With a few remarks on two proverbs more I will bring this lecture to an end. Here is one with an insight at once subtle and profound into the heart of man: Ill doers are ill deemers; and instead of any commentary on this of my own let me quote some words which were not intended to be a commentary upon it at all, and which furnish notwithstanding a better than any which I could hope to give. They are words of a great English divine of the 17th century, who is accounting for the offence which the Pharisee took at the Lord’s acceptance of the affectionate homage and costly offering of the woman that was a sinner: “Which familiar and affectionate officiousness, and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with, could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present. For that dispensation of the law under which they lived making nothing perfect, but only curbing the outward actions of men; it might very well be that they, being conscious to themselves of no better motions within than of either bitterness or lust, how fair soever they carried without, could not deem Christ’s acceptance of so familiar and affectionate a service from a woman of that fame to proceed from anything better than some loose and vain principle ... for by how much every one is himself obnoxious to temptation, by so much more suspicious he is that others transgress, when there is anything that may tempt out the corruptions of a man.” [181]
Chinese proverb.
And in this Chinese proverb which follows, Better a diamond with a flaw, than a pebble without one, there is, to my mind, the assertion of a great Christian truth, and of one which reaches deep down to the very foundations of Christian morality, the more valuable as coming to us from a people beyond the range and reach of the influences of direct Revelation. We may not be all aware of the many and malignant assaults which were made on the Christian faith, and on the morality of the Bible, through the character of David, by the blind and self-righteous Deists of a century or more ago. Taking the Scripture testimony about him, that he was the man after God’s heart, and putting beside this the record of those great sins which he committed, they sought to set these great, yet still isolated, offences in the most hateful light; and thus to bring at once him, and the Book which praised him, to a common shame. But all this while, the question of the man, what he was, and what the moral sum total of his life, to which alone the Scripture testimony bore witness, and to which alone it was pledged, this was a question with which they concerned themselves not at all; while yet it was a far more important question than what any of his single acts may have been; and it was this which, in the estimate of his character, was really at issue. To this question we answer, a diamond, which, if a diamond with a flaw, as are all but the one “entire and perfect chrysolite,” would yet outvalue a mountain of pebbles without one, such as they were; even assuming the pebbles to be without; and not merely to seem so, because their flaw was an all-pervading one, and only not so quickly detected, inasmuch as the contrast was wanting of any clearer material which should at once reveal its presence.
Footnotes
- [[144]] They have for their Latin equivalents such as these; Colo quod aptâsti, ipsi tibi nendum est.—Qui vinum bibit, fæcem bibat.—Ut sementem feceris, ita metes.
- [[145]] In respect of other proverbs, such as the following, Tunica pallio propior;—Frons occipitio prior; I have greater doubt. The misuse lies nearer; the selfishness may very probably be in the proverb itself, and not in our application of it; though even these seem not incapable of a fair interpretation.
- [[146]] On a toujours assez de force pour supporter le malheur de ses amis. I confess this sounds to me rather like an imitation of Rochefoucault than a genuine proverb.
- [[147]] Ognun tira l’acqua al suo molino.
- [[148]] Ex alieno tergore lata secantur lora.
- [[149]] Zelf is de Man.
- [[150]] J’aime mieux un raisin pour moi que deux figues pour toi.
- [[151]] Comptez après votre père. Compare the Spanish: Entre dos amigos un notario y dos testigos.
- [[152]] Einmal, keinmal. This proverb was turned to such bad uses, that a German divine thought it necessary to write a treatise against it. There exist indeed several old works in German with such titles as the following, Ungodly Proverbs and their Refutation. It is not for nothing that Jeremy Taylor in one place gives this warning: “Be curious to avoid all proverbs and propositions, or odd sayings, by which evil life is encouraged, and the hands of the spirit weakened.” In like manner Chrysostom (Hom. 73 in Matt.) denounces the Greek proverb: γλυκὺ ἤτω καὶ πνιξάτω.
- [[153]] Peccato celato, mezzo perdonato.
- [[154]] Badly turned into a rhyming pentameter:
- Consonus esto lupis, cum quibus esse cupis.
- [[155]] There are very few inculcating an opposite lesson: this however is one: Spend, and God will send; which Howell glosses well; “Yes, a bag and a wallet.”
- [[156]] Quien en un año quiere ser rico, al medio le ahorcan.
- [[157]] Male parta male dilabuntur.—Wie gewonnen, so zerronnen.
- [[158]] Ungerechter Pfennig verzehrt gerechten Thaler.
- [[159]] Lo ageno siempre pia por su dueño.
- [[160]] Der Geiz sammlet sich arm, die Milde giebt sich reich. In the sense of the latter half of this proverb we say, Drawn wells are seldom dry; though this word is capable of very far wider application.
- [[161]] There is one remarkable Latin proverb on the moral cowardliness which it is the character of riches to generate, saying more briefly the same which Wordsworth said when he proclaimed—
- “that riches are akin
- To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death;”
- it is this: Timidus Plutus: and has sometimes suggested to me the question whether he might not have had it in his mind when he composed his great sonnet in prospect of the invasion:
- “These times touch monied worldlings with dismay;”
- not that his genius needed any such solicitation from without; for the poem is only the natural outgrowth of that spirit and temper in which the whole series of noble and ennobling poems, the Sonnets to Liberty, is composed, and in perfect harmony with the rest; yet is it, notwithstanding, in a very wonderful way shut up in the two words of the ancient proverb.
- [[162]] Τῇ χειρὶ δεῖ σπείρειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ ὅλῳ τῷ θυλάκῳ.
- [[163]] Giv saa i Dag, at du og kandst give i morgen.—Giv een at du kand give en anden.
- [[164]] L’ultimo vestito ce lo fanno senza tasche.
- [[165]] This is the English form of that worthy old classical proverb: Φεύγων μύλον, ἄλφιτα φεύγει, or in Latin: Qui vitat molam, vitat farinam.
- [[166]] Ahont anirás, bou, que no llaures? I prefer this form of it to the Spanish: Adonde yrá el buey, que no are?
- [[167]] Pereza, llave de pobreza.
- [[168]] Dii facientes adjuvant.
- [[169]] According to the Spanish proverb: Quien bien ata, bien desata.
- [[170]] Quien tiene boca, no diga á otro, Sopla.
- [[171]] Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre.
- [[172]] Nondum omnium dierum sol occidit.
- [[173]] Il mondo è, di chi ha pazienza.
- [[174]] Se ben ho perso l’anello, ho pur anche le dita;—Si se perdieron los anillos, aqui quedaron los dedillos.
- [[175]] In their bastard French it runs thus: Gambette ous trouvé nen gan chimin, nen gan chimin ous va pèdè li. It may have been originally French, at any rate the French have a proverb very much to the same effect: Ce qui vient par la flute, s’en va par le tambour; and compare the modern Greek proverb: Ἀνεμομαζώματα, δαιμονοσκορπίσματα. (What the wind gathers, the devil scatters.)
- [[176]] Εὕδοντι κύρτος αἱρεῖ.—Dormienti rete trahit. The reader with a Plutarch’s Lives within his reach may turn to the very instructive little history told in connexion with this proverb, of Timotheus the Athenian commander; an history which only requires to be translated into Christian language to contain a deep moral for all. (Sulla, c. 6.)
- [[177]] Sera in imo parsimonia.
- [[178]] Seneca (Ep. i.): Non enim tantum minimum in imo, sed pessimum remanet.
- [[179]] Morgenstund’ hat Gold im Mund.
- [[180]] Lo que hace el loco á la postre, hace sabio al principio.
- [[181]] Henry More, On Godliness, b. 8. How remarkable a confirmation of the fact asserted in that proverb and in this passage lies in the twofold uses of the Greek word κακοήθεια; having, for its first meaning, an evil disposition in a man’s self, it has for its second an interpreting on his part for the worst of all the actions of other men.
[LECTURE VI.]
THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
I sought, as best I could, in my last lecture to furnish you with some helps for estimating the ethical worth of proverbs. Their theology alone remains; the aspects, that is, under which they contemplate, not now any more man’s relations with his fellow-man, but those on which in the end all other must depend, his relations with God. Between the subject matter, indeed, of that lecture and of this I have found it nearly impossible to draw any very accurate line of distinction. Much which was there might nearly as fitly have been here; some which I have reserved for this might already have found its place there. It is this, however, which I propose more directly to consider, namely, what proverbs have to say concerning the moral government of the world, and, more important still, concerning its Governor? How does all this present itself to the popular mind and conscience, as attested by these? What, in short, is their theology? for such, good or bad, it is evident that abundantly they have.
Here, as everywhere else, their testimony is a mingled one. The darkness, the error, the confusion of man’s heart, out of which he oftentimes sees distortedly, and sometimes sees not at all, have all embodied themselves in his word. Yet still, as it is the very nature of the false, in its separate manifestations, to resolve into nothingness, though only to be succeeded by new births in a like kind, while the true abides and continues, it has thus come to pass that we have generally in those utterances on which the stamp of permanence has been set, the nobler voices, the truer faith of humanity, in respect of its own destinies and of Him by whom those destinies are ordered.