* W. Lindsay Alexandei', Christian Thought and fVork, 268.
The Buying and Selling of the Truth.
SM
Literature.
Farindon (A.), Sermons, ii. 373.
Greenhough (J. G.), in Great Texts of the Old Testament, 19.
Gregg (J.), Sermons and Lectures, 67.
James (F. H.), in Voysey's Sermons, xv. (1892), No. 42.
Jeffrey (J.), The Woaj of Life, 252.
Moody (A.), Buy the Truth, 11.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons for Children, 15.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 81.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xii. (1876), No. 967.
„ „ Sermons to Children, v. 160. Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 9. Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 88. Christian World Pulpit, Ixxiv. 133 (E. J. Miller); Ixxxiv. 145 (W. B.
Carpenter).
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The Buying and Selling of the Truth.
Buy the truth, and sell it not;
Yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.— Prov. xxiii. 23.
1. " Buy the truth, and sell it not." Wedged in between warnings against the evil effects that attend gluttony and drunkenness come these startling words, a ray of sheer idealism, which lights up the whole page. Here are no calculations of profit as it is understood in the market-place and the counting-house ; here is no commendation of virtue on the ground that experience shows it to pay better in the long run than its opposite, nor the spirit which declares honesty to be the best policy, — a maxim which might have been penned by any convicted pickpocket, — but truth is praised for its own sake as a supreme possession, to be acquired and not to be parted with on any consideration ; it is like that pearl of great price which a merchant found, and in exchange for which he gave all that he had.
2. Shakespeare has told us that " all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." It would have been much more true to say that all the world is a market, and all the men and women buyers and sellers. Every day is a market-day, and every evening brings its balance-sheet to us : things bought and things sold, with the net gain, or, it may be, loss. Foolish people are always selling the better things for the worse ; while the wise buy the more precious and enduring things, at the cost of that which they can more easily part with. The foolish sell the substance for the shadow, and the wise sell the shadow for the substance ; that is the main difference between the two.
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328 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH
I,
A Thing of Value.
" The Truth."
" Buy the truth, and sell it not ; yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding," The second clause gives the sphere in which truth moves, or the three properties which appertain to it. These are : wisdom, practical knowledge ; instruction, moral culture and discipline ; and understanding, the faculty of discernment.
1. First, then, the treasure set before us here as worth obtain- ing is the truth. The truth has a perpetual charm for every soul that is true. Over all souls she wields a mystic power ; all must bow to her authority, whether they love her or not. She has a Divine right to command, to direct, to judge, to condemn and to acquit. She is the only possessor of such a right. There is, indeed, no authority that can make itself felt by man save that which comes to him in the guise of truth. The truth is not merely intellectual but moral and practical as well. To seek truth wherever she may be found, to follow truth wherever she leads, to do truth whatever the consequences, may be said to sum up the whole duty of man. Therefore, " whatsoever things are true " may well be the primary subjects of our thought and medi- tation and practice.
•(I Let no promise of reward, however great, tempt you from that generous and uncalculating loyalty to truth which holds that any sacrifice made on its altar is worth making, that nothing which is purchased at the cost of truth is worth the prize. If you are called to the office of a teacher or preacher of truth — and what vocation can be higher ? — see that it is the truth as you yourself have learned to see it, and not somebody else's truth, that you give your fellows. The secret of success in the communication of truth, as in all true success in life, is to be yourself, as the secret of failure is concealment and repression of one's own selfhood — the seeming to be what one is not. The life of imitation, as Plato said, is the life of evil. The good life, the true life, is always original. Such fidelity to truth you will find to be its own reward, as unfaithfulness is its own penalty. To sell the truth is to arrest the movement of your intellectual life, to kill the faculty of further
PROVERBS XXIII. 23 329
insight. To cherish the truth you know is to keep the eyes of your mind open to the larger vision of truth which the future has in store for you, to remain a seeker, and therefore a finder, of truth in all the days to come. Be loyal to your convictions, at whatever cost ; beware of disloyalty to truth.^