Spiritual ignorance and obedience. (See also homily on Proverbs 19:2.) Two things are clear:
1. That God has provided us with many sources of knowledge. We have, for materials to work with, a very complex and richly endowed nature; and we have, for materials to work upon,
2. That these sources of wisdom, which are constant and common to our race, prove to be lamentably insufficient. Man, under the dominion and depression of sin, cannot read aright the lessons which his own nature, the visible universe, and the providence of God are fitted and intended to teach him. He shows himself utterly incapable; he is completely false in his ideas, and pitiably wrong in his course of action. Hence we come to the conclusion of the text—
I. THE LAMENTABLE RESULT OF SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Where there is no special Divine revelation, supplementing the knowledge and correcting the ignorance of the unenlightened, there is a "perishing" or a "nakedness" in the land. The sad and miserable result, as all lands and all ages testify, is:
1. Literal, physical death. Without the knowledge of God, and in the absence of the control which the knowledge of his will can supply,
2. Loss of character. Not only of that which is sometimes understood by character, viz. reputation, but also of character itself. Where God's Word and will are unknown, there is such a deplorable descent into the erroneous and the immoral, that both of these go down and perish.
3. Absence of spiritual life. The life of our life is in God, and not only in his kindness to us, but in our knowledge of him. To be in utter ignorance of him, to have lost all belief in him, to be spending our days in spiritual separation from him,—is not this to be so destitute of all that beautifies and brightens, of all that enlarges and ennobles, human life, as to be "dead while we live"? So thought and taught the great Teacher and his great apostle (Luke 9:60; John 5:24; 1 Timothy 5:6). It is not merely that there is a sad exclusion, at the end, from the heavenly kingdom; it is that spiritual ignorance of God constitutes death, and they who are living without God, and becoming more and more alienated from and unlike to him, are perishing "day by day."
II. THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. "He that keepeth the Law," etc. Happy is the man who walks in the fear of God, in the love and the service of Jesus Christ; for
1. He is walking in the path where all the worst evils cannot harm him; he is defended from "the evil which is in the world;" he is upheld in his purity and his integrity.
2. He is living a life which will command the esteem and win the love of the wise and the worthy.
3. He abides under the wing of a heavenly Father's favour; he is enjoying the friendship of a Divine Saviour.
4. He is expending his powers in the conscious, the happy service of him "whose he is," and in whose service is true and lasting freedom.
5. He is exerting a benignant influence in every circle in which he moves.
6. He is travelling homewards.—C.
(See homily on Proverbs 29:11.)—C.