Traits of wisdom and folly
I. FEMININE WISDOM. (Proverbs 14:1.)
1. Its peculiar scope is the home. Women are physically and morally constructed with a view to the stationary life and settled pursuits of home. Its comfort, the strength of the race, the well being of society, are rooted, more than in any other human means, in the character, the principle, the love and truth of the wife and mother.
2. The absence of it is one of the commonest causes of domestic misery. The fact is but too well known to all who are acquainted with the homes of the poor, and indeed of all classes. The cause is not far to seek. The word "home" has hardly a meaning without the presence of a virtuous woman; and a home has seldom been wrecked while a virtuous woman remained in it.
II. THE STRICT CONNECTION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY. (Proverbs 14:2.)
1. Fear of Jehovah includes reverence for what is eternal, faith in what is constant, obedience to what is unchanging law.
2. Contempt for Jehovah means the neglect of all this; and the preference of passion to principle, immediate interest to abiding good; what is selfish and corruptible to what is pure and durable and Divine.
III. SPEECH A SCOURGE OR A SHIELD. (Proverbs 14:3.) The word of haste, which is at the same time the word of passion and of inconsiderateness, recoils upon the speaker. As an old proverb says, "Curses come home to roost." And what can put a stronger armour about a man, or cover him more securely as a shield, than the good words he has thrown forth, or in general the expression of his spirit in all that is wise and loving? The successive accretions of substance from year to year in the trunk of the oak tree may typify the strength coincident with growth in the good man's life.
IV. THE CONNECTION OF MENAS AND ENDS. (Proverbs 14:4.) Such seems to be the point of the saying. "Nothing costs nothing." If you keep no oxen, you have no manger to supply. But at the same time, nothing brings nothing in. The larger income is secured by the keeping of oxen. This is, in fact. the sense of the old saw, "Penny wise and pound foolish." In short, it is part of the science of life to know the limits of thrift and of expense. "A man often pays dear for a small frugality." "Cheapest," says the prudent, "is the dearest labour." In the more immediate interests of the soul, how true is it that only first expense of thought, time, love, upon others is the truest condition of our own blessedness!
V. TRUTH AND LIES. (Proverbs 14:5.) Again and again we strike upon this primary stratum of character. We cannot define the truthful or untruthful man. We can feel them. The reason is as "simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs. The natural force is no more to be withstood than any other force. We can drive a stone upwards for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will fall; and whatever instances may be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed."
VI. THE UNWISDOM OF THE SCOFFER. (Proverbs 14:6.) He places himself in a false relation to truth; would measure it by his small mind, and weigh it in his imperfect scales. He has one principle only to apply to everything, and that the limited perception of his faculty or the narrow light of his experience. The description well applies to the free thinkers, the illuminati so called of the last century in England, France, and Germany, and their successors in the present day. There is the air of superior intelligence and zeal for truth, frequently concealing some passion of a very different; order. Or, again, there is the shallow assumption that absolute truth is to be found by the human intellect, which has led philosophers two many aberrations. The end is some fallacy and glaring self-contradiction. How different the spirit of him whom the teacher describes as "intelligent' in this place! It is "easy" for him to be wise. It is like opening his lungs to the bountiful and all-embracing air, or expatiating on the boundless shore, like great Newton. Wisdom springs from the sense that truth in its infinity is ever beyond us. But the reference here is more to practical wisdom, the science of living from day to day. And good sense is the main requisite for its acquirement, the very opposite of which is the supercilious temper which disdains to learn from any and all.
VII. THE EVIL OF FOOLISH COMPANY. (Proverbs 14:7.) And of all its conversation, its atmosphere, its temper. "Cast not pearls before swine." "Avoid the mixture of an irreverent commonness of speaking of holy things indifferently in all companies" (Leighton). "Do not overrate your strength, nor be blind to the personal risks that may be incurred in imprudent efforts to do good" (Bridges). "Better retreat from cavillers" (ibid.).—J.