sentence, and there a long allegory. At one turn we see the gilded coverings stripped from some sin, and at the next the polished and barbed arrow goes home to the heart of a cherished wrong. And the whole is so condensed and pithy, so full and yet so keen, with outward duty mentioned and yet the right heart so insisted upon, piety blended with morality and morality so enforced by piety, that the book is always venerable but never stale, can always be consulted yet never exhausted. The oldest finds in it food for thought, and the youngest a diversion and a delight. Those who enjoy the sketches of character, and those equally who love to see a condensed argument in a single sentence, can find in this book the thing that suits their taste. Will that single proverb ever grow obsolete while men love their holy dead-the proverb that says, "The memory of the just is blessed"? or will men ever cease to own the aptness of the saying, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joys"? And who has not been compelled to say, as he has met the experiences of life, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful"? And how pertinent the sentence, "The beginning of strife is as the letting out of water; therefore

leave off contention before it is meddled with." What convert coming into the peace of God's forgiveness has not repeated those words, "Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace?" Lord Bacon has been applauded for his saying, "Knowledge is power." But put the word. wisdom for the word knowledge, and Solomon had said the same thing ages before.

Observe also that many of these proverbs get their power from some picture in them. A comparison of a single word in the heart of a pithy sentence has made it easy to remember and pertinent for quotation. "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth;" "He that watereth shall be watered; "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city;" "The slothful man saith there is a lion without;" "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." And if any man thinks these proverbs are mere truisms, let him pause over them and study them till they reveal themselves. He will find that there is a heart behind them. For they rise higher and strike deeper than the mere surface of our ordinary life. I never knew a man of sagacity, of practical skill in dealing with men, who was not fond of this Book of Proverbs. Such men have often these

proverbs close at hand, an exhaustless treasure for

daily use. The oral sketches that are scattered through the book are worthy of our study. They are exceedingly graphic. Perhaps there is no more terrible sketch in the Bible than that given in the opening chapter. A young man is warned not to go out into actual life without true piety. If he shall do it, all will go wrong. If he shall do it, God will be angry. God against him, calamities will sooner or later gather about him, and destruction come like an armed man, and there be none to deliver. "They shall call but I will not answer. They shall seek but not find." To the young man that laughs at religion and mocks at piety, who goes the voyage without the chart that God has given, he saith, “I will laugh at your calamity and I will mock when your fear cometh; when distress and anguish come upon you." And the reason for all this is given in these words, "Because they did not choose the fear of the Lord." So that in the opening chapter we have the keynote of the whole book, and nowhere is there any declining from this grand and lofty tone with which the book begins, viz., that the fear and love, the trust and the joy of the Lord, are the essential things in a true and noble life. The high

and beautiful severities of morality and religion stand forth, the glorious mountain summits that are never to be lost sight of in all our climbing. The air grows purer, the vision broader. The very precipices of doom are for a salutary warning that we venture not too near the shelving edge of any evil, lest we provoke God to leave us. And thus alike, by warning and by wooing, by words that startle and those that encourage, by the fear of God and by the love of God, we are instructed, admonished, profited. The ruin of the godless man is made in this opening chapter a minister of salvation to all who propose to "walk not in the way of the wicked and refrain the foot from their path."

Another of these character-sketches is peculiar to Eastern life as seen to-day among the unaltered customs of the Orient. There, enervated by the climate, by lack of general enterprise, by the ease with which the few necessities of life are gained, men will doze away a lifetime in an idleness that has no prosperity to excuse it. The idle man in the East is not a retired rich man, but often one who has need of daily labour. And Solomon's picture of the idler is drawn so sharply that we can almost see him in his sloth. There he is, prone on his bed, though the sun has risen and others are at

work. His fields are grown over with weeds. "Yet a little more sleep," he says drowsily when one would rouse him,-"Yet a little more sleep, and a little more slumber, and a little more folding of the hands to sleep"-and he has gone again. Roused once more, he turns lazily on his bed and says, "There is a lion without in the way; yet a little more sleep." Do we need to study this picture? If we had lived in the former ages, before industry had become a passion of the nations, some exhortation towards worldly thrift might have been needful for us. But industry is the New England virtue, and a lazy man is the contempt of the community. And yet this outward thrift is often unattended with any inward aspiration. "To get on in the world" becomes the great aim. The intellect is often untilled, and the soul is a luxuriant wilderness of weeds, the chance growth of accident on a soil that needs to be reclaimed and redeemed for God. Idlers on one field we despise. Then must there be care, lest, looking on the picture which Solomon has placed before us, we should fail to see his twofold meaning; fail also to see that we may have escaped from the one to be ensnared in the other and the sadder peril.

And the drunkard is also sketched by our royal