition required of us in the prayer “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” and the question must surely be rising in the reader’s mind, What relation can possibly be discovered between these high thoughts and the Jewish proverbs? This surprisingly intimate relation—that whilst the manifestation of perfect forgiveness in Christ’s own Person made His Prayer a new power in the world, the thought in this petition was not new; it goes back to these words of Ben Sirach, He that taketh vengeance on his neighbour will meet vengeance from the Lord, and his sins will surely be confirmed. Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done thee, and then shall thy sins be pardoned when thou prayest (E. 281, 2)! Who dares withhold his approval from the condition in the abstract? If we are Christians at all, our conscience must welcome its eternal justice, recognising that we can ask no greater mercy to be extended us by God. And so we are wont to repeat the Prayer willingly without reservations or misgivings ... just until the day come when “our neighbour” has gotten him a name and we lie dazed and bleeding from the hurt that he hath dealt us. That is the moment for which these words were spoken—Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them upon thy neck (Pr. 33). Know that—By mercy and truth iniquity is purged away, and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil (Pr. 166). By the time a man has schooled himself to put those exhortations into practice, he will be in no danger of treating forgiveness lightly: true forgiveness is conditioned by the Moral Law, is no futile shutting-of-the-eyes to uneradicated sin, and may therefore call for faithfulness unto death and necessitate the greatest sacrifice earth knows, even the Cross of Christ.

And with the thought let us return to that saying of Ben Sirach, Strive for the truth unto death. “The Truth” is here to be interpreted in the fullest sense of the term; it means Righteousness or Justice; it denotes sincerity in things great and small, in thought word and deed. The proverb then may serve as a reminder of the uncompromisingly stern and perilous element in human experience. Until three years ago many men had no lively sense of that aspect of things. The sinister possibilities were not absent, but often they were fallaciously concealed. When a man catches the same train to town day after day and his outward circumstances are uneventful and regular as some slow-moving stream, he may easily be deluded into thinking that his inner, spiritual self is likewise pursuing the even tenor of its way; whereas in reality it may be waging a desperate battle against increasing pride, prejudice, hardness of heart, and a whole battalion of the Fiend’s picked legionaries. The Prosperous, consulting his bankbook, may easily be betrayed into saying “I shall not want,” whilst the soul within him is choking. If our essential life is spiritual and consists in our love of the True, the Good, the Beautiful, riches are likely to prove a thin armour against the enemy. But three long and terrible years of war have transformed the situation, and there are few to-day who do not know that there is “a striving for the truth unto death.” Little need now to emphasise the dark side of life; myriads are but too well acquainted with its tragedies.

The Jewish proverbs offer no philosophy of Suffering; for that one must go to the Christian religion, which has faced the worst of the problem and is unique in having found a reassuring answer. When, however, we turn to the immediate question, how best to meet and deal with hardship, physical or mental, behold! Christianity is content to appropriate the language of a Jewish proverb and reiterate its counsel, though with a glorious new confidence: Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.... For consider Him who endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin, and ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons,

My son, regard not lightly the discipline of the Lord
Nor faint when thou art reproved of him;
For whom the Lord loveth He disciplines,
And chasteneth[151] every son whom He receiveth (Pr. 311, 12).

It is for discipline that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father doth not discipline? (Hebrews 121-7). To use or to refuse this idea of the educative opportunity in suffering makes an amazing difference to life. Says a commentator of the older school writing upon this passage in Proverbs: “First, Despise not the discipline.... Do not meet sorrow by a mere hardihood of nature. Let your heart flow down under trouble, for this is human: let it rise up also to God, for this is divine. And secondly, Faint not.... This is the opposite extreme. Do not be dissolved, as it were—taken down and taken to pieces by the stroke. You should retain presence of mind and exercise your faculties. If the bold would see God in his afflictions, he would not despise; if the timid would see God in them, he would not faint.... The same stroke may fall on two men and be in the one case judgement, in the other love. You may prune branches lying withered on the ground, and also branches living in the vine. In the two cases the operation and instrument are precisely alike; but the operation on this branch has no result, and the operation on that branch produces fruitfulness.”[152]

My son, if thou comest to serve the Lord,
Prepare thy soul for trial.
Set thy heart aright and with constancy endure,
And be not terrified in time of calamity....
For gold is tried in the fire,
And acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation,
Put thy trust in God and He will help thee;
Order thy ways aright and set thy hope on Him (E. 21-6).

Never in living memory has there been greater need for wise and persuasive advice how to conduct oneself in time of anxiety and affliction. In the gales of life many a ship is flung on the rocks for lack of a little good seamanship on board. But ships need care even when they are sailing summer seas; and so, because one hopes that brighter days are coming to the world and coming soon, there is room for one more counsel in conclusion. Religion, and particularly Christianity, has been robbed of half of its power over men’s souls, by reason of the absurd and tragical notion that it bears chiefly on the woes of man and very little on his joys. On this score also the Jewish proverbs preach a useful and pleasant sermon, with their natural honest desire for the good things of life and their strong and salutary conviction that in Wisdom—being that fear of the Lord which is to depart from evil—will be found a never-failing source of refreshing happiness:

The fear of the Lord is glory and exultation
And gladness and a crown of rejoicing.
The fear of the Lord shall delight the heart,
And shall give gladness and joy and length of days (E. I11, 12; cp. Pr. 210, 316).

CHAPTER XIX
Faith

Ben Sirach has a wise passage in recognition of the transcendent majesty of God. He has been seeking to describe the marvels of the universe, and words have failed him; how much more then if he should strive to declare the glory of the Creator! Wonderful as the visible world may be, Many things are hidden greater than these, and we have seen but a few of His works.... The Lord is terrible and exceeding great, and marvellous is His power. When ye glorify the Lord praise him as much as ye can, for even then will He surpass. When ye exalt him, put forth your full strength; be not weary; for ye will never attain (E. 4329-32). These words give the reason why expressions of belief in God so often appear to the unbelieving mere platitudes. Before the thought of the living God, men of intense and sensitive faith are either silent, or at the most will speak in simple language, being conscious that we may say many things, yet shall we not attain; and the sum of our words is “He is all” (E. 4927).

The Jewish proverbs recognise that God makes one fundamental demand from men, namely Honesty of purpose—the very quality or attitude of soul which, as we have just seen, is so essential to the growth of moral character:

All the ways of a man are right in his own eyes,
But God weigheth the heart (Pr. 212).

He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is made in mockery; and the mockeries of wicked men are not well-pleasing (E. 3418).

Ben Sirach says of a sinner, confident in his wrong-doing because no man seeth him—But he knoweth not that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, beholding all the ways of men, and looking into secret places (E. 2319).

And again he writes of the hypocritically pious:

The Most High hath no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly, neither is He pacified for sins by the multitude of sacrifices (E. 3419; cp. Pr. 2127).

It does not seem probable that the Almighty will be any the better impressed, should the wicked offer up hymns instead of sacrifices. Motive is still the criterion of worship: take heed how ye praise or pray, lest your words be no more than the sound of a voice; take heed how ye hear, lest, judging a sermon, you fail to hear God’s judgment of you; and above all remember that the chief act of worship, without which all else is in vain, must be rendered at home and in the city’s streets, for—said a Wise-man on whom the spirit of the prophets had descended—to do justice and equity is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice (Pr. 213). A plain commandment, but there is none greater: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

And to them that are fain to keep the commandment God giveth gifts. “But” says one, “how know you that they are God’s gifts? Is there a God to give? Faith is very difficult to attain.” Certainly faith is difficult to the sophisticated in this and every age; but to the Wise it has always seemed natural, and never impossible. Said a young Russian modernist, “I find it difficult not to believe in God.” So much in passing; we shall return to the question a little later. Meantime, however, let us turn to what cannot be denied, the reality of the gifts and the axiomatic truth of the assertion that they are from God in the sense that they are the consequence of believing God is and is good.

To believe in the true God, the high and holy and merciful God of Israel’s noblest thinkers, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, certainly gives men confidence and courage, not because the dangers and difficulties of life are removed, but because our strength being increased, it becomes possible to overcome them: The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe (Pr. 1810). Through the new spirit that is ours, life is lifted to a higher plane where we feel that, when sorrow and pain and sin have had their say, still the Lord reigneth; God is greater than His foes: Whoso feareth the Lord shall not be afraid and shall not play the coward; for God is his hope (E. 3414).

To them that seek Him God gives illumination. Evil men understand not justice, but they that seek the Lord understand it altogether (Pr. 285)—which does not mean that the pious are omniscient, but does mean that to follow after truth and goodness enlightens, whereas to seek evil and pursue it makes men blind. Accordingly it is said, There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord (Pr. 2130), and the truth of that great saying has been repeatedly displayed in the rise and fall of mighty nations and empires, as well as in the lives of individuals. Selfishness is always short-sighted, snatching greedily at shadows and missing the best there is in life. Again, The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but He blesseth the habitation of the righteous (Pr. 333); and that is true because it is seldom that such things as passion, hatred, cruelty and haunting moral fears are absent from the former, and, whatever the good man’s house may lack, it will generally have love, joy, peace and all the fruits of the Spirit.

One remarkable proverb claims that When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him (Pr. 167); and the value of the saying is perhaps increased in that, regarded pedantically, the claim breaks down, whereas on a wider consideration it seems to be subtly and profoundly true. Thus, our truthfulness may not prevent some particular individual (our enemy) from deceiving us by a lie, but it helps many, who might become false and some day deceive us, to persevere in truthfulness; and if all men really were liars, heaven help our race! Our honesty may not prevent a thief from breaking through and stealing, but it does make it easier for other men to be honest and so helps to reduce dishonesty in the world; and if all men were deceivers, peaceful trade would cease. Mercy begets mercy; the kindness of all true men who love God and follow Christ is making the world more kind. In a word, the effect of righteous example is magnificently great. What matter then if the truth be superlatively phrased? Let us affirm it boldly: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

Here is a verse that sums up the whole topic:—

The eyes of the Lord are upon them that love Him,
A mighty protection and strong stay,
A cover from the hot blast and a shelter from the noonday,
A guard from stumbling, and a succour from falling.
He raiseth up the soul, and enlighteneth the eyes;
He giveth healing, life, and blessing (E. 3416, 17).

The gifts are good. But is there a Giver, a God who cares? Why not so believe? It is neither impossible nor incredible. In the last chapter we shall touch further upon the great question. For the moment our concern is only with the answer to it that we find in the Jewish proverbs. That answer is boldly affirmative. Let us begin, however, with a rather hesitant saying; A man’s goings are of the Lord, how then can he understand his ways? (Pr. 2024). Possibly the author intended not to assert God’s guidance but only to complain of the baffling character of our fortunes. If so, we will have none of it. If there be no God at all, at least let us struggle to determine our path with such intelligence as we can muster. In the following, however, there is no dubiety about the affirmation of faith: A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps (Pr. 169). Hard doctrine! theoretically possible perhaps, but is it probable? Certainly it is hard to believe, almost incredible, so long as it is considered merely from the critic’s chair. But the sublime hope that God careth for men displays an astonishing vitality; and the altogether amazing and significant fact is this, that just where it ought most surely to die down and be extinguished, there it always rises up and burns again—as now in the trenches.

Here is the witness of an educated man, who had long ceased to be a Christian in the conventional usage of the term. He is writing freely to one who had been more than a friend for Christ’s sake, and it is fair to give his words, because death is no longer a mystery to him. “Half-unconsciously I hummed the tune rather than the words of the famous hymn [When I survey the wondrous Cross]; As I did so there appeared before me, not a vision of Christ’s person, but of the meaning of the glorious crown of thorns He wore. The King of Heaven, the Prince of Peace, is a man—He took not upon Him the nature of angels. That would have been easy but futile. It would not have linked Him with us closely enough. So my vision told me. He must needs suffer for us.... And if suffering, and forgiveness, and love of our fellows, and general self-forgetfulness be what is required of every one of us, how greatly we all stand in need of His atonement. That was the lasting impression of my vision: but, subsidiary, there was another. I felt, for a moment, a sense of divine spectatorship, as if there was but God in the world besides me; and God, all-seeing, all-understanding, with whom no words were necessary[153].”

But also those whose training in the school of life has brought them no such command of words as had the writer of the above, have their own way of voicing the instinct, saying that “if a fellow’s name is written on a bullet he’ll get it, and if it isn’t, he won’t.” Press the naïve metaphor. Who writes the name on the bullet? Not Krupps; they are too busy for that. Then is the writing the writing of God, graven upon the bullet? Probably the man himself would say, Fate is the writer. “Fate” on the lips of men who have nineteen centuries of Christian tradition behind them is only another name, and imperfect, for God the Father. There is fatalism and fatalism. The fatalism of men who, being conscious (however dimly) that duty has drawn them into a war which is at bottom an immense conflict of ideas and ideals regarding the use and abuse of national power, feel somehow that they will not die except they were appointed to lay down their life for others; that fatalism is separated by a hair’s breadth from explicit trust in the overshadowing love of God. Belief in God’s providence may seem difficult to the student at his ease, but it is high human doctrine. It was the doctrine of Jesus; and keen and earnest thinkers, and simple men and women innumerable, facing the sternest facts of life, have found it possible to place their trust in it, and, trusting, have found themselves at peace.

Be not afraid of sudden fear, nor of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh;
For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken (Pr. 325f).

In conclusion, here is a proverb which needs a few words of introduction. The graces and benefits of religion are frequently associated in the Bible with “meekness” or “humility.” Now those English words carry unfortunate associations which are absent from the Hebrew they represent. The “humility” commended by the Prophets and Psalmists is a certain frank simplicity of soul—a quality from which not a few of the most effective and virile personalities in the world’s history have derived their power. It has little or nothing to do with softness or timidity of character; indeed courage is its hall-mark. Those who first rallied round the Maccabean leaders in the struggle against an unclean Hellenism were of “the meek ones of the earth.” The Russian peasant has this Biblical “humility,” but the proudest military empire in the modern world has tasted the fortitude of his soul. Wherefore we may claim that this exquisite saying is not merely beautiful, but is also profound:

The prayer of the humble pierceth the clouds (E. 3517).

CHAPTER XX
The Gift of God

The sayings we have been quoting in this volume for the most part belong to the life of ordered and peaceful society. There is no tramp of armies, no sense of imminent death, no outrage of gigantic suffering and injustice, in the pages of Proverbs or Ecclesiasticus. To-day, however, the ordinary problems and interests of peace-time seem altogether irrelevant. Twenty million fighting men in Europe, asked what a maxim is, would talk to you of machine-guns; the maxims otherwise called proverbs belong to a different and forgotten world. For trifling moralisms we have to-day neither taste nor time.

But the Jewish proverbs range wide enough to have a word for everyone, for the grave or the gay, for pious or profane, for those in haste just as much as for those at leisure; and many of their comments on life are very far removed from being trifling. In our enquiry we have met not a few winged words worth capturing and holding fast even in war-time; great thoughts such as this assertion, He that followeth after righteousness shall attain unto life, but he that pursueth evil doeth it to his own death (Pr. 1119), or this reassuring hint of the fundamental goodness of human nature, When the righteous triumph there is great glorying, but when the wicked come to power men hide themselves (Pr. 2812; cp. 1110), or this grand medicine for a tempted people, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any folk (Pr. 1434).

Moreover it ought to be recognised that, properly regarded, morality is never unimportant; moralisms being trifling only so long as they remain mere words, not when they are translated into deeds. Act upon the good that is found in these proverbs, and immense results would follow. But just there is the crux: “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 our passion and self-will.”[154]

Now there is one deeply significant fact which we have seen in our study of the Jewish proverbs, but on which we have not yet laid sufficient stress—the fact that they seemed to their authors to point beyond themselves to a Divine Source. They were not fortuitous atoms gathered no man knew whence or why, but part of a marvellous system inspired and originated by God, sustained by His inexhaustible power, and governed by His holy purposes. Whatever may be thought regarding particular proverbs, no sensible person can imagine that Wisdom itself is idle or unimportant talk. Wisdom remains wise even in such a war as this, though the nations rage and the kingdoms are moved.

But is there a Divine Wisdom? Or is the aspiring faith of men only an unsubstantial dream? From first to last the Jews believed that Wisdom is a reality, and, far from weakening as the years went on, their confidence even increased, and their thoughts of the wonder and glory of the Heavenly Wisdom became, if possible, more sublime and yet no less intimate. And high as they exalted Wisdom, her chiefest glory remained this, that she was willing to dwell with men. Let us take as a last quotation some beautiful and loving words from that late work, the Wisdom of Solomon, to which reference was made in [Chapter IX]:

Wisdom is an effulgence from everlasting light,
A stainless mirror of God’s working, and an image of His goodness.
And it, being one, hath power to do all things;
And remaining in itself, reneweth all things:
And from generation to generation passing into holy souls
It maketh men friends of God and prophets....
Wisdom is fairer than the sun, and above all the constellations of the stars.
Being compared with light, it is found to be before it;
For to the light of day succeedeth night,
But against Wisdom evil doth not prevail (W.S. 726-30).

Is there this Heavenly Wisdom? Century by century, Life is accumulating its patient answer to the question, building up its vast evidence that the word of God endures, generation by generation confirming the intuition that the visible is for man the least real and that it is the unseen things that are eternal. But out of the midst of history there has also come one finished and marvellous reply—the personality of Jesus Christ.

Wisdom, whence cometh it? And where is the place of understanding? cried one who had despaired to find an answer. But the day came when certain of the Jews declared that Wisdom was found, that the infinite Divine Wisdom in its full glory had dwelt amongst us. All, and more than all, that had been said or thought or hoped of the Heavenly Wisdom, they had discovered in Christ Jesus. For one who had been man among men to be thus by Jews identified as the Perfect Wisdom, which was but an aspect of God Himself, is clearly wonderful; but just how utterly amazing it is, perhaps only those can realise who are conscious of the innate and magnificent monotheism of the Jews, and who have listened with sympathy and understanding to these reverent and rapturous praises of Wisdom. That a human being could possibly be felt to be the incarnation of Wisdom’s Self is a miracle. But the miracle is precisely that which has happened, and it is explicable only by a cause as great as the effect; that is, by the miracle of what Jesus was and is.

Recognition of Christ as the Divine Wisdom, and of Wisdom as incarnate in Christ, permeates the tradition and theology of the New Testament. It is visible in almost every passage where His disciples have sought to express the mystery and majesty of Him whose human love they had known on earth, whose divine power they now felt from heaven. The idea of Wisdom is the basis of St. Paul’s great utterances regarding Christ in the Epistle to the Colossians; of the affirmations in Hebrews that by Christ were the worlds made and that He is the Radiance of the Divine Glory and the Reflection of the Divine Being; and behind the wonderful opening chapter of St. John’s Gospel there is a hymn to the Eternal Wisdom, which was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God.[155]

Who hath ascended into heaven and descended?—asked a sceptical questioner in the Book of Proverbs (Pr. 304). No man ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man, rings out the answer of the Gospel (John 313).

If any man lack Wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him, writes St. James. Surely God’s gift is Christ? There are now nineteen centuries to show that nothing that has set itself against His wisdom has endured and been accepted as the truth.

“We need a power which can successfully contend against the storm of our passion and self-will.”—St. Paul affirms that the need has been met and answered in Christ crucified, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, and the Gospel holds out the same promise: as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God.

But are they many who throughout these centuries have sought to find Wisdom in Christ, and in His redeeming compassion, His perfect knowledge of human weakness and human need, His calm unfailing strength, His infinite holiness, His glorious ideal, His faith, His sacrifice, have declared that they have found that which they sought? They are very many. Already they are a multitude which no man can number—out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples—of whom some have sealed the confession with their life-blood, and some have given equal testimony in the unfaltering purity and patience of a quiet and unselfish life. Some of them have been learned and some unlearned in this world’s knowledge, but it is abundantly evident that all who have been faithful to His word have possessed in its fulness the deeper Wisdom which is from above.

The sum of it all is this. Christ has come. There are those who do not trouble to seek for Wisdom with their whole heart, but that is a foolish attitude which should be shunned. The miracle has happened, and we ought to face its challenge. What think ye of Christ? Whose son is He?

Index
A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles on Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom Literature, Hellenism, etc., in the Encyclopædia Brittanica (11th edition), Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopædia Biblica.

C. H. Toy, Proverbs (International Critical Commentary).
G. Currie Martin, Proverbs, etc. (The Century Bible).
C. F. Kent, Wise Men of Ancient Israel.
W. O. E. Oesterley, Ecclesiasticus (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).
S. R. Driver, Literature of the Old Testament s.v., Proverbs, etc.
G. A. Smith, Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, ch viii.
A. R. Gordon, The Poets of the Old Testament chs. XV.-XVIII.
C. Taylor, Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth).
A. Cohen, Ancient Jewish Proverbs (Wisdom of the East Series).
E. L. Bevan, The House of Seleucus (2 vols.)
E. L. Bevan, Jerusalem under the High Priests.
H. P. Smith, Old Testament History chs. XVIII., XIX.