by the speaker or by any looker-on. Wedding-feasts bring out these feclinc,3; nncl 0 the happiness and prosperity of married pairs are as little exposed to the tooth of envy as any earthly good, 4. It is satiifying; for what repose can be more sweet and secure than that on the bosom of the faithful spouse? It is enrapturing, without being enfeebling, unlike those false pleasures, "violent delights with violent endings, that in their triumph die" (ver. 19). III. CoNOLUDING EXHORTATION (ver. 20), founded on the contrast just given. 1. The true rapture (the Hebrew word shagah, "reel" as in intoxication, repeated) should deter from the false and vicious. 2. To prefer the bosom of the adulteress to that of the true wife is a. mark of the most vitiated taste, the most perverted understanding.-J. Ver. 21.-God the all-seeing Judge. "Before Jehovah'~ eyes are man's paths, and all bis tracks he surveys." I. CYNICAL PROVERDS CONCERNING SECRECY ARE CONDEMNED. Such as "What the eye sees not, the heart does not grieve over;" "A slice from a cut cake is never missed; " "Never mind so long as you are not found out." II. NOTHING IS REALLY SECRET OR UNJQIOWN. We are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The whisper, the inarticulate thought, will come hack one day in thunder.-J. Vers. 22, 23.-Vice suicidal. I. WICKEDNESS (LIKE GOODNESS) HAS UNDESIGNED RESULTS. The good comes back to nestle in the bosom of the giver and the doer. We never do right without invoking a blessing on our own heads. Evil, on the other hand, designed and executed, is like a snare set for one's self, a net in the meshes of which the crafty is entangled, self-overreached. II. WICKEDNESS AND IGNORANCE ARE IN CLOSE CONNECTION. "He shall die for want of instruction "-the correct rendering of ver. 23. Socrates taught that vice was ignorance, virtue identical with knowledge. This, however, ignores the perversity of the will. The Bible ever traces wickedness to wilful and inexcusable ignorance. III. WIOKEDJIESS Is A KIND OF MADNESS. "Through the greatness of his folly he shall reel about." The word shagah once more. The man becomes drunk and frenzied with passion, and, a. certain point passed, staggers to his end unwitting, careless, or desperate.-J. •
Vers.1-20.- Victims of vice. One particular vice is here denounced; it is neces,ary to warn the young against its snares and sorrows. What is here said, however, of this sin is applicable, in most if not all respects, to any kind of unholy indulgence; it is an earnest and faithful warning against the sin and shame of a vicious life. I, ITs SINFULNESS. The woman who is a sinner is a. "strange" woman (ver. 3). The temptress is all too common amongst us, but she is strange in the sight of God. She is a.n alien, foreign altogether to his purpose, a. sad and wide departure from bis thought. And a.II vice is strange to him; it is a departure from his thought and from his will; it is sin in his sight; it is offensive to him; he "cannot look on" such iniquity without abhorrence and condemnation. He who is tempted may well say, with the pure-minded and godly Joseph, " How can I <lo this great wickedness, and sin against God?" II. 1TB SHAME. It is a shame to e. man to a.llow himself to be deceived by a vain, shallow-minded woman (vers. 3, 4); it is a. shame to a. man to permit a mere selfish temptress to beguile him, to prevent him from entertaining the true and wise thought in his mind, to hinder him by her artifices from reflecting on what is the path of life and what the way of death (ver. 6); it is a shame to a man to surrender bis manly virtue to one so utterly undeserving of his honour (vers. 7-9). He who yields to the solicitations of the temptress, to the impulse.q of e. vicious nature, is forfeiting his honour, is resigning his true manhood, is a. son of shame. III. 1TB FOLLY. (Vers. 15-20.) How senseless is sin ! bow stupid is vice I It embraces a guilty and short-lived pleasure only to reject a pure and lasting joy. Why should men resort to shameful lust when they can be blest with lawful and honourable love? Why sink in debauchery when they can walk a.long those goodly heights of moderation and of pleasures on which God's blessing may be invoked 'l Whatever the 120 THE PROVERBS. [ell. v. 1-23,