Proverbs 18
Butler1. HE that separateth himself seeketh his own desire, And rageth against all sound wisdom.
2. A fool hath no delight in understanding, But only that his heart may reveal itself.
3. When the wicked cometh, there cometh also contempt, And with ignominy cometh reproach.
4. The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters; The wellspring of wisdom is as a flowing brook.
5. To accept the person of the wicked is not good, Nor to turn aside the righteous in judgment.
6. A fool’s lips enter into contention, And his mouth calleth for stripes.
7. A fool’s mouth is his destruction, And his lips are the snare of his soul.
8. The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, And they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.
9. He also that is slack in his work Is brother to him that is a destroyer.
10. The name of the LORD is a strong tower: The righteous runneth into it, and is safe.
11. The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, And as an high wall in his own imagination.
12. Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, And before honour goeth humility.
13. He that giveth answer before he heareth, It is folly and shame unto him.
1. THE man who is of unsocial and misanthropic disposition and therefore separates himself from intercourse with others, becomes selfish in his aims, and as a result quarrels with true wisdom rather than secures its favor and aid. Chambers.—Selfishness will thus become exclusive and supreme, and break through all bounds to gratify itself.
4. The words, in the first clause, are those of a wise and prudent man. They are like deep waters, because they consist of thoughts not easily sounded to the bottom, and still less capable of exhaustion. (See 20:5; Eccl. 7:24.) The second image is still more lively: A fountain of wisdom is a stream gushing forth—i.e., it is like a stream which, gushing forth from the earth, is always full and refreshing. M. S.—His words have a savor of good sense
14. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; But a broken spirit who can bear?
15. The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; And the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.
16. A man’s gift maketh room for him, And bringeth him before great men.
17. He that pleadeth his cause first seemeth just; But his neighbour cometh and searcheth him out.
18. The lot causeth contentions to cease, And parteth between the mighty.
19. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: And such contentions are like the bars of a castle.
20. A man’s belly shall be filled with the fruit of his mouth; With the increase of his lips shall he be satisfied.
21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
22. Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, And obtaineth favour of the LORD.
23. The poor useth intreaties: But the rich answereth roughly.
24. He that maketh many friends doeth it to his own destruction: But there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
which impress you as coming from a deep fountain of thought and wisdom.
5. To “accept the person” is to regard the merely external circumstances, as opposed to regarding the essential right and equity of the case. It includes all forms of personal favoritism, whether on the ground of sympathy with the character, or of relationship, or the influence of bribes. It is not good to respect the person of the wicked for the purpose and with the result of frustrating the righteous in judgment. Such regard to persons must always be a flagrant sin before God, not only because He hates all injustice, but especially because this form of injustice frustrates the very provisions God has made for securing justice to those who are both innocent and powerless to assert and maintain it. H. C.
6,7. The verses go together, speaking of the results of the “fool’s” temper. First, “contention,” then “blows,” then “destruction.” E. H. P.
8. The point of the proverb is the depraved pleasure which the uncharitable take in hearing whispered backbitings. They welcome such utterances, and swallow them eagerly, as if they were rare dainties. Here applies the saying, “The receiver is as bad as the thief.” If there were no willing listeners there would be no eager whisperers of unkind things. A witty English divine once said that the tale-bearer should be suspended by a nail through his tongue, and the tale-bearer by nails through his ears. Chambers.—An acquaintance with society furnishes ample proof that the statement is true to life. Gossip that besmirches the reputation of some prominent man is eagerly swallowed. When it is whispered into the ear by some newsmonger, it is supposed to be a precious piece of information confided to the receiver. In this particular, society is not very different from what it was in Solomon’s time. Zion’s Herald.
When the backbiter cannot deny the metal to be good and the stamp to be true, he clippeth it and so rejecteth it from being current; he misconstrues doubtful actions unfavorably, and throws over the very virtues of his neighbors the name of faults; he diminishes from the excellence of good actions by showing how much better they might have been done; and attempts to destroy all confidence in long-established character, and all respect for it, by pitching on some single act of imprudence and expanding it into a magnitude which truth and justice forbid. Such is the backbiter, whose crime is compounded of the ingredients of ill-humor, pride, selfishness, envy, malice, falsehood, cowardice, and folly. Backbiting must be peculiarly hateful to God. He is the God of truth, and therefore detesteth lying, of which detraction ever hath a spice. He is the God of justice, and therefore doth especially abhor wronging the best persons and actions. He is the God of love, and therefore cannot but loath this capital violation of charity. He is jealous of His glory, and therefore cannot endure it to be abused by slurring his good gifts and graces. He cannot but hate the offence which approacheth to that most heinous and unpardonable sin, that consisteth in defaming the excellent works performed by Divine power and goodness, ascribing them to bad causes. Anon.
The malicious utterance of a slander is likely to defeat its purpose by its very exhibit of malice; whereas a slander that is simply repeated by one person after another, with its steadily increasing scope and explicitness, as a matter of gossip, or as an item of popular information, often seems too natural to be wholly a fabrication, and it gradually gains a credence that properly belongs to established truth. It is the “they say,” that slips so easily from the unwatched tongue, and that enters so freely the unguarded ear. And there is never a time, nor ever a social circle, when and where there is not some slander concerning innocent and unsuspicious persons, which is passed from one to another unthinkingly, on the basis, or the baselessness, of this indefinite origin. He who consents to hear such a charge against another without giving it a challenge, accords his tacit approval to a slander. He who consents to pass such a charge along as something which he has heard and has not challenged, becomes himself a slander-monger, if not indeed a wilful slanderer. He, on the other hand, who challenges any such slander, and who rebukes its utterer, is so far an upright man and a public benefactor. S. S. T.
9. As bearing upon the accumulation of wealth and the comforts of life, there is little to choose between the slack hand and the wasteful one. They are near enough alike to be brothers. The difference between not getting and wasting is of small account. The Hebrew phrase for “great waster” is expressive; “master of wasting,” as if he had the art to perfection. H. C.—Is a destroyer. Idleness hinders the progress of the individual and the community. The idler is a robber of both God and man. Man was made to work, irrespective of the fortune he may possess. The young man of wealth, or the young woman of fashion and fortune, who has nothing to do but to find some new way of doing nothing is lower down in the scale of being than the vagabond who may have sunk to his position for lack of work. There are thousands of such creatures of affectation and ennui, living men and women literally buried in tombs of physical, intellectual, and spiritual idleness. They never take a thought of the end for which they were created. They scout the idea that the Creator intended them to be of use and service to humanity. They think a selfish, useless, barren life will answer the expectations of that God who designed everything to some useful end, and they libel the name of their Creator by impressing their enfeebled rational faculties into the service of killing time. There are many who regard their wealth, talent, and position as a Divine trust; who look upon life as a stewardship for which they must give account; whose hands and heart are in every good work; and who work as hard in their sphere as any street laborer in his. But these are not of that class. G. L. Spining.
10. All the names of God being significant of His attributes, expressing some of the various qualities of His being and character, the phrase, “the name of the Lord,” differs not materially from the word Lord only. In this proverb the meaning is simply that the Lord Himself is a strong tower. The figure is military. Towers, built high, were a very effective protection against the missile weapons of ancient warfare. The Hebrew word for “is safe” means is up on high, and therefore out of the reach of darts, javelins, or the sling-stones of war. H. C.—What name is this? “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and that will by no means spare the guilty.” This name is our strong tower; this God is our stronghold. We may take refuge in every name and attribute as in a separate chamber of our fortress. Let a man comprehend the import of the declaration that God is good; let him think who and how great God is; what and how copious His all-sufficiency; how boundless His ability to bless; how exquisite the pleasures at His right hand forevermore; and then let him stand and wonder at the greatness of affection affirmed of such a Being, who sits at the fount of all conceivable good, creates all susceptibilities of enjoyment, and floods them with holy fulness. Let him muse on this till he has begun to conceive what God is, what God’s love is, and how it must gush from this spring-head, and stream into swelling rivers of deep and spreading beneficence, of vast and awful bliss, from its sources in the heart of infinite favor. Let a man thus understand and thus believe that God loves him—and he is a happy man; he now knows that God is “a strong tower.” J. W. A.
11. The rich, instead of looking to Jehovah for protection, trust in their riches—which are a high wall, in their own imagination, but not so in reality. In 10:15, the like words are employed, but in a different relation. M. S.—What the name of the Lord is to the righteous, that wealth is to the rich. He flees to it for refuge as to a strong city; but it is so “in his own conceit” only. The word so rendered signifies primarily an “image,” and so “imagination.” E. H. P.
10,11. We have here the “strong tower”
(v. 10) and the “strong city” (v. 11); the man lifted up above danger on the battlements of the one, and the man fancying himself to be high above it (and only fancying himself) in the imaginary safety of the other. Consider first the two fortresses. One need only name them side by side to feel the full force of the intended contrast. On the one hand the name of the Lord, with all its depths and glories, with its blaze of lustrous purity and infinitudes of inexhaustible power; and on the other “the rich man’s wealth.” The name of the Lord, of course, is the biblical expression for the whole character of God, as He has made it known to us, or, in other words, for God Himself, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself to mankind. His name proclaims Him to be self-existent, and, as self-existent, eternal; and as eternal, changeless; and as self-existent, eternal, changeless, infinite in all the qualities by which He makes Himself known. But far beyond the sweep of that great name, Jehovah, is the knowledge of God’s deepest heart and character, which we learn in Him who said, “I have declared Thy name unto My brethren, and will declare it.” The name that is the strong tower is the name “My Father!” A Father of infinite tenderness, and wisdom, and power. Look at the other fortress: “The rich man’s wealth.” Of course we have not to deal here only with wealth in the shape of money, but all external and material goods; the whole mass of the things seen and temporal are gathered together here in this phrase. Men use their imaginations in very strange fashion, and make, or fancy they make, for themselves out of the things of the present life a defence and a strength. Of all delusions that can beset you in your course, none will work more disastrously than the notion that the summum bonum, the shield and the stay of a man is the abundance of the things that he possesses. Consider next how to get into the true refuge. How does a man make this world his defence? By trusting to it. He that says to the fine gold, “Thou art my confidence,” has made it his fortress; and that is how you will make God your “strong tower”—by trusting to Him. A. M.
12. Pride is the presage of ruin, and ruin will at last be the punishment of pride; for before destruction men are commonly so infatuated by the just judgment of God, that they are more haughty than ever; that their ruin may be the sorer and the more surprising. Humility is the presage of honor, and prepares men for it, and honor shall at length be the reward of humility, as He had said before (15:33). That has need to be often said, which men are so loath to believe. H.—Without humility where is the love of man, that love which consists in the cultivation of charitable affections, in the exercise of charitable services from one toward another? Without humility where is poverty of spirit and contrition of soul? where are meekness and mercy? where is purity of heart? where are peace and righteousness? where is repentance for sin, and faith exclusive of every meritorious claim, faith in the blood of the Redeemer? A proud Christian is a contradiction in terms; humility is the very essence of the Gospel! Bishop Mant.
13. Those that take a pride in being quick, commonly fall under the just reproach of being impertinent. It is folly for a man to go about to speak to a thing which he does not understand, or to pass sentence upon a matter which he is not truly and fully informed of, and has not patience to make a strict inquiry into; and if it be folly, it is and will be shame. H.
14. Infirmity relates to pains of body; a dejected spirit to a mind sad and cast down. The first can be endured by firmness and resolution; but the last—who can endure it, when resolution for endurance is gone? M. S.—Let this shell of nature, the body, be under never so much pain and agony, yet a well-settled and resolved mind will be able to buoy it up and keep it from sinking; the spirit will bear, and by bearing will at length master these infirmities. But when the spirit itself is wounded and struck through, the grief presently becomes victorious and intolerable. South.
The spirit of a man may sustain the common infirmities of nature, and the incidental evils of life; but a wounded spirit—a spirit pierced with a sense of unrepented guilt—who can bear? Guilt will have its day of account; and when this day comes, be it sooner or be it later, whither shall the sinner fly? With what arguments shall he sustain the anguish of his wounded soul? S. Carr.—Dreadful apprehensions of God’s anger, whether well or ill founded, are among the most intolerable of all our states of mind. The citadel itself is assaulted. The supporting power itself cries for support. J. W. A
The mind fortified by principles of moral counsel and constancy, can endure the assault of external evils; “but a wounded spirit who can bear?” This is most insupportable, when the sting and remorse of the mind is from the sense of guilt. The guilty conscience turns “the sun into darkness, and the moon into blood;” the precious promises of the Gospel that assure favor and pardon to returning and relenting sinners are turned into arguments of despair by reflecting upon the abuse and provocation of mercy, so that the advocate in God’s bosom becomes the accuser. Whatever the soul-wounded sinner sees or hears afflicts him; whatever he thinks torments him. All the diversion in the world, business, pleasures, merry conversation, comedies, are ineffectual to give freedom from those stings and furies in the breast. Bates.
Look which way it will for relief, the wounded spirit can discover nothing but aggravations of its wretchedness. If it looks within, it finds nothing but darkness and tempest and despair. If it looks around on its temporal possessions, it sees nothing but gifts of God which it has abused, and for its abuse of which it must give a terrible account. If it looks back, it sees a life spent in neglect of God, and ten thousand sins following it as accusers to the judgment-seat. If it looks forward, it sees that judgment-seat to which it must come, and where it expects nothing but a sentence of final condemnation. If it looks up, it sees that God who is wounding it, and whose anger seems to search it like fire; and if it looks downward, it sees the gulf which awaits its fall. Not even to death can it look forward as the termination of its miseries, for it fears that its miseries will then receive a terrible increase. True, there is one object to which it might look for relief and find it. It might look to the Saviour, the great Physician, and obtain not only a cure for its wounds, but everlasting life. Payson.
In the commission of evil fear no man so much as thyself; another is but one witness against thee; thou art a thousand; another thou mayest avoid; thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment. Quarles.
How deeply seated the conscience is in the human soul is seen in the effect which sudden calamities produce on guilty men, even when unaided by any determinate notion or fears of punishment after death. The wretched criminal, as one rudely awakened from a long sleep, bewildered with the new light, and half recollecting, half striving to recollect, a fearful something, he knows not what, but which he will recognize as soon as he hears the name, already interprets the calamities into judgments, executions of a sentence passed by an invisible Judge; as if the vast pyre of the Last Judgment were already kindled in an unknown distance, and some flashes of it, darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, were flying and lighting upon the face of his soul. Coleridge.—The guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. D. Webster.
We have little reason for troubling ourselves in questions that relate to a place of future misery. Enough to know that the mind is its own place, and will make a place of woe to itself, whithersoever it goes, in a life of sin and separation from God. If the sceptic bolts upon us with the question, Where is hell? or the question, whether we suppose that a God of infinite goodness has occupied Himself in excavating and fashioning a local state for the torment of bad men? it is enough to answer that a bad mind carries a hell with it, excavates its own place of torment, makes it deep and hot as with fire, and will assuredly be in that place, whatever else may be true. A good mind sits in heavenly places, because it is good. Go where it will it is with God, and God is tempted eternally in it; God is His own everlasting beatitude and peace. Exactly what is true of place beyond this, or of place as related to the condition of happy spirits, we do not know, but shall know hereafter. Enough that the bad mind will at least be its own bad state and element It has the fire and brimstone in itself, and the suffocating smoke, and the darkness, and the thirst, and the worm that never dies—testifying always, “I myself am hell.” It would turn the golden pavement into burning marl, and the hymns and hallelujahs of the blessed into shrieks of discord. H. B.
Men tell us that God is too merciful—too kind to punish. We try to believe them, knowing that God is a thousand-fold milder, more merciful than thought of ours can conceive; but we have only to look within and around us upon the sufferings that sin inflicts, and the vision of a Divinity that does not, will not punish, vanishes like a dream of the night. Where then can our conscience-troubled spirits find repose, where but in Him who hath taken our sin upon Him, in whom there is redemption for us through His blood, even the forgiveness of all our sins? If we may go to Christ for anything, it is for this forgiveness. Hanna.—Pardon is the only fit remedy for a troubled conscience; what can give ease to a wounded spirit but pardoning mercy? Offer Him the honors and pleasures of the world, ’tis as if you bring flowers and music to one that is condemned. Nothing but a pardon sealed with the blood of the Redeemer can ease a wounded spirit. Watson.—Peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy, which, sounding in the conscience, brings the soul into a sweet rest with the pleasant music it makes. Gurnall.
15. With the wise and prudent there is no loss of time. “Heart” and “ear”—the mind working within, or gathering from without materials for its thought—are, through this channel or that, ever gaining knowledge. E. H. P.—Those that are prudent will seek knowledge, and apply their ear and heart to the pursuit of it; their ear to attend to the means of knowledge, and their heart to mix faith with what they hear and make a good improvement of it. H.
17. You hear the first man state his case; he seems to have right on his side; but when his neighbor comes in to reply, and to give his side of the case, he searches out his opponent, canvasses the facts, and often puts a new face upon the whole matter. The moral is, therefore, hear the other side before you judge. H. C.—However some may affect to dislike controversy, it can never be of ultimate disadvantage to the interests of truth or the happiness of mankind. Where it is indulged to its full extent, a multitude of ridiculous opinions will no doubt be obtruded upon the public; but any ill influence they may produce cannot continue long, as they are sure to be opposed with at least equal ability and that superior advantage which is ever attendant on truth. The colors with which wit or eloquence may have adorned a false system will gradually die away, sophistry be detected, and everything estimated at length according to its value. R. Hall.
There is a wide difference between religious controversy and religious discussion. Controversy is contradiction. Discussion is examination. The one is intellectual pugilism. The other is co-operative study. The purpose of the one is victory—of the other, truth. The two are immediately distinguishable from each other by the spirit they each manifest. Controversy is angered by opposing truth, and seeks to minify or pervert it. Discussion gladly recognizes an opposing truth, and reconstructs for its reception. Discussion is modest and never self-seeking. Controversy is loud and sometimes unscrupulous. Interior.—Controversy may for the present be needful; but there never was and never will be need for its rancor. We may have all its victories without its virulence; and its truths without its personal tragedies; and that will be the most wholesome state of the Church when discussions wax kindly, and controversies are conducted in the spirit, not of party feuds, but of friendly investigations. Iron sharpens iron; and the day may come when, like honest experimenters in physics, earnest inquirers in theology will employ their respective acumen, not in perplexing one another, but in pursuing joint researches; and will find their full reward, not in a bewildered public, but in a text clearly interpreted and a doctrine finally demonstrated, in a long debate concluded, and a weary question forever set at rest. Hamilton.
If, in Christian or social intercourse, we wish to deliver any man from what we think error, we must do so by putting him in the way of convincing himself. To beat him down by unreasoning opposition, or even by an irresistible argument, may please us, but is not likely to gain him. There is a great chasm between achieving a victory and making a conquest, and the completeness of the first often prevents the last. To respect a man’s freedom, never to press him so hard as to humiliate him, to give him the clew that may help him to guide himself to the right, is according to the Divine model, and would aid us in serving at the same time both our fellowmen and the truth. Ker.
In my youth I did not sufficiently discern how much, in most of our controversies, is verbal and upon mutual mistakes. And I knew not how impatient divines were of being contradicted, nor how it would stir up all their powers to defend what they have once said, and to rise up against the truth which is thus set upon them as the mental enemy of their honor; and I knew not how hardly men’s minds are changed from their former apprehensions, be the evidence never so plain. In my youth I was quickly past my fundamentals, and was running up into a multitude of controversies, and greatly delighted with metaphysical and scholastic writings (though I must need say my preaching was still on the necessary points), but the older I grew the smaller stress I laid upon these controversies and curiosities, though still my intellect abhorreth confusion. Baxter.
Our religion is a religion that dares to be understood, that offers itself to the search of the inquisitive, to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened reason; for, being secure of her substantial truth and purity, she knows that for her to be seen and looked into is to be embraced and admired, as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light than to see it. South.
19. A readiness to detect a mote in a brother’s or sister’s eye—a habit of cherishing hard thoughts against them—the outrage of speaking against thine own mother’s child—an inflammable disposition, which gets angry with them, either without a cause or with a very small one—all these are indications of a want of real family love. Fault-finding and quarrelling, vanity and conceited comparisons, ill-natured remarks, should all be carefully avoided; for they give offence, and the offence rankles in the memory forever. Very difficult are they to be eradicated and supplanted by right affections. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Anon.—Under the best of circumstances there will be frequent trials of temper among brothers and sisters. Our varying dispositions, our self-will, our disappointments, tend to express themselves in differences and wrangling and in warm and uncourteous words. Temptations of this kind will occur where there is no selfishness in the general sense of that term, and no real jealousy. But if family life is to be sunny and sweet, we must carefully guard ourselves here. Our duty is to try and understand each other’s dispositions, to put the most generous interpretation on each other’s words and actions, even when we dislike them. We must carefully cultivate that love which, unless it “suffereth long,” is not love at all, much less that love which should prevail in families. W. Braden.
20. Words spoken will bring their proper retribution. There is an income from them—a result of good or ill according to what they are. As the fruit and income from hand labor goes to supply the demands of the digestive organs and of the animal frame, so the lips also have their income—i.e., a just retribution. H. C.—We ought to take as great care about the words we speak as we do about the fruit of our trees, or the increase of the earth which we are to eat; for, according as they are wholesome or unwholesome, so will the pleasure or the pain be wherewith we shall be filled. Bishop Patrick.
21. The tongue can bless or curse. It can whisper slander or utter praise. It can speak in tones of kindness, or send forth the ravings of bitter and vindictive passion. It can vent the oath, or pour out the homage of devout and humble prayer. It can set before us the sublimest truths of heaven, or utter the blasphemies of the world of woe. It can carry to other hearts the sympathy of our own, or mix in their cup of anguish new dregs of bitterness. It can speak in the sufferer’s ear in tones that seem like heavenly music, or give back sounds echoed as it were from the desperation of fiends. Who does not know, who has not felt, the power of the tongue—in the social circle, in the public assembly, in the scenes of business, pleasure, or devotion? E. H. G.
It is startling to think what Christian conversation might be, of what it ought to be, and then of what it is. Why should such a power for good be wasted, or far worse than wasted? Why should our Christian development be retarded by the misuse of the marvellous gift of speech? It were far better that one were born dumb than that, having a tongue, one should use it to scatter evil and sorrow, or to sow the seeds of bitterness and pain. Our Lord said we must give account of every idle word; and if for the idle words, how much more for the words that stain and injure, or fall as a destructive blight into other hearts and lives! When we give ourselves to Christ, we ought to give Him our tongues. J. R. M.
22. Of course a good wife is meant. This is a blessing which God gives. (See 19:14; 31:10.) M. S.—It seems safe to conclude that he meant to indorse marriage as a Divine institution and a source of blessings to the husband whose concern it is to find a wife. Let him always regard a wife found as a favor obtained from the Lord. Some degree of mutual adaptation to each other in age and character are essential to the very purposes of married life, and may therefore be considered as necessarily implied in the idea of a wife. H. C.—He that finds a helpmeet for him—that is, a wife in the original acceptance of the word, that sought such a one with care and prayer, and has found what he sought, he has found a good thing, he has found that which will not only contribute more than anything to his comfort in this life, but will forward him in the way to heaven. H.
23. Such is the usual fact; specially is the first part of the verse usually true, because the necessities of the poor force them to beg. The second also is by far too often true. M. S.
24. The true meaning is, A man of many companions is so to his own destruction, but there is a friend (the true, loving friend) that sticks closer than a brother. The teacher warns us against mistaking the counterfeit for the true treasure. It is not the multitude of so-called friends that helps us. They may only embarrass and perplex. What we prize is the one whose love is stronger and purer even than all ties of kindred. E. H. P.—It is somewhat as if we should say in our tongue, A man of [too many] companions will be companionized; or rather (for the sense) victimized. Comparing the first clause with the second, the original uses a very different word for “friend.” The first (“he that hath friends”) may be a hale fellow, a free associate to live upon you, to eat up at once your time, your morals, and your estate; but the second (“there is a friend”) is the loving friend who is bound to you by ties of pure and strong affection. The sentiment seems to be that too many loose associates will work your ruin; but one truly affectionate friend is worth more than a brother. H. C.
“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” is a general proverbial assertion that the tie of friendship may be and sometimes is stronger than that of nature; that the attachment which binds two souls of kindred sentiments, tempers, and sympathies, may be and sometimes is closer, firmer, more endearing and enduring, than that which subsists by virtue of a mere natural relationship. B.
There is an inevitable space between us and our best friends in this world. We all need to have a friend who can keep nearer us and understand us better, stand by us more faithfully and help us more effectually, than any human being. And Christ is such a friend. Think of His power—His power to help and protect, in work, in danger, in temptation. Think of His sympathy—He can feel for us, He can understand us, and all we are feeling and going through. His might to help us is as of one raised like the stars above us; His understanding of us is nearer than that of one who sits by the same fireside. This best Friend will never disappoint us, as those we thought our good friends here sometimes do. This best Friend is always near. This Friend is never estranged.
He will never die. There is no shadow of coming parting to hang, unspoken of, but oftentimes silently remembered, over our communion with Him. A. K. H. Boyd.
What Christ was, He is. The centuries of time, which have been as an imperceptible instant to Him, have produced no change in His friendship, have not abated in the least His faithful affection, His exhaustless sympathies. His absence in body has not impaired or affected His power and willingness to befriend the trusting soul—to minister guidance, strength, comfort, and sanctification, in all its circumstances of darkness, temptation, grief, or sin. It is Jesus, the Friend of sinners, that still extends to us the offices of friendship. It is He that guides, girds, soothes, cheers, and charms our blinded, tempted, wounded, wearied spirits in the narrow pathway to heaven. And it is He that still mercifully confronts us while traversing the broad way to destruction, that still waits, knocking at the door of our hearts, that beseeches us to come unto Him that we may have life, that pleads as from the cross for our forgiveness when in our continued waywardness and guilt we know not what we do. Yes! in all these modes of His kindly interposition with us, whether we are pursuing the path to eternal life or death, Jesus is now proving Himself to be “a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” B.
About all our other friendships there are some easily reached and sorely felt limitations. There is a lack of knowledge in them, and we suffer from our friend’s ignorance. There is a lack of sensibility; and what the tongue of one speaks with no thought of injury stings or crushes the spirit of another. There is a lack of patience; and affection itself, because it is human, neither beareth all things nor rises to the magnanimity of thinking no evil. There is a lack of strength or of skill; and the friend who has all the willingness and the desire to help us fails just at the point where help is most needed, or, with honest goodwill, blunders into the plan that brings damage and distress. There is a limit to physical capacity, to health, to endurance, to life; and so, in the midst of the most gracious and blessed ministrations to sympathy, the ready foot falters, the eager hand droops, the loving eye is closed, and the faithful watcher falls asleep. Turn to the One Friend. His friendship never fails or disappoints for lack of knowledge. It never fails or disappoints for want of patience; for among all the millions of inconstant and unthankful souls that He has permitted to call themselves His friends, there is not one but has wounded Him in some committed wrong or omitted remembrance; and yet what one has He shaken off or given up, from the Peter that denied Him at the judgment hall to the innumerable Peters that denied Him last week in the face of fashion or mammon? It never fails or disappoints for want of skill, or strength, or endurance. How could it, seeing that it carries in its hand the very wisdom and power of God, puts all enemies under its feet, and having loved its own loves them unto the end? This is the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. He loves us before we love Him. He is the Friend whose affection waits for no preference, or overture, or conciliatory obedience, that it may begin its wonders of grace; for it is while we are yet sinners that He dies for us. He loves us for no beauty, because to those eyes that had been used to look, before He left His glory to come seeking us, on the beauty of heaven, there could be no loveliness in us to see. Beginning thus, His love only grows with its own sacrifices. F. D. H.
The peculiarity of Christianity is the strong personal tie of real love and intimacy which will bind men to the end of time to this Man that died nineteen hundred years ago. We look back into the wastes of antiquity; the mighty names rise there that we reverence; there are great teachers from whom we have learned and to whom, after a fashion, we are grateful. But what a gulf there is between us and the best and the noblest of them! But here is a dead Man, who to-day is the object of passionate attachment and a love deeper than life to millions of people, and will be to the end of time. There is nothing in the whole history of the world the least like that strange bond which ties you and me to Jesus Christ, and the paradox of the apostle remains a unique fact in the experience of humanity. “Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love.” We stretch out our hands across the waste, silent centuries, and there we touch the warm, throbbing heart of our Friend, who lives forever and forever is near us. We here, nearly two millenniums after the words fell on the nightly air on the road to Gethsemane, have them coming direct to our hearts. A perpetual bond unites men with Christ to-day; and for us, as truly as in that long-past Paschal night, is it true, “Ye are My friends.” There are no limitations in that friendship, no misconstructions in that heart, no alienation possible, no change to be feared. There is absolute rest for us there. Why should I be solitary if Jesus Christ is my Friend? Why should I fear if He walks by my side?
Why should anything be burdensome if He lays it upon me and helps me to bear it? What is there in life that cannot be faced and borne— ay, and conquered—if we have Him, as we all may have Him, for the Friend and the home of our hearts. A. M.