There is nothing that claims our grief so much as sin, and yet there may be an excess of sorrow for sin, which exposes men to the devil and drives them into his arms.—Lawson.
A single good or favourable word will remove despondency; and that word, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee,” will instantly remove despair.—A. Clarke.
main homiletics of verse 26.
The Guide and the Seducer.
Translating this verse, “The righteous guides his neighbour aright,” we remark:—
I. That the righteous man guides his neighbour both by his word and by his life. He guides him by wise counsel—by giving him “a word in season” (see [verse 25])—and he more especially guides him by his holy life. His character is a revealer of the way of life. The light which shines through a lantern reveals the path, not only to the man who carries it, but to him who beholds it if he should be disposed to follow in the same road. The righteous man is a light-bearer—he has moral light within him, which breaks forth in the acts of his daily life, and sets a good example to other men, and so, to some extent, his life, like that of his Master’s, is a “light of men.”
II. That he guides him aright because he shows him how to make the most of his life. Men are generally anxious to live long, and the righteous man shows his neighbour how to live long by living well. A husbandman values his trees, not by the length of time they have stood in the ground, but by the amount of fruit they yield. There are trees which bring forth more fruit in one season than others do during the whole time they stand in the orchard. And the length of a man’s life is to be estimated not by the number of years he has been in the world, but in the use which he has made of them. Many men who leave the world comparatively young have lived longer, because to more purpose, than others who have not died until they were a hundred years old (On this subject see homiletics on chap. [x. 17], page 164).
III. That the wicked man also exercises an influence upon his neighbour; but his influence leads to evil. He is a seducer—one who leads astray by false professions and promises. Like the good man, he emits a light, but it is the false light of the ignis fatuus, which is the offspring of the stagnant swamp, and which will only lure him who follows it to destruction. One of the chief employments of the bad, and that which seems to afford them the greatest pleasure, is to carry other men to ruin. And even when the wicked man is not an active seducer, his way, or his life, seduces his neighbour. The force of an evil example is very great, and men are insensibly influenced by it. Men of ungodliness diffuse around them an atmosphere of moral unhealthiness, which insensibly affects those around them, who are not godly, and strengthens them in all their downward tendencies. Such men are “as graves which appear not” (Luke xi. 44), and are centres of spiritual disease and death.
outlines and suggestive comments.
If then, the “righteous be more excellent than his neighbour,” how is it that men do not follow their way? Because “the way of the wicked, which is apparently more excellent, or abundant in temporal advantages, seduces them” (Kimchi in Mercer), It “seduceth” with false hopes, doomed in the end to destruction.—Fausset.