All true mirth is from rectitude of the mind, from a right frame of soul. When faith hath once healed the conscience, and grace hath hushed the affections, and composed all within, so that there is a Sabbath of the spirit, and a blessed tranquility lodged in the soul, then the body also is vigorous and vegetous, for most part in very good plight and healthful constitution, which makes man’s life very comfortable. . . . They that in the use of lawful means wait on the Lord, shall renew their strength (Isa. ix. 31).—Trapp.
main homiletics of verse 23.
Bribery.
I. Its nature. An act of bribery may be committed without any monetary transaction taking place. It is not necessary that gold should pass from hand to hand to make a man guilty of bribery. It is not even necessary that there should be a distinct promise of any good either in the present or the future. A man bribes another if he merely implies by word or deed that he can make him suffer for speaking what he knows is the truth, and for acting according to the dictates of his conscience. And a man is guilty of accepting a bribe if he abstains from such speech or action from a fear of loss or from a hope of gain, although no distinct promise or threatening has been made by those whom he wishes to propitiate.
II. Its cause. Want of integrity on the part of both the man who offers the bribe and him who accepts it. There are some men in the world to whom even a man who held their lives in his hand would not think of offering a bribe of any kind. He knows it would be as useless to attempt to make such men swerve from the path of right as to try to alter the course of the earth round the sun. There are many, we know, in this country, notwithstanding its many timeservers and place-hunters who, like Samuel of old can say, “Whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken, or who have I defrauded, who have I oppressed, or of whose hands have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?” (1 Sam. xii. 3). Only one thing is needed to destroy bribery—in its most impalpable and shadowy forms as well as in its more glaring and shameless manifestations—and that is universal honesty of character. When every man loves truth and right more than he loves material gain then bribery will cease, but not before. Men may be restrained by shame from being guilty of it openly, and will call it by some less obnoxious name, but the spirit of bribery will be at work so long as there are men upon the earth who love gain more than godliness.
III. The universal testimony of the human conscience against it. “The wicked man taketh a gift out of his bosom”—it is a transaction of secrecy—there is a shame connected with the act which proves that conscience condemns it. The man who offers the bribe does not do it openly, which shows that he is fully conscious that he is transgressing the law of right; and the man who accepts it does not boast openly that he has done so for the same reason. Bribery is a sin which is repeatedly denounced by God (Isa. i. 23, 24; Ezra xxii. 13), but men who have not possessed the light of revelation have denounced bribery as a crime.
IV. Its effect. It “perverts the ways of justice.” Its effect is to bring about that abomination mentioned in verse 15—the justification of the wicked and the condemnation of the just. (See Homiletics on [that verse].)
outlines and suggestive comments.
An honest man would rather lose his cause, however just, than gain it by such a base thing as a bribe. It must have been a great bondage for Paul to have been confined in a prison, when he loved the pulpit so well, had not his will been sunk in the Will of God; yet he would not offer the least bribe to his covetous judge, who detained him in prison, expecting that money would be offered for his freedom (Acts xxiv. 6).—Lawson.
Is not the child of God often pressed with this temptation? Does the influence of a gift, the sense of obligation, never repress the bold consistency of godliness? Does no bias of friendship, no plausible advantage, entice into a crooked path?—Bridges.