"Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the tips of knowledge. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit. Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour. The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy. The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death."
The counsel in the first of these verses might be enforced on both negative and positive grounds. First of all, the company and conversation of "a foolish man" can do you no good you can derive no profit from it. At the best, therefore, the time spent in his society can be only time wasted and lost. But this is not the full amount of the reason. While he can do you no good; he may do you essential harm: for "the foolish" are the unprincipled; and the "knowledge" not found in their lips is especially the knowledge of the mind and will of God.-Be ye the "companions," as the Psalmist was, of "them who fear Him." From such choose your associates. Let their society be the society you love. They say, "Come with us, and we will do you good." O comply with the invitation, if you would imbibe their spirit, learn their wisdom, and participate in their happiness.
True wisdom is practical. Thus here:-"The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way." He first of all estimates, according to their real worth, those abstruse or airy speculations, which terminate in nothing but diverting the attention of him who is fascinated by them from the consideration of the "way " which he ought to be pursuing. Every man has a way to go; has a department in life to fill up. It is "wisdom" to know how to do this with sense, with propriety, with safety, with honour, with advantage to self. With benefit to others. He who does not thus "understand his way," may have knowledge, but he has not wisdom.
And, to apply the words (as I cannot doubt they were meant to be applied) in the highest of all departments-every man has a final destination before him. The way of all is the way to the grave, and to eternity. But in that eternity in which the present short course must terminate, there are two widely differing states;-the one of perfect purity and perfect bliss, the other of growing sinfulness, and unmingled and unmitigated woe. To these opposite states there are two ways-" the narrow," and "the broad." O the infinite value of true wisdom here!-the wisdom that " understands" both ways, and rightly chooses between them!
"But the folly of fools is deceit." These words may mean that the folly of fools proves to them deceit. They fancy and call it wisdom. But they impose upon themselves. Their confidence in it, and their expectations from it are sheer delusion, and this they will find by bitter experience in the end. Or the sense may be, "Deceit is the folly of fools." The truly wise and prudent man is an enemy to policy and craft. He is upright and straight-forward; ever acting up to our own established adage-that "honesty is the best policy." Craft and policy mislead, entangle, and ruin men. They are "taken in their own craftiness." "New stratagems," says Lord Bacon, "must be devised, the old failing and growing useless; and as soon as ever a man hath got the name of a cunning crafty companion, he hath deprived himself utterly of the principal instrument for the management of his affairs,-which is trust." Policy, therefore, on this as on other accounts, is "the folly of fools."
Verse Pro_14:9. "Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour." This verse has been differently rendered, and of course differently understood. The word for sin signifies either the trespass or the guilt involved in the trespass, and which exposes to penal consequences. Both at the sin, the guilt, and the consequence, "fools make a mock."-The chief difficulty in the verse is the point of the antithesis in the two clauses of it. The general import, however, seems to be, that the friendship of wicked men, of Scorners, and scoffers, is destitute of principle. You can have no dependence on the man who "makes a mock at sin;" and between men of this description there can be no lasting, sacred, confidential attachment. They feel that they can have no sure hold of each other, neither word nor deed being trustworthy. Between them mutual esteem cannot exist, there being nothing on either side on which such a sentiment can find a basis. On the contrary-"Among" or between "the righteous there is favour"-genuine, disinterested, benevolent regard,-attachment founded on principle, and respect for each other's character. In the former case, each knows the other's worthlessness; distrusts, and is distrusted; despises, and is despised. In the latter, there is mutual esteem. Each cleaves to the other in admiring and confiding affection.
The conduct of the man who "makes a mock at sin," involves impiety, cruelty, and infatuation.
1. That it involves impiety is sufficiently obvious. "Sin is the transgression of the law." It is contrariety to the divine holiness, opposition to the divine authority, ingratitude for the divine goodness, the object of the divine abhorrence, the declared and denounced subject of the divine curse and vengeance. To "mock at sin," therefore, is to despise God's holiness, to set at nought God's authority, to abuse God's goodness, to disregard and slight God's glory, to make light of God's curse and threatened vengeance; which implies a denial of God's truth and a scornful defiance of God's power. There cannot be a more profane insult on the infinite Majesty, than is involved in every sin, and especially in mockery at this worst of evils.
2. It involves cruelty-cruelty the most atrocious. The scoffer may be a great pretender to humanity and kindheartedness. But there breathes not on earth a more inhuman, a more iron-hearted monster, than the man who "makes a mock at sin." He may profess to feel for the miseries of mankind; for the ravages of disease and death over their bodies; of fire and flood and storm over their means of life and comfort; of melancholy, and idiocy, and
"Moody madness, laughing wild
Amid severest woe,"
over their minds; and the vast endless catalogue of ills by which the lot of man in this world is afflicted. But he "makes a mock" of that which is the cause, the prolific and accursed cause of all. There is not an ill that man is called to suffer, that does not owe its origin to Sin. Like the "star called wormwood," in the Apocalyptic vision, it has fallen on every "fountain and river" of human joy, turning all their waters to bitterness. It is the sting of conscience. It is the venom and barb of the darts of the king of terrors. It is the very life of the "worm that dieth not." It is the kindling and fuel of the flames of hell. Oh! the miserably mistaken flattery, that can speak of the kind-heartedness and humanity of the man who laughs at that which is the embryo germ of all the sufferings of time, and all the woes of eternity! Abuse not language thus. Assail not the unhappy wretch with irony so bitter. Call himself what he will he is "cruel as the grave," who "makes a mock at sin."
3. Such mockery is most infatuated. Sin is the evil that is ruining the poor sinner himself-hurrying him to perdition. It is the disease that, whether he is sensible of it or not, is preying upon his own vitals, and must terminate in "the second death." It is the secret consuming fire, that is wasting his eternal all. Sin has separated him from God. Sin has doomed him to toil, to trouble, to sorrow, to death, and to the grave. And sin will "destroy both soul and body in hell." Yet the deluded victim of its power laughs at it-"makes a mock" and a jest of it! O the infatuation, the self-murderous madness of mocking at sin! Beware of it, my hearers. It is mockery of God, mockery of all the sufferings in the universe, mockery of your own damnation!-And let the mutual "favour" that subsists between the people of God, manifest itself in their keeping each other from sin; in their cherishing in each other's bosoms right impressions of its exceeding sinfulness, and such a holy dread and detestation of it, as shall lead them to seek, with all earnestness and assiduity, its crucifixion and destruction in themselves, in one another, and in all around them!*
* The verse has been rendered, "Sin-offering mocks fools; but among the upright there is ready acceptance," the meaning being, that "when sin-offering is presented formally by fools, it mocks their hopes because it is not accepted;" whereas the offerings of the upright "find good will, that is, ready acceptance." Some consider that the structure of the Hebrew sentence makes this rendering imperative. Be this as it may, it in no way affects the solemn truth so forcibly illustrated.
Verse Pro_14:10. "The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy." We may connect this verso with the preceding; and in this connexion, it naturally suggests the thought of the "bitterness" of a spirit wounded by the accusations of conscience-the stings keen and rankling, of remorse; of the inward, secret, dark anticipations of death and judgment, hell and eternity, unacknowledged, but acutely felt by the fools who "make a mock at sin." His mockings are many a time but the flimsy cover of a spirit ill at ease, and the poor expedient for alleviating for the moment the "bitterness" which his own heart alone knows, and which he is proudly anxious to conceal. And this may be contrasted with the heartfelt "joy" of the righteous-" the joy of the Lord"-the joy of God's salvation-the "peace that passeth all understanding,"-the delightful sense of God's pardoning mercy and paternal love-the cheering "hope of glory, honour, and immortality."
Or the words may be taken more generally, as expressing a distinct and independent sentiment.-We are not competent judges either of the happiness or the unhappiness of others. The sentiment is emphatically true of the latter. All is not happiness that bears the semblance of it. How often are there secret griefs concealed in the inner chambers of the heart, and engendering there a "bitterness" unknown but by him who feels it! How often are fondly cherished desires and hopes frustrated!-and, as no one knew the sweetness of the sanguine anticipation, no one can duly estimate the "bitterness" of the disappointment. How many circumstances are there which give special poignancy to sorrow which another cannot appreciate! The remark might be illustrated from the feelings that arise out of the peculiar relations of life. Who but a parent can fully know the "bitterness " of his grief who "mourneth for an only son"-of him who is "in bitterness for his first-born!" O, who but a parent can sympathise with the " bitterness " of the royal mourner's anguish, when over a son that had died in rebellion against his father, and his God, he exclaimed, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" "Who but a widow can realize the exquisite "bitterness" of a widow's agony, when bereft of the loved partner of her joys and sorrows, her cares and her comforts; and when gazing with tearful eye and bleeding heart on her fatherless babes! "Who but a pastor can know, in all its intensity, the "bitterness " of soul experienced in seeing those on whom he counted as genuine fruits of his ministry, and on whom he looked with delighted interest, as his anticipated "joy and crown" in "the day of the Lord," falling away-" going back and walking no more with Jesus!"-the "blossom of his hopes going up as dust," or ripening into the "fruits of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah!"
But still, amid all descriptions of secret woe-of heart-felt and heart-hidden "bitterness," the child and servant of God possesses "a joy" with which " a stranger doth not intermeddle." It is a joy imparted to the heart by the Spirit of God. It is many a time most sweetly and exquisitely felt, when other joys are withdrawn,-when the springs of earthly pleasure are stinted or dried. The world cannot give it; nor can the world, blessed be God! take it away. "Who?-what "stranger?"-what creature, in heaven, earth, or hell-can "intermeddle with the joy " of the believer, when, in the darkest and most desolate of the hours that pass over him-his dearest joys all swept away and his fairest hopes blasted,-he can still sit down and sing, "Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation?" Hab_3:17.
The language may also be applied to the gracious and divinely awakened convictions of sin, and the secret anguish thence arising, when the conscience is aroused, the "heart pricked," and the cry of distress wrung from the inmost soul. "What shall we do?"-and to the peace and joy, contrasted with this, which arise from the spiritual discernment of the gospel, in the freeness and richness of its grace, and the adaptation of its provisions to all the sinner's exigencies-
"When in that trembling sinner's view
The wonders of the cross arise,
His agonizing fears subdue,
And change to joy his hopeless sighs."
In the verse following, the "house of the wicked" stands in contrast with the " tabernacle of the upright." The one may be a palace, the other a hut; but, as we had occasion before to remark, the lowly mud-walled cottage of the pious poor is, with the blessing of heaven abiding under its roof and resting on its inmates, incomparably better than the splendid and spacious mansion of the man of the world, who is living without God, and enjoys not His favour and love:-" The house of the wicked shall be overthrown; but the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish." *
* Compare Pro_3:33; Pro_12:7.
Verse Pro_14:12. "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death." There are some ways which can hardly "seem right" to any man,-the ways, namely, of open and flagrant wickedness:-although even in these the presumptuous sinner may delude himself, with false, self-flattering views of the divine mercy,-fondly assuring himself that God will not be hard upon him, and that all, no doubt, will be well at last! But many are the ways which, under the biasing influence of pride and corruption, "seem right," and yet their "end" is "death."
There is the way of the sober, well-behaved worldling. He thinks of the law as if it had but one table, the first being entirely overlooked. He passes among his circle for a man of good character. He flatters himself in proportion as he is flattered by others, that all is right, and that there is no fear of him. And yet he lives "without God"-a stranger to the spiritual feelings and exercises of a renewed heart; without regard to the divine authority as his rule, the divine glory as his end, the divine love as his motive, the divine blessing as his portion. And, with all his earth-born virtues, goes down to the grave "with a lie in his right hand." His way "seems right;" but it is not the way of life, for God is not in it.
There is the way of the formalist. He follows, strictly and punctually, the routine of external religious observance. He reads his Bible. He goes pretty regularly to church and sacrament. He maintains, perhaps, "by tradition from his fathers," a form of family worship, and. even, possibly says a prayer when he rises, and when he goes to bed. But his heart has not been given to God. The world still has it. He compromises the retention of its affections for the things of the world and of sense, by giving to God the pitiful and worthless offering of outward homage. It will not do. The services cannot terminate in life, which have no life in them. The way of mere form is the "way of death."
There is the way of the religious speculatist-or the speculative religionist. Prom education, or as a matter of curiosity, he has made himself an adept in theological controversy-especially, it may be, in the particular questions of the day. He holds by the creed of orthodoxy, and is readyarmed at all points in its defence: and he imagines that this kind of knowledge is religion. "His way seems right to him." And yet there may not be in all his knowledge and in all his talk one atom of religion-one "vital spark" of its "heavenly flame." The heart may not be touched-neither warmed nor purified in any one of its affections; nor the conscience rendered sensitive and tender in its submission to the dictates of the divine will. Speculative opinion is not saving knowledge;-is not the faith which "worketh by love" and "overcomes the world." It is not the way of spiritual life; and the "end thereof are the ways of death."
There is the way of the self-righteous. It is, we shall suppose, a combination of all the other three-of sobriety, formality, and knowledge,-and of self-confidence thence arising. Such was the way of the Pharisees in Christ's time; on whom, notwithstanding their high pretensions, he denounces the heaviest and most terrific woes. And such was the way of the unbelieving Jews of that age more generally; of whom" Paul in his Epistle to the Romans presents such a graphic and powerful description.*
* Rom_2:17-24.
In the " way which seemeth right unto a man" may be comprehended, in short, all that bears the semblance of religion and may be mistaken for it, but is not the reality. The "end" of everything of this kind is and must be "the way of death."
God's way must be the only right way. It is, we remind you anew, the way of faith and obedience; of faith producing obedience-of obedience springing from faith. The way to heaven-the way of life, is measured from Calvary. From the foot of the cross alone can any sinner set out in it. The course of holy obedience commences with the acceptance of mercy there. It is there, through faith in atoning blood and mediatorial righteousness, that the sinner is freed from the burden of conscious guilt and heart-sinking fear; and thence, under the spring and elasticity of a light and joyful heart, he starts in "the narrow way"-the one and only divinely provided way to heaven. "I AM THE WAY," says Jesus; "NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER BUT BY ME."
