Religion the true beginning
This is the motto of the book. It is often found (Proverbs 9:10; Sirach 1:16, 25, 26; Psalms 111:10). The Arabs have adopted it at the head of their proverbial collections.
I. THE OLD TESTAMENT DESIGNATION OF RELIGION. It is the fear of Jehovah. That is reverence for him who is One, who is eternal, incomparable with any of the gods of the heathen, the Deliverer of Israel in the past and ever, the All-holy, just and merciful One. Such reverence includes practical obedience, trust, gratitude, and love. With this expression we may compare walking before Jehovah and the service of Jehovah, as designations of the practical aspect of religion, as the former indicates the emotional and intellectual.
II. SUCH RELIGION IS THE TRUE GERM OF SOUND KNOWLEDGE. Men have divorced by a logical abstraction science, and often sense, from religion. But ideally, psychologically, historically, they are in perfect unity. Religion is "the oldest and holiest tradition of our race" (Herder). From it as the beginning the arts and sciences sprang. It is ever so. True science has a religious basis.
1. In both the Infinite is implied and is sought through the finite.
2. Both run up into mystery—science into the unknowable ground or substance behind all phenomena, religion before the inscrutable and unutterable God.
3. The true mood is alike in both, that of profound humility, sincerity, self-abnegation, impassioned love of the truth, the mood of Bacon, of Newton, etc.
III. THE REJECTION OF RELIGION FOLLY. The Hebrew word for "fool" is strong; it is crass, stupid, insensible. "A stock, a stone, a worse than senseless thing." Folly is always the reversal of some true attitude of the mind and temper. It is the taking a false measure of self in some relation. It is the conceit of a position purely imaginary—amusing in a child, pathetic in a lunatic, pitiful in a rational man. True wisdom lies in the sense that we have little, in the feeling of constant need of light and direction; extreme folly, in the notion that the man "knows all about it." Most pitiable are learned fools. Without religion, i.e. the constant habit of reference to the universal, all knowledge remains partial and shrunk, is tainted with egotism, would reverse the laws of intelligence, and make the universal give way to the particular, instead of lifting the particular to the life of the universal. Beware of the contemptuous tone in books, newspapers, and speakers. Reserve scorn for manifest evil. The way to be looked down upon is to form the habit of looking down on others. To despise any humblest commonplace of sense and wisdom is to brand one's self in the sight of Heaven, and of the wise, a fool.—J.
Filial piety
The teacher speaks under the assumed form of a father, like St. Paul (1 Corinthians 4:15; Philemon 1:10), to give the more affectionate zest to his appeal. And the word "mother" is brought in by poetical parallelism, enhancing the parental image, We may include the parent and the teacher in one conception. The duty owed to both is analogous. And the teacher may be at the same time the parent.
I. DUTY TO PARENTS AND EARLY TEACHERS COMES NEXT TO DUTY TO GOD. It occupies that place in the Decalogue. Pythagoras and Plato, and the wise of antiquity, generally taught that parents came next to the gods, and were to be honoured even as the gods. The family is the keystone of society. Parents are the earliest representatives to children of the principle of authority, of "other will," and, in this sense, of God.
II. THE TRUE PARENT IS THE BEST EARLY TEACHER,
1. He has the fresh mind to deal with, the opportunity of the first word, the early and deepest impression.
2. He is the most sincere of teachers, or has the least temptation to be insincere. His one object is the child's good.
3. He is the most loving.
4. The father and the mother should combine in this work—the father to train the young mind to principle, the mother to inspire pure sentiment. The masculine influence deals with the general, with law and relation in life, with the logic or mathematics of conduct; the feminine, with the particular, with the details of behaviour, with the concrete expression of right thought and feeling. Neither can be dispensed with.
III. REVERENCE FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS IMPARTS GRACE AND BEAUTY TO THE BEARING. The adoption of their example and instruction is compared, in Oriental illustration, to the wearing of a "pleasant chaplet" on the head (and the necklace of pearls), as at feasts and entertainments—a wreath of roses or other flowers. The former was a general custom of antiquity, both for men and women. We have no exact parallel to it, and must recur to the thought of good or graceful dress in general. What significance, as we all know, is there in dress to make or mar the personal appearance! But the spiritual, not the material "habit" is the best dress, and will set off the most ungainly form. It is natural to wish to appear graceful, and one of the first manifestations of the artistic instinct in humanity is in this attention to dress. Let the instinct, then, have a moral or religious turn, and true beauty be found above all in the moral idea, in the attire of the soul, "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price." The complimentary deferences to one another in polite society, the slight submissions in word and deed, the trifling self-abnegations which give a transient perfume and refinement to social hours,—all these do but mimic or represent something of more permanent value, the principle of obedience, the will governed by law, the character formed by the true, which is also the good and the beautiful.—J.