With daily growing gratitude and veneration does such an one look back upon the early home of piety and tenderness.
[53] This subject, which occupies so large a part of the book, is further treated in Lect. XXIII.
[54] It is noteworthy that the LXX. in ver. 2 seek to maintain the Solomonic authorship by deliberately altering the words.
[55] _Cf._ the beautiful family picture of the linked and mutually blessed generations in the proverb, "Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers" (xvii. 6).
[56] Prov. iv. 8, 9.
[57] Prov. iv. 14.
[58] Prov. iv. 20-23.
[59] Matt. xv. 19.
[60] _Paradise Lost_, iv. 20, etc., and 75. _Cf._ also ix. 120:--
"And the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, as from hateful siege Of contraries. All good to me becomes Bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state."
[61] Prov. iv. 24.
[62] Prov. iv. 25-27.
[63] Prov. iv. 27.
[64] _Cf._ xvii. 24, "Wisdom is before the face of him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth."
[65] Eccles. ix. 7.
[66] Prov. iv. 26.
[67] Prov. v. 21.
[68] Prov. iv. 19.
[69] Prov. iv. 16, 17.
[70] Prov. iv. 18, margin.
[71] Prov. iv. 12.
"His own iniquities shall take the wicked, And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction; And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray." --PROV. v. 22, 23.
It is the task of Wisdom, or, as we should say, of the Christian teacher,--and a most distasteful task it is,--to lay bare with an unsparing hand (1) the fascinations of sin, and (2) the deadly entanglements in which the sinner involves himself,--"there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."[72] It would be pleasanter, no doubt, to avoid the subject, or at least to be content with a general caution and a general denunciation; one is tempted to take refuge in the opinion that to mention evils of a certain kind with any particularity is likely to suggest rather than to suppress, to aggravate rather than to lessen, them. But Wisdom is not afraid of plain speaking; she sees that shame is the first result of the Fall, and behind the modest veil of shame the devil works bravely. There is a frankness and a fulness in the delineations of this chapter and of chapter seven which modern taste would condemn; but the motive cannot be mistaken. Holiness describes the ways of sin in detail to create a horror and a hatred of them; she describes exactly what is within the tempting doors,--all the glamour, all the softness, all the luxury, all the unhallowed raptures,--and shows distinctly how these chambers are on the incline of death, in order that curiosity, the mother of prurience, may be stifled, and the unwary may be content to remove his way far from the temptress, and to come not nigh the door of her house.[73]
But this, it may be said, is the plea urged by a certain school of modern Realism in Art. Let us depict--such is the argument--in all its hideous literalness the sinful life, and leave it to work its own impressions, and to act as a warning to those who are entering on the seductive but dangerous ways. From this principle--so it may be said--has sprung the school of writers at whose head is M. Zola. Yes, but to counteract vice by depicting it is so hazardous a venture that none can do it successfully who is not fortified in virtue himself, and constantly led, directed, and restrained by the Holy Spirit of God. Just in this point lies the great difference between the realism of the Bible and the realism of the French novel. In the first the didactic purpose is at once declared, and the writer moves with swift precision through the fascinating scene, to lift the curtain and show death beyond; in the last the motive is left doubtful, and the writer moves slowly, observantly, even gloatingly, through the abomination and the filth, without any clear conception of the Divine Eye which watches, or of the Divine Voice which condemns.[74]