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Pro_25:11
In either case we are clear, that, whether real or imitated, apples are not intended. For one reason, the apple is of small value in Palestine, or anywhere else in the Levant; except, perhaps, in some parts of the mountainous country south-east of the Black Sea, where we have found that the elevation, by neutralizing the effect of latitude, produces a climate so far favorable to the apple-tree as to enable it to produce a fruit which might not disgrace our own orchards. But, upon the whole, the apples of the Levant, where they are found, are execrable, and held in no esteem whatsoever. It is somewhat different with regard to oranges; but the climate of Palestine is not very favorable to that fruit, and it is not very abundant nor very good. On the other hand, that variety of fragrant lemon called the “citron,” attains its highest perfection in that country, and is very abundant; and by the consent of the Jewish writers themselves, as well as from the probability of the case, we apprehend that “citron” is always to be understood by the word translated “apple” in the common version. In the present text it is peculiarly and beautifully appropriate. That the citron was well known to the Hebrews we learn from Josephus, who mentions, that on one occasion, at the feast of tabernacles, King Alexander Janneus was pelted in the temple with citrons, which the Jews had in their hands—for which he assigns the reason, that the law required that at that feast every one should have bunches of the palm-tree and the citron-tree. The Jews still thus understand the injunction, and as the fruit is not produced in this country, they import large quantities for the occasion.
Now, then, we are enabled to understand the sacred writer to mean, that “a word fitly spoken,” that is, spoken at the fit or proper time, is like placing an apple of gold or a citron in a basket of silver; and we thus obtain a most appropriate and elegant similitude out of that which seems not at the first very intelligible or remarkably suitable.
A favorite author of our earlier days, and to whom we still often turn with advantage and pleasure, is a Puritan divine, the Rev. Thomas Brook, whose writings abound in racy anecdotes and precious sentences—in “apples of gold,” which he does well who places in the “silver basket” of his mind. Indeed, one of his best books bears the title of Apples of Gold. Note: Apples of Gold for Young Men and Women, and a Crown of Glory for Old Men and Women, etc., 26th Edition. London, 1812. We take down our own well-used copy; and find it scored throughout with old marks—each of which is to us a memorial of old times and thoughts; and we know not that we can give a better turn to the reader’s reflections on this day, than by setting before him a few of these passages.
In his preface, Brook says: “I have never found greater and choicer blessings attend any of my poor weak labors than those that have been brought into the world through the greatest straits and difficulties.”
“Love to Christ and souls, will make a man willing to spend and be spent: he that prays himself to death, that preaches himself to death, that studies himself to death, that sweats himself to death, for the honor of Christ and the good of souls, shall be no loser in the end. Love knows no difficulties. Divine love is like a rod of myrtle, which, as Pliny reports, makes the traveller that carries it in his hand, that he shall never faint or be weary. Divine love is very operative; if it do not work, it is an argument that it is not at all. Divine love, like fire, is not idle but active: he that loves cannot be barren…. The very heathen hath observed that God doth not love his children with a weak womanish affection, but with a strong masculine love; and certainly, they that love the Lord strongly—that love Him with a masculine love, they cannot but lay out their little all for Him and for his glory.”
“Two things make good Christians: good actions and good aims; and though a good aim does not make a bad action good (as in Uzzah), yet a bad aim makes a good action bad (as in Jehu), whose justice was approved, but his policy punished.”
Alluding to the text, Ecc_12:1, “Remember now thy Creator,” etc., Brook says: “Now is an atom will puzzle the wisdom of a philosopher, the skill of an angel, to divide. Now is a monosyllable in all learned languages.”
“Most young men in these days do as the heathen: when their gods called for a man, they offered a candle.”
“As a copy is then safest from blotting when dust is put upon it; so are we, when, in the time of our youth, we remember that we are but dust.”
“I have heard of a devout man, who, when he heard a clock strike, would say, ‘There is an hour past that I have to answer for.’”
“It was a brave magnanimous speech of Luther, when dangers from opposers did threaten him and his associates: ‘Come,’ said he, ‘let us sing the forty-sixth Psalm, and let them do their worst.’”
“As Hiliary said to his soul: ‘Soul, thou hast served Christ this seventy years, and art thou afraid of death? Go out, soul, go out.’”
“The ancients were wont to call the days of their death Natalia—not dying days, but birth-days.”
“The ancients did picture Youth like a young man naked, with a veil over his face, his right hand bound behind him, his left hand loose, and Time behind him, pulling one thread out of his veil every day—intimating that young men are void of knowledge, and blind, unfit to do good, ready to do evil, till time, by little and little, makes them wiser.”
“There was but one young man came to Christ, and he came not aright; and all the good that was in him was but some moral good, and yet Christ loved him with a love of pity and compassion.”
“St. Jerome tells us of one Mepotiamus, who by long and studious meditation on the Holy Scriptures, had made his mind the library of Jesus Christ.”