The Book of Proverbs Illustrated by St. John

“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness.” —John viii. 12.

We begin this afternoon to read the Book of Proverbs. A portion of that book consists of aphorisms relating to the well-being of individuals and nations; on Morals and Politics, as we might say in modern phraseology. The ground of these aphorisms lies in the earlier chapters. Before we are taught how Wisdom and Folly are exhibited in the transactions of life, we are told what Wisdom and Folly are. A collection of shrewd observations by a man who has some experience of the world and of himself is always worthy of study. But if it is not put together merely or chiefly for the purpose of displaying the writer’s sagacity, we have a right to ask that he will show us how we may turn his discoveries to account in any emergencies of ours. Solomon does not decline this challenge. His claim to be a wise man or a wise king rests not the least on his isolation from his fellow-men, upon his want of sympathy with them. He is wiser than others because he enters more than others into that which is human and universal, because he is freer from affectation and singularities, because he looks more earnestly and bravely into the heart of commonplaces, because he can tell his readers what is true—and what they can ascertain to be true—of themselves as much as him. He lets his silly headstrong son know that there is a light near him in which he may walk, and a darkness in which he may walk also. Rehoboam was not in this respect different from Solomon. There was the same law for both, the same unseen Wisdom ever revealing itself to the search and love of both, the same harlot sense tempting them away from this Wisdom to follow their own courses, to choose their own delusions, to slay themselves. Each had that in him which made this tempter very powerful, very attractive; each was addressed by the Divine Teacher, the true Lawgiver and King of Man; each could heed that voice, and find, though it was soft and gentle, that it had a might to command which dwelt in no other. Wisdom, so Solomon affirms, is no hard, dreary abstraction, no result of experience, no product of our understanding. It is living, actual, personal; we find it, not make it; we are to search for it, and it will surely disclose itself; the more we confess it, the more conscious we become of its presence; the more our understandings do it homage, not trusting in themselves, the more free, vigorous, manly they are.

I. Such is the doctrine of the Book,—a doctrine which craves to be tried by its application to all the greatest and pettiest details of our existence, which sets itself up to pronounce judgment upon the acts and policy of kings, and does not disdain the weights and measures of the shop,—which requires no happy accidents of time or place that it may be verified, which is just as willing to be proved by the inconsistencies, follies, sins, of those who proclaim it, as by their most heroical deeds. With that which would be called, in any work of art, subtle and bitter irony,—and it is the subtlest and bitterest of all irony, for it is the irony of fact,—Solomon himself is set forth to us in the Scriptures as the signal type and illustration of his own warnings. The wise king becomes elated with his own wisdom; he is charmed and intoxicated by the visible things which had poured themselves at his feet as their master; he is overpowered by the images which he had taught others to beware of and to turn from; he is turned into a fool, and by his folly establishes his principle for all who will meditate the story, not in scorn or despair, but in charity and self-suspicion, trying to learn from it where their safety lies.

II. If we cannot separate this Book of Proverbs from the life of him who wrote it, neither can we separate it from the different stages of the history of the people for whom it was written. There cannot be a greater mistake than to look upon it as a singular document, a specimen of Jewish philosophy, and not to perceive how it is connected with all that has been recorded in simple narrative of Abraham and the patriarchs, with all that was written of fixed law in tables, with all the visions and raptures of holy seers. The end of the Jewish Calling and Covenant, the meaning of Circumcision (if we may take the language of the Bible in its plain sense), was to set apart one race to the Living and True and Unseen God, to detach them from visible idolatries, and so to make them a wise and understanding people in the sight of the sense-bound nations around.

If this was not the end of their family order and their legal government,—if God Himself was not the author of both,—if He was not upholding both,—if their well-being did not stand in trust in Him, as a present Protector and King, as One who would be the Protector and King of their children after them,—if all their institutions were not instruments for redeeming them from the service of idols they made for themselves, that they might serve Him Who had made them in His image—the story is a fiction from beginning to end. You cannot reconstruct it on the supposition that those who were concerned in it were honest, well-intentioned, at worst self-deceived men; we are bound to treat them as wilful impostors, blasphemers, liars. But if the quiet pastoral life described in the Book of Genesis has this character stamped upon it no less legibly than the laws and statutes in the Wilderness,—if the voice, “Get thee out of thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee,” and “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed,” carried this signification, as well as the I AM which came out of the bush that was burning and not consumed,—then, just as the Book of Psalms translates this historical language into the language of prayer and praise, the Book of Proverbs translates it with equal accuracy into the language of moral discourse. The devotions, like the maxims of conduct, presume a perpetual conflict between Life and Death, Light and Darkness; presume that every man and every nation is engaged in that conflict. Both alike treat this fight as an actual and not a sham fight, because the Light does not come from man but to man; because it comes not to his eyes but to his own self, to his conscience and heart; because He from Whom it proceeds is a Being Who may be trusted, Who desires the deliverance of His creatures out of the hands of their enemies, Who means to effect their deliverance. And this faith could be sustained in the conscience of the nation, it could raise and purify the conscience of the individual members of the nation; because there was a continual witness, borne by holy men, borne by the national blessings and national judgments which they interpreted, that the Divine Wisdom, the Word that was With God, “as one brought up with Him, and whose delights were with the Sons of Men,” would one day come forth, not as a cold abstraction, not in the letters of a book, but living and personal, even such a one as Solomon had declared to be the source of all right thoughts and good counsels, the true King of Men, the object of all loyal homage and dutiful love.

III. It was proved clearly in that interval which elapsed between the termination of independent Jewish history and the coming of our Lord, that the sense of a conflict between light and darkness had been working in all the Pagan nations. The cultivated people who become known to us during that time differ from other people precisely because they are more conscious of it. They despise those whom they call barbarians, however physically strong, because they appear to them to want this perception. Yet they do in fact, by their clearer utterances, interpret the confused dreams of these barbarians, and show that the battle was one in which they also were engaged. Every tradition respecting any heroic man witnesses that he was great because, being a son of some God, he had made the decision, however imperfectly he might adhere to it, between the claims of sense and of an invisible guide. The after-speculations of philosophers were but working out these materials, trying to ascertain how it was possible for men to behave themselves between two such influences, which they were to obey, and whence each proceeded. So far from desiring to hide these facts, he who really believes in the Jewish calling and revelation will loudly proclaim them. They prove wonderfully that it was a calling for the good of man, a revelation of that Wisdom which is speaking to man. They corroborate the truth which Solomon illustrated under so many aspects. They are testimonies from the innermost consciences and hearts of humanity that there was a Guide near all, Who could not by searching be found out, though He might in their words and acts be acknowledged. They are a cry from that same heart and conscience that He would declare Himself to them; would show what he had to do with God and with Man; and so what God and Man were each to the other.

IV. “Then spake Jesus unto them again, I am the Light of the World.” He had often spoke this word before. Every act of mercy He did, spoke it to the men who were the subjects of it. St. John dwells specially upon His cure of blindness. He takes that as an instance—the clearest and liveliest instance—of the effects which were produced by all His miracles. Each sufferer felt that a power of darkness had taken hold of him; that a portion of the beauty and joy of the Universe was hidden from him. The appearance of a Deliverer who could set him free from his plague was the appearance of a Light. He was brought out of a cave; the air that breathed upon the rest of men was breathing on him; the common sun was shining on him. So the leper felt, who had heard Christ speaking on the Mount, and dared to approach Him, exile though he was from the rest of his kind. “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Thou canst bring me back into the society of human beings; thou canst take away this veil which divides me from them.” So it was with the palsied man, to whom He delivered that more astonishing message, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” A palsy there was on his heart more hopeless apparently than the palsy on his limbs. There was One Who saw down into the depth of his heart, Who scattered the darkness there. He became a freed man, an illuminated man. He could rise and walk. Christ’s word was light; the entrance of it into the soul gave light, and that light diffused itself through every part of the man. It brought health and vigour wherever it encountered sickness and decay.

Whether the Evangelists tell of the words by which He scattered diseases, or the words by which He taught the people, their mode of speaking is the same; they could find none so simple and true. He goes into the land of Zabulon and Naphthali, into Galilee of the Gentiles. It is a half-idolatrous region; it was therefore described—Isaiah had so described it centuries before—as a region of darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord’s appearance in it is the appearance of a Light, not to one here and there, but to the whole of that outcast population. There is no real difference in these cases. The gracious light which shines on the sorrowing or tormented man is the Universal Light; his blessing is that he is brought in a measure to be a sharer of it. That Light is only fulfilling its proper function, when its presence is felt at once by whole multitudes.

Divines are wont to make distinctions between Christ the Teacher of the world at large, and Christ the Teacher of the heart and conscience of each man. They talk of an outward Christ and an inward Christ. The Evangelists indulge in no such refinements. The Christ Who was born of the Virgin, Who suffered under Pontius Pilate, reveals himself, not to the eyes of those who actually see and handle Him, but to a spirit within them. He calls forth faith, which is the proper organ and exercise of that spirit; He speaks to a man that was hidden within the man. And there is always an answer of some kind to His voice. It may come forth in a stupid yawn, as of one half-awakened and longing to sleep again. It may come forth in a growl of defiance, “What have we to do with Thee?” But in one case or another there is a recognition of the Holy One; there is a sense of Light, however painful it may be, however little the eye may be disposed to entertain it.

V. And so there is no need of artificial rules and distinctions, such as doctors invent for their own confusion. The Light makes the distinction. It is not the distinction of Pharisee or Publican, of religious men or irreligious. It goes deeper than that. It is the distinction between that in every man which welcomes the light and claims kindred with it, and that in every man which eschews the light and would fain extinguish it for ever. It expresses itself in these words: “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness.”

When the Son of Man said to Matthew the Publican, as he sat at the receipt of custom, “Follow Me,” there was no force exerted upon him more than upon any Scribe or Ruler who cried, “This man blasphemeth; he casteth out devils through the Prince of the Devils.” It was altogether an inward attraction. Matthew was in want of a guide out of the covetousness and money-worship to which he felt that all his circumstances, and something stronger than circumstances, made him prone. His guide had come, had spoken to him, had uttered the command which He had the right and power to utter. So he became a disciple. Through what paths he was to be led he knew not; what work he was to do besides that of collecting taxes he knew not. The Master would show him in due time. His business was to follow. As he followed the Light, it showed more and more of the confusion in which he had been walking, more and more of his own ignorance and folly. As he followed it, the path of life seemed often a thornier, a more tangled path than it had been before, just because thorns which before pierced him and went into him were now visible; just because he had a goal in sight, and was not merely wandering wherever chance led him. Strangest of all! he found that to follow the King of Men was to follow a Sufferer; that His path was a path of humiliation, of contempt, of death; that a Cross was at the end of it. What an end! This, said our Lord, is the hour of the powers of darkness. They had to all appearance triumphed. The Deliverer was crushed. The Light of the World was put out.

And yet it was then that Matthew the publican found what he had to do besides collecting the taxes. What was it? To testify, “The Light of the World is not put out. It never was shining so brightly as now. That Cross is the fullest and most perfect exhibition of it, to men, to Angels, to you, and to me. Now is that Being manifested in Whom is Light and no darkness at all; Good, and not one taint of evil. Now is that Being seen in a dying Man. Now is His reconciliation with our race complete. Now have Death and the Grave been converted into the great testimonies for Life and Immortality. Now may each man who has the sentence of Adam upon him, know that he is a kinsman of the Son of God. Now may he follow Him, and so, when the darkness is thickest around him and within, not walk in it, but see the Light of Life.”

And so the doctrine of the Book of Proverbs—the doctrine to which the heroes of the old world clung, though it came to them through no written book—has been changed into the message of the Gospel. The conscience of mankind has cried in various tongues, or in mere inarticulate groans, for the Light. And the Light has come forth to it. And the Light of the World is saying now to every one of us, “Follow me, and thou shalt not walk in darkness.” Yes, brethren, to every one of us, in his commonest works, at the receipt of custom, in the hall of justice, in our daily intercourse with each other, as citizens, as fathers, brothers, husbands. There is a road into which every man is tempted, in whatever work he is engaged; a road that looks promising; a road that may lead—that does sometimes lead—to wealth and fame. But it is a road which is certain to end in darkness; which in truth is dark all along. A little tampering with conscience, words spoken and things done that will not bear the light—that we cannot quite dare to look at ourselves,—whither are these leading? to the loss of all moral discernment; to the incapacity of knowing right from wrong, truth from falsehood; to that habit of falsehood, that state of falsehood, which is Hell.

And yet to avoid these,—to keep the heart or reason open and free and pure, able to hold the truth it has ready to receive that which it has not,—how hard is this! Which of us does not bitterly know how hard? Yes! and how desperate the effort, if our own understandings and our own consciences were left to find the light which they want, or if they must depend on the opinion of society, on the traditions of men to give it them. But it is not so. Jesus the Son of Man speaks now as ever, “I am the Light of the World, shining on all, not far from any. In all perplexities, bewilderments, temptations, trust in Me. I will guide you, and following Me ye shall not walk in darkness.”

And for us too, as for our Leader, “Via Crucis, Via Lucis.” He will use crosses on earth as means of purging our eyes, and preparing them for the Light which will burst upon the whole world when He appears.