THE

WAY OF UNDERSTANDING

I

THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." -PROV. ix. 10.

We are about to commence a series of studies in one of the books of the Old Testament which has perhaps received less than its share of attention at the hands of preachers, and that in spite of the fact that it provides a veritable mine of material for the pulpit-the Book of Proverbs. When you look at the opening verses of this book in your Bibles, you find it described as "The Proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel"; but you must not take that title too seriously or literally. If these thirty-one chapters contain any genuine sayings of Solomon's, we cannot identify them; the overwhelming bulk of them belong with certainty to a far later age, and are of the most varied authorship, though popular fancy loved to attribute all these pithy counsels and pungent reflections to the great king whose splendour and wisdom formed one of the favourite traditions of the Hebrew people. As a matter of fact, we have in the Book of Proverbs something much better and more interesting than the production

of any one single mind: just as in the Psalms we listen to the voices of many singers expressing the devout aspirations of all Israel, so these hundreds of maxims and aphorisms give us in collected form the proverbial lore, the practical wisdom, of the whole Jewish nation, a popular compendium of popular philosophy, distilled from many minds.

This book forms part of what is known as the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrews, because of the stress it lays upon the worth of wisdom, the necessity for it, its sovereign claim and virtues: "Wisdom is the principal thing,' ""With all thy getting, get wisdom," such are the exhortations constantly addressed to the reader, while in the great eighth chapter Wisdom is personified as standing at the meeting of the paths uttering her invitation to all: "Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.'

What is this wisdom? let us ask first of all, so as to make sure of our bearings. Is it a kind of secret doctrine about the nature of God, speculations concerning the universe or the human soul, glimpses into hidden mysteries or the final consummation of the ages? No, there is nothing mystical or visionary in these chapters at all; the atmosphere is clear enough for most accurate vision, yet not too rarefied for the most ordinary mortal to breathe. There is nothing abstruse, nothing metaphysical in Proverbs from beginning to end—it has no affinity with the dreamings of the farther East, where the soul loses itself in rapt communings with the Infinite. The Hebrew mind is nothing if not concrete; just as Jesus Christ threw all His principles into story form-because there is

nothing so "telling," in the true sense of the term, as a story-so, e.g., where we should say "Union is strength," it comes natural to the Hebrew to express the same idea in the phrase, "With two dogs they killed a lion." Instead of an abstract notion you get a vivid picture-and it sticks: you see the two dogs getting the fierce lion under by a concerted attack, whereas, singly, they would have been no match at all for the huge brute.

So in the present case, I repeat, the "wisdom" of the Book of Proverbs is no speculative affair, but practical to a degree-it offers advice as pointed as that shrewd book "Letters from a Self-made Merchant to his Son," which you probably know. It is, if you like, not a heavenly wisdom, but a wisdom of this world, dealing with the art and science of life; and I suggest to you that it is not to be despised on that account, for the business of living calls and enthrals us all, the problems of living present themselves with unfailing regularity and urgency to each one of us, and like importunate messengers decline to stir from our doorsteps without an answer. To-day's task; to-day's trial; to-day's dilemma; to-day's struggle ; to-day's opportunity-they will not any of them wait until to-morrow to be dealt with, and delay merely aggravates the trouble we want to avoid or stave off. Really-let us be quite frank-you can get on just a little longer without a completely satisfactory solution of all the theological or philosophical problems that may be of interest to you; but in the meantime life itself has to be lived. You may not have settled the question of freewill in theory; you have got to settle it fifty times a day in practice. Some of our clever men

at the Colleges have recently made the discovery that the teachings of Jesus do not matter much—it is some theory about Jesus, on which unfortunately they are not agreed, that is all-important: well, we tell them to get on with their theory, but not to hurry themselves unduly, because for us commonplace mortals, who have not their learned leisure, the teachings, the practical precepts of the Master, are still good enough -in fact we find them indispensable. The need of everyday humanity is for everyday religion-never mind the mysteries and the subtleties. As Paul said with great candour and great good sense: "I speak with tongues more than you all: howbeit in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue "—i.e., in a language not understood by the people. Preaching that does not help average people in their day-by-day lives is worse than superfluous-it is a pretentious nuisance; I select this Book of Proverbs for preaching about on Sunday mornings because it drives at practice all the way.

Not only so, but its exhortations and reflections come straight home to men's business and bosoms; they appeal to the large unchanging factor in our composition. The other day you amused yourself and impressed your youngsters by telling them of all the things that did not exist when you were their age -no telephones, no phonographs, no motors, no typewriters, no aeroplanes, no wireless telegraphy, no cinematographs-" why," you wound up, speaking more to yourself than to them, "we're living in quite a different world nowadays." No, you are not. Nature

and human nature are the same, and between them they make up ninety-nine per cent. of the world-the rest is only trimmings. If you want to feel how essentially identical human nature twenty-five centuries ago was with the human nature of to-day, in spite of all the dizzy rush of inventions and the rest, read the Book of Proverbs, and see if it does not find you. Our little lives are only short lengths cut from the same old fabric nature has been weaving and delivering to order all the while there are the same human relationships, the same necessity of earning a livelihood, the same temptations of appetite, the same fine possibilities of exercising our foolishness, the same cares of household and business, the same disappointments overtaking the pleasure-loving, the spendthrift, the slothful, the same solid satisfactions attending a temperate, serviceable, laborious, God-fearing life— and what lies beyond it, in God's hand. And whether you write 1000 B.C.-the approximate date of Solomon's reign-or 19— A.D., does not make much odds.

So we can go to these ancient deliverances on the wisdom of life, and put our questions: On what principles is life to be conducted? On what terms is it to be lived? In what way is the maximum of personal happiness to be extracted from it? Is the highest wisdom a prudent selfishness, a careful regard to one's own interests? Or again, may not the true philosophy be this, which we read expressed in one of the Apocryphal books: "Short and sorrowful is our life; and there is no healing when a man cometh to his end. Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no putting back of our end. Come,