"Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life."
Solomon, in the introductory portion of this Book, is especially addressing the young; and youth he knew to be naturally volatile, and listless as to the topics to which he was most solicitous to secure their attention. Hence, like a speaker who sees attention drooping-the interest of his hearers becoming languid-the eyelids heavy-the countenance vacant, and indicating an absent and wandering mind-he often rouses by a fresh appeal, in the language of affectionate concern:-Verse Pro_4:1. "Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding."
"Attention" is necessary to the acquisition of all knowledge, and not least the knowledge of divine truth. And when the instruction is imparted by a parent's lips, earnest and thoughtful attention is specially incumbent on children. The obligation is reciprocal. It lies on parents to teach; it lies on children to learn. Of all knowledge, pious parents will ever be most solicitous to impart to their children the knowledge of God's will. Whatever be second, this must be first. And while it should be that which parents are most anxious to impart, it should be that which children are most eager to gain. Remember, my young friends, Solomon here speaks of the "instruction of a father." And for children to disregard paternal instruction, is ungrateful, cruel, wicked, and infatuated.
It is ungrateful. The obligations, under which children lie to parents, are of a nature never to be fully discharged. My young hearers, your fathers and mothers wept for joy at your birth, and many a time wept for sorrow at the sufferings of your helpless infancy and childhood. In that period of your entire dependence, they protected and cherished you; they fed and clothed you; they fervently prayed for you; they hung over your sickbed with the tenderness of unwearied anxiety-trembling between hope and fear; watching each moment every symptom, and rejoicing in the turn of the ebbing tide, and your restoration to health and life. O! your bosoms are yet strangers to the indescribable tenderness and force of parental love. To be rightly known, it must be experienced. How ungrateful, then, not to hear the instruction of a father or a mother, (for.the obligation applies alike to both) when, from solicitude about your bodies, they are taking thought for your souls; when, from care for your temporal, they are rising to care for your eternal interests. As this is the department of their highest obligation, so is it of yours. Sad evidence is it of your gratitude for the one, that you disregard and reject the other!
It is cruel. If you but knew it, there is nothing more agonizing to a godly parent's heart. It is incomparably worse than that inspired by your severest bodily ailments. O! were you but aware of the secret anguish that wrings the bosom-that gnaws and consumes the spirit-of a pious father or mother, when instruction is contemned, and carelessly or stubbornly refused, you would not act thus.
It is wicked. It is a violation of God's law. He has made it the duty of parents to instruct their families; and he has enjoined it as the corresponding duty of children, to hear their instructions. In refusing parental counsel, you are disobeying God.
It is infatuated. The young are always in danger of selfsufficiency. They will have their own way, refusing the dictates of superior wisdom and age. But "this their way is their folly." They are their own enemies. They are treasuring up regrets for the close of life, and for eternity.
In all that I have thus said, one thing has been assumed. Solomon states it in the second verse (Pro_4:2):-" For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law." I am speaking of the instructions of godly parents, and supposing them to be in harmony with the lessons of God. Children and youth are prone to question the goodness of them. Their hearts naturally dislike them. They are too strict, too spiritual, too holy, for their taste. Ever prone to worldly and sinful pleasures, they fret at the rein that holds them in. Even though that rein is of silk, and held by the hand of the kindest affection, they would rather be free. Their deceitful heart blinds and perverts their better judgments, so that they "call good evil, and evil good." The doctrine of God, taught in the Bible, and instilled into the opening mind by godly parents, is, in every sense, "good doctrine." It is good in its own nature-coming as it does from the very mind of God, by the illumination of his Holy Spirit; and it is good in its results, on the present and everlasting happiness of all who receive it. When temptations allure the young to "forsake the law," which God gives them, they will find in their sad experience that it is good they are forsaking, and misery they are pursuing.
Solomon recommends his instructions to his own children,-as having been, not his only, but those of their venerable grandfather to himself. And he herein sets before us at once a filial and a paternal example:-verses Pro_4:3-4. "For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live." Solomon, like Isaac, was a child of promise. He was the appointed heir of his father's throne, and type of an infinitely greater successor than himself, (2Sa_7:12-13.) He had a name given him, as formerly noticed,* significant of the divine affection and favour towards him. He discovered symptoms of early wisdom and piety, which could not fail greatly to endear him to the heart of his father, and of his mother also. He here shows how he felt the affection of both, and returned it.
* Lecture 1: p. 3.
Solomon was born to a kingdom. Too often has the education of the heirs of thrones been neglected-especially in that department which is incomparably the most important, both for their own sakes, and for the sake of their future subjects. It is of unutterable consequence, that those who are to be entrusted with power-so very dangerous a commission, and one which the temptations to abuse are so strong-should have principle to use it aright; that they to whom the interests of so many others are to be entrusted should be qualified to consult and promote those interests to the most advantage. David manifested his paternal affection for Solomon, in union with patriotic affection for his people, in the instructions he imparted to him, and the counsels and admonitions he addressed to him, in his early years. This example of David as a father, is here recommended to parents; while that of Solomon is recommended to youth.
Ye fathers and mothers, if you love your children, as David did Solomon, you will teach and admonish them as David did Solomon. You will "say unto them,"-and that with all tenderness and importunity, and the tears of solicitude for their well-being, "Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live." You will be anxious for the life of your offspring;-for the true happiness of their life on earth,-of which you know by your own experience, if you are God's people, true religion is the very zest and relish; and more especially for their future life,-their meetness for heaven, and their final attainment of " life everlasting." Nothing short of this will satisfy you. Were you to be assured that all wealth and honour, and every variety of earthly good, in the richest abundance, were to be the lot of your children in the world, your hearts would still ache for them; you would feel that all was nothing, less than nothing, if the assurance was unaccompanied with any intimation of the safety of their souls. You would feel it an infinite relief to you,-a burden lifted off your spirits,-a joy unspeakable infused into your hearts, were all that variety and abundance of earthly good swept away, and the life of the soul and the hope of heaven substituted in its room.
And, my young friends, look at the example of Solomon. See here, how he goes back in recollection to the days of his childhood, with pious thankfulness-thankfulness both to his earthly and his heavenly Father-verse Pro_4:4. "He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live." He thus records it with filial reverence and love, to his father's honour. I can conceive his heart, when he wrote these words, swelling in the remembrance of the days of his youth, and his eyes filling with the tears of tenderness.
And are there none of us who have cause for similar grateful remembrances? I for one must record mine; and many there are who can look back with delight and gratitude on the same scenes. Well I remember the family group, on the evenings of the "Lord's day," with our Bibles and our catechisms, storing our memories, and receiving, in simple explanations, and comparisons of one scripture with another, the early rudiments of saving knowledge-mingled with affectionate warnings, coming from the very bottom of a fond and devout heart, against "the ways of the destroyer," and all the errors and sins and temptations of the world. The whole circle is before my eye-the eye now of memory and imagination alone, for all who constituted that circle are now gone but he who addresses you. To the Christian faithfulness of a long-departed father I rejoice to bear my renewed testimony, in the very words of Solomon-verse Pro_4:4. "He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live." I speak to many who have, through the grace of God, reaped the blessed fruits of such early lessons. Are there any hearing me who can remember scenes of a similar description, but not with sweetness, not with satisfaction?-none by whom, to this day, both the instructions and the recollection of them have been fruitless of saving benefit? O let such, how far soever advanced in life, yet remember, and yet improve the remembrance. Hear, with the ear of memory, "the instructions of a father," or of a mother, or of both. If your secret convictions tell you that they "gave you good counsel," it will even yet be for your good to improve it, that you may have their happiness in life, their hope in death, and a participation in the blessedness to which they are gone, and the choice of which they were so anxious to induce you to make. Make it yet-make it note. Ere you leave this house today, make it, and keep to it!
In the whole passage, from verse fifth to verse thirteenth, there is much that is similar to what has already been under our review.
Mark the urgency of the exhortation to the acquisition of wisdom-verses Pro_4:5 and Pro_4:7. "Get wisdom, get understanding; forget it not: neither decline from the words of my mouth. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding."
If you look at what keeps the world astir, you will at once conclude, that most men around you are under the actuating influence of a very different maxim from that presented in the latter of these verses. You might, without being at all chargeable with a libel, read-"Money is the principal thing; therefore get money; and with all thy getting get a fortune." This, alas! is the world's "one thing needful." All else is postponed to this. The world's advice to the young is, Get money first. Secure a competency (a word of which the limit is never defined); and when that has been done, you will have leisure to think about what good folks call "better things." Mind you the main chance. This world is the one with which we have first to do, as we are placed first in it. This world, then, first, and then the next! Ah! what a delusion! How many thousand times has it been found that, instead of leisure afterwards presenting itself for acquiring a better portion, the attachment of the heart to the world becomes stronger and stronger, and its seductive power the more and the more fascinating, as it is progressively acquired! The meshes of the net become the tougher and the more entangling, and the escape increasingly difficult, every hour. Its miserable victim comes to be held faster and faster in the toils, from which he flattered himself he would at any time set himself free. He is caught, and kept, and ruined, in the very net which he laid, unwittingly it may be, for himself O! when true wisdom is neglected for this-how pitiable! That preferred, which may never be got; and if got, may not be kept even for a day!-and that foregone for its sake, which cannot fail to be got, if in earnest desired and sought, which is the richest and sweetest relish of everything else, and which itself endures for ever-the portion of the soul, sure as eternity!
The urgency to "get wisdom," is fully justified by the benefits here enumerated:-verse Pro_4:6. "Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee."
The "preservation" is from the ways of sin, of folly, of the world, of death. From these true religion is the only safety.*
* See chap, 2:10-12.
And true religion is the only way to true honour and joy-to ultimate and permanent good:-verse Pro_4:8. "Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour when thou dost embrace her." This may be connected with the previous verse; the one being just a carrying out of the conviction of the truth of the other. To "exalt wisdom,"-when we recollect that "the fear of the Lord is wisdom "-is to honour God. It implies the choice of true religion as the chief good-giving it the first and highest place among the objects of desire and pursuit-enthroning it in our hearts, or rather enthroning there Him who is the object of it.-" She shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honour," might be interpreted, as before, of the esteem which really consistent religion is fitted to inspire. It may, by its admirable practical effects, produce confidence, and obtain elevation to offices of trust and consequence and honour amongst men. But something more, something higher and better is intended. This appears from the ninth verse-"She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."*1 The meaning of the two parts of this verse, when taken together, may be-She shall give thee true dignity here, and confer upon thee glory for ever hereafter. It is impossible, consistently with the ordinary import of the language of the Bible, to interpret the phrase "a crown of glory" of any thing else than the everlasting honours of heaven.*2
*1 See on chap. Pro_1:9; Pro_3:22.
*2 Comp. Heb_2:9. 2Ti_4:8. 1Pe_5:4. Rev_2:10.
The blessing mentioned in the tenth verse-" The years of thy life shall be many," has been more than once before us.* I dwell not on it now.
* Comp. Pro_3:1-2; Pro_3:16.
The repetition of the same thoughts, in nearly the same words, inclines me to interpret the whole passage as the strain of David's lessons to Solomon. And then we see the pattern after which, under the influence of the same Spirit which rested so abundantly upon his father, Solomon framed his own lessons. The likelihood of this is strengthened by the eleventh verse-"I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths." This, we say, is probably, though not certainly, the appeal of David to Solomon. If we may regard the language, 1Ch_28:9, "And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he mil cast thee off for ever,"-as the sum of the many previous lessons and admonitions of David, we shall have a favourable, and, from what Solomon himself here tells us, a just impression of the tenor of the parental training, of which he had been the subject. Happy, enviably happy the parent who can, with a clear conscience, make this appeal!
We have here set forth the two branches which constitute the sum of parental tuition-instruction and direction; teaching truth and guiding to duty. The one part relates to knowledge-the other to practice. In all rightly-conducted education, the two should never be disjoined. To teach duty without truth, is to teach action without motive-virtue without its principle. To teach truth without duty is to teach motive without the practice to which it should lead. They are both partial-and if kept asunder, both worthless. To act without the only right motive, and to understand the motive, without following it out and realizing it in action-must be alike unacceptable to "Him with whom we have to do."
The happy practical results of attention to parental counsel, and imbibing the principles and spirit of true wisdom, are expressed in verse twelfth. "When thou goest"-that is, in thy daily walk-thy course of conduct, "thou shalt not be straitened." The word seems to express the case of one in difficulty and perplexity-contradictory impulses and obstacles pressing and hindering on every side-perpetually producing embarrassment and hesitation, and uneasy apprehension-hedging up the way, and hemming us in, and destroying the freedom and the confidence of advancement. Such is the case of the man who walks according to the maxims of a worldly and carnal policy. He is ever at a loss. As circumstances are ever shifting, he is ever shifting his principles and plans to suit them,-ever tearing and fretting himself with devices for this and the other end. But the "wisdom that is from above" inspires a simplicity and unity of principle, by which a vast amount of this agitating and painful perplexity is taken away, and liberty, delightful liberty, imparted to the steps. This wisdom has one point alone to ascertain-what the will of the Lord is. That point discovered, the mind is instantly at rest. The path is clear; the step free, bold, fearless.-Then, "when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble." May not this refer to cases of urgency, cases calling for instant decision and prompt action? He whose mind is implicitly subject to the divine authority and direction; who is well-informed in God's word, and familiar with its contents; whose eye is single; whose principle is one; who looks not to the dictates of a crooked policy, but simply to God's will and God's glory-will not be often at a loss, or in great danger of making false steps, even when taken suddenly, and at unawares. He will be ready at all times and in all emergencies for action; and his duty will be done, while another is hesitating and considering, looking to results, and balancing probabilities; and, if necessitated to act on the instant, will be in great danger of stumbling-of hitting on some wrong, and far from advisable expedient. In the character of the former-of the man of principle, there is a firmness, a steadiness, a consistent uniformity of conduct, which appears in all circumstances, however different and opposite. His course does not shift with the wind. He is under no necessity of tacking from side to side, and accommodating to every changing current of air, like the vessel that must reach her point by the dexterous and ever-varying management of sails and rudder; but like the ship that is impelled by the marvellous might of steam-goes forward, direct to his destination, against wind, and tide, and current. The urgency of Solomon's admonitions, implies the existence of temptation and consequent danger-danger, as we have said before, of "letting slip the things which we have heard." Hence the style of the next verse, "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life." The natural giddiness and levity of youth; the allurements, in all their variety and force, of the world and of vice; the seductive enticements of evil company; the power of inward corruption, and the "wiles of the wicked one"-all draw one way-all against the impulse of heavenly principle, of divine wisdom; and they are all aided by the natural resistance to control of pride and self-will.
That on which we feel that we depend for safety, or for the attainment and continued enjoyment of something on which our hearts are set, and which is essential to our present or our future well-being or both, we "take fast hold of;" we will not let go; having seized it with avidity, we cling to it with tenacious grasp. Thus is it with a shipwrecked and drowning man within reach of a floating plank. With what eagerness he seizes it!-with what a desperate embrace he maintains his hold of it!-he will not "let it go"-he "keeps it, for it is his life." Thus must it be with the sinner and heavenly wisdom. Thus must you feel your need of it. Thus must you lay hold on it. Thus must you cling to it:-"it is your Life." You are lost without it. Let no buffeting wave of temptation drive you from it. Let nothing that seems to offer greater security induce you to quit your hold. It is your only life. You must lay hold of true religion, even as the trembling and sinking Peter caught at the out-stretched hand of his gracious and omnipotent Lord. Laying hold on Christ is laying hold on wisdom. In conclusion,-.
1. If it be an evil to spurn at the instructions of an earthly father, how much greater an evil must it be to slight the paternal counsels and entreaties of the divine Father Of All! How ungrateful, how wicked, how infatuated! Cruel we cannot with propriety call it; for all the suffering in which such neglect or refusal results must be your own. It cannot affect the blessedness of Deity.
2. The sentiment respecting wisdom in the seventh verse is the same in substance with that of a greater than Solomon, when he says-" One thing is needful," Luk_10:42. Salvation and the means of its attainment must be the "one thing needful" for a sinful creature. He is wise who seeks and finds this. He is emphatically the "fool" who neglects it. This is the pearl of great price, which is "not to be gotten for gold," and which he is an infinite gainer who parts with all else to find, as his everlasting treasure. How poor and miserable are those who get their desires as to this world, in the gratification of avarice, of ambition, of literary and scientific reputation, of personal and social pleasures, and get them to the full. If they live and die without wisdom-without fitness for the life to come-without Christ, without God, without hope!
3. Christian parents, let no infatuated wish to get your children forward in the world-to put them in the way of wealth or honour-to introduce them to what is reckoned genteel society and good connexions, or any earthly consideration whatever, tempt you to neglect their souls or to expose them to jeopardy. Proceed on the principle, that you are making the best provision for their temporal happiness by securing, in the first instance, that which is eternal. If you do otherwise you may rue it with tears of bitterness in the latter end.
