Ralph Wardlaw Lectures on Proverbs - Proverbs 25:14 - 25:20

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Ralph Wardlaw Lectures on Proverbs - Proverbs 25:14 - 25:20


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:



LECTURE LXXVIII.



Pro_25:14-20.



"Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain. By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone. Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it. Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour's house; lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee. A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow. Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint. As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre; so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart."



The comparison in the first of these verses is a very obvious and a very apt one. "Clouds and wind" were, in that country, an ordinary presage of "rain." * But there, as with ourselves, appearances might be very promising and prove deceitful-raising expectations, possibly after long, weary, and threatening drought, only to disappoint them, and so to increase vexation and apprehension. Thus it is with the man who boasts mightily of what he can do, and will do,-making large promises either without intention to fulfil them, or without ability.



* See 1Ki_18:44-45.



Such boasters talk as if all creation were at their disposal. Nothing too hard for them! their resources and their influence are without limits! When you apply to them for a favour, they are full of gasconade about what they have in their power; give you, with not a little exaggeration, instances of what they have done for others; and-O yes; there is no doubt of their ability; and what is there they would not do for you? But it is all words-big words; and the bigger if others besides yourselves are within hearing-but as light and empty as air-bubbles:-"clouds mid wind without rain."



Others, from mere unwillingness to deny you, or to seem unkind, cannot find in their hearts to say No, and make hasty promises in plenty. But they are only to please yon for the time. They have not considered them; and, although it might be too strong to affirm, that they do not at the time mean what they say, yet neither can they be regarded as having any firm purpose of fulfilling it. Their kind words have served their present end;-have saved them the pain of refusing and disobliging you. But in practice they come to nothing. When your time of need arrives, what have you? They are in profession as kind as ever; and as their kindness before vented itself in promises, it is now not less abundant in apologies and regrets. They are so sorry-so very, very sorry;-and then you have a string of unsatisfactory BUTS-an enumeration of preventives:-"clouds and wind without rain."



It may be regarded as a wise and safe rule, to trust the less, in proportion as a man is wide and boastful in his promises. Let your confidence be in the inverse ratio of the boasting. Genuine friendship deals not in such vauntings. Deeds are its characteristics, more than words. It acts quietly; lets its gifts fall silently and unostentatiously; neither talking much itself, nor ambitious of being talked about. It would infinitely rather come unexpectedly on its object with a seasonable interposition, than raise expectations beforehand by promises that may fail. True friendship-real goodness-may be described by a figure which forms a contrast to the one before us:-"When the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth," Ecc_11:3. Such clouds aptly represent faithful benefactors;-bountiful, unpretending, unostentatious friends.



Verse Pro_25:15. "By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone." "A soft tongue breaketh the bone," is one of those short and pithy expressions of a general sentiment, which is the character of so many proverbs. What is the sentiment? Evidently, that gentle means are the most effectual. The reference is to cases of displeasure, and the means of pacifying it. It is true, that there is a great variety of tempers, and that these require to be dealt with in various ways. But in cases of resentment,-whether reasonable or unreasonable, with or without ground,-the sentiment will be found to hold good to a very great extent. By the pouring on of oil you may smooth the wave, which you would rebuke and lash in vain.



If the displeasure be well-founded,-that is, if we really have provoked and deserved it,-then gentleness, and submission, and apology are a clearly incumbent duty. What right can we have to take high what we have brought upon ourselves? Hard words, in such a case, would obviously be most incongruous and unprincipled; and they would have no other effect than that of exasperating passion. If, on the other hand, it be unreasonable,-when nothing on our part has been said or done to warrant it,-then the consciousness of not deserving it should sustain our minds in a dignified calmness, and restrain us from angry and violent expostulation or reviling. The most consistent frame of spirit, so far as we ourselves are concerned, and the best suited for conciliation and peace,-for disarming and subduing passion and pride, is a gentle and placid firmness. For it ought to be understood, that "a soft tongue" is not the tongue of weakness and silliness, that has not manliness enough to feel or to take its due and proper position:-neither is it a flattering, fawning tongue, that coaxes into conciliation by saying whatever will please, whether there be dignity, and self-respect, and truth in it, or not. The gentleness of temper, deportment, and speech, which the divine word inculcates, is perfectly consistent with firmness and energy of principle. It is not the gentleness of mean sycophantish pliancy, that is reckless of principle and consistency. Yet one almost fears to introduce these qualifications and admissions, lest undue advantage be taken of them to cover and excuse frames of spirit which neither the precepts nor the example of Jesus our Master would justify;-vindicating under the name of becoming manliness what He would condemn as pride,-and unyielding obstinacy under the well-sounding designation of decision of character. O! we need the grace of Christ to enable us to unite the qualities of firmness and gentleness, as they were united in Him.



Of the general sentiment we have a particular application in the former part of the verse:-"By long forbearance is a prince persuaded."-From his eminent station, and from being accustomed to obeisance, "a prince" may be supposed more than ordinarily touchy and jealous of his honour and authority,-more apt to stand upon the punctilio of due submission-more difficult than others of persuasion and conciliation. Petulance, forwardness, self-sufficiency, and passion, will only inflame him the more, and expose ourselves to the weight of his wrath. There must be no cringing meanness, no compromise of principle, no apologies for unreal faults,-which would be worse than stooping from the dignity which every man ought to maintain,-a dereliction in part of the claims of conscience: but still, we are bound to be, in all cases, respectful and mild; and if we are enabled thus to combine meekness and gentleness with adherence to principle, "the prince" may not only be won, but led to admire the consistency, that would not, for any selfish consideration, bend to unworthy compliances, and cringe and fawn for favour.



Verse Pro_25:16. "Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it."-This language is evidently to be taken, in the proverbial use of it here, as significant of any worldly enjoyment. The language can hardly be applied to spiritual sweets. We do not meet, in the Bible, with warnings against excess in these. There is little risk of an extreme in that direction. But when the "honey" as here, is the emblem of earthly sweets, of mere temporal enjoyments,-there is great need for the caution,-a caution against excess in the desire, in the pursuit, and in the use of them. Pleasant they are in themselves; and God kindly gives us them to be enjoyed-to be received and used with gratitude and cheerfulness. But they must be enjoyed with a united sense of obligation and of dependence, and in the remembrance that all excess and all abuse involve a violation of the spirit of both.



Verse Pro_25:17. "Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour's house; lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee."-This is another lesson of moderation, though of a very different kind. It relates to the discreet use of the privilege of social and friendly intercourse. There is in this a prudence and a sense of propriety, which is indispensable to its cordial maintenance and its permanent constancy. It is one of those things in which there is no possibility of drawing precise lines,-prescribing the exact degree of frequency with which every relation, and friend, and neighbour should be visited, and the number of minutes each visit should last. All must be regulated by circumstances; and these circumstances may hardly in two cases be in every respect the same. Discretion and good sense must guide. But of these qualities there are some persons who have a very scanty portion. Such persons are to be found in both sexes. They are fond of incessant gossipping. They are ever on their round of calls and visits. Instead of being "keepers at home"-instead of "doing their own business"-they are, day after day, "going from house to house"-each morning planning their circuit. Or, when they are out, and "their neighbour's house" is in their way, they cannot think of passing the door without just stepping in. They enter. They merely looked in in passing-they cannot sit down. But they are prevailed upon. And when once they are fairly set, they forget their haste. They are very loath to move. They talk of doing so twenty times before it is done; and many precious hours are lounged away in unprofitable idleness. If such persons have any thing in the form of a general invitation, in the common style of courtesy, they are sure to avail themselves of it to the uttermost, how slight and incidental soever it may have been. They never need a second. They continue to come, and come, and come,-consuming the time, disarranging the order, disturbing the enjoyment, and in some cases, living on the substance, of other families.



This becomes irksome. Their neighbours weary of them. They fret inwardly, when they make their appearance. Their liking to them cools; and by degrees positive alienation takes its place; and those whom at first they courteously and kindly made welcome, they actually cannot bear. They become, in one short but expressive, though perhaps sufficiently familiar word for this place-a bore. Delicacy, at the same time, forbids this to be plainly said; and such persons, having generally no great portion of such delicacy themselves, are exceedingly slow to discover it:-till at length rudeness becomes a matter of necessity; and hints,-gentle perhaps at first, but broader and broader till understood and taken,-are thrown out, that less frequent visits will be acceptable.



Our strongly condemnatory description of these persons must not drive others to the opposite extreme. For fear of the evil here supposed, some "withdraw their foot" altogether: they do not visit at all. This course is hardly less reprehensible than the former. Among all, and especially among fellow-Christians, it looks distant and dry. It is inconsistent with all the claims of friendship. A mutual exchange of visits, in the way of promoting mutual love and mutual advantage, is desirable, and is a duty. But assuredly, it is better to be blamed for the fewness of our visits, than for their frequency;-better far to be wished back than to be wished away. The persons I have been sketching ought to be discouraged. They are idle; and they encourage others to be idle. They are temptations, moreover, to different evils: to the common practice, for example, of what is called denying one's self, or saying not at home: (which, let it be vindicated, disguised, palliated, apologized for as you will, is neither more nor less than direct and palpable lying) and secondly, to a large amount of hypocrisy-the dissembling of the real state of the feelings and the wishes; so that the scene may at times be presented-so inconsistent with "simplicity and godly sincerity"-of a grumble and a scowl when the unwelcome visitor's knock comes to the door,-the exchange of this for the assumed looks and words of civility when the door opens and he enters;-and the "glad he's gone!" as soon as his back is turned, and the door closes after him. Here then, as in every thing, let us "deal prudently;" and let us look for grace to enable us. Let our visits neither be unseasonably paid, nor unduly prolonged, nor too frequently repeated. And let such intercourse be maintained as shall at once keep alive the feeling and the principle of union. Above all, "let love be without dissimulation."



On the following verse, I pause only to make two remarks:-First, the language expresses strongly the mischief done by the "false witness" to him against whom he bears his lying testimony-against whom he swears falsely. He is "a maul,* and a sword, and a sharp arrow." He wounds and injures him by his lying words, as really, and in some respects, it may be, incomparably more seriously and irreparably, than if he were assailing him with the lethal weapons here alluded to. He may inflict wounds that cannot be cured, on his person, his substance, his credit, his character, his happiness, his life.-Secondly, such a man,-the man who has no conscience, no regard to truth, or regard to the well-being of others,-who is capable of swearing away by falsehood the name and interest and life and property of his neighbour-is a man whom all will shun and dread, as they would an armed enemy;-as they would the hand that brandishes in threatening attitude the instruments of mutilation and death.



* A maul is an English word now obsolete, signifying a heavy hammer or club.



Verse Pro_25:19. "Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint."-Every one feels in a moment the truth and the force of this comparison-this double comparison. There are two obvious points in the similitude:-1. The unfaithful man, equally with the broken tooth and the dislocated foot, fails when put to use. You try your tooth upon your food; but you can make nothing of it:-you try your limb, for support and motion, but it will not serve you. So, you try the man by whose promises you have been encouraged to confide in him, and to look for good at his hand, but your confidence is vain. He fails you. He is the "broken tooth," the "foot out of joint."-2. There is more than failure, there is pain; there is accompanying torture. The broken tooth, when you attempt to use it, and the disjointed foot, when you rest the weight of your body upon it, each causes intolerable agony. And such is the mental distress which is caused by the failure of confidence, in proportion to the degree in which you had cherished it. Especially is this felt "in time of trouble," when help is peculiarly needed, and when a kind of claim, independently of all professions and promises, is felt to exist on sympathy and kindness. Then the heart is sensitively alive to aught like neglect and disappointment. To trust and be deceived is at any time a bitter trial. To trust in "the time of trouble" and be deceived, is the extreme of mental suffering.



How acutely did Paul feel the truth of the proverb when he wrote to Timothy-"At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge."-And did not our blessed Master feel it, when he said, "All ye shall be offended because of me this night:" and when, accordingly, in the hour of danger, "all his disciples forsook him and fled?"-and when he who had most solemnly protested his unconquerable adherence denied with oaths and curses that he knew Him?-O let us rejoice, that, whatever may come of our confidence in men, we have one sure, tried, everfaithful Friend, who never has deceived, and never can deceive; on whose word we may rely without fear; who will prove himself "a very present help in time of trouble;" then, in a special manner, when the need of it is most felt, vouchsafing His presence, the light of his countenance, his timely and effective aid.



Verse Pro_25:20. "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre; so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart."-We may conceive a kind of suggestive association between this verse and the preceding. In the nineteenth we have the misery of disappointment when we have, "in time of trouble," relied on the promises or the professions of friendship given by a man who then proves unfaithful. There is one description of distress in the time of suffering and trial; here we have another, though of a different kind;-the pain which is inflicted, especially on spirits of delicate sensibility, by the injudicious and incongruous administration of comfort,-both in the matter and in the manner of it. The figure, or comparison, here used to convey the idea of extreme unsuitableness, is a very strong and a very expressive one. I should rather say that both comparisons are so. The "taking away of a garment in cold weather,"-at the very time, that is, when an additional garment would be requisite for comfort,-would involve in it a combination of absurdity and cruelty. It would be exceedingly foolish and exceedingly unkind. In the second comparison, "nitre" does not mean the salt so called by us-saltpetre; but rather an alkaline substance, which was called by the Romans nitrum, and which, in a particular state of preparation, was used in Judea for soap. Vinegar, or any other acid, poured on this substance would, from the want of chemical affinity between them, produce effervescence; and this appears to be the similitude intended;-the want of affinity between the song of mirth and the spirit of heaviness. It is incongruous, disquieting, agitating. To sing merry songs to one whose heart is at the time under the pressure of grief, or even in the presence of the dejected and sorrowful, and especially when the sorrow is recent, and the mind has had no time to recover its tone and balance,-discovers mournful ignorance of human nature. These are extremes which can never meet. The very attempt to introduce all at once the lightness of mirth into a wounded and heavily-burdened heart, produces a revulsion, of which the necessary effect is only to render the sadness the deeper. And this effect arises, not merely from the contrariety between what is sung and the state of the spirit, but by the apparent want of feeling on the part of him who treats our sorrow thus. It is impossible to persuade ourselves that he feels with us or feels for us, when, instead of entering by a sympathetic tenderness into the true state of our minds, he discovers such lightness in his. And this painful apprehension is only a new and additional source of heaviness. Few things can operate more directly in this way, than to see one whose heart we expected to be in harmony with our own, manifesting so opposite a frame of mind. Some people are very thoughtless and injudicious in this respect. By trying to accomplish too sudden and violent a transition, they effectually frustrate their purpose, and, instead of alleviating, aggravate the evil. Even although not meant as a taunt, it is apt to have the effect of one; the effect so touchingly described in the case of the captives of Judah in Babylon:-"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Psa_137:1-4.



No one who has studied the constitution of the human mind, will ever attempt (unless in some peculiar cases of mental derangement) to work upon it by violent transitions. He who does so will generally be even more than disappointed. The likelihood is that he will either augment what he intended to lessen, or give rise to some other effect not less to be deplored than the one meant to be remedied.



The same observations apply to all attempts to put down the spirit of melancholy-whether constitutional or induced-by the opposite extreme of merriment,-to banish grief by scenes of joviality. Persons under deep dejection may sometimes, by dint of importunity, be prevailed upon to go into the midst of a gay party, where all is hilarity,-all jest and song. But the very effort to assume an air of cheerfulness,-to join in the buoyant festivity and mirth, has been distressingly painful, and subsequent reflection on the incongruity (as they have felt it to be) between the scene and their circumstances, has sunk them the deeper afterwards,-through dissatisfaction with themselves.



With regard to any who can on purpose insult the sorrowing and heavy heart by the song of mirthful gaiety,-they are monsters-not men. They deserve not a place in the society of human beings.-And there is one description of mental distress, with which the world have not-and cannot be expected to have-any sympathy. They frequently indeed deal by it very roughly and cruelly-



"Regardless of wringing and breaking a heart

Already to sorrow resigned."



I mean spiritual dejection. I will not give it the name of religious melancholy; for that is an unhappy misnomer, expressing what has no existence. There is no description of melancholy which in itself can with truth be called religious,-though there is much that may spring from subjects that bear a close affinity to religion. Melancholy and dejection of spirit arises, not from religion, but from the absence of it, or from defective and erroneous conceptions of it. Rightly understood, it is its only true and effectual cure. It is the light which, introduced into the mind, dissipates its darkness and dreariness. It is the balm that soothes, mollifies, and heals the wounded spirit. It is all restorative, all cheering. Trouble of spirit does arise from conviction of sin, and of exposure, on account of it, to "the wrath to come," and from the secret, deep-felt, irrepressible apprehension of that wrath. But such conviction, such pain, such fear, are not religion. They are the very things which religion is designed and fitted to remove. The truth of the gospel-the message of mercy-understood and received in its divine authority and simplicity, sets all to rights. It dispels the gloom. It introduces the sunshine of joy. It stills the trembling heart. It dries the bitter tear, and sends after it the tear of delight and gratitude,-the drops of genuine penitential tenderness, mingling, as they always do, with those of calm, thankful, thrilling ecstasy. To the spirit that is loaded with a sense of guilt, and bowed to the dust by the apprehension of coming wrath, there is no song but one that can impart relief and joy,-none but one that can harmonize its jarring emotions, and soothe it to permanent peace. It is the song of the angels at the nativity of the Saviour-"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,"-or of the redeemed multitude before the throne-for the spirit of both is the same-"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain"-"Thou art worthy, for thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood." Let but that blood touch the heart, and all its alarms are hushed. The lips will be tuned to the notes of that song. It will "throw off its sackcloth, and gird itself with gladness."