^ If all trees were clerks and all their branches pens, and all the hills books, and all the waters ink, yet all would not
PROVERBS VIII. 36 257
sufficiently declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness ; this house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and woe ; this house of all refreshment to be full of hunger and thirst ; this abode of love to be a prison of enmity and ill-will ; this seat of meekness to be the haunt of pride and rage and malice. For laughter sin has brought horror; for munificence, beggary; and for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.^
2. Sin is here represented as a missing of wisdom.
(1) Wisdom is frequently spoken of in the Book of Proverbs as mere prudential morality, the discretion which life teaches or should teach, the sagacity in dealing with affairs, the knowledge of men and things that comes from experience. As many of the Proverbs show, wisdom means what we call common sense, and is opposed to folly, the stupid disregard of facts, the dulness of mind that will not learn the lessons that are patent on the very face of life. Thus, the book has many practical exhortations as to what to do in the ordinary problems that emerge every day, exhortations whose tone grows solemn and impressive as it warns against gluttony and drunkenness and the undue regard of wealth and kindred mistakes, even condescending to give advice about becoming surety for another. It is a sort of prudential morality, which experience loudly teaches to all who are not deaf.
To this wisdom, necessary though it is to all in some degree, we could only partially apply the words of the text, "He that misseth me wrongeth his own soul." We are all sufficiently alive, at least in theory, to the necessity for such wisdom. Men are trained in some fashion to acquire it ; and most of us do gain some knowledge of men and affairs. We all undergo the education which informs us of things, and fills our heads with facts and distinctions in varying degrees of usefulness or useless- ness. It is quite true that to miss this worldly wisdom which life should teach is to wrong one's own self. To have the means of knowledge in our hands and before our eyes and yet not to know, to have gone through life with our minds sealed, is to do despite to our own nature. To be incorrigible, unteachable, is to
* Jacob Behmen. PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 7
258 WRONGING THE SOUL
be (as the proverbs again and again declare) brutish, like the fool with folly so ingrained that though he were brayed in a mortar with a pestle yet will not his folly depart from him. " He that misseth me," says Wisdom as a guide of practical conduct, " wrongeth his own self."
^ Prudence is a virtue of the practical reason, which not only enables a man to know in concrete circumstances what means are best to take to a good end, but also inclines a man to take those means with promptitude. Prudence resides in the intellect, not in the will, for its acts are intellectual acts. By prudence we inquire about, examine, and direct ourselves to the adoption of the proper means to a desired end. Modern philosophy has done much to bring the virtue of prudence into contempt by represent- ing it as exclusively a selfish virtue — a virtue by which each man seeks to secure his own greatest happiness. But prudence no more exclusively concerns the individual's happiness than do the other virtues. For there is a prudence that prescribes the right means to the family good or general good, as well' as that which secures one's own personal good. However, when used without qualification, the word "prudence" has always been understood as appertaining to the individual good only.^
(2) But wisdom as used in this book has a deeper meaning, which underlies all the practical counsels. Wisdom is looked on as identical with the law of God. It is the discernment that looks beneath the surface and sees cause and effect ; looks into the heart of things and gets sane and true views of life, putting everything into correct perspective — a guide of the heart as well as of the feet, a guide for thought and feeling as well as for conduct. In this deeper sense it teaches morals and religion. Its very beginning is in the fear of God, reverence for the good and the high. It deals with the moral basis of life, and looks upon evil, not simply as mistake which a wise man would avoid, but as sin which perverts and depraves the very nature. This inner, deeper wisdom judges human nature and human conduct by the religious ideal set forth in the law of God. It probes down to the causes which produce such tragic failure in the lives of men. It sees that life is built on law ; so that to break law is not merely folly that incurs punishment from the outside as by some machine that regulates all things, but is to break the law of ^ M. Crouin, The Science of Ethics.