Solomon says: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard—which provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” No doubt it was a vulgar error of very wide diffusion that ants feed upon corn, and lay up a store of grain in harvest time for winter use. Pliny, Ælian, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, [44] and several in our own country, have endorsed the instruction of Solomon, but what is the real fact? In the first place, ants are dormant in winter; and in the next place, they do not feed upon corn, but chiefly on animal food. What Solomon and others supposed to be grains of corn are in reality the cocoons which they bring out of their nests in fine weather to air, and after they have exposed them to the sun they carry them back again. Efforts have been made to prove that there is a species of ant which lives on grain; but even if such could be found, it is not the exception, but the rule which must characterise the animal. No one would say to a person, you are “white as a rose,” or “black as a cherry;” though there are white roses and black cherries. In all proverbial expressions and general allusions, the ordinary character is referred to, and not the exceptions.
Matt, xiii., 31, 32; Mark, iv., 31, 32.
Jesus said: “A grain of mustard-seed . . . is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
It is not correct that the “grain of mustard is the least of all seeds.” Many seeds are smaller, as that of the foxglove and tobacco plant; nor is it correct that mustard anywhere grows into a tree, “so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
The exaggeration in the corresponding verse of the second Gospel is even greater than that of Matthew. Mark says: “It is less than [any of] the seeds that be sown in the earth . . . but becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches.”
Here, again, critics have come forward to prove that the mustard seed of the text was not mustard seed, but something else. Some one fancies he has discovered a seed which better answers the description, and says Jesus did not mean mustard, but the seed of the critic. Such puerile defence does more harm than good. Moses did not mean “six days” by six days; Joshua did not mean that the “sun was to stand still,” when he commanded it so to do; Solomon did not mean “ants” by ants; nor Jesus, “mustard-seed” by mustard seed. In fact, words have no meaning, but may be fitted with a sliding scale to fit the wishes and knowledge of every reader. The dishonesty of this practice is palpable, and any system which needs such shoring should be suffered to fall through its own weakness.
1 Chron. iv., 17; and 1 Chron. vii., 14.
Being on the subject of blunders, we would commend our readers to the two verses referred to above—“The sons of Ezra were Jether, Mered . . . and Jalon; and she bare Miriam, Shammai, and Ishbah.”
Again. “The sons of Manasseh [were] Ashriel, whom she bare . . . and the name of the second was Zelophehad.” I know not if the reader can understand these verses; I must candidly confess I am wholly unable to attach any meaning whatever to them.
Another puzzle will be seen in Ecclesiastes, vii., 27–29, but probably the translation is in great measure responsible for the obscurity of this passage. The preacher says: “Behold, this have I found, counting one by one to find out the account; which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found.” It would be no easy matter to make out what the preacher “has found,” which requires such a blowing of trumpets. The original Hebrew may throw some light upon his meaning, but I am certain that if any candidate for the civil service had written those verses, no examiner would commend their perspicuity.