Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. BY THE REV. WILLIAM ARNOT, ST. PETER’S FREE CHURCH, GLASGOW. Second Series. Vol. 2 LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. MDCCCLVIII. 1858 TO THE READER. WHILE, as a series of practical comments upon texts selected from a Book of Scripture, the two volumes now published constitute one whole; yet, from the nature of the sub- jects, and the manner in which they have been treated, each is complete in itself, and independent of the other. For the sake of those who may see this volume first, or this volume only, the explanatory note which was pre- fixed to the former volume is reprinted here:— These Illustrations of the Proverbs are not critical, continuous, exhaustive. The comments, in imitation of the text, are intended to be brief, practical, miscellaneous, isolated. The reader may, however, perceive a principle of unity running through the whole, if he take his stand at the outset on the writer's view-point—a desire to lay the Christian System along the surface of common life, without removing it from its foundations in the doctrines of Grace. The authority of the instructions must be divine: the form transparently human. Although the lessons should, with a pliant familiarity, lay themselves along the line of men's thoughts and actions, they will work no deli- verance, unless redeeming love be everywhere the power to press them in. On the other hand, although evangelical doctrine be con- sistently maintained throughout, the teaching will come short of its purpose unless it go right into every crevice of a corrupt heart, and perseveringly double every turn of a crooked path. Without "the love wherewith He loved us" as our motive power, we cannot reach vi TO THE READER. for healing any of the deeper ailments of the world: but having such a power within our reach, we should not leave it dangling in the air; we should bring it down, and make it bear on every sorrow that afflicts, and every sin that defiles humanity. The two extremes to be avoided are, abstract, unpractical speculation, and shallow, power- less, heathen morality; the one a soul without a body, the other a body without a soul—the one a ghost, the other a carcass. The aim is, to be doctrinal without losing our hold of earth, and practical without losing our hold of heaven. Most certain it is that if the Church at any period, or any portion of the Church, has fallen into either of these extremes, it has been her own fault; for the Bible, her standard, is clear from both impu- tations. Christ is its subject and its substance. His word is like Himself. It is of heaven, but it lays itself closely around the life of men. Such is the Bible; and such, in their own place and mea- sure, should our expositions of it be. Had our object been a critical exposition of the Book, it would have been our duty to devote the larger share of our attention to the more difficult parts. But our aim from first to last has been more to apply the obvious than to elucidate the obscure, and the selection of texts has been determined accordingly. As there is diversity of gifts, there should be division of labour. While scientific inquirers re-exa- mine the joints of the machine, and demonstrate anew the principles of its construction, it may not be amiss that a workman should set the machine a-going, and try its effects on the affairs of life. W. A. CONTENTS PAGE I. THE ALL-SEEING 9 II. A WHOLESOME TONGUE 23 III. MIRTH A MEDICINE 30 IV. TASTES DIFFER 37 V. HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR 46 VI. THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY’S PEACE 51 VII. THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE 59 VIII. MERCY AND TRUTH 68 IX. PROVIDENCE 74 X. WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH 88 XL THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT 93 XII. THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE 99 XIII. THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS 104 XIV. FRIENDSHIP 116 XV. THE BIAS ON THE SIDE OF SELF 126 XVI. A WIFE 131 XVII. ANGER 142 XVIII. A POOR MAN IS BETTER THAN A LIAR 147 XIX. THE DECEITFULNESS OF STRONG DRINK 152 XX. THE SLUGGARD SHALL COME TO WANT 164 XXI. WISDOM MODEST, FOLLY OBTRUSIVE 170 XXII. TWO WITNESSES—THE HEARING EAR/THE SEEING EYE 175 XXIII. BUYERS AND SELLERS 187 viii CONTENTS. PAGE XXIV. A GOOD NAME 195 XXV. THE RICH AND THE POOR MEET TOGETHER 200 XXVI. HIDING-PLACES FOR THE PRUDENT 205 XXVII. EDUCATION 209 XXVIII. THE BONDAGE OF THE BORROWER 228 XXIX. CONVENIENT FOOD 237 XXX. THE RIGHTS OF MAN 244 XXXI. A FAITHFUL FATHER 256 XXXII. THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED 268 XXXIII. A BROTHER'S KEEPER 273 XXXIV. PIETY AND PATRIOTISM 282 XXIV. THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 290 XXXVI. MONARCHS—UNDER GOD AND OVER MAN 296 XXXVII. A FAITHFUL MESSENGER 303 XXVIII. THE FIRE THAT MELTS AN ENEMY 309 XXXIX. A TIME TO FROWN AND A TIME TO SMILE 317 XL. COLD WATERS TO THE THIRSTY SOUL 323 XLI. AN IMPURE APPETITE SEEKS IMPURE FOOD 328 XLII. NOW, OR TO-MORROW 333 XLIII. THE COUNTENANCE OF A FRIEND 342 XLIV. CONSCIENCE 348 XLV. SIN COVERED AND SIN CONFESSED 353 XLVI. THE FEAR OF MAN BRINGETH A SNARE 366 XLVII. PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 379 XLVIII. LEMUEL AND HIS MOTHER 392 XLIX. A HEROINE 397 L. FAITH AND OBEDIENCE—WORK AND REST 407 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. I. THE ALL-SEEING. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?"—PROVERBS xv. 3, 11. THE omniscience of God is usually considered a funda- mental doctrine of natural religion. Nobody denies it. Infidelity in this department is acted, not spoken. Specu- lative unbelievers are wont, in a free and easy way, to set down at least a very large proportion of the existing Christian profession to the credit of hypocrisy. Hypo- crite is a disreputable name, and most men would rather impute it to a neighbour than acknowledge it their own: but it is one thing to repudiate the word, and another to be exempt from the thing which it signifies. That weed seems to grow as freely on the soil of natural religion as in the profession of Christian faith. A man may be a 10 THE ALL-SEEING. hypocrite although he abjures the Bible. Most of those who reject a written revelation profess to learn from the volume of creation that a just God is everywhere pre- sent, beholding the evil and the good; but what disciple of Nature lives consistently with even his own short creed? The doctrine of the divine omniscience, although owned and argued for by men's lips, is neglected or resisted in their lives. The unholy do not like to have a holy Eye ever open over them, whatever their profession may be. If fallen men, apart from the one Mediator, say or think that the presence of God is pleasant to them, it is because they have radically mistaken either their own character or his. They have either falsely lifted up their own attainments, or falsely dragged down the standard of the Judge. Atheism is the inner spirit of all the guilty, until they be reconciled through the blood of the cross. All image worship, whether heathen or Romish, is Atheism incarnate. The idol is a body which men, at Satan's bidding, prepare for their own enmity against God. The gods many and lords many that thickly strew the path of humanity over time, are the product ever and anon thrown off by the desperate wriggle of the guilty to escape from the look of an all-seeing Eye, and so be permitted to do their deeds in congenial darkness. When spiders stretched their webs across the eylids of Jupiter, notwithstanding all the efforts that Greek sculpture had put forth to make the image awful, the human worshipper would hide, without scruple, in his heart the thoughts which he did not wish his deity THE ALL-SEEING. 11 to know. It was even an express tenet of the heathen superstitions that the authority of the gods was partial and local. One who was dreadful on the hills might be safely despised in the valleys. In this feature, as in all others, the Popish idolatry, imitative rather than inven- tive, follows the rut in which the ancient current ran. Particular countries and classes of persons are assigned to particular saints. With puerile perseverance, the whole surface of the earth and the whole course of the year have been mapped and appropriated, so that you cannot plant a pin point either in time or space without touch- ing the territory of some Romish god or goddess. In this way the ignorant devotee practically escapes from the conviction of an omniscient Witness. "Divide and conquer" is the maxim of the enemy when he tries to deaden or destroy that sense of divine inspection which seems to spring native in the human mind When he cannot persuade a man that there is no such witness, he persuades him, as the next best, that there are a thousand. When a man will not profess to have no god, the same end is accomplished by giving him many. We sometimes feel and express surprise that rational beings should degrade themselves by worshipping blind, dumb idols, which their own hands have made; but it is precisely because the idols are blind and dumb that men are willing to worship them. A god or a saint that should really cast the glance of a pure eye into the con- science of the worshipper would not long be held in repute. The grass would grow again round that idol's shrine. A seeing god would not do: the idolater wants 12 THE ALL-SEEING. a blind one. The first cause of idolatry is a desire in an impure heart to escape from the look of the living God, and none but a dead image would serve the turn. From history and experience it appears that idolaters prefer to have an image that looks like life, provided always that it be not living. A real omniscience they will not endure; but a mimic omniscience pleases the fancy, and rocks the conscience into a sounder sleep. In the present generation the Romish craftsmen have tasked their ingenuity to make the eyes of their pictured saints move upon the canvass. The eyeball of a certain saint rolled, or seemed to roll, in its dusky colouring within the dimly-lighted aisle, and great was the effect on the devotions of the multitude. In places where Protestant truth has not shorn their superstition of its grosser out- growths, the procession of the Fete Dieu is garnished with a huge goggle eye, carried aloft upon a pole, moved in its socket by strings and pulleys, and ticketed "The Omniscient." This becomes an object of great attraction in the crowd. In one aspect it is more childish than any child's play; but in another aspect a melancholy seriousness pervades it. This hideous mimicry of omni- science is an elaborate effort to weave a veil under which an unclean conscience may comfortably hide from the eye of God. After all the darkening and distorting effects of sin, there lies in the deep of a human soul an appetite for the knowledge of God, which, when it can do no more, stirs now and then, and troubles the man. It is the art of Antichrist to lie on the watch for that blind hunger when first it begins to stir, and throw into its THE ALL-SEEING. 13 opening mouth heaps of swine-food husks, to gorge and lay it, lest it should seek and get the bread of life. This is the grosser method, which grosser natures adopt to destroy within themselves the sense of divine omni- science. There is another way running off in an opposite direction,—more refined, indeed, but equally atheistic, more manly, but not more godly, than the crowded Pan- theon of ancient or modern Rome. This other road to rest is Pantheism. If there is speculation in an age, it becomes restive under the thick clay of image-worship. There is a spirit which will not endure a material idol, and yet is not the spirit of God. Dagon falls, and the philosophers make sport of his dishonoured stump. Instead of making a little ugly idol for themselves, they adopt a great and glorious one made to their hands. God, they say, is the soul of Nature; and Nature therefore is the only god whom they desire or need. Sea, earth, air,—flowers, trees, and living crea- tures, including man, —the creatures in the aggregate,— the universe is God. In this way they contrive to heal over the wound which the sense of an omniscient Eye makes in an unclean conscience. It is the personality of God that stings the flesh of the alienated. It is easier to deal with Nature in her majestic movements than with the Self of the Holy One. Nature heaves in the sea, and sighs in the wind, and blossoms in the flowers, and bleats on the pastures. Nature glides gently round in her gigantic orbit, and stoops not to notice the thoughts and words of a human being. He may live as he lists, al- though Nature is there. Philosophy compels him to reject the paltry, tangible, local gods of all the superstitions.