Proverbs 23

WARD

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Proverbs 23:1-11

LECTURE LXXI.

“When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee; and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties; for they are deceitful meat. Labour not to be rich; cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats; for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee. The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words. Speak not in the ears of a fool; for he will despise the wisdom of thy words. Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: for their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.”

Diligence is commended in the close of the preceding chapter; this opens with the commendation of temperance or moderation. This virtue the people of God ought to practise in every thing. They should “let their moderation be known unto all men”-that is, their self-government in the desire, the use, the enjoyment, and the regret, of all that pertains to the present world. In the opening verses, we have one particular description of moderation,-the laying of a restraint, at all times, but especially on occasions of peculiar temptation, on the animal appetites. The verses suggest the following observations:-

There are few things, if any, more disgusting and degrading, than the studied and anxious indulgence of these appetites:-to see a man surveying the table, with an epicure’s eye; carefully selecting his favourite articles; and in his manner of preparing and eating them, making it manifest to all about him that his whole soul is on the contents of his plate, and that nothing annoys him so much as any interruption such as endangers their getting out of season, and losing their nice relish. It is particularly loathsome, when the man appears to catch with extraordinary avidity the occurrence of a feast, and to be resolved on making the most of the opportunity. What man can be more despicably low than he “whose God is his belly?” When Solomon says-“Consider diligently what is before thee,"-it is for a very different purpose, and in a very different frame of mind, from those I have been mentioning. It means-Consider well the scene of temptation that is before thee, and be upon thy guard.
There are, on such occasions, temptations to over-indulgence and excess. And then our self-jealousy and watchfulness should be proportioned to two things-namely, the strength of propensity, and the amount of temptation. This is the import of the strong expression in the second verse-“and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.” The import seems to be-eat as if a knife were at thy throat;-eat in the recollection and impression of thine imminent danger; remember that the knife wherewith thou dost feast thy delicate or thy gluttonous appetite had better be at thy throat than used for such a purpose,-so prejudicial to health, to reputation, to the credit of thy profession, to the interests of thy soul. In several versions we have the sense given-“Otherwise thou wilt put a knife to thy throat, if thine appetite have the dominion.” For-
A man’s conduct, on such occasions, is marked;-especially if he be a religious professor. He may, in this way, bring reproach upon religion: which ever ought, and which, when genuine and duly felt, ever will, impose a restraint on such indulgences. How sad, when a religious professor gives occasion to the ungodly, with the leer of sarcastic scorn, to say-“Ah! did you see how the holy man–the man of spiritual abstraction-how he did enjoy himself!-he made the most of it!-with what a gusto, and what culinary connoisseurship, he discussed his meal!” Thus are all his pretensions to spirituality turned to ridicule; and from his example encouragement is taken by others to persist in such indulgences and excesses: while any usefulness he might have is impaired and lost, and his reputation for consistency forfeited.
On the other hand, we should be on our guard against the ostentation of abstinence and plainness,-the affectation of extraordinary abstemiousness;-declining this, and refusing that, merely for the purpose of drawing attention, and further fixing that attention by incidental remarks-incidental in appearance but studiously introduced and timed,-for the express purpose of having it said-What a singularly abstemious man he is! how plain in his tastes! how exemplarily indifferent to the gratification of his appetite!-This would be little better than gratifying one carnal principle instead of another,-vanity, instead of gluttony or epicurism, the love of notice and distinction, instead of animal appetite and the love of dainty fare,-the lust of the mind, instead of the lust of the flesh.-Our duty, then, is-indifference to the indulgences of the table, without the obtrusive ostentation of it; eating and drinking in moderation, what is set before us, without the affectation of singularity.
There should be special vigilance, if there be reason to suspect any snare-any intended temptation, for answering a selfish or a malicious purpose. Worldly men sometimes do, very wickedly, lay such snares for the godly. They do so to try them,-for the diabolical satisfaction of witnessing the inconsistencies into which they thus seek to entice them. They then laugh at them, and make sport of their principles: for “fools make a mock at sin."-I do not say that anything of this kind is meant to be conveyed by the terms of verse third-probably not. The meaning of that verse seems to be no more than that evil often lurks under the semblance of good;-that while present enjoyment is promised and pressed upon us, the consequences, if we suffer ourselves to be thrown off our guard, may be bitter.-“When you see a number of dishes, of very different kinds,” says a sensible expositor, “think with yourself-Here are fevers, and agues, and gouts in disguise. Here are snares and traps spread along the table, to catch my soul, and draw me into sin. Sense gives a good report of this plenty; but reason and religion tell me to take heed, for it is deceitful moat.”

Verse Proverbs 23:4 . “Labour not to be rich; cease from thine own wisdom.” “Labour not to be rich.” What a startling interdict this! What an immense proportion of the world’s toil, and especially in such a community as our own, does it bring under condemnation and proscription! Were all the labour directed to this forbidden end to cease,-how little would be left!-what a sudden stagnation would there be of the turmoil of busy activity with which we are daily surrounded! What are the great majority of men about,-in our city and in our country? What keeps them all astir? What is the prevailing impulse of all the incessant bustle and eager competition of our teeming population? Are not all,-with a wider or a narrower estimate of what riches mean,-“labouring to be rich?"-The love of fame has been called the universal passion. Is not the love of money quite as much, if not more, entitled to the designation? Yes; and many a time does the wisdom of the world set itself to the defence of the world’s toil and the world’s aim-alleging many plausible, and some more than plausible, things in its pleadings. “Riches,” say they, “keep a man and his family from dependence. Riches enable a man to enjoy many comforts that are in themselves lawful and desirable. Riches procure a man distinction and influence in society. By this and other means, riches put it in a man’s power to do good:-why should we not ’labour to be rich?’” It is all true; and the plea is in part quite legitimate. Yet Solomon, by the Spirit, with the authority, and in the kindness of God, enjoins-“labour not to be rich.”

His meaning evidently is, that the acquisition of the worldly wealth must not be a man’s primary aim-that which chiefly occupies his desires, his thoughts, his schemes, his time, and his toil,-to the neglect of concerns of incomparably higher importance, and to a forgetfulness of the amount of temptation, and of danger to these higher concerns, which success in his pursuit brings with it,-so as to preclude serious inquiry about the grand problem-the most momentous by infinite degrees, that can occupy the mind of man-how an eternity of being may be to him an eternity of well-being.

“Cease from thine own wisdom” may be considered as regarding both the object of pursuit, and the manner of pursuing it. The object, considered as the main end of life, is infinitely unworthy of a reasonable being; and the manner in which the pursuit of it is carried on is characterized by a disregard of God that is the very essence of impiety. All this is true, even on the supposition that the result of the labour were certain acquisition, and the riches, when acquired, a sure possession,-sure for life and for posterity. But-

Verse Proverbs 23:5 . “Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not J for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven."-How emphatically strong this language! “Upon that which is not!” So precarious are the riches when obtained, that they are hardly allowed the attribute of existence!-that which is not!-How beautifully the air-bubble glitters in rainbow hues, as it floats on the stream, or mounts into the atmosphere!-but in a moment, it bursts, and is gone. Solomon here uses a different figure:-“for riches verily make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” Such was the experience of the wise man’s times:-surely I need not say in what a degree it has been the experience of our own. How frequently, and how affectingly in many cases, has it been exemplified!-Sometimes the wings grow gradually. Their begun and advancing growth is perceived by the owner, and the result dreaded, when others know nothing of it, and are fancying all secure. His eyes are sleepless with solicitude amidst the envy of the ignorant around him. At other times, the event is as unanticipated by the possessor as it is by others. The wings are the product of a moment, and the flight unexpected and sudden. A single unlooked for contingency in providence,-and all is gone!-the accumulations of half a life-time vanished in an hour! A change in the commercial tariff of a foreign state;-a sudden fall in the markets;-a single unsuccessful speculation, from which additional thousands were expected;-the bankruptcy of some house that was esteemed of established and unshaken credit;-a hundred causes may, one or other, occasion the sudden annihilation of property and prospects. The very “labouring” to be rich,-the very eagerness after the object,-the “hasting” to its attainment, is not unfrequently the very means of bringing all to nothing.

“Wilt thou,” then, “set thine eyes upon that which is not?” To set the eyes upon it, is to set the heart upon it. The fixing of the gaze on any object, is the expression of fond desire. The original word contains the idea of special avidity. Nothing can be more unwise:-not only because we may lose the object of desire, how largely soever acquired, even while we are here, but because we must part with it very soon at the longest. Riches may leave us; we must leave riches. How simple, yet how conclusive the consideration-“We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,” 1 Timothy 6:7 . And then-how solemn but how little thought of, the lesson which follows-“They that will be rich fall into temptation, and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows,” verses 1 Timothy 6:9-10 .

Verses Proverbs 23:6-8 . “Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee. The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words."-We had formerly occasion to notice the different acceptations in which the phrase “an evil eye” is taken in Scripture. Here, it has evidently the sense of a covetous, penurious, stingy, grudging disposition. Such persons as are here described were to be found then. They are to be found still. They invite and entertain others, under the impulse of various selfish motives. They must, for appearance and reputation’s sake, pay back their debts of this description; or it is necessary in the way of business; or they like to make a little show, to gratify a spirit of ostentation, and yet grudge and fret at the means. Their entertainments, therefore, are not given from any motive of regard for any but themselves. So that, while with the lips, as a matter of course, they profess great hospitality-“Eat and drink, saith he to thee!"-every mouthful that is swallowed, when, unfortunately their invitation is accepted, is eyed with a secret twinge of fretful regret for having asked you. They would have been better pleased had the invitation been declined. How does this discover itself? It does not always. It may, at times, be pretty successfully concealed. But in general it may be known from the character of the parties, as apparent in other things. A stingy disposition can hardly hide itself. And when a man’s general character is known,-it is known how very ill a particular display of profusion and finery assorts with his ordinary doings, and his established reputation; and hence cannot fail to arise the suspicion, and more than suspicion, that there is something under it,-something else than the unwonted appearance of friendly generosity. And then, unless the simulation is singularly well kept up indeed, the difference will be perceptible between the open, frank, sterling cordiality of genuine heartfelt kindness, and the affectation-the hypocritical pretence of it. The eye belies the lips. While he says one thing, he looks another. While “Eat and drink” is on his lips,-he will, at the same time, by his remarks on the dearth of living, and the high price of particular articles, and the great pains he has been at for your entertainment,-he will betray the true state of his feelings. They are far more with his purse than with his guests.

It is evident, from the very expression, that the man is supposed to be in some degree known. “The bread of him that hath an evil eye” means the provision of one, of whose character this is a manifest feature. The dissuasive advice may be considered as suggested by different considerations. It is painful to the spirit of sensibility to be laid under obligation to men of this sort,-persons who hold their favours so high, and look for so much in return for them. It is, moreover, most irksome and distressing, to partake of any thing respecting which there is the remotest ground of surmise that it is grudgingly given. A share of the very homeliest meal,-even of the crust and water of the beggar,-with a real hearty welcome, is preferable to a place at the most sumptuously covered board, where the dainties have been provided and are partaken with a grudge. When this is the case, there is loathing at the very idea of having so much as tasted them. This appears to be the sentiment in the eighth verse:-“That which thou hast swallowed shalt thou vomit up.” The very thought of the spirit in which the entertainment has been given, will sicken thee to nausea:-and withal “thou shalt lose thy sweet words.”

“Thy sweet words” may mean the words spoken by him to thee. The guest at the time might augur good from them; might flatter himself with his being a special favourite; might, like Haman, go home merry and glad of heart, and full of expectation. But “the good words and fair speeches” were only another part of the simulation. They are mere air. They come to nothing. They are followed, when you have gone away, and he sees your back and the door fairly shut upon you, with fretting and grumbling against you for the expense you have put him to. He reckons up the cost, and curses you in his heart.-But, “thy sweet words” are more naturally understood of the words spoken by thee to him. They were words of thanks and compliment-of flattery for the style, abundance, and variety of his entertainment,-his equipage, his dishes, his wines, his entire set-out. They are lost on one who in truth, when all is known, so ill-deserved them,-a mere dissembler of hospitality and friendship. Your having accepted his invitation, laid him under the necessity of asking others; and your having partaken of his sumptuous dinner, is recorded in his mind against you as a deadly offence; and all your “sweet words” go for nothing! Surely one would rather be famished than be regaled with such grudged abundance.

The injunction, or dissuasion, I need not surely say, is by no means intended to give any license or encouragement to a spirit of pride or disdain. No. It is only a salutary warning to be cautious of bringing yourselves under obligation to any selfish and hypocritical dissembler of kindness, who only wishes to lay you under such obligation to serve purposes of his own. The man who has thus entertained you will boast of his hospitality; tell others of it, making the most of it for his own behoof; set it down against you, debiting you on account of it with certain expected good turns at your hand, when he comes to need them. He will throw it up to you, should you not do all he looks for; or rail at you to others for ingratitude and meanness in forgetting his kindness. He will remind you of it again and again, with vexatious importunity,-teazing you for your favour and influence in some object he has in view for himself or his family. It is amazing what an amount of expectation a man of this sordid and selfish disposition will found upon a dinner! Your having sat at his table, eaten of his dainties, and drunk of his wines, is price enough even for your conscience itself. Beware of him. Keep yourself free.

There is nothing more odious in the sight of God than every description of hypocrisy, whether practised to Himself or to fellow-men. He “desireth truth in the inward parts.” And let all bear in mind, that, whatever a man may succeed in feigning himself to be with his neighbours-the representation in the words before us is, in regard to God, always true-“As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” No imposture can succeed with God.

Verse Proverbs 23:9 . “Speak not in the ears of a fool; for he will despise the wisdom of thy words."-The lesson here taught is one of discretion. It refers to all cases, in which we have reason to apprehend that the latter part of the verse will be the result. In such cases, it is generally better to hold our peace; since by speaking we only give the fool occasion to sin. There may be many cases in which it becomes essential for us to deliver our own souls by bearing our testimony to the truth, “whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear;” that our consciences may be at ease, being clear of their blood. And the lesson here taught is one of judicious discrimination as to the times and seasons when speaking is likely to be profitable, or the contrary. And the lesson relates, not only to our speaking directly to the fool himself, but to speaking in his presence and his hearing, when, by his contradicting and blaspheming, or by his light and “foolish jesting,” he may not only render what we say unavailing to others, but even injurious.*

See Proverbs 9:7-8 ; Matthew 7:6 .

Verses Proverbs 23:10-11 . “Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: for their Redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee."-We had this subject before us, under its general form, in Proverbs 22:28 . Here it comes before us in a more special form. But when the twenty-eighth verse of the preceding chapter is connected with the twenty-second and twenty-third, the connexion will render the lesson very much the same with that in the verses now claiming our attention. And its recurrence again is only an additional proof of the peculiar interest taken by the blessed God in the description of persons mentioned.

The shifting of landmarks, and the plundering of fields,-in any case a flagrant act of injustice and wrong,-is here represented as having in it a much more than ordinary heinousness when the objects of the unrighteous fraud and aggression are the unprotected-those who have been deprived of their natural guardian and maintainer of their rights and interests. The claim of such to sympathy and care is one which has been very generally admitted by mankind-in word and theory at least; but selfishness has too often come between the sufferers and the kindness which was their due. “When, however, this has been, in any remarkable degree, the ease, it has been regarded as indicating an inhumanity that was fit for the perpetration of any deed whatever that is oppressive and ruthless. When Job’s friends, in their irritation, are disposed to be most severe upon him, this is one of the charges they falsely prefer against him.*1 And when Job draws the character of wicked men who merited the wrath of heaven, this is one of its heavy features,*2 And when he denies the charge against himself, the very opposite is strongly affirmed by him as the true description of his character.*3 On behalf of “the fatherless,” God’s jealous protection and avenging omnipotence are here anew pointedly pledged. The word for redeemer signifies the man who was “next of kin,"-the kinsman, on whom, by the law of Moses, it was incumbent, as a matter of duty, and with whom too it was a matter of interest, to look after the concerns of his poor relations; with whom lay indeed the avenging of their blood, if, in any case, their life should, in cruel selfishness, be taken away. It was on the principle of that statute that Boaz called upon the next of kin to come forward and redeem the inheritance of Elimelech at the hand of Naomi, and that, upon his hearing the conditions and declining, he did it himself. Now he who happened to be the redeeming kinsman might himself be poor, and powerless, and without either means or influence. But they should not, on that account, be unprotected and unbefriended. Jehovah himself would take the place of their kinsman,-would “plead their cause” would maintain their rights, would redress their wrongs, would bring His power to bear against their oppressors. He would fulfil for them the part of their near relation: and he is “mighty.” Hear his words:-“Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless,” Exodus 22:22-24 . These, you may think, are Old Testament threatenings, be longing to a judicial law that has passed away:-or, more properly, they belong to the special theocracy, being strictly no part of the judicial law, inasmuch as they do not prescribe any punishment to be inflicted by the hand of roan, but announce what Jehovah himself would, by his own interposition, execute. Be it so. But think you that the character of God has changed? Such assurances and threatenings are not mere warnings of punishment; they are expressions of character. And do you imagine that under the new dispensation,-which, in a special sense, is the dispensation of love, the ministration of mercy,-the compassion of Jehovah towards those who need it, has diminished? that His zeal in their behalf has suffered abatement? That, assuredly, were a grievous mistake. The God of love has not ceased to pity, and to pity with a special compassion, the unprotected, the friendless, the poor. Look at his character as it was manifested in the person of Him who could say-“He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” This exhibition of the divine character introduced the new and spiritual dispensation. And was there any failure of regard for the poor?-of pity for the fatherless and the widow?-of power in behalf of the destitute? Let not the oppressor fancy that there is no Jewish law now,-no theocracy now. There is a theocracy, although of a different kind. “The Lord reigneth;” and woe to the defrauder or oppressor of the destitute! He shall not escape. “Their Redeemer” is no less “mighty” than he was of old. He will avenge their cause at last, with terrible retribution.

*1 Job 22:5-10 . rr

*2 Job 24:3-4 ; Job 24:7-10 . rr

*3 Job 29:11-13 ; Job 31:16-22 . rr

Let the poor, the fatherless, and the widow, when wronged, beware of harbouring and cherishing in their own bosoms the sentiments of resentment or revenge. Let them rather, in humility and forgiving meekness, put their case into the hands of Him, of whom it is said-“The poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless.” He will appear for them. If God allows them to suffer, when thus submissive to His will, He will graciously give them to experience that “all things work together for their good,"-and that His “grace is sufficient for them;” and He will at last give them to the full of “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” In their most destitute condition even here, enjoying the rich provisions of the gospel, they have no reason to envy the wealthiest of the wealthy, the greatest of the great. The latter may envy them. Jehovah himself “is the portion of their inheritance and of their cup; he maintaineth their lot.” He is theirs, and they are His. They who have the fulness of God’s covenant promises have infinitely more than the world can give to its most successful and favoured votaries. They to whom Jehovah says, “Thy Maker is thy Husband,” have strong consolation in their desolate widowhood. They who, though they are deprived of an earthly, have a heavenly Father, are better off than those who have the earthly without the heavenly. They who are heirs of the eternal inheritance, who are, in every step of life, advancing nearer to possession of that from which no power of earth or hell shall ever be able to eject them, are more blessed far than the men of this world whose possessions are present, who are, at every step through life, coming nearer to the end of their lease,-a lease of whose duration they themselves are ignorant, and which, at the will of the universal Proprietor, may terminate in a moment when least they are thinking of it. Their landmark is fixed for them in the better country. It shall never be removed. They shall be “found in their lot in the end of the days”-in the consummation of all things:-and having settled in that lot,-the lot of their inheritance,-they shall hold it in eternal security.

Proverbs 23:12-23

LECTURE LXXII.

Proverbs 23:12-23 .

“Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge. Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine; Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things. Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off. Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.”

The exhortation in the first of these verses, of which we have had the spirit and substance, though not the identical terms, frequently before us, is one that can never be too often repeated, or too urgently enforced. The words might be adopted by the teachers of all departments of useful knowledge, as their counsel to their pupils; and such an enlarged application of the words we can have no objection. But oh! my friends, and my young friends especially, we do feel that the admonition or the entreaty, has a peculiar appropriateness in the lips of those whose province it is to communicate divine knowledge,-the knowledge which God has been pleased to lay up in store by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit in this blessed Volume. Of its precious contents all of us have still much to learn. By whom have they ever been exhausted? The counsel, therefore, is in all cases, appropriate. The oldest, the most experienced, and the best informed Christian may take it, as well as the youngest beginner in the study of sacred science.

Verses Proverbs 23:13-14 . “Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.” “We quoted these verses, in connexion with others on the same subject, formerly: and we entered then, pretty much at large, into what may be called the theory and practice of early discipline; of which, therefore, we do not now resume the discussion. I only entreat parents to mark, and to bear in mind affectionately and steadily, the end to be kept in view. It is to save from “the second death”-even “from hell.” Of all parental instruction, admonition, restraint, correction, example, and prayer, this is the great aim. How unutterably precious to the heart of every truly Christian parent! O the anguish of the thought of a child, the object of the heart’s fondest love, dying that death, sinking into the pit of woe! That parent deserves not the name of Christian, who would not cheerfully lay down his own life, to save his child from such a doom. O! it was not the mere temporal death of Absalom, that wrung with agony the spirit of David, when, on hearing the tidings, he “went up to the chamber over the gate of his palace, and as he went, wept, and said-O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” It was not the thought merely of the darts with which the heart of that son had been transfixed, that pierced his own with grief so acute and overwhelming. It was the thought of his having died in rebellion against his father and against his God. This was the barbed and envenomed arrow, of which “the poison drank up his spirit."-And there is every reason to fear that a false tenderness, and an inexcusable laxity of parental discipline, had contributed to the profligate character and the fatal end of Absalom.

Let parents be further again reminded, that the conduciveness of correction to the end mentioned depends, to a very great extent, upon the manner of it. The why,-the when,-the what,-and the how? are all most important questions, each requiring to be seriously pondered in this department of parental duty. “Beating with the rod” may be so applied as to beat folly into the child instead of out of him. Too often have parents whipped their children with indiscriminate harshness, with the tear of anger and not of love. They have measured the chastisement by the mischief done, rather than by the evil disposition displayed. They have made religious duties a task, and exacted their performance on pain of the lash, and visited their neglect with the rigour of corporeal discipline. They have conducted the entire process of educational training on a system of scolding, and driving, and coercion, and flogging. They have thus produced sullenness and disgust; secret and smothered irritation; aversion to all that bears the name or aspect of religion; duplicity and cunning; a longing for freedom,-for the hour of release from such restraint, and of becoming their own masters; and, when that hour arrives, unbridled licentiousness.

Verses Proverbs 23:15-16 . “My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.” What is the wisdom that is meant? The same which the writer so often describes*-the wisdom of spiritual principle,-the wisdom of the fear and love and service of God,-the wisdom that chooses what is best and most lasting as its portion,-that aims at the very highest attainments of which created natures are capable, likeness to God as its character, and the enjoyment of God as the All of its happiness. It is this wisdom that is the spring of the intensity of joy, that is evidently implied in the emphatic repetition of the terms of delight thrice in these verses. This-Oh! this is what parents who themselves fear God should desire most earnestly to see in their rising offspring. This should most of all gladden their spirits. Their souls should thrill with joy-joy the purest, the most exquisite, as they discover the opening indication of right principle in the mind and heart-“when the lips speak right things”-when there is the language of truth, unvarying, undissembling truth; of reverence for God and divine things; of gentleness, and kindness, and obedience, and sensibility to reproof, and apprehension of evil,-all manifesting an inward and vital change.

See Proverbs 1:7 ; Proverbs 2:1-5 ; Proverbs 9:10 .

But here I must address to parents a word of caution. They are exposed to the danger of one or other of two extremes:-

The first is that of expecting too much in children:-more than, from the nature of the case, we are at all warranted to expect. An extreme it assuredly is to leave out of account the natural buoyancy and glee and frivolity and fickle mutability of childhood, and, at that early period, to look for the consistency, gravity, and stayedness of advanced life. To this extreme those are specially more prone, whose minds have in them a tendency to the gloomy and morose. Persons of this mental cast are ready to construe all the harmless merriment and sprightly playfulness and light-heartedness and fun of children, and all their trifling, nonsensical talk, into sad indications of the want of grace and of the fear of God. This is expecting children to be men; ay, and something more. I would say to parents, If you wish to gain the ear and the interest of your children to your graver instructions and counsels at graver seasons, you must win their affections by entering kindly and cheerily into their innocent pastimes. Be merry with them if you wish them to be grave with you.
Then, there is the other extreme of being satisfied with too little. This is sadly common,-especially with parents of an easy, credulous, unsuspicious temperament. They are prone to flatter themselves that all is well,-to be easily pleased with their children, and thus to make their children (for in this lies the danger) too easily pleased with themselves. They are too prone to treat as levities what ought to be treated as sins, and to be content with symptoms of goodness that are at best equivocal and precarious. While I would warn parents against being too easily or hastily satisfied with the symptoms of early piety, and against allowing themselves to be deceived, by confounding the imitative, merely, or the effect of the wish to please, with the real operation of the germinant principles of godliness in the heart, yet would I not be understood as speaking the language of discouragement. Most delightful, indeed, it is to mark the effects, in the progress of early instruction,-the listening ear,-the moist and melting eye,-the tender conscience,-the fondness for the Bible,-the disposition to prayer, though in “the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try,"-the sensitive regard to truth, and all the indications of a filially affectionate and obedient heart.
I call on all the young now hearing me to mark the expressions in these verses. They are evidently intended to operate as a motive. If not, what is their meaning? They are an appeal-pointed and touching-to filial affection:-“My son, if thou be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.” The latter words have been rendered-“yes, I myself”-the father, the mother, whom you love, and who, you know, so tenderly loves you. Would you make glad the hearts of these your parents-dearest to you of all on earth?-then yield to the admonition, “Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.” Not, as I have before said, that this is to be your only, or oven your chief motive. Imagine not that I am exhorting you to piety, merely to please your parents. In that case, there would be no fear of God in the matter. It would be fear and love “in word,” not “in deed and in truth.” It would be profession without principle; the most worthless of all things. The authority of the blessed God himself must be your supreme consideration,-associated with regard such as He enjoins, to your best and highest, your everlasting interests. But with these, in all propriety, may be associated also the consideration of the delight it will afford to the hearts of your parents. I would not have you depart, in one iota, from principle-from what the word of God tells you is right, to please even the dearest of parents; for God’s claims, both on the ground of authority and love, are first. But when the thing itself is right-divinely right-then there can be no harm surely in your having a respect, in doing it, to the gratification and happiness of those whom, next to God, it is incumbent upon you to honour and to love.

We may take in, in this connexion, verses Proverbs 23:24-25 :-“The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice; and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.” In the verses on which we have been commenting, Solomon,-whether or not with his own son Rehoboam in his mind we cannot determine,-speaks in the character of a father. Thus at least I have understood him, although it is possible that he may use the compilation “My son” as one of fatherly affection to youth in general, in the same way in which similar designations are used by inspired apostles in the New Testament. The strength of the language, however, corresponds so much with that in other passages, that I cannot but think the light in which we have taken them up the more natural one. In these two verses, the united joy of both parents,-their sympathy of fervent delight-in witnessing the piety and virtue of their children,-dear to them as their very heart’s blood, nay as their own souls,-is expressed with emphatic tenderness and force. And observe the peculiar stress that is laid on the mother’s affection:-“Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.” I believe there are not, in the whole compass of animated nature, feelings of more exquisite tenderness, than those of a mother of sensibility, whose instinctive love is heightened and hallowed by piety.-“A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world,” John 16:21 . This is the first joy of a mother;-a joy which, when the conjugal bond has been one of true affection, is intensely shared by him who is the partner of every throb of delight or of sorrow that visits her heart. But besides this first joy we have here before us another,-a purer, a higher, a nobler, a more lasting. The former is the joy of nature; this, the joy of grace;-the former, the joy that “a man-child is born into the world,” the heir of a fleeting and precarious life; the latter, that an immortal has become a child of God’s spiritual family, and an heir of life eternal. This, then, my youthful hearers, is a very tender appeal,-well fitted to touch and move the heart of every right-minded and affectionate son or daughter:-“she that bare thee shall rejoice.” O! did you but know all that she has felt and suffered for you,-her anxieties, her alarms, her watchings, her tears, her prayers-it would “pierce you through with many sorrows” to be the occasion of sending a single pang to her bosom. That youth is ominously hardened,-is fit for any of the dark deeds of hell,-whose heart does not soften towards the mother that bare him! I hardly can fancy any other description of right feeling remaining in that breast. Every warm drop of generous sensibility must have been wrung out from the heart, ere it parted with its sense of a mother’s love,-ere those earliest and tenderest meltings of nature ceased to be felt!

And what is the special joy of which Solomon speaks? It is the joy of parents who, having been the instruments of giving you being, yearn for the happiness of the being they have given. They have learned to view your existence, as well as their own, in its eternity. They have given commencement to an existence that is never to close,-to the existence of an accountable agent, whose unending state is to be bliss or woe! Can you wonder at their solicitude? or can you wonder at the joy, when they see the germs of eternal goodness and eternal blessedness putting themselves forth, even in their most incipient promise, in your hearts and characters? O! this is joy indeed! If the child lives, it is joy in his life; for he will live unto God. If the child dies, and dies before his parents, it is joy in his death, as he leaves behind him grounds of assurance that he is gone to live unto God in a higher, a holier, and a happier world. And if they die before the child, it is joy in their own departure, as they leave him in the cheering hope of his following them to glory. It is joy at the tribunal of Christ in the great day, to have their child with them on the right hand of the Judge, and. included with them in the gracious welcome-“Come, ye blessed!” and it is joy in heaven for ever, in the joint participation of its pure and perfect felicity! O what a joy, here and hereafter,-on earth and in heaven,-when parents and children, united by the ties of nature, are, at the same time, all one in the bond of grace,-one with Christ, and one in Christ,-and thus, having enjoyed the happiness of this double union in the present world, meet in the world to come-

“And form a family anew,

Unbroken in the skies!”

Mark the striking antithesis in next verse, where the address is still to youth:-“Be not envious of sinners; but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.” Such envy produces the danger of casting off the fear of God. But cultivate this fear. Cleave, with increasing firmness and constancy, to God and to his ways; and by and by, sinners will envy you:-“For ( Proverbs 23:18 ) surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.” Here, I apprehend, is a twofold consideration enforcing the counsel. The words refer at once to the end of the sinner, and to the fulfilment of the hope of the righteous. Ah! my youthful hearers, the prosperity of sinners, by which you are so prone to be deceived, is a delusive prosperity, seducing them from God, and luring them to eternal death. “Their end is destruction.” But, of those who are “in the fear of the Lord the expectation shall not be cut off.” No. It shall be realized and satisfied to the full-satisfied in the enjoyment of perfect, unchanging, endless bliss.

We shall dwell but briefly on the verses which follow:-verses Proverbs 23:19-22 . “Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.”-“The way” in which Solomon, in the first of these verses, enjoins the young to “guide their hearts”-is clearly “the way of God’s commandments”-the way of believing and holy obedience. And the counsel can only be complied with by your taking God"s Word as your directory for the way, and seeking God’s promised Spirit to make the way, by means of it, plain before your face; to save you from all biassing and seducing influences, and incline your heart steadily to follow it.

The warning against gluttony and drunkenness-against the sensual indulgences of the table-is enforced by motives taken from the effects of such a course. “Be not amongst them”-that is, be not one of them: be not thyself a glutton or a drunkard;-thus degrading thyself below the beasts; contracting guilt before God; searing thy conscience; deadening thy heart to every good impression; preparing thyself for every other description of wickedness, and for temporal and eternal ruin. The three things in the 21st verse ( Proverbs 23:21 ) are often united in the same character. Indolence frequently leads to gross indulgences; and it is ever confirmed and increased by them,-the habits grow together; and what good can be looked for to the person or the family of the lazy beastly sot?-the lowest, the most contemptible, and the most loathsome of all characters; whose time is divided between eating and drinking and sleeping, except the remnant that is given to debauchery and wickedness of other kinds. Shun, then, their company-for two reasons;-lest you learn their ways, and lest you share their doom.

The next verse is a repetition of the counsel in previous verses-but with an addition. The addition is-“despise not thy mother when she is old.” There is a connexion to be noticed, of this verse with the two preceding. The youth who frequents such company as they describe, will find much said, of which the object is, to coax him to go to excess. Among other things, he will hear not a little of the unreasonableness of parents in not making allowance for the young,-in tying down youth to the maxims and the precision of age. What harm in a little joviality?-it is natural to youth; why not indulge it? And if his father or his mother be “old” he may hear hints, perhaps, with a shrug of the shoulders, and a sly look to those about him, of the good old gentleman, or the good old lady, that is beginning to get into dotage, and has forgotten what it is to be young. Now, mark me:-the youth who allows himself for once and for one moment to listen to such reflections, has already begun to violate the command here given.

Respect was enjoined by the law to old age.* What peculiar respect then, must be due to the silver locks of a father or a mother!-How incumbent the duty to smoothe, by every affectionate and reverential attention and kindness, the declining path to the tomb of those who have been the guardians of your childhood and youth!-to strive to make them happy, instead of breaking their hearts by neglect and misconduct! Fearful was the retribution of the stubborn and rebellious son, under the law:-“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear,” Deuteronomy 21:18-21 . This law is passed away. But it indicated the mind of God. And the rebellious son is still as of old, the object of His condemnation, and will be visited with His vengeance.

Leviticus 19:32 .

Verse Proverbs 23:23 . “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.” The allusion is to the merchandise of the world;-the buying and selling of its commodities. In such merchandise, benefit is expected from both. A merchant buys, for the very purpose of selling; and he will not buy, unless he has a pretty good assurance that he can sell at a profit; that he can get for his article more than he has given. The case here, then, is quite a peculiar one. It is all buying. The article is one which is to be bought, but never sold. And why? For the best possible reason,-that it never can be sold at a profit, there is nothing too valuable to be given for it, there is nothing valuable enough to be taken for it. Get for it whatever else we may, the bargain will be a losing one.

The latter clause of the verse may be considered as comprehended in the former; for to secure “the truth” is to secure “wisdom, instruction, and understanding;” and of wisdom and understanding the highest proof is the securing of “the truth.” In further illustration then of the words “Buy the truth, and sell it not, observe:-

The buyer tests his article. He uses means to ascertain its genuineness. Suppose it is an article whose component parts are “gold and silver, precious stones, and pearls.” Such to the eye it appears. Such, by him who offers it for sale, it is declared to be. But the cautious purchaser will make sure of his bargain; and all the surer, the higher the price. He will assay the purity of the gold and silver; and chemically ascertain that the precious stones and the pearls are not factitious imitations.

Now, all that is presented to us as truth, must thus be tested. It must be proved to be what it professes to be. In physical science, scientific men will not take upon trust what professes to be a new discovery-especially if it happens to be at variance with previous theories,-without examining thoroughly the experiments by which it is said to have been ascertained, and trying, by counter-experiments, to determine whether there has been any slip or mistake in the processes, and any consequent fallacy in the conclusion. Thus too does the metaphysician in regard to every new theory in mental science; and the moral philosopher in the department of ethics. Everything in the various provinces of inquiry is examined by evidence according with its nature. The one question is-Is it truth? Truth alone is valuable; alone worthy to be received and held.

Now, we are as far as possible from wishing it to be otherwise in the department of religion. In proportion to the importance of the case,-to the height of the authority on which the claims to acceptance are rested,-the magnitude at once of the benefits promised, and of the risks incurred,-ought to be the solicitude and care with which the testing process is conducted. This then is the last department of all, in which what professes to be truth should be taken upon trust; in which inquiry should be careless, and faith easy. The obligation to examine is imperative and solemn; and marvellous, indeed, is the indisposition of men to enter on the investigation. Men who, with the utmost earnestness and perseverance, will test every alleged truth in science, in history, or in politics, cannot be persuaded to apply their powers to an inquiry more important, by infinite degrees, than any other that can engage the attention of the human mind! They either decline it altogether, or they set about it with a levity and a superficiality utterly at variance with what such a question demands, and from which no just appreciation or correct conclusion can be anticipated.

It is not enough for the buyer to ascertain the genuineness of his article. He sets about estimating its real worth; its worth intrinsically, and its worth adventitiously; its worth in itself, and its worth to him. The two may be widely different. The diamond is of incomparably more intrinsic worth than the grain of barley; but the cock in the fable spurned away the former and picked up the latter. In the present case,-having once ascertained the divine authority of the record,-there can be no hesitation about either the intrinsic or the relative value of what it makes known. All truth is precious; but its preciousness is, of course, endlessly varied in degree. Two things may be considered as combining to constitute its value. These are-its subject, and its utility. In natural science some truths present a union of both. The discoveries of astronomy, for example, are, many of them, full of intrinsic interest from their vastness and sublimity, and the impressions they give of the transcendent majesty of God; while, in some of their practical bearings, they are of pre-eminent advantage to men. But in a peculiar sense may this be affirmed of the discoveries of divine revelation. These discoveries present views of God’s moral government, in its great essential principles and in their practical application, such as have in them a weight of moral grandeur, and a consequent depth of absorbing interest surpassing all that nature can disclose. And, while they possess intrinsic preciousness above all other truths,-think of their value when estimated by the blessings which are unfolded in them, and to which the faith of them introduces the believer, in time and in eternity! The purchaser values the article he is about to purchase, by the amount of benefit the possession of it will bring him. In like manner must you estimate the value of “the truth” you are here counselled to buy. The value of it, in this view, is summed up by our Lord himself, when he says-“THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL.” What then, the real worth to you, of any other compared with this?
The buyer, when he has estimated the value of his article, makes proportional sacrifices to obtain possession of it. Foolish estimates there may be; and these foolish estimates may be the occasion of foolish bargains; and these may be the grounds of regret and self-dissatisfaction. But supposing the certainty of all the benefits, for time and eternity, which in the Bible are promised and guaranteed in connection with “the truth.” O! what is there, in the whole compass of what this world can confer, that should not, without one moment’s hesitation, be sacrificed for its attainment?

The language, observe, does not refer to any compensation to the Author of “the truth,"-anything to be given by which we can ever make it ours by purchase-ours as a matter of right or desert.*1 But there are some things which stand in competition with it. These must be parted with if it is to be ours; and these, whatever they may be, are what Solomon had in his eye, and what our Lord had in His, when the one directly, and the other virtually, counsels the sacrifice of them all for the sake of it.-By the “pearl of great price,” and by the “treasure hid in the field,” our Lord meant the blessings of the gospel,-“the unsearchable riches of Christ;” and all these are comprehended in “the truth” here spoken of. And in His parables, there is a manifest reference to the circumstances in which many of those who embraced the principles of His kingdom,-who believed and professed “the truth,” would be placed,-the sacrifices they might be called to make, on account of those principles. Often does He forewarn his disciples of this; and tells them faithfully the necessity of preferring their principles, and parting with every thing for them,-and for the blessings of course associated with them; believing that at every kind and amount of sacrifice, they should be gainers.*2 He holds out encouraging assurances to them of what would be infinitely more than a compensation for any such sacrifices.*3 In all cases the bargain is one of gain,-gain unspeakable.

*1 See Isaiah 55:1 ; Romans 6:23 ; Revelation 22:17 . rr

*2 See Luke 14:33 . rr

*3 Mat 16:24-27 ; Matthew 19:27-29 . rr

In proportion to the buyer’s estimate of his article, and the cost at which he has obtained it, will be the jealousy with which he retains and guards it. “Sell it not.” Selling the truth, is not simply letting slip from the mind the remembrance or the knowledge of mere abstractions; it is to give up the profession and faith of it for the sake of the very things which we sacrificed for it.-But “sell it not.” Sell it not for the pleasures of sin. Sell it not for the riches and the honours of the world. O part not with “the pearl of great price” for the husks which the swine do eat. And sell it not for any other description of knowledge. Sell not the most valuable of all knowledge, for that which, how legitimate and attractive soever, can never compensate for the loss of the other, or ever supply its room. Let no book usurp the place of your Bible. The more you know of “the truth” revealed in it; the more richly “the word of Christ dwells in you;” the more you have experimentally tasted its sweetness and felt its blessed and holy power upon your hearts,-the more unwilling you will be to part with it; the more tasteless in comparison will every other kind of reading and knowledge become to you; and, were a library of all the world’s literature and science, in all their departments, put in your offer for YOUR BIBLE, you would bind the sacred treasure to your hearts, and reject the offer, saying, as you clasped it to your bosom, with tears of gratitude-“THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL.”

Get THE TRUTH, then, at any price; part with it at no price. And, be prompt with your bargain. Those who are much set upon an article, will not delay their purchase, lest perchance it should pass from their hands. Blessed be God! there is no danger here, so far as others coming forward before you is concerned. The store of divine truth and divine blessing is never reduced by the number of purchasers. One buying-thousands buying-will not leave the less for you, or at all interfere with your obtaining, whensoever you make up your mind. But if not now prompt and decided, you may be thwarted in another way. There is one who may ere you are aware, decide the matter for you, by putting the acquisition for ever out of your power. Death may lay his sudden arrest upon you. And if The Truth is not then yours; if its blessings and its hopes are not then yours,-woe unto you! You gain the world, you LOSE YOUR SOUL; and in the bitterness of hopeless despair will deplore your bargain through eternity.

Proverbs 23:29-35

(C)

LECTURE LIX.

(THIRD DISCOURSE.)

eS module note: see the two lectures on Proverbs 20:1 for the first two discourses….

Proverbs 23:29-35 .

“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shall be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.”

It was my purpose to have reserved any enlarged illustration of the evils of intemperance, till I should arrive at this passage in the ordinary course of exposition. I have thought it preferable, however, to follow up my two former discourses with an immediate exposition of its contents. A more graphic and vivid description,-a more powerful and awakening appeal,-a more solemn, earnest, and alarming expostulation and warning, it is hardly possible to conceive.

Before entering on the illustration of it, I cannot avoid requesting attention to the clear and ample confirmation it affords of all that was formerly said about the intoxicating character of the wines of Palestine. I stated before, and repeat it, that no learning is necessary to make out the only point which it is of any consequence to establish. It is easy to speak of the weak and light wines of that country. But how can any one read such a passage as this-and it is very far from standing alone-without being satisfied, that, whatever varieties there might be in the wines in ordinary use,-just as, with ourselves, there are weaker and stronger, lighter and more heady wines, there were some of them, that were not only intoxicating, but intoxicating to the utmost conceivable degree. For assuredly, nothing can go beyond the stage of drunkenness depicted in the verses which I have just read. Why, then, all the learned discussion? Why the raising of subscriptions for the purpose of sending commissions to Palestine, “to examine into the history of ancient wines, their manufacture and use?” Can this be necessary, to ascertain, to any reader of the Bible, whether they were intoxicating, when he reads of " the drunkards of Ephraim,” and finds so frequently meeting him, warnings against the sin of intoxication, and against not “strong drink” alone, but “wine,” as its fatal cause. To any one, therefore, who says he cannot believe that the wines of Judea were at all of the same heady qualities with ours,-I should think it enough to say Read these verses. No matter whether they were the same, in their manufacture, and in their qualities generally, with ours or not,-one quality they evidently possessed,-the quality which is the only ground of controversy:-they were intoxicating.

It will ho impossible to avoid, in the illustration of this passage, repeating sentiments of a similar description to some of those advanced in last lecture. For this,-so far as it may be the case,-allowance will readily be made.

Our subject, then, is the Sin Of Intemperance. Here, there is no great likelihood of difference of opinion. Should there be difference, it will be on the part of such as are themselves, in a greater or less degree, addicted to the vice, and fond to discover grounds of palliation and self-defence,-or who are just in the perilous predicament of contracting a fondness for it.

Intemperance is the use of any intoxicating liquor to excess. It matters not what the liquor be-whether wine or malt-liquor, or ardent spirits, or extract of opium, or anything else. The evil lies, not in the article used, but in the excessive use of it. Now I fancy I hear some one say-and smile with a kind of self-complacency in saying it, as if he had found a puzzle for the speaker and a convenient refuge for himself-Ah! but what is the excessive use of it?-Allow me to say to such persons, that I never hear this question put, without trembling for him who puts it. I state it as my pastoral experience, that among all the cases of discipline for the sin of intemperance that have come under the cognizance of the church, I have hardly known one in which the party concerned, when evidence was clear against him, has not been disposed to take refuge in such excuses as-“I grant that I have at times taken pretty freely-perhaps I may at a time have gone a little further than I should have gone; but I always knew what I was doing.”

Now, first of all, this is far from being always true. A man frequently says and does things, when under the influence of liquor, of the strangeness of which he is not at the time sensible; and does even right things in a manner that plainly betrays his condition to others, when he is entirely, or in a great measure, unconscious of it himself. But this is not all. Even supposing what these persons say of themselves were true, what a ground is this for a professing Christian,-nay, what a ground for any man holding even the common principles of morality,-to take! What! is it consistent with Christian principle-with Christian prudence-with Christian self-knowledge-with Christian vigilance-to venture thus to the very confines of evil,-to sport upon the borders of sin-to tread, with heedless step, the verge of hell? I can have no hesitation in saying, that the man who goes thus far has exceeded. He may not have got drank; but he has tampered with temptation;-he has violated all the admonitions to self-jealousy; he has shown a conscience not impressed as it ought to be with “abhorrence of that which is evil,” by the very fact of his venturing so near it; he has shown an inclination, that would go further, if he dared,-that has not boldness enough as yet to sin freely;-if he is not a drunkard in fact, he is one in will,-and he is in most imminent danger of very soon being one in fact too. There are some to be found who, constitutionally or by custom, can take more than their neighbours, without being, as they say, the worse for it. And such persons have been many a time known to boast of how much they can stand. But not only is this grovelling and disgustful,-it is deeply criminal. It is a waste of God’s bounties,–a perversion of them to purposes they were never meant to serve; it is a species of indulgence at once deleterious to the body, and hardening and brutalizing to the mind; the boasting is a lure to others to try their strength,-a lure which, when successful, brings to the account of him who presents it all the sin and guilt produced by the imitation. There cannot be greater curses to society than those who are thus “mighty to mingle strong drink,” and whose boast is, how many they can, as the phrase is, “lay under the table,” while they themselves keep sober! The Bible says-“Woe unto them!” and all who wish well to mankind will say Amen! to the woe. There are some, too, who, though they never perhaps get themselves thoroughly drunk-are for ever at it-tasting-tasting-tasting-whenever they can find the opportunity. One does not like to make comparisons; because such is the deceitfulness of the heart, and such men’s proneness to palliate their own forms and modes of evil, that when you represent another form as worse than theirs, they are tempted to a latitude of inference, such as makes them feel at ease in their own indulgence, as if it were hardly an evil at all, as if the sin were extracted from it by comparison with the greater sin of the other:-yet, in some respects at least, the incessant tippler is a worse and more hopeless character, than the occasional drunkard. The habit gets stronger-the craving more imperious-and the danger greater of the character of a confirmed sot being the result. Even although the tippler should never fall into absolute intoxication, he is intemperate. He may not go to great excess in any one particular case; but his incessant use is excess. He may be more intemperate in this respect, than the man whose fits of intoxication-or whose rambles (to use a cant word, which will convey to many my meaning better than any other,) are the exceptions, more or less frequent, to their ordinary sobriety. But away with such comparisons. All the modes of the evil are bad,-all to be shunned,-all to be abandoned. Men addicted to the vice, in one or other of its modes, have drawn variously the line of demarcation between temperance and intemperance, according to their different tastes and propensities,-have drawn it sometimes seriously, and more frequently in jest-” fools making a mock at sin.” I will not descend from the dignity of the place I occupy by meddling with any of these. They are not the results of sober-minded conviction; and to refute the jokes, either of the low tippler or of the jovial debauchee, would be as degrading as it is unnecessary.

In the passage before us Solomon speaks of those that “tarry long at the wine, that go to seek mixed wine.” They “tarry at the wine” from fondness of it, and reluctance to quit it-yet another, and another, and another cup:-and they “go to seek mixed wine”-that is, either they inquire with eagerness where the best, the most deliciously flavoured, the strongest, the most highly seasoned and thoroughly inspissated wines, are to be found,-that there they may hold their carousals; or, they seek still a stronger and a stronger stimulant;-having recourse, when simple unmixed wines have failed of their effect, to those more heady and intoxicating combinations of liquor, or those liquors that have been mingled with drugs and spices of highly stimulating virtue, by which the efficacy may be enhanced as well as the relish improved. But the terms are evidently applicable to the indulgence, in whatever way, and by whatever means, in the propensity to excess. They describe drinking to intoxication, whatever be the beverage, and whether in solitude or in company. The terms too, it may be remarked, are expressive of habit. They suppose the habit formed. But everything that tends to the formation of the habit, must of course be considered as included. The habit is the height and consummation of the evil; but all the successive acts by which the habit has been formed come in for their proportional shares of the guilt. Habitual intoxication is the worst state of the vice; but occasional intoxication is still the vice. It is out of the occasional that the habitual arises. Men may think lightly, and talk lightly, of going beyond due bounds at a time, so long as they keep from the habit. But they would do well to remember, that every individual instance of excess is an act of decided and flagrant sin; and that, while it is vicious in itself, it is additionally vicious, as conducing to the formation of the habit. The man who makes light of occasional intoxication, is in the high way to the character of a habitual drunkard. There is, on this subject (and the observation applies to swearing and other sins, as well as to intemperance,) a strange perversion of principle at times to be found, in the estimates which men form of evil, or perhaps rather in the manner in which they talk about it. I refer to the manner in which we frequently hear men allege the strength of habit in palliation of their misdeeds. The swearer has got so habituated to the use of oaths, that he utters them, without being sensible of doing it. The drunkard has become so addicted to the use of stimulating and intoxicating liquors that he cannot do without them; he absolutely requires them; the craving has become such that it must be gratified. So they speak; and in speaking so, they are guilty of the extraordinary delusion of making the very worst form and most flagrant degree of a sin the apology for the commission of it;-the habit of profaneness the excuse for being profane!-the habit of intemperance the apology for its individual acts! forgetting that the habit itself involves in it the accumulated guilt of all the individual acts which have either contributed to its formation, or have arisen from it when formed! The sin, then, of which I now speak is intemperance, as including the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, even although absolute intoxication should rarely if ever be the result; and especially intoxication itself, in all its degrees, and all its stages,-from the first unsettlement of sober reason, down to the lowest pitch of drunken insensibility.

Our next inquiry must be-what are the effects of this sin? and our reply to this question will bring out more clearly the nature and the amount of its criminality. We shall take up the effects, as they are here, directly and indirectly, enumerated; there being few of the evils resulting from this prolific parent sin, which may not find a place, naturally enough, within the limits of this most graphic and vivid portraiture.

We begin with observing, that, on the very first and most superficial view of the case, there is apparent in it a very flagrant evil. God has given man reason, for the superintendence and direction of his conduct in all the situations and connexions of life in which His providence may be pleased to place him. How, then, is that man to answer to his Maker and Judge, who wilfully deprives himself of the presidency of reason over his mind, and heart, and conscience, and behaviour?-who, of his own accord, irrationalizes himself-reduces himself to a brute? When I use this comparison, I refer exclusively to the unseating of reason from the throne of its legitimate and divinely appointed rule, or the impairing, in whatever degree, of its capacity for duly maintaining it. There is a sense in which the man who acts this part sinks himself far lower than the brute. Yes:-it is a slander on the inferior tribes of the animal creation, to compare a drunken man to a brute. The brute follows the prevailing instincts of its constitution,-and acts according to the measure of understanding which the all-wise Creator has conferred upon it. But the drunkard voluntarily bereaves himself of understanding; voluntarily incapacitates himself for his required functions; voluntarily becomes a half-witted fool, a violent maniac, or a drivelling idiot.

The first question in the passage cited is-“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow?” Many, alas! are the sources of “sorrow” and “woe” to the drunkard, especially so long as his conscience, and his relative affections, and his regard to reputation and self-interest, retain any portion of sensibility, and have not been reduced to absolute callousness by protracted indulgence in sin. First of all, there is the woe of conscious debasement and guilt. Impelled by the unnatural cravings of a disordered appetite, or by the love of company and of social mirth, all is, for the time, joviality and glee:-who on earth so happy as the drunkard, when under the immediate impulse of his exhilarating stimulus? But, to form a true judgment, you must look at him when the excitement is past, and he is left to sober recollection-to the awful collapse of his over-stimulated spirits. Then come-(I am supposing the case of one not yet seared in conscience)-then come his fits of penitence. He is stung with remorse. He is ashamed, and dissatisfied with himself, painfully, fretfully, indignantly dissatisfied. He thinks, it may be, of the good principles of piety and virtue in which he was educated; of the parental example by which these were recommended and enforced; and of the anguish and heart-break which his conduct must occasion to fond parents. Or again, if he has a family,-if he is himself a husband or a father,-his heart is wrung with the agony of self-reproach, in looking on his wife and children, whom he has been depriving of his company, denying the endearments of domestic life, dishonouring, distressing, abridging of their comforts, impoverishing, famishing, and possibly, while in his cups and rallied by his jovial associates, he has spoken of with unkindness and contumely, and, when he has come home, has treated with the words and the acts of abuse and violence;-or in gazing on the bitterly reproaching look of his heart-broken partner, whom he has wantonly and cruelly alienated by his unnatural neglect and profligacy,-or on what (if any spark of nature’s sensibility still lingers in his bosom) is still more full of anguish-the affectionate smile, through glistening tears, that would fain and fondly win him back to the joys of home, and to the ways of sobriety and virtue and happiness!-Then, again, there is the “woe” and “sorrow,” when he thinks how he has forfeited his reputation-that “good name which is better than precious ointment;” how he has injured his credit, and shaken the confidence that was reposed in him; how he has neglected and left undone something of essential moment, or has said, or done, or consented to, something eminently detrimental to himself, to his business, to his family:-he is angry with himself , he sees the damage, and he sees it to be irretrievable; he chafes and frets in vain; and by this very feeling of restless irritation, he is perhaps driven to seek refuge from his self-inflicted wretchedness in new and still greater excesses!-These are but specimens of the woes and sorrows, of which the variety is without end, that spring from this fountain of bitterness. It follows-“Who hath contentions?” I need not surely say, how frequently these are the accompaniments and consequences of intemperance:-how teazingly and provokingly troublesome on the one hand, and how senselessly quarrelsome on the other, it often renders its poor unhappy victims. They become reckless of all reason and of all risks. They will fight; they must fight. They contend for contention’s sake. To tell them there is no cause, is to speak to madmen. Broils and angry debates are fomented, over which reason has left passion to preside alone,-whence come blows and battles, such as not seldom terminate seriously and even fatally. How many feuds and animosities, that separate friends and families, and spread discord and strife through neighbourhoods, and sometimes end in blood, have had their rise over the bottle, when men continue at it till wine or strong drink inflame them!-How many of the murders that from time to time take place, and of which the scaffold is the just requital, may be traced to intemperance!-how large a proportion of the “blood that crieth unto God from the ground” may be justly laid to the charge of that sin! “Who hath babbling?"-All who have marked the effects of intoxication must have observed how different they are on different mental temperaments. Some who are naturally quiet, good-humoured, and gentle, it renders loquacious, irritable, and headstrong; while others, naturally perhaps far from being the most easily managed, are converted into personifications of good humour. Like a temporary insanity, (which in truth it is) it works various and strange transformations of character. But, while the frantic fury of the drunkard is frightful, the silly incoherent drivel, and the broken, drawling, inarticulate, babbling speech, of the drunkard, is, to the last degree, pitiable and disgusting. Surely could the poor man see and hear himself-that would work a reformation, if anything would! How often may the drunkard, in his cups, be heard maintaining, with pertinacious and unmoved obstinacy, the most foolish and impertinent absurdities;-reiterating the affirmation of them with a stoutness and a violence growing with contradiction;-giving utterance to the most wretched inanities, without meaning and without coherence;-stammering out vows of eternal attachment to persons whom he has hardly seen before, or for whom he cares not a rush when sober:-and all this too, with looks, and tones, and gestures, of the most infantile imbecility! Drunkenness destroys all distinctions and varieties of mental capacity and energy. When reason is once dethroned, wisdom and folly are on a level; and the wisest and most intelligent man in the company sinks into the pre-eminence of the veriest fool,-all froth, and emptiness, and absurdity!

“Who hath wounds without cause!” These maybe the result of various causes:-sometimes of contentions, when he picks quarrels and gets into brawls with all he meets,-interrupting them, laying hold of them, teazing and insulting them, and receiving in return what from many might be expected:-sometimes of his stumbles and falls, by which he is covered with cuts and bruises:-sometimes even of self-mutilation and violence,-the temporary madness having, in some instances, been known to produce the infliction of severe contusions, and the cleaving off of fingers,-by which they have been confounded afterwards on being told that it was their own doing! These are “wounds without cause”-not merely wounds needlessly incurred, and which by sobriety might have been shunned,-but of which the drunkard himself cannot tell the cause, but, when he gets sober, marvels whence they have come!

“Who hath redness of eyes?"-The habits of the man come to be marked by their effects upon his looks. The inflamed and turgid eye, and the blotched, and fiery, and disfigured countenance, indicate, that the deleterious poison has gone through his frame, and has incorporated with, and tainted, and set on fire the entire mass of circulating blood. His very looks become the index of his character, and give warning to all who look at him to have nothing to do with him.

To these melancholy evils, others still more melancholy are added:-“Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.” The two vices, of drunkenness and lewdness, are almost inseparable associates. The one proverbially inflames the other. Intoxication is many a time the first step in seduction to other evils. When unprincipled men are desirous of obtaining the instrumentality of others for any wicked purpose, how often have they been known first to disorder their understandings by tempting them to free indulgence at the bottle! Thousands of crimes have their origin here. The fable is no doubt familiar to many of you-but though a fable it involves an important truth, and an important warning,-of the man to whom the devil is said to have offered the alternative of a choice between three sins, one or other of which, as the means of averting some evil or obtaining some good, he was bound to commit. The three sins were, murder, incest, and drunkenness. The man made choice of the last, as, in his estimation, incomparably the least. This was the devil’s device; for, when he was under the influence of it, he was easily beguiled into both the other two!-It is needless to say, how insensible the drunkard becomes, when in his cups, to all the feelings and laws of delicacy and decorum,-committing unblushingly the most shameless indecencies, and glorying in his shame; and how readily in such a state, he becomes the prey-the wretched and dishonourable prey-of every vile seducer.

“And thy lips shall utter perverse things."-It was “babblings” before. But mere drivelling and folly is not all; it would be comparatively well if it were. But too often intoxication is the inlet to licentious and impure conversation; to profligate and obscene songs; to slander and abuse even of the best and most venerated characters; to the treacherous and injurious betraying of secrets (which it is sometimes, indeed, the means employed for detecting); to impious and heaven daring profanities and blasphemies, oaths and curses, and reckless jestings at sacred things. These form the frightful compound, amidst growing confusion, and riot, and violence, of the drunken revel! When a man is in his cups, “perverse things” may find utterance, such as will cost him many an hour and many a day of bitter suffering; such as he would cheerfully give all that he is worth to be able to recall; but such as he regrets to no purpose, the utterance and the consequences being alike irretrievable.

The 34th and 35th verses describe the lowest point in the descending scale of the detestable and loathsome vice-the state of drunken stupor and insensibility. The man reduced to this condition, when he begins to awake from it, wonders where he has been, and wonders no less to find himself where he is; and he shudders with horror to think of the imminent perils by which, when he knew it not, he has been surrounded. How strange must be the feelings of him who, while sunk in a profound sleep, has been launched alone on the deep, and on waking finds himself there, in this dangerous solitude; or who, while his senses have, in like manner, been locked up, has been laid, insensible, on the masthead, and opens his eyes to his unwonted and unaccountable position?-Thus it is with the drunkard. When he is informed, on his reason returning to him,-after he has slept away the fumes of his miserable debauch,-where he has been, and what he has said and done,-he startles in astonishment, incredulity, and self-reproach; but he recollects nothing of it. What a graphic delineation we have, in the last verse, of a drunkard beginning to recover!-When he has passed through the different stages, of violent excitation, and of subsequent unconscious impotence;-the vacant stare,-the stammering speech,-the double vision,-the falling jaw,-the reeling step;-when he has fallen, and, on attempting to rise, has fallen irrecoverably again;-has been carried senseless to bed, and has fallen into a profound and beastly sleep:-here he is before you-beginning to awake;-feeling his contusions and wounds, and wondering where and how he can have got them; stiff and sore; trying to raise or to stretch himself; scarcely believing that he is not still asleep; yawning and listless, in that state of intolerable languor which is said to succeed the fits of high and fevered excitement! A most wretched state of remorse, and regret, and bitter reflection, and anticipated and dreaded evils; and yet-accompanied with the unendurable craving and longing for the necessary stimulus,-a craving, which is, alas! so seldom effectually resisted and subdued-“I will seek it yet again.” The language of the thirty-second verse-“At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” may be applied to all the subsequent effects together of this sin;-all the misery of an awakened conscience,-of keen self-reproach,-of corporeal and mental suffering,-of domestic discomfort,-of the loss of reputation, credit, health, life, soul,-all may be comprehended in this emphatic similitude.-O my friends, let us not forget, especially, the last of this sad series of particulars! The drunkard destroys His Soul. The temporal evils that result from the course he pursues are many and deeply deplorable. But O! what is any, what are all of them, compared with this!-compared with the spiritual desolation which this sin spreads around it, and the irretrievable ruin of everlasting interests, in which it terminates! Think of the deathbed of the drunkard,-a deathbed to which, it may be, his criminal and infatuated indulgence has contributed prematurely to bring him! He has lived “without God,” and he dies “without hope.” He quits the world in the horrors of despair, or in the hardly less fearful insensibility of a seared conscience, an exhausted mind, and a heart drugged into apathy by “strong delusion.” He leaves behind him a ruined character, a ruined fortune, and, it may be, (no thanks to him if it is otherwise,) a ruined family;-and his ruined self plunges into hell!

I use this strong language freely and boldly, because I have formerly shown you how decidedly I am borne out in the use of it, by the positive assurances and awful denunciations of God’s word. I have shown you, that by the express and irrevocable sentence of the Judge of all, intemperance is one of the sins which indicate a heart unrenewed by divine grace, and which finally exclude from “the kingdom of heaven.” O that I could impress the fearful truth, with practically dissuasive power, on the consciences and hearts of all! The renunciation of the vice, where it has been practised, is one of the essential evidences of conversion to God:-“Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,” 1 Corinthians 6:11 . It follows that no one belongs to the number of the “washed and sanctified and justified,” who belongs to the class of drunkards. And from this it further follows, that none such should ever be admitted to the fellowship of the church below, seeing they stand excluded from the church above, but must be kept out and cast out. O! well might Solomon say, with all the emphasis of pointed and affectionate warning-“Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colo1u’ in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.” The look forbidden is the look that springs from and provokes desire. There is always danger in looking at a tempting object. It was when Eve looked on the tempting fruit that she fell. The man who looks on the wine with special pleasure, when it sparkles and mantles in the brimming cup, excites his longing after it, and is in imminent danger of being overcome. If he would conquer, and avoid being conquered, he would do well to turn his eyes away; for it is, in this and in other cases, by the eye that the temptation enters and prevails. The people of God themselves are expressly warned against the indulgence and the encroachments of this miserable vice: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit,” Ephesians 5:18 . On this remarkable passage I may be allowed to observe-that being “filled with the Spirit” is the best preventive, the most effectual safeguard, against this and all other sins: for “the Spirit lusteth against the flesh, that we may not do the things which we would.” And further-what a contrast is between the utterance of the man who is thus “filled with the Spirit,” and that of the man who is “drunk with wine.” We have seen what the latter is:-we have the former in the verse immediately following the expression quoted-“Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves: in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Our Lord himself, in very solemn and awful terms, admonishes his people on this subject;*1 and the warnings of His apostles are no less impressive and powerful.*2 Yet does it not strike you as remarkable,-and is it not deserving of the notice of those of our brethren who are accustomed to speak of abstinence as the only true temperance,-that when our Lord himself,-“the great Teacher,"-whose instructions, as well as whose example, were perfect,-admonished his followers, in terms so solemn and alarming, against such excesses as were inconsistent with due vigilance, and might expose them to be taken by surprise at the coming of their Master,-he never should have thought of the “more excellent way” of preventing the evil against which he warns by an injunction of abstinence? Never, one should think, was there a more appropriate time for it. The very admonition shows that the sin was not a rare one, or their danger of falling into it a great unlikelihood. Yet we have nothing of the kind. The rise is not interdicted, as the surest means of avoiding the abuse. The warning is solely against excess. Was this an oversight-an omission and imperfection in the Saviour’s teaching? It must not be said, there was not the same danger:-had there not been danger, there would not have been warning. Observe me-I find no fault with the man who, in attending to the Saviour’s admonition, acts upon the principle that the best and surest means of avoiding excess is, abstaining from whatever might tempt to it. He may act upon this principle himself; he may advise others to act upon it. All that is pleaded for is-that he do not condemn those, as disobeying the Saviour’s admonition, who, whether in eating or drinking, can partake of God’s bounties without the excess, and who, in so partaking, are imitating that Saviour’s example.

*1 See Matthew 24:48 ; Luke 21:34 . rr

*2 See Romans 13:11-14 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:4-10 .

I wished to have enlarged a little now on one or two topics that were touched upon in last discourse. But your time will by no means admit of my doing so. I then stated what I conceive to be the only reasonable basis on which the advocates of Abstinence Societies should ever attempt to found them;-namely, the principle contained in the Apostle’s words-“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak:"-that is, the principle of selfdenial for the good of others,-or, in other words, the expediency of having recourse to means, in some circumstances, which, in different circumstances, might be unnecessary and uncalled for. It would, in my apprehension, have been well for their cause, had the friends of abstinence confined themselves to this ground. Although by no means to all Christian minds satisfactory to the extent to which they carry the application of the principle, or unobjectionable on other accounts,-yet to a certain degree it was solid. But by attempting to extend their foundation, they have weakened it. By seeking to prove too much, they have lost, in many minds, the hold they might have had. They have adopted principles which trench upon Christian liberty, by imposing human authority for divine, and condemning as sin what God has nowhere forbidden; which thus lead to uncharitable and censorious estimates of character; which require for their maintenance the violation of the canons of sound criticism and legitimate biblical interpretation; which, introduced into the church, would exclude from its communion many whom “Christ has received;” and, above all, which throw an injurious and most revolting reflection (how undesignedly and unconsciously soever, and I need not say I regard it as altogether so,) on the character of the all-perfect pattern of every excellence-‘’the man Christ Jesus.” All this is to myself matter of sincere regret. The object they prosecute is one of unquestioned and primary excellence-the diminution and eradication of an evil of enormous magnitude, and the inlet to a deplorable variety and amount of other evils, both moral and physical, personal, domestic, and public. In so far as this object is prosecuted by scripturally legitimate means, we cannot but wish the prosecution of it God-speed. I avow my preference of means, as far as they can possibly be brought into operation, of a different description;-means that go more directly to the root of other evils as well as this,-that go immediately, that is, to the rectification of the principles of human conduct;-means, that leave less likelihood of the minds of those on whom they are brought to bear being absorbed in this one concern, deluded into the notion that the temperance reformation is all in all,-to make this reformation their righteousness, to put their sobriety in the place of godliness, their reformation for conversion; and, though cured of one great evil, and freed from the miserable effects arising from it, to live as really without God as before;-means, which, while they saved their objects from intemperance, would, at the same time, bring them to more than what the world call sobriety,-which would bring them to faith, to holiness, to God;-which would thus combine ends of which the combination is so desirable,-providing for “things that accompany salvation” as well as things that accompany outward virtue and this world’s well-being. Mistake me not. I do not mean that it is at all wrong to avail ourselves of motives and considerations of an inferior kind to those which relate to the high interests of the soul and eternity, in order to induce men to abandon an evil which so injuriously affects themselves, their families, and the community. I am far from saying or thinking so. The Holy Scriptures make frequent use of such motives:-but the Bible, at the same time, should be our pattern in combining both, and in placing the highest first. I have also, as I formerly said, more confidence in the permanence of the results, when the means by which they are produced involve the infusion of principle. Is it so, as has been reported, that many of the Irish papists, who took the pledge from Father Matthew, are now, at the hands of other priests, get. ting absolution from their pledge for a shilling? So it is said. For my own part, I should rejoice to hear that it is not time:-but still, I should not be at all surprised if it is. It would only be an exemplification of what I stated last Lord’s day-the slender hold we have on a man when such a pledge is unaccompanied with knowledge, and unfounded in just principle. In the case alluded to, the bond and the release are alike the fruit of ignorance. Ignorance takes it; ignorance is absolved from it;-the ignorance of a soul-deceiving superstition,-a superstition which would lead its victims to make a merit of the keeping of their pledge,-and yet to feel themselves not the less safe for giving it up when their release was obtained from priestly authority.

I do not vindicate either myself or others from culpability in not bringing more into active operation such means as those of which I have intimated my approbation. Be it so, that in this we have erred, and do err. That affects not the present question. I have formerly said, and say it again,-that I have been reluctant to utter a word that could by any be construed as if it were pointed against, and designed to hinder, the advance of a good cause,-of a great reformation. And yet, conscious as I am that my sole object is truth-the basing of Christian plans and Christian doings upon right principles;-why should I fear the result? Essential truth, in the principles on which we proceed, will be sure of producing ultimate good,-even should it, for a time, appear to interfere with it.

And now, having laid before you what I believe to be the mind of God on the subject that has occupied the last three morning lectures-I trust I may say without the charge of presumption, what my conscience tells me I say, though with confidence, without elation,-” I take you to record this day,” whether, either by what I have said or by what I have not said, I have justly incurred the heavy imputation of “casting the weight of my influence into the scale of intemperance;” whether, for the last three Sabbath mornings, I have been “employing myself in promoting the dreadful evil of intemperance!” I have been describing its nature; exposing its sinfulness; shutting out those who are guilty of it from the kingdom of God both on earth and in heaven; showing its dreadful consequences, in time and eternity, and denouncing it in the name of the Lord. And I have been pleading for temperance as a Bible virtue, commanded by God, and exemplified by Christ, and a fruit of his Spirit in all who believe his truth. But, because I cannot see temperance and abstinence to be the same thing,-or, in the face of my Bible kind of experience, assent to the position, that abstinence is the only and the incumbent means of promoting temperance, I must bear the weight of imputations, which, if true, would render the man who is justly chargeable with them unworthy ever to open a lip again as a minister of God’s truth. My conscience acquits me of having ever, within my recollection, used a single passage of the word of God, during the whole course of my ministry, in a sense inconsistent with what I believed to be its meaning, or for a purpose aside from its design. On the present subject, my sole desire has been to ascertain the mind and will of the Lord; and whatever the Lord sayeth, that to speak: and I trust that, “through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” I shall ever be enabled, faithfully and unflinchingly, mildly but firmly, without the “fear of man, which bringeth a snare,”-” fearing God, and knowing no other fear,"-to “declare unto you”-” shunning” no one part of it-” the whole counsel of God;”-“not walking in craftiness, not handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending myself to every man’s conscience in His sight!”

Lectures on the Book of Proverbs

Ralph Wardlaw (1779-1853) was a Scottish Congregational minister and theologian in Glasgow, where he taught for forty years. These lectures work through Proverbs a passage at a time, unhurried and practical, treating the proverbs as instruction for ordinary life rather than as detached maxims. …

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