Proverbs
3:1-10: THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING
The first ten verses of this passage
form a series of five couplets, which enforce on the young various phases of
goodness by their tendency to secure happiness or blessedness of various
sorts. The underlying axiom is that, in a world ruled by a good Being,
obedience must lead to well-being; but while that is in the general true,
exceptions do occur, and good men do encounter evil times. Therefore the
glowing promises of these verses are followed by two verses which deal with
the explanation of good men’s afflictions, as being results and tokens of
God’s fatherly love.
The first couplet is general in
character. It inculcates obedience to the precepts of the teacher, and gives
as reason the assurance that thereby long life and peace will be secured.
True to the Old Testament conception of revelation as a law, the teacher
sets obedience in the forefront. He is sure that his teaching contains the
sufficient guide for conduct, and coincides with the divine will. He calls,
in the first instance, for inward willing acceptance of His commandments;
for it is the heart, not primarily the hands, which he desires should ‘keep’
them. The mother of all graces of conduct is the bowing of the will to
divine authority. The will is the man, and where it ceases to lift itself up
in self-sacrificing and self-determining rebellion, and dissolves into
running waters of submission, these will flow through the life and make it
pure. To obey self is sin, to obey God is righteousness. The issues of such
obedience are ‘length of days . . . and peace.’
Even if we allow for the difference
between the Old and the New Testaments, it remains true that a life
conformed to God’s will tends to longevity, and that many forms of sin do
shorten men’s days. Passion and indulged appetites eat away the very flesh,
and many a man’s ‘bones are full of the sin of his youth.’ The profligate
has usually ‘a short life,’ whether he succeeds in making it ‘merry’ or not.
‘Peace’ is a wide word, including all
well-being. Ease-loving Orientals, especially when living in warlike times,
naturally used the phrase as a shorthand expression for all good. Busy
Westerns, torn by the distractions and rapid movement of modern life, echo
the sigh for repose which breathes in the word. ‘There is no joy but calm,’
and the sure way to deepest peace is to give up self-will and live in
obedience.
The second couplet deals with our
relations to one another, and puts forward the two virtues of
‘loving-kindness and truth’—that is truth, or faithfulness—as all-inclusive.
They are the two which are often jointly ascribed to God, especially in the
Psalms. Our attitude to one another should be moulded in God’s to us all.
The tiniest crystal has the same facets and angles as the largest. The giant
hexagonal pillars of basalt, like our Scottish Staffa, are identical in form
with the microscopic crystals of the same substance. God is our Pattern;
goodness is likeness to Him.
These graces are to be bound about the
neck, perhaps as an ornament, but more probably as a yoke by which the
harnessed ox draws its burden. If we have them, they will fit us to bear one
another’s burdens, and will lead to all human duties to our fellows.
These graces are also to be written on
the ‘table of the heart’; that is, are to be objects of habitual meditation
with aspiration. If so, they will come to sight in life. He who practises
them will ‘find favour with God and man,’ for God looks with complacency on
those who display the right attitude to men; and men for the most part treat
us as we treat them. There are surly natures which are not won by kindness,
like black tarns among the hills, that are gloomy even in sunshine, and
requite evil for good; but the most of men reflect our feelings to them.
‘Good understanding’ is another
result. It is ‘found’ when it is attributed to us, so that the expression
substantially means that the possessors of these graces will win the
reputation of being really wise, not only in the fallible judgment of men,
but before the pure eyes of the all-seeing God. Really wise policy coincides
with loving-kindness and truth.
The remaining couplets refer to our
relations to God. The New Testament is significantly anticipated in the
pre-eminence given to trust; that is, faith. Nor less significant and
profound is the association of self-distrust with trust in the Lord. The two
things are inseparable. They are but the under and upper sides of one thing,
or like the two growths that come from a seed—one striking downwards becomes
the root; one piercing upwards becomes the stalk. The double attitude of
trust and distrust finds expression in acknowledging Him in all our ways;
that is, ordering our conduct under a constant consciousness of His
presence, in accordance with His will, and in dependence on His help.
Such a relation to God will certainly,
and with no exceptions, issue in His ‘directing our paths,’ by which is
meant that He will be not only our Guide, but also our Roadmaker, showing us
the way and clearing obstacles from it. Calm certitude follows on
willingness to accept God’s will, and whoever seeks only to go where God
sends him will neither be left doubtful whither he should go, nor find his
road blocked.
The fourth couplet is, in its first
part, in inverted parallelism with the third; for it begins with
self-distrust, and proceeds thence to ‘fear of the Lord,’ which corresponds
to, and is, in fact, but one phase of, trust in Him. It is the reverent awe
which has no torment, and is then purest when faith is strongest. It
necessarily leads to departing from evil. Morality has its roots in
religion. There is no such magnet to draw men from sin as the happy fear of
God, which is likewise faith. Whoever separates devoutness from purity of
life, this teacher does not. He knows nothing of religion which permits
association with iniquity. Such conduct will tend to physical well-being,
and in a deeper sense will secure soundness of life. Godlessness is the true
sickness. He only is healthy who has a healthy, because healed, soul.
The fifth couplet appears at first as
being a drop to a lower region. A regulation of the Mosaic law may strike
some as out of place here. But it is to be remembered that our modern
distinction of ceremonial and moral law was non-existent for Israel, and
that the command has a wider application than to Jewish tithes. To ‘honour
God with our substance’ is not necessarily to give it away for religious
purposes, but to use it devoutly and as He approves.
Christianity has more to say about the
distribution, as well as the acquisition, of wealth, than professing
Christians, especially in commercial communities, practically recognise.
This precept grips us tight, and is much more than a ceremonial regulation.
Many causes besides the devout use of property tend to wealth in our highly
artificial state of society. The world tries to get it by shrewdness,
unscrupulousness, and by many other vices which are elevated to the rank of
virtues; but he who honours the Lord in getting and spending will generally
have as much as his true needs and regulated desires require.
Proverbs 3:11-24:
THE GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM
The repetition of the words ‘my son’
at the beginning of this passage marks a new section, which extends to verse
20 , inclusively, another section being similarly marked as commencing in
verse 21 . The fatherly counsels of these early chapters are largely
reiterations of the same ideas, being line upon line. ‘To write the same
things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.’ Many
strokes drive the nail home. Exhortations to get Wisdom, based upon the
blessings she brings, are the staple of the whole. If we look carefully at
the section ( vers. 11-20 ), we find in it a central core ( vers. 13-18 ),
setting forth the blessings which Wisdom gives, preceded by two verses,
inculcating the right acceptance of God’s chastisements which are one chief
means of attaining Wisdom, and followed by two verses ( vers. 19, 20 ),
which exalt her as being divine as well as human. So the portraiture of her
working in humanity is framed by a prologue and epilogue, setting forth two
aspects of her relation to God; namely, that she is imparted by Him through
the discipline of trouble, and that she dwells in His bosom and is the agent
of His creative work.
The prologue, then, points to sorrow
and trouble, rightly accepted, as one chief means by which we acquire
heavenly Wisdom. Note the profound insight into the meaning of sorrows. They
are ‘instruction’ and ‘reproof.’ The thought of the Book of Job is here
fully incorporated and assimilated. Griefs and pains are not tokens of
anger, nor punishments of sin, but love-gifts meant to help to the
acquisition of wisdom. They do not come because the sufferers are wicked,
but in order to make them good or better. Tempests are meant to blow us into
port. The lights are lowered in the theatre that fairer scenes may become
visible on the thin screen between us and eternity. Other supports are
struck away that we may lean hard on God. The voice of all experience of
earthly loss and bitterness is, ‘Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore
get Wisdom.’ God himself becomes our Schoolmaster, and through the voice of
the human teacher we hear His deeper tones saying, ‘My son, despise not the
chastening.’
Note, too, the assurance that all
discipline is the fruit of Fatherly love. How many sad hearts in all ages
these few words have calmed and braced! How sharp a test of our childlike
spirit our acceptance of them, when our own hearts are sore, is! How deep
the peace which they bring when really believed! How far they go to solve
the mystery of pain, and turn darkness into a solemn light!
Note, further, that the words ‘despise’ and ‘be weary’ both imply rather
rejection with loathing, and thus express unsubmissive impatience which gets
no good from discipline. The beautiful rendering of the Septuagint, which
has been made familiar by its adoption in Hebrews, makes the two words
express two opposite faults. They ‘despise’ who steel their wills against
the rod, and make as if they did not feel the pain; they ‘faint’ who
collapse beneath the blows, which they feel so much that they lose sight of
their purpose. Dogged insensibility and utter prostration are equally
harmful. He who meets life’s teachings, which are a Father’s correction,
with either, has little prospect of getting Wisdom.
Then follows the main part of this
section ( vers. 13-18 ),—the praise of Wisdom as in herself most precious,
and as bestowing highest good. ‘The man that findeth Wisdom’ reminds us of
the peasant in Christ’s parable, who found treasure hidden in a field, and
the ‘merchandise’ in verse 14 , of the trader seeking goodly pearls. But the
finding in verse 13 is not like the rustic’s in the parable, who was seeking
nothing when a chance stroke of his plough or kick of his heel laid bare the
glittering gold. It is the finding which rewards seeking. The figure of
acquiring by trading, like that of the pearl-merchant in the companion
parable, implies pains, effort, willingness to part with something in order
to attain.
The nature of the price is not here in
question. We know who has said, ‘I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in
the fire.’ We buy heavenly Wisdom when we surrender ourselves. The price is
desire to possess, and willingness to accept as an undeserved, unearned
gift. But that does not come into view in our lesson. Only this is strongly
put in it—that this heavenly Wisdom outshines all jewels, outweighs all
wealth, and is indeed the only true riches. ‘Rubies’ is probably rather to
be taken as ‘corals,’ which seem to have been very highly prized by the
Jews, and, no doubt, found their way to them from the Indian Ocean via the
Red Sea. The word rendered ‘things thou canst desire’ is better taken as
meaning ‘jewels.’
This noble and conclusive depreciation
of material wealth in comparison with Wisdom, which is not merely
intellectual, but rests on the fear of the Lord, and is goodness as well as
understanding, never needed preaching with more emphasis than in our day,
when more and more the commercial spirit invades every region of life, and
rich men are the aristocrats and envied types of success. When will England
and America believe the religion which they profess, and adjust their
estimates of the best things accordingly? How many so-called Christian
parents would think their son mad if he said, ‘I do not care about getting
rich; my goal is to be wise with God’s Wisdom’? How few of us order our
lives on the footing of this old teacher’s lesson, and act out the belief
that Wisdom is more than wealth! The man who heaps millions together, and
masses it, fails in life, however a vulgar world and a nominal church may
admire and glorify him. The man who wins Wisdom succeeds, however bare may
be his cupboard, and however people may pity him for having failed in life,
because he has not drawn prizes in the Devil’s lottery. His blank is a
prize, and their prizes are blanks. This decisive subordination of material
to spiritual good is too plainly duty and common sense to need being dwelt
upon; but, alas! like a great many other most obvious, accepted truths, it
is disregarded as universally as believed.
The inseparable accompaniments of
Wisdom are next eloquently described. The picture is the poetical clothing
of the idea that all material good will come to him who despises it all and
clasps Wisdom to his heart. Some things flow from Wisdom possessed as usual
consequences; some are inseparable from her. The gift in her right hand is
length of days; that in her left, which, by its position, is suggested as
inferior to the former, is wealth and honour—two goods which will attend the
long life. No doubt such promises are to be taken with limitations; but
there need be no doubt that, on the whole, loyal devotion to and real
possession of heavenly Wisdom do tend in the direction of lengthening lives,
which are by it delivered from vices and anxieties which cut many a career
short, and of gathering round silver hairs reverence and troops of friends.
These are the usual consequences, and
may be fairly brought into view as secondary encouragements to seek Wisdom.
But if she is sought for the sake of getting these attendant blessings, she
will not be found. She must be loved for herself, not for her dowry, or she
will not be won. At the same time, the overstrained and fantastic morality,
which stigmatises regard to the blessed results of a religious life as
selfishness, finds no support in Scripture, as it has none in common sense.
Would there were more of such selfishness!
Sometimes Wisdom’s hands do not hold
these outward gifts. But the connection between her and the next blessings
spoken of is inseparable. Her ways are pleasantness and peace. ‘In
keeping’—not for keeping—‘her commandments is great reward.’ Inward delight
and deep tranquillity of heart attend every step taken in obedience to
Wisdom. The course of conduct so prescribed will often involve painful
crucifying of the lower nature, but its pleasure far outweighs its pain. It
will often be strewn with sharp flints, or may even have red-hot
ploughshares laid on it, as in old ordeal trials; but still it will be
pleasant to the true self. Sin is a blunder as well as a crime, and
enlightened self-interest would point out the same course as the highest law
of Wisdom. In reality, duty and delight are co-extensive. They are two names
for one thing—one taken from consideration of its obligation; the other,
from observation of its issues. ‘Calm pleasures there abide.’ The only
complete peace, which fills and quiets the whole man, comes from obeying
Wisdom, or what is the same thing, from following Christ. There is no other
way of bringing all our nature into accord with itself, ending the war
between conscience and inclination, between flesh and spirit. There is no
other way of bringing us into amity with all circumstances, so that
fortunate or adverse shall be recognised as good, and nothing be able to
agitate us very much. Peace with ourselves, the world, and God, is always
the consequence of listening to Wisdom.
The whole fair picture is summed up in
verse 18 : ‘She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.’ This is a
distinct allusion to the narrative of Genesis. The flaming sword of the
cherub guard is sheathed, and access to the tree, which gives immortal life
to those who eat, is open to us. Mark how that great word ‘life’ is here
gathering to itself at least the beginnings of higher conceptions than those
of simple existence. It is swelling like a bud, and preparing to open and
disclose the perfect flower, the life which stands in the knowledge of God
and the Christ whom He has sent. Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom, is Himself
‘the Tree of Life in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The condition of
access to it is ‘laying hold’ by the outstretched hand of faith, and keeping
hold with holy obstinacy of grip, in spite of all temptations to slack our
grasp. That retaining is the condition of true blessedness.
Verses 19 and 20 invest the idea of
Wisdom with still loftier sublimity, since they declare that it is an
attribute of God Himself by which creation came into being. The meaning of
the writer is inadequately grasped if we take it to be only that creation
shows God’s Wisdom. This personified Wisdom dwells with God, is the agent of
creation, comes with invitations to men, may be possessed by them, and
showers blessings on them. The planet Neptune was divined before it was
discovered, by reason of perturbations in the movements of the exterior
members of the system, unaccountable unless some great globe of light,
hitherto unseen, were swaying them in their orbits. Do we not see here like
influence streaming from the unrisen light of Christ? Personification
prepares for Incarnation. There is One who has been with the Father from the
beginning, by whom all things came into being, whose voice sounds to all,
who is the Tree of Life, whom we may all possess, and with whose own peace
we may be peaceful and blessed for evermore.
Verses 21-24 belong to the next
section of the great discourse or hymn. They add little to the preceding.
But we may observe the earnest exhortation to let wisdom and understanding
be ever in sight. Eyes are apt to stray and clouds to hide the sun. Effort
is needed to counteract the tendency to slide out of consciousness, which
our weakness imposes on the most certain and important truths. A Wisdom
which we do not think about is as good or as bad as non-existent for us. One
prime condition of healthy spiritual life is the habit of meditation,
thereby renewing our gaze upon the facts of God’s revelation and the bearing
of these on our conduct.
The blessings flowing from Wisdom are
again dilated on, from a somewhat different point of view. She is the giver
of life. And then she adorns the life she gives. One has seen homely faces
so refined and glorified by the fair soul that shone through them as to be,
‘as it were, the face of an angel.’ Gracefulness should be the outward token
of inward grace. Some good people forget that they are bound to ‘adorn the
doctrine.’ But they who have drunk most deeply of the fountain of Wisdom
will find that, like the fabled spring, its waters confer strange
loveliness. Lives spent in communion with Jesus will be lovely, however
homely their surroundings, and however vulgar eyes, taught only to admire
staring colours, may find them dull. The world saw ‘no beauty that they
should desire Him,’ in Him whom holy souls and heavenly angels and the
divine Father deemed ‘fairer than the sons of men’!
Safety and firm footing in active life
will be ours if we walk in Wisdom’s ways. He who follows Christ’s footsteps
will tread surely, and not fear foes. Quiet repose in hours of rest will be
his. A day filled with happy service will be followed by a night full of
calm slumber, ‘Whether we sleep or wake, we live’ with Him; and, if we do
both, sleeping and waking will be blessed, and our lives will move on gently
to the time when days and nights shall melt into one, and there will be no
need for repose; for there will be no work that wearies and no hands that
droop. The last lying down in the grave will be attended with no terrors.
The last sleep there shall be sweet; for it will really be awaking to the
full possession of the personal Wisdom, who is our Christ, our Life in
death, our Heaven in heaven.
Proverbs
4:10-19 THE TWO PATHS
This passage includes much more than
temperance or any other single virtue. It is a perfectly general exhortation
to that practical wisdom which walks in the path of righteousness. The
principles laid down here are true in regard to drunkenness and abstinence,
but they are intended to receive a wider application, and to that wider
application we must first look. The theme is the old, familiar one of the
two paths, and the aim is to recommend the better way by setting forth the
contrasted effects of walking in it and in the other.
The general call to listen in verse 10
is characteristically enforced by the Old Testament assurance that obedience
prolongs life. That is a New Testament truth as well; for there is nothing
more certain than that a life in conformity with God’s will, which is the
same thing as a life in conformity with physical laws, tends to longevity.
The experience of any doctor will show that. Here in England we have
statistics which prove that total abstainers are a long-lived people, and
some insurance offices construct their tables accordingly.
After that general call to listen
comes, in verse 11 , the description of the path in which long life is to be
found. It is ‘the way of Wisdom’—that is, that which Wisdom prescribes, and
in which therefore it is wise to walk. It is always foolish to do wrong. The
rough title of an old play is The Devil is an Ass , and if that is not true
about him, it is absolutely true about those who listen to his lies. Sin is
the stupidest thing in the universe, for it ignores the plainest facts, and
never gets what it flings away so much to secure.
Another aspect of the path is
presented in the designation ‘paths of uprightness,’ which seems to be
equivalent to those which belong to, or perhaps which consist of,
uprightness. The idea of straightness or evenness is the primary meaning of
the word, and is, of course, appropriate to the image of a path. In the
moral view, it suggests how much more simple and easy a course of rectitude
is than one of sin. The one goes straight and unswerving to its end; the
other is crooked, devious, intricate, and wanders from the true goal. A
crooked road is a long road, and an up-and-down road is a tiring road.
Wisdom’s way is straight, level, and steadily approaches its aim.
In verse 13 the image of the path is
dropped for the moment, and the picture of the way of uprightness and its
travellers is translated into the plain exhortation to keep fast hold of
‘instruction,’ which is substantially equivalent to the queenly Wisdom of
these early chapters of Proverbs. The earnestness of the repeated
exhortations implies the strength of the forces that tend to sweep us,
especially those of us who are young, from our grasp of that Wisdom. Hands
become slack, and many a good gift drops from nerveless fingers; thieves
abound who will filch away ‘instruction,’ if we do not resolutely hold tight
by it. Who would walk through the slums of a city holding jewels with a
careless grasp, and never looking at them? How many would he have left if he
did? We do not need to do anything to lose instruction. If we will only do
nothing to keep it, the world and our own hearts will make sure that we lose
it. And if we lose it, we lose ourselves; for ‘she is thy life,’ and the
mere bodily life, that is lived without her, is not worth calling the life
of a man.
Verses 14 to 17 give the picture of
the other path, in terrible contrast with the preceding. It is noteworthy
that, while in the former the designation was the ‘path of uprightness’ or
of ‘wisdom,’ and the description therefore was mainly of the characteristics
of the path, here the designation is ‘the path of the wicked ,’ and the
description is mainly of the travellers on it. Righteousness was dealt with,
as it were, in the abstract; but wickedness is too awful and dark to be
painted thus, and is only set forth in the concrete, as seen in its doers.
Now, it is significant that the first exhortation here is of a negative
character. In contrast with the reiterated exhortations to keep wisdom, here
are reiterated counsels to steer clear of evil. It is all about us, and we
have to make a strong effort to keep it at arm’s-length. ‘Whom resist’ is
imperative. True, negative virtue is incomplete, but there will be no
positive virtue without it. We must be accustomed to say ‘No,’ or we shall
come to little good. An outer belt of firs is sometimes planted round a
centre of more tender and valuable wood to shelter the young trees; so we
have to make a fence of abstinences round our plantation of positive
virtues. The decalogue is mostly prohibitions. ‘So did not I, because of the
fear of God’ must be our motto. In this light, entire abstinence from
intoxicants is seen to be part of the ‘way of Wisdom.’ It is one, and, in
the present state of England and America, perhaps the most important, of the
ways by which we can ‘turn from’ the path of the wicked and ‘pass on.’
The picture of the wicked in verses 16
and 17 is that of very grossly criminal sinners. They are only content when
they have done harm, and delight in making others as bad as themselves. But,
diabolical as such a disposition is, one sees it only too often in full
operation. How many a drunkard or impure man finds a fiendish pleasure in
getting hold of some innocent lad, and ‘putting him up to a thing or two,’
which means teaching him the vices from which the teacher has ceased to get
much pleasure, and which he has to spice with the condiment of seeing an
unaccustomed sinner’s eagerness! Such people infest our streets, and there
is only one way for a young man to be safe from them,—‘avoid, pass not by,
turn from, and pass on.’ The reference to ‘bread’ and ‘wine’ in verse 17
seems simply to mean that the wicked men’s living is won by their
‘wickedness,’ which procures bread, and by their ‘violence,’ which brings
them wine. It is the way by which these are obtained that is culpable. We
may contrast this foul source of a degraded living with verse 13 , where
‘instruction’ is set forth as ‘the life’ of the upright.
Verses 18 and 19 bring more closely
together the two paths, and set them in final, forcible contrast. The phrase
‘the perfect day’ might be rendered, vividly though clumsily, ‘the steady of
the day’—that is, noon, when the sun seems to stand still in the meridian.
So the image compares the path of the just to the growing brightness of
morning dawn, becoming more and more fervid and lustrous, till the climax of
an Eastern midday. No more sublime figure of the continuous progress in
goodness, brightness, and joy, which is the best reward of walking in the
paths of uprightness, can be imagined; and it is as true as it is sublime.
Blessed they who in the morning of their days begin to walk in the way of
wisdom; for, in most cases, years will strengthen their uprightness, and to
that progress there will be no termination, nor will the midday sun have to
decline westward to diminishing splendour or dismal setting, but that
noontide glory will be enhanced, and made eternal in a new heaven. The
brighter the light, the darker the shadow. That blaze of growing glory,
possible for us all, makes the tragic gloom to which evil men condemn
themselves the thicker and more doleful, as some dungeon in an Eastern
prison seems pitch dark to one coming in from the blaze outside. ‘How great
is that darkness!’ It is the darkness of sin, of ignorance, of sorrow, and
what adds deeper gloom to it is that every soul that sits in that shadow of
death might have been shining, a sun, in the spacious heaven of God’s love.
Proverbs 4:12 MONOTONY AND CRISES
The old metaphor likening life to a
path has many felicities in it. It suggests constant change, it suggests
continuous progress in one direction, and that all our days are linked
together, and are not isolated fragments; and it suggests an aim and an end.
So we find it perpetually in this Book of Proverbs. Here the ‘way’ has a
specific designation, ‘the way of Wisdom’—that is to say, the way which
Wisdom teaches, and the way on which Wisdom accompanies us, and the way
which leads to Wisdom. Now, these two clauses of my text are not merely an
instance of the peculiar feature of Hebrew poetry called parallelism, in
which two clauses, substantially the same, occur, but with a little pleasing
difference. ‘When thou goest’—that is, the monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp of
slow walking along the path of an uneventful daily life, the humdrum ‘one
foot up and another foot down’ which makes the most of our days. ‘When thou
runnest’—that points to the crises, the sudden spurts, the necessarily brief
bursts of more than usual energy and effort and difficulty. And about both
of them, the humdrum and the exciting, the monotonous and the startling, the
promise comes that if we walk in the path of Wisdom we shall not get
disgusted with the one and we shall not be overwhelmed by the other. ‘When
thou walkest, thy steps shall not be straitened; when thou runnest, thou
shalt not stumble.’
But before I deal with these two
clauses specifically, let me recall to you the condition, and the sole
condition, upon which either of them can be fulfilled in our daily lives.
The book from which my text is taken is probably one of the very latest in
the Old Testament, and you catch in it a very significant and marvellous
development of the Old Testament thought. For there rises up, out of these
early chapters of the Book of Proverbs, that august and serene figure of the
queenly Wisdom, which is more than a personification and is less than a
person and a prophecy. It means more than the wise man that spoke it saw; it
means for us Christ, ‘the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.’ And so
instead of keeping ourselves merely to the word of the Book of Proverbs, we
must grasp the thing that shines through the word, and realise that the
writer’s visions can only become realities when the serene and august Wisdom
that he saw shimmering through the darkness took to itself a human Form, and
‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.’
With that heightening of the meaning
of the phrase, ‘the path of Wisdom’ assumes a heightened meaning too, for it
is the path of the personal Wisdom, the Incarnate Wisdom, Christ Himself.
And what does it then come to be to obey this command to walk in the way of
Wisdom? Put it into three sentences. Let the Christ who is not only wise,
but Wisdom, choose your path, and be sure that by the submission of your
will all your paths are His, and not only yours. Make His path yours by
following in His steps, and do in your place what you think Christ would
have done if He had been there. Keep company with Him on the road. If we
will do these three things—if we will say to Him, ‘Lord, when Thou sayest
go, I go; when Thou biddest me come, I come; I am Thy slave, and I rejoice
in the bondage more than in all licentious liberty, and what Thou biddest me
do, I do’—if you will further say, ‘As Thou art, so am I in the world’—and
if you will further say, ‘Leave me not alone, and let me cling to Thee on
the road, as a little child holds on by her mother’s skirt or her father’s
hand,’ then, and only then, will you walk in the path of Wisdom.
Now, then, these three
things—submission of will, conformity of conduct, closeness of
companionship—these three things being understood, let us look for a moment
at the blessings that this text promises, and first at the promise for long
uneventful stretches of our daily life. That, of course, is mainly the
largest proportion of all our lives. Perhaps nine-tenths at least of all our
days and years fall under the terms of this first promise, ‘When thou
walkest.’ For many miles there comes nothing particular, nothing at all
exciting, nothing new, nothing to break the plod, plod, plod along the road.
Everything is as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and as it will
be to-morrow, and the day after that, in all probability. ‘The trivial
round, the common task’ make up by far the largest percentage of our lives.
It is as in wine, the immense proportion of it is nothing but water, and
only a small proportion of alcohol is diffused through the great mass of the
tamer liquid.
Now, then, if Jesus Christ is not to
help us in the monotony of our daily lives, what, in the name of common
sense, is His help good for? If it is not true that He will be with us, not
only in the moments of crisis, but in the long commonplace hours, we may as
well have no Christ at all, for all that I can see. Unless the trivial is
His field, there is very little field for Him, in your life or mine. And so
it should come to all of us who have to take up this daily burden of small,
monotonous, constantly recurring, and therefore often wearisome, duties, as
even a more blessed promise than the other one, that ‘when thou walkest, thy
steps shall not be straitened.’
I remember hearing of a man that got
so disgusted with having to dress and undress himself every day that he
committed suicide to escape from the necessity. That is a very extreme form
of the feeling that comes over us all sometimes, when we wake in a morning
and look before us along the stretch of dead level, which is a great deal
more wearisome when it lasts long than are the cheerful vicissitudes of up
hill and down dale. We all know the deadening influence of a habit. We all
know the sense of disgust that comes over us at times, and of utter
weariness, just because we have been doing the same things day after day for
so long. I know only one infallible way of preventing the common from
becoming commonplace, of preventing the small from becoming trivial, of
preventing the familiar from becoming contemptible, and it is to link it all
to Jesus Christ, and to say, ‘For Thy sake, and unto Thee, I do this’; then,
not only will the rough places become plain, and the crooked things
straight, and not only will the mountains be brought low, but the valleys of
the commonplace will be exalted. ‘Thy steps shall not be straitened.’ ‘I
will make his feet as hind’s feet,’ says one of the old prophets. What a
picture of light, buoyant, graceful movement that is! And each of us may
have that, instead of the grind, grind, grind! tramp, tramp, tramp! along
the level and commonplace road of our daily lives, if we will. Walk in the
path of Christ, with Christ, towards Christ, and ‘thy steps shall not be
straitened.’
Now, there is another aspect of this
same promise—viz. if we thus are in the path of Incarnate Wisdom, we shall
not feel the restrictions of the road to be restraints. ‘Thy steps shall not
be straitened’; although there is a wall on either side, and the road is the
narrow way that leads to life, it is broad enough for the sober man, because
he goes in a straight line, and does not need half the road to roll about
in. The limits which love imposes, and the limits which love accepts, are
not narrowing. ‘I will walk at liberty, for—I do as I like.’ No! that is
slavery; but, ‘I will walk at liberty, for I keep Thy precepts’; and I do
not want to go vagrantising at large, but limit myself thankfully to the way
which Thou dost mark out. ‘Thy steps shall not be straitened.’ So much for
the first of these promises.
Now what about the other one? ‘When
thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.’
As I have said, the former promise
applies to the hours and the years of life. The latter applies to but a few
moments of each man’s life. Cast your thoughts back over your own days, and
however changeful, eventful, perhaps adventurous, and as we people call it,
romantic, some parts of our lives may have been, yet for all that you can
put the turning-points, the crises that have called for great efforts, and
the gathering of yourselves up, and the calling forth of all your powers to
do and to dare, you can put them all inside of a week, in most cases. ‘When
thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.’ The greater the speed, the greater
the risk of stumbling over some obstacle in the way. We all know how many
men there are that do very well in the uneventful commonplaces of life, but
bring them face to face with some great difficulty or some great trial, and
there is a dismal failure. Jesus Christ is ready to make us fit for anything
in the way of difficulty, in the way of trial, that can come storming upon
us from out of the dark. And He will make us so fit if we follow the
injunctions to which I have already been referring. Without His help it is
almost certain that when we have to run, our ankles will give, or there will
be a stone in the road that we never thought of, and the excitement will
sweep us away from principle, and we shall lose our hold on Him; and then it
is all up with us.
There is a wonderful saying in one of
the prophets, which uses this same metaphor of my text with a difference,
where it speaks of the divine guidance of Israel as being like that of a
horse in the wilderness. Fancy the poor, nervous, tremulous creature trying
to keep its footing upon the smooth granite slabs of Sinai. Travellers dare
not take their horses on mountain journeys, because they are highly nervous
and are not sure-footed enough. And, so says the old prophet, that gracious
Hand will be laid on the bridle, and hold the nervous creature’s head up as
it goes sliding over the slippery rocks, and so He will bring it down to
rest in the valley. ‘Now unto Him that is able to keep us from stumbling,’
as is the true rendering, ‘and to present us faultless . . . be glory.’
Trust Him, keep near Him, let Him choose your way, and try to be like Him in
it; and whatever great occasions may arise in your lives, either of sorrow
or of duty, you will be equal to them.
But remember the virtue that comes out
victorious in the crisis must have been nourished and cultivated in the
humdrum moments. For it is no time to make one’s first acquaintance with
Jesus Christ when the eyeballs of some ravenous wild beast are staring into
ours, and its mouth is open to swallow us. Unless He has kept our feet from
being straitened in the quiet walk, He will not be able to keep us from
stumbling in the vehement run.
One word more. This same distinction
is drawn by one of the prophets, who adds another clause to it. Isaiah, or
the author of the second portion of the book which goes by his name, puts in
wonderful connection the two thoughts of my text with analogous thoughts in
regard to God, when he says, ‘Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that
the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary?’ and immediately goes on to say, ‘They that
wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall run and not be
weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ So it is from God, the unfainting and
the unwearied, that the strength comes which makes our steps buoyant with
energy amidst the commonplace, and steadfast and established at the crises
of our lives. But before these two great promises is put another one: ‘They
shall mount up with wings as eagles,’ and therefore both the other become
possible. That is to say, fellowship with God in the heavens, which is made
possible on earth by communion with Christ, is the condition both of the
unwearied running and of unfainting walking. If we will keep in the path of
Christ, He will take care of the commonplace dreary tracts and of the brief
moments of strain and effort, and will bring us at last where He has gone,
if, looking unto Him, we ‘run with patience the race,’ and walk with
cheerfulness the road, ‘that is set before us.’
Proverbs
4:18 FROM DAWN TO NOON
‘Then shall the righteous shine forth
as the sun in the kingdom of their father.’— MATT. 13: 43 .
The metaphor common to both these
texts is not infrequent throughout Scripture. In one of the oldest parts of
the Old Testament, Deborah’s triumphal song, we find, ‘Let all them that
love Thee be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.’ In one of the
latest parts of the Old Testament, Daniel’s prophecy, we read, ‘They that be
wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many
to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.’ Then in the New Testament
we have Christ’s comparison of His servants to light, and the great promise
which I have read as my second text. The upshot of them all is this—the most
radiant thing on earth is the character of a good man. The world calls men
of genius and intellectual force its lights. The divine estimate, which is
the true one, confers the name on righteousness.
But my first text follows out another
analogy; not only brightness, but progressive brightness, is the
characteristic of the righteous man.
We are to think of the strong Eastern
sun, whose blinding light steadily increases till the noontide. ‘The perfect
day’ is a somewhat unfortunate translation. What is meant is the point of
time at which the day culminates, and for a moment, the sun seems to stand
steady, up in those southern lands, in the very zenith, raying down ‘the
arrows that fly by noonday.’ The text does not go any further, it does not
talk about the sad diminution of the afternoon. The parallel does not hold;
though, if we consult appearance and sense alone, it seems to hold only too
well. For, sadder than the setting of the suns, which rise again to-morrow,
is the sinking into darkness of death, from which there seems to be no
emerging. But my second text comes in to tell us that death is but as the
shadow of eclipse which passes, and with it pass obscuring clouds and
envious mists, and ‘then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in
their Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’
And so the two texts speak to us of
the progressive brightness, and the ultimate, which is also the progressive,
radiance of the righteous.
I. In looking at them together, then,
I would notice, first, what a Christian life is meant to be.
I must not linger on the lovely
thoughts that are suggested by that attractive metaphor of life. It must be
enough, for our present purpose, to say that the light of the Christian
life, like its type in the heavens, may be analysed into three beams—purity,
knowledge, blessedness. And these three, blended together, make the pure
whiteness of a Christian soul.
But what I wish rather to dwell upon
is the other thought, the intention that every Christian life should be a
life of increasing lustre, uninterrupted, and the natural result of
increasing communion with, and conformity to, the very fountain itself of
heavenly radiance.
Remember how emphatically, in all
sorts of ways, progress is laid down in Scripture as the mark of a religious
life. There is the emblem of my text. There is our Lord’s beautiful one of
vegetable growth: ‘First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the
ear.’ There is the other metaphor of the stages of human life, ‘babes in
Christ,’ young men in Him, old men and fathers. There is the metaphor of the
growth of the body. There is the metaphor of the gradual building up of a
structure. We are to ‘edify ourselves together,’ and to ‘build ourselves up
on our most holy faith.’ There is the other emblem of a race—continual
advance as the result of continual exertion, and the use of the powers
bestowed upon us.
And so in all these ways, and in many
others that I need not now touch upon, Scripture lays it down as a rule that
life in the highest region, like life in the lowest, is marked by continual
growth. It is so in regard to all other things. Continuity in any kind of
practice gives increasing power in the art. The artisan, the blacksmith with
his hammer, the skilled artificer at his trade, the student at his subject,
the good man in his course of life, and the bad man in his, do equally show
that use becomes second nature. And so, in passing, let me say what
incalculable importance there is in our getting habit, with all its mystical
power to mould life, on the side of righteousness, and of becoming
accustomed to do good, and so being unfamiliar with evil.
Let me remind you, too, how this
intention of continuous growth is marked by the gifts that are bestowed upon
us in Jesus Christ. He gives us—and it is by no means the least of the gifts
that He bestows—an absolutely unattainable aim as the object of our efforts.
For He bids us not only be ‘perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect,’
but He bids us be entirely conformed to His own Self. The misery of men is
that they pursue aims so narrow and so shabby that they can be attained, and
are therefore left behind, to sink hull down on the backward horizon. But to
have before us an aim which is absolutely unreachable, instead of being, as
ignorant people say, an occasion of despair and of idleness, is, on the
contrary, the very salt of life. It keeps us young, it makes hope immortal,
it emancipates from lower pursuits, it diminishes the weight of sorrows, it
administers an anaesthetic to every pain. If you want to keep life fresh,
seek for that which you can never fully find.
Christ gives us infinite powers to
reach that unattainable aim, for He gives us access to all His own fullness,
and there is more in His storehouses than we can ever take, not to say more
than we can ever hope to exhaust. And therefore, because of the aim that is
set before us, and because of the powers that are bestowed upon us to reach
it, there is stamped upon every Christian life unmistakably as God’s purpose
and ideal concerning it, that it should for ever and for ever be growing
nearer and nearer, as some ascending spiral that ever circles closer and
closer, and yet never absolutely unites with the great central Perfection
which is Himself.
So, brethren, for every one of us, if
we are Christian people at all, ‘this is the will of God, even your
perfection.’
II. Consider the sad contrast of too
many Christian lives.
I would not speak in terms that might
seem to be reproach and scolding. The matter is far too serious, the disease
far too widespread, to need or to warrant any exaggeration. But, dear
brethren, there are many so-called and, in a fashion, really Christian
people to whom Christ and His work are mainly, if not exclusively, the means
of escaping the consequences of sin—a kind of ‘fire-escape.’ And to very
many it comes as a new thought, in so far as their practical lives are
concerned, that these ought to be lives of steadily increasing deliverance
from the love and the power of sin, and steadily increasing appropriation
and manifestation of Christ’s granted righteousness. There are, I think,
many of us from whom the very notion of progress has faded away. I am sure
there are some of us who were a great deal farther on on the path of the
Christian life years ago, when we first felt that Christ was anything to us,
than we are to-day. ‘When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need
that one teach you which be the first principles of the oracles of God.’
There is an old saying of one of the
prophets that a child would die a hundred years old, which in a very sad
sense is true about very many folk within the pale of the Christian Church
who are seventy-year-old babes still, and will die so. Suns ‘growing
brighter and brighter until the noonday!’ Ah! there are many of us who are a
great deal more like those strange variable stars that sometimes burst out
in the heavens into a great blaze, that brings them up to the brightness of
stars of the first magnitude, for a day or two; and then they dwindle until
they become little specks of light that the telescope can hardly see.
And there are hosts of us who are
instances, if not of arrested, at any rate of unsymmetrical, development.
The head, perhaps, is cultivated; the intellectual apprehension of
Christianity increases, while the emotional, and the moral, and the
practical part of it are all neglected. Or the converse may be the case; and
we may be full of gush and of good emotion, and of fervour when we come to
worship or to pray, and our lives may not be a hair the better for it all.
Or there may be a disproportion because of an exclusive attention to conduct
and the practical side of Christianity, while the rational side of it, which
should be the basis of all, and the emotional side of it, which should be
the driving power of all, are comparatively neglected.
So, dear brethren! what with
interruptions, what with growing by fits and starts, and long, dreary
winters like the Arctic winters, coming in between the two or three days of
rapid, and therefore brief and unwholesome, development, we must all, I
think, take to heart the condemnation suggested by this text when we compare
the reality of our lives with the divine intention concerning them. Let us
ask ourselves, ‘Have I more command over myself than I had twenty years ago?
Do I live nearer Jesus Christ today than I did yesterday? Have I more of His
Spirit in me? Am I growing? Would the people that know me best say that I am
growing in the grace and knowledge of my Lord and Saviour?’ Astronomers tell
us that there are dark suns, that have burnt themselves out, and are
wandering unseen through the skies. I wonder if there are any extinguished
suns of that sort listening to me at this moment.
III. How the divine purpose concerning
us may be realised by us.
Now the Alpha and the Omega of this,
the one means which includes all other, is laid down by Jesus Christ Himself
in another metaphor when He said, ‘Abide in Me, and I in you; so shall ye
bring forth much fruit.’ Our path will brighten, not because of any radiance
in ourselves, but in proportion as we draw nearer and nearer to the Fountain
of heavenly radiance.
The planets that move round the sun,
further away than we are on earth, get less of its light and heat; and those
that circle around it within the limits of our orbit, get proportionately
more. The nearer we are to Him, the more we shall shine. The sun shines by
its own light, drawn indeed from the shrinkage of its mass, so that it gives
away its very life in warming and illuminating its subject-worlds. But we
shine only by reflected light, and therefore the nearer we keep to Him the
more shall we be radiant.
That keeping in touch with Jesus
Christ is mainly to be secured by the direction of thought, and love, and
trust to Him. If we follow close upon Him we shall not walk in darkness. It
is to be secured and maintained very largely by what I am afraid is much
neglected by Christian people of all sorts nowadays, and that is the
devotional use of their Bibles. That is the food by which we grow. It is to
be secured and maintained still more largely by that which I, again, am
afraid is but very imperfectly attained to by Christian people now, and that
is, the habit of prayer. It is to be secured and maintained, again, by the
honest conforming of our lives, day by day, to the present amount of our
knowledge of Him and of His will. Whosoever will make all his life the
manifestation of his belief, and turn all his creed into principles of
action, will grow both in the comprehensiveness, and in the depths of his
Christian character. ‘Ye are the light in the Lord.’ Keep in Him, and you
will become brighter and brighter. So shall we ‘go from strength to
strength, till we appear before God in Zion.’
IV. Lastly, what brighter rising will
follow the earthly setting?
My second text comes in here. Beauty,
intellect, power, goodness; all go down into the dark. The sun sets, and
there is left a sad and fading glow in the darkening pensive sky, which may
recall the vanished light for a little while to a few faithful hearts, but
steadily passes into the ashen grey of forgetfulness.
But ‘then shall the righteous blaze
forth like the sun, in their Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’ The momentary
setting is but apparent. And ere it is well accomplished, a new sun swims
into the ‘ampler ether, the diviner air’ of that future life, ‘and with new
spangled beams, flames in the forehead of the morning sky.’
The reason for that inherent
brightness suggested in our second text is that the soul of the righteous
man passes from earth into a region out of which we ‘gather all things that
offend, and them that do iniquity.’ There are other reasons for it, but that
is the one which our Lord dwells on. Or, to put it into modern scientific
language, environment corresponds to character. So, when the clouds have
rolled away, and no more mists from the undrained swamps of selfishness and
sin and animal nature rise up to hide the radiance, there shall be a fuller
flood of light poured from the re-created sun.
That brightness thus promised has for
its highest and most blessed character that it is conformity to the Lord
Himself. For, as you may remember, the last use of this emblem that we find
in Scripture refers not to the servant but to the Master, whom His beloved
disciple in Apocalyptic vision saw, with His ‘countenance as the sun shining
in his strength.’ Thus ‘we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is.’ And therefore that radiance of the sainted dead is progressive, too.
For it has an infinite fulness to draw upon, and the soul that is joined to
Jesus Christ, and derives its lustre from Him, cannot die until it has
outgrown Jesus and emptied God. The sun will one day be a dark, cold ball.
We shall outlast it.
But, brethren, remember that it is
only those who here on earth have progressively appropriated the brightness
that Christ bestows who have a right to reckon on that better rising. It is
contrary to all probability to believe that the passage from life can change
the ingrained direction and set of a man’s nature. We know nothing that
warrants us in affirming that death can revolutionise character. Do not
trust your future to such a dim peradventure. Here is a plain truth. They
who on earth are as ‘the shining light that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day,’ shall, beyond the shadow of eclipse, shine on as the sun does,
behind the opaque, intervening body, all unconscious of what looks to mortal
eyes on earth an eclipse, and ‘shall blaze out like the sun in their
Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’ For all that we know and are taught by
experience, religious and moral distinctions are eternal. ‘He that is
righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is filthy, let him be
filthy still.’
Proverbs
4:23: KEEPING AND KEPT
The former of these texts imposes a
stringent duty, the latter (1Peter 1:6) promises divine help to perform it.
The relation between them is that between the Law and the Gospel. The Law
commands, the Gospel gives power to obey. The Law pays no attention to man’s
weakness, and points no finger to the source of strength. Its office is to
set clearly forth what we ought to be, not to aid us in becoming so. ‘Here
is your duty, do it’ is, doubtless, a needful message, but it is a chilly
one, and it may well be doubted if it ever rouses a soul to right action.
Moralists have hammered away at preaching self-restraint and a close watch
over the fountain of actions within from the beginning, but their
exhortations have little effect unless they can add to their icy injunctions
the warmth of the promise of our second text, and point to a divine Keeper
who will make duty possible. We must be kept by God, if we are ever to
succeed in keeping our wayward hearts.
I. Without our guarding our hearts, no noble life is possible.
The Old Testament psychology differs
from our popular allocation of certain faculties to bodily organs. We use
head and heart, roughly speaking, as being respectively the seats of thought
and of emotion. But the Old Testament locates in the heart the centre of
personal being. It is not merely the home of the affections, but the seat of
will, moral purpose. As this text says, ‘the issues of life’ flow from it in
all the multitudinous variety of their forms. The stream parts into many
heads, but it has one fountain. To the Hebrew thinkers the heart was the
indivisible, central unity which manifested itself in the whole of the
outward life. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ The heart is the
man. And that personal centre has a moral character which comes to light in,
and gives unity and character to, all his deeds.
That solemn thought that every one of
us has a definite moral character, and that our deeds are not an accidental
set of outward actions but flow from an inner fountain, needs to be driven
home to our consciences, for most of the actions of most men are done so
mechanically, and reflected on so little by the doers, that the conviction
of their having any moral character at all, or of our incurring any
responsibility for them, is almost extinct in us, unless when something
startles conscience into protest.
It is this shrouded inner self to
which supreme care is to be directed. All noble ethical teaching concurs in
this—that a man who seeks to be right must keep, in the sense both of
watching and of guarding, his inner self. Conduct is more easily regulated
than character—and less worth regulating. It avails little to plant watchers
on the stream half way to the sea. Control must be exercised at the source,
if it is to be effectual. The counsel of our first text is a commonplace of
all wholesome moral teaching since the beginning of the world. The phrase
‘with all diligence’ is literally ‘above all guarding,’ and energetically
expresses the supremacy of this keeping. It should be the foremost,
all-pervading aim of every wise man who would not let his life run to waste.
It may be turned into more modern language, meaning just what this ancient
sage meant, if we put it as, ‘Guard thy character with more carefulness than
thou dost thy most precious possessions, for it needs continual
watchfulness, and, untended, will go to rack and ruin.’ The exhortation
finds a response in every heart, and may seem too familiar and trite to bear
dwelling on, but we may be allowed to touch lightly on one or two of the
plain reasons which enforce it on every man who is not what Proverbs very
unpolitely calls ‘a fool.’
That guarding is plainly imposed as
necessary, by the very constitution of our manhood. Our nature is evidently
not a republic, but a monarchy. It is full of blind impulses, and hungry
desires, which take no heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the
reins are thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, they will drag the
man to destruction. They are only safe when they are curbed and bitted, and
held well in. Then there are tastes and inclinations which need guidance and
are plainly meant to be subordinate. The will is to govern all the lower
self, and conscience is to govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts of
every man’s nature which are meant to serve, and parts which are appointed
to rule, and to let the servants usurp the place of the rulers is to bring
about as wild a confusion within as the Ecclesiast lamented that he had seen
in the anarchic times when he wrote—princes walking and beggars on
horseback. As George Herbert has it—
‘Give not thy humours way;
God gave them to thee under lock and key.’
Then, further, that guarding is
plainly imperative, because there is an outer world which appeals to our
needs and desires, irrespective altogether of right and wrong and of the
moral consequences of gratifying these. Put a loaf before a starving man and
his impulse will be to clutch and devour it, without regard to whether it is
his or no. Show any of our animal propensities its appropriate food, and it
asks no questions as to right or wrong, but is stirred to grasp its natural
food. And even the higher and nobler parts of our nature are but too apt to
seek their gratification without having the license of conscience for doing
so, and sometimes in defiance of its plain prohibitions. It is never safe to
trust the guidance of life to tastes, inclinations, or to anything but clear
reason, set in motion by calm will, and acting under the approbation of ‘the
Lord Chief Justice, Conscience.’
But again, seeing that the world has
more evil than good in it, the keeping of the heart will always consist
rather in repelling solicitations to yielding to evil. In short, the power
and the habit of sternly saying ‘No’ to the whole crowd of tempters is
always the main secret of a noble life. ‘He that hath no rule over his own
spirit is like a city broken down and without walls.’
II. There is no effectual guarding
unless God guards.
The counsel in Proverbs is not mere
toothless moral commonplace, but is associated, in the preceding chapter,
with fatherly advice to ‘let thine heart keep my commandments’ and to ‘trust
in the Lord with all thine heart.’ The heart that so trusts will be safely
guarded, and only such a heart will be. The inherent weakness of all
attempts at self-keeping is that keeper and kept being one and the same
personality, the more we need to be kept the less able we are to effect it.
If in the very garrison are traitors, how shall the fortress be defended?
If, then, we are to exercise an effectual guard over our characters and
control over our natures, we must have an outward standard of right and
wrong which shall not be deflected by variations in our temperature. We need
a fixed light to steer towards, which is stable on the stable shore, and is
not tossing up and down on our decks. We shall cleanse our way only when we
‘take heed thereto, according to Thy word.’ For even God’s viceroy within,
the sovereign conscience, can be warped, perverted, silenced, and is not
immune from the spreading infection of evil. When it turns to God, as a
mirror to the sun, it is irradiated and flashes bright illumination into
dark corners, but its power depends on its being thus lit by radiations from
the very Light of Life. And if we are ever to have a coercive power over the
rebellious powers within, we must have God’s power breathed into us, giving
grip and energy to all the good within, quickening every lofty desire,
satisfying every aspiration that feels after Him, cowing all our evil and
being the very self of ourselves.
We need an outward motive which will
stimulate and stir to effort. Our wills are lamed for good, and the world
has strong charms that appeal to us. And if we are not to yield to these,
there must be somewhere a stronger motive than any that the sorceress world
has in its stores, that shall constrainingly draw us to ways that, because
they tend upward, and yield no pabulum for the lower self, are difficult for
sluggish feet. To the writer of this Book of Proverbs the name of God bore
in it such a motive. To us the name of Jesus, which is Love, bears a yet
mightier appeal, and the motive which lies in His death for us is strong
enough, and it alone is strong enough, to fire our whole selves with
enthusiastic, grateful love, which will burn up our sloth, and sweep our
evil out of our hearts, and make us swift and glad to do all that may please
Him. If there must be fresh reinforcements thrown into the town of Mansoul,
as there must be if it is not to be captured, there is one sure way of
securing these. Our second text tells us whence the relieving force must
come. If we are to keep our hearts with all diligence, we must be ‘kept by
the power of God,’ and that power is not merely to make diversion outside
the beleaguered fortress which may force the besiegers to retreat and give
up their effort, but is to enter in and possess the soul which it wills to
defend. It is when the enemy sees that new succours have, in some mysterious
way, been introduced, that he gives up his siege. It is God in us that is
our security.
III. There is no keeping by God
without faith.
Peter was an expert in such matters,
for he had had a bitter experience to teach him how soon and surely
self-confidence became self-despair. ‘Though all should forsake Thee, yet
will not I,’ was said but a few hours before he denied Jesus. His faith
failed, and then the divine guard that was keeping his soul passed thence,
and, left alone, he fell.
That divine Power is exerted for our
keeping on condition of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting Him for
ourselves. And that condition is no arbitrary one, but is prescribed by the
very nature of divine help and of human faith. If God could keep our souls
without our trust in Him He would. He does so keep them as far as is
possible, but for all the choicer blessings of His giving, and especially
for that of keeping us free from the domination of our lower selves, there
must be in us faith if there is to be in God help. The hand that lays hold
on God in Christ must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, gentle, and
strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is to infuse strength. If the
relieving force is victoriously to enter our hearts, we must throw open the
gates and welcome it. Faith is but the open door for God’s entrance. It has
no efficacy in itself any more than a door has, but all its blessedness
depends on what it admits into the hidden chambers of the heart.
I reiterate what I have tried to show
in these poor words. There is no noble life without our guarding our hearts;
there is no effectual guarding unless God guards; there is no divine
guarding unless through our faith. It is vain to preach self-governing and
self-keeping. Unless we can tell the beleaguered heart, ‘The Lord is thy
Keeper; He will keep thee from all evil; He will keep thy soul,’ we only add
one more impossible command to a man’s burden. And we do not apprehend nor
experience the divine keeping in its most blessed and fullest reality,
unless we find it in Jesus, who is ‘able to keep us from falling, and to
present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.’
Proverbs 5:22 THE CORDS OF SIN
‘His own iniquities shall take the
wicked himself, and
