Alas! how many things are there to be suffered, how many things to be forgotten, how many things, though seen, to be as it were unseen, that love may be preferred. He that covereth transgression warmeth affection, and he that seeketh the love of man shall be sure to find the love of God. The way to seek and find other things is by uncovering that which is hid; but the way to seek and find love is by covering the offence.—Jermin.
If one has been our enemy it has been for some trespass. The best way to abate the enmity is to cover up and smother over, and thus erase from memory our act against him. He that does this “seeks love.” “He who falls back into the wrong,” i.e., iterates or doubles over his offence, drives away everything. (See [Critical Notes].) . . . Spiritually, a man is not to complain of the alienation of his Maker, if he wilfully retain his sin. If God has given us a special way for covering sin, and we postpone it, and go tumbling back into our acts, the strife is ours.—Miller.
There are two ways of making peace and reconciling differences: the one begins with amnesty, the other with a recital of injuries, combined with apologies and excuses. Now I remember that it was the opinion of a very wise man, and a great politician, that “he who negotiates a peace without recapitulating the grounds of difference rather deludes the minds of the parties, by representing the sweetness of concord, than reconciles them by equitable adjustment.” But Solomon, a wiser man than he, is of a contrary opinion, approving of amnesty, and forbidding a recapitulation of the past. For in it are these disadvantages: it is as the chafing of a sore; it creates the risk of a new quarrel (for the parties will never agree as to the proportions of injuries on either side); and lastly, it brings it to a matter of apologies: whereas either party would rather be thought to have forgiven an injury than to have accepted an excuse.—Lord Bacon.
main homiletics of verse 10.
Correction Must be Adapted to the Character of the Offender.
I. Some men can be influenced by moral means. A man whose moral nature is developed can be brought to a sense of error by an appeal to his own sense of right and wrong. Although he has fallen into sin he does not love it, and the rebuke from without finds an echo in the monitor within his own breast. His susceptibility to reproof arises—1. From a deep sense of his obligations to God. He knows what God has done to put away sin and its effects from the universe, and gratitude to Him opens his ear and his heart to reproof. 2. From a sense of his own true interest. A man would be counted a fool if he were to be angry with the physician who desired to free him from the dominion of a bodily disease, and a morally wise man is too keenly alive to the worth of his own soul not to listen to a wise reproof.
II. But there are men who can only be aroused to a sense of wrong-doing by physical suffering. Such men, by a long course of crime or by a constant resistance of moral influences, have sunk almost to the level of the brute. They are like the horse and mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held with bit and bridle (Psalm xxxii. 9). Nothing can awaken their sleeping consciences but severe and startling judgments or bodily chastisement, and even these “stripes” may fail to bring them to a right state of mind. Let men, then, beware, lest being often reproved and hardening themselves against it (ch. xxix. 1), they become so callous to the words of God and good men, or to the visitations of Providence, as to be “past feeling” (Eph. iv. 19).
illustration.
It was a maxim of Bishop Griswold—“when censured or accused, to correct—not to justify my error.” A certain minister, with more zeal than discretion, once became impressed with the thought that the bishop was a mere formalist in religion, and that it was his duty to go and warn him of his danger. Accordingly he called upon the bishop, very solemnly made known his errand, and forthwith entered upon his reproof. The bishop listened in silence till his visitor had closed a severely denunciatory exhortation, and then in substance replied as follows:—“My dear friend, I do not wonder that they who witness the inconsistency of my conduct, and see how poorly I adorn the doctrine of God my Saviour, should think I have no religion. I often fear for myself that such is the case, and feel very grateful to you for giving me the warning.” The reply was made with such evidently unaffected humility, and with such deep sincerity, that if an audible voice from heaven had attested the genuineness of his Christian character it could not more effectually have silenced his kindly intending but mis-judging censor, or more completely disabused him of his false impressions.—Episcopal Record.
outlines and suggestive comments.