400 EXPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.
evil day; laugh even on the brink of that destruction, which, unless
Sovereign grace interpose, will make them wise too late.
4. By (the reward of, marg.) humility and the fear of the Lord are riches,
honour, and life (lives, marg.)
Who then will say--"It is vain to serve God?" (Mal. iii. 14.)
Riches, honour, and life to enjoy them--all this accumulation and com-
pleteness of happiness belong to his service. But observe the two
marks of his ways, humility and the fear of the Lord. Humility is not
the mere meekness of modesty. (1 Sa.m. x. 22.) This, though a lovely
temper, is not a Christian grace. Nor is it the servility of the hypocrite
for his own selfish ends;1 or the temporary conviction of external
humiliation.2 We may easily distinguish the genuine principle by its
accompaniment--the fear of the Lord-that blessed holy reverence,
which none but his children feel, and which, while it represses pre-
sumption, establishes humility. A just apprehension of God will always
lay us in the lowest dust before him. The contrasted sight of his
majesty with our meanness, of his holiness with our defilement, con-
strained the cry from one--"Behold! I am vile; I abhor myself"3--
from another--"Woe is me, for I am undone!"4 Then humility is the
truest glory. The most humble is the most triumphant Christian.
Depressed indeed he may be; yet is he highly exalted. Riches are his,
both of grace and of glory. None can deprive him of them.5 Honour
is his--the true fruit,6 the gracious reward,7 of humility--high and
glorious; the title and present privilege of a child of God, "as heir of
God, and joint-heir with Christ."8 Life is his9--lives, every kind of
life, not natural only, but spiritual and eternal; life with the Father
and the Son, now "hid with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is
our life, shall appear," then to be manifested in all its fulness of ever-
lasting joy. (Col. iii. 3, 4.) Shall we look then beyond the narrow limit
of time, and search what is the character of the heirs of glory? He
will beautify the meek with salvation." "Blessed' are the poor in
spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of God."10 How glorious is the end of
this lowly path of humility and godly fear!
5. Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth keep his
soul shall be far from them.
A forcible image to shew, that nothing stands so much in a man's.
way, as the indulgence of his own unbridled will. The man, who is
most perversely bent on his purposes, is most likely to be thwarted in
1 2 Sam. xv. 5. 2 1 Kings, xxi. 27. 3 Job, xl. 4; xlii. 5, 6.
4 Isa. vi. 5. 5 Chap. viii. 18. 6 Chap. xv. 33; xviii. 12.
7 Luke xviii. 13, 14. 8 Rom viii. 17.
9 Chap: xix. 23. Ps. xxii. 26. Comp. Ecclus. i. 11, 12, 18; ii. 8, 9; xl. 26, 27.
10 Ps. cxlii. 4; Matt. v. 3.
CHAP. XXII. 6. 401
them. 'He thinks to carry all before him; whereas his frowardness
makes thorns and snares for his way.1 He is as a man on all sides
encompassed with thorns and snares. His stubbornness brings him into
infinite perplexities, out of which he can find no issue.'* Sarah,2 Jacob,3
Balaam,4 found the way of the froward full of hindrance and entangle-
ment. A special mercy is it, when the thorns embitter the way, and
bring the froward sinner as an humbled child, asking and seeking the
road to his Father's house. (Luke, xv. 12-20.) If there be difficulties in
the ways of God, are there none in the ways of sin? A fair balance
would prove, which yoke, which burden, is the more "easy and light."
The sting of conscience; the rebukes of Providence; the disappoint-
ment of cherished desires, the tyranny of lust--all tend to make "the
way of transgressors to be hard." (Chap. xiii. 15.) Nay--not the world
only, but even the holy Gospel, is made a snare in the way of the froward,
Such are "the depths and devices of Satan"5 that they" turn the grace
of God into lasciviousness," and the occasion or excuse of sin.6
Our happiness and security therefore lie in an humble submission
to the Lord; desiring nothing so much as conformity to his will;
dreading nothing so much as being left to our own waywardness. Thus
keeping our soul, we shall be far from the thorn and snare of the froward;
we shall "make straight" and safe, if not smooth, "paths for our feet,"
and "all our ways shall be established."7 "He that is begotten
of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." (1 John,
v. 1 8.
6. Train up| a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will
not depart from it.
The hopes of at least two generations hang upon this most im-
portant rule. How can we look on a child without thoughtful anxiety?
An existence is commenced for eternity. No power of earth or hell can
crush it. The whole universe does not afford an object of deeper in-
terest. It is an "arrow in the hand of a mighty man;" a most power-
1 Jer. xxiii. 12, 13. Judg. ii. 2, 3. 2 Gen. xii. 10, 20; xvi. 1-6; xx. 2-14.
3 Ib. xxvii. 4 Num. xxii. 22-32. 5 Rev. ii. 24; 2 Cor. ii. 11 ; xi. 14.
6 Rom. iii. 8; vi. 1. Jude, 4. 7 Heb. xii. 13. Chap. iv. 26.
*Bp. Hall.
|All commentators by their different versions admit the signicance of the original term.
Imbue--Schultens. Geier-'Give it the first dip, dye, seasoning.' Initia-Begin the first
instruction--Lay the groundwork--the first stone. Instrue--This is substantially the
marg. catechize--like Abraham's servants-instructed (catechized, marg.) alike in the art
of war and in the fear of God. Gen. xiv. 14; xviii. 19. The word elsewhere conveys the
idea of dedication to the service of God. (Comp. Deut. xx. 5; 1 Kings, viii. 63; 2 Chron.
vii. 5; title to Ps. xxx.) In this view a judicious expositor illustrates it--'As a house.
altar, or temple, newly built, and not yet profound, is fitted by certain rites and sacrifices
for its future use; so a child, as a newly-formed edifice, is fitted by a certain course for the
service and the church, and his heart is made meet as an habitation of God. and the temple
of the Holy Ghost.'-GEIER.
402 EXPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.
ful instrument of good or evil, according to the direction that is given
to it. (Ps. cxxvii. 4.)
Everything hangs on his training. Two ways lie before him-
the way in which he would go, headlong to ruin; and the way in which
he should go, the pathway to heaven. The rule for training implies
obliquity. A young and healthy tree shoots straight upwards and
instead of putting forth crooked and deformed branches, gives promise
of a fine and fruitful maturity.
But all training, save on the principles of the Bible, must be in-
jurious. To expand, without soundly enlightening, the mind, is but to
increase its power for evil. Far better to consign it to total ignorance,
inasmuch as the uninstructed savage is less responsible, less dangerous,
than the well-furnished infidel.
Yet the religious training must not be the border of the garment,
which might easily be cut off. It must be the pervading substance
throughout. Begin, as Hannah did, with the dedication of the child to
God. (1 Sam. i. 28.) This done-train him as God's child, entrusted to
your care. Ask guidance from day to day--"How shall we order the
child, and how shall we do unto him?" (Judg. xiii. 12.) Train him, as
a baptized child, in the principles of his baptismal engagements. Pray
for him. Teach him to pray. Instruct him" from a child in the Holy
Scriptures," as the sole rule of faith, end directory of conduct.
Indeed, unless you give a child principles, you leave him utterly
helpless. And yet too often parents have no established principles of
education themselves. The children are theirs. Something therefore
must be done for their training for future life. But ignorant as they
are of their moral state, and of their besetting evils, they are utterly
unable to apply any effectual discipline. The child therefore becomes
the victim of his parent's ignorance. His education in all its important
departments is neglected. The impulse of caprice gives the only direc-
tion, and in this atmosphere of confusion parental authority soon fails
to controul the far mightier influence of passion.
Certainly, admitting the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, no-
thing can be more ruinous than to thrust them out of their place, as
the sum and substance of educational principles. Never was Scriptural
training more momentous. From a defect here many young persons
are tossed to and fro in every vacillation of error; and the anxious
attempt to set them right we find to be ' building where there is
foundation, or rather, where there is not so much as ground to build
upon.'| In fact, the mind, abhorring a vacuum, must have some notions.
And the alternative is not between sound principles and none; but
between wholesome with and those crude or poisonous errors, which
* 2 Tim. ill. 15. Compo the wise man's own training, chap. iv. 3, 4.
| SOUTH'S Sermon on the text, vol. i.
CHAP. XXII. 6. 403
the subtle enemy is ever ready to inject, and the corrupt heart equally
prepared to receive. Nor let the formation of sound practical habits
diligence, industry, and self-government, be forgotten. Let the child
be trained, like the soldier under arms, to endurance, order, and sub-
jection.
But we must not forget the distinct track of the educational training
--the way in which the child should, not that in which he would, go.
Heaven and hell are not more opposite than these two ways. Indeed
they are identified with the narrow and broad way, in one of which
every child of Adam is walking. The child's will revolting from God
is the certain way to ruin. The way back to God, marked out in the
Bible, is consecrated by his blessing, and is the sure way to heaven.
Wisely does Solomon direct us to begin at the mouth or entrance of his
way,*--at the first opening intelligence. The more early the training,
the more easy the work, and the more encouraging the results. Our
character largely takes the form of that mould into which our early
years were cast. Much in after-life, both good and evil, may be traced
back to the seed sown in the days of infancy. It is a matter of expe-
rience, that what is early learnt, is most tenaciously retained. It stands the
friction of time with the least injury. Far better, instead of waiting for;
the maturity of reason, to work upon the pliability of childhood.| The
gardener begins to graft in the first rising of the sap. If the crooked
shoots of self-will and disobedience are not cut off, their rapid growth and
rapidly growing strength will greatly increase the future difficulty of
bending them. Present neglect occasions after risk and perplexity.
We may begin our work too late, but we can scarcely begin it too soon.1
If the child be too young to teach to read, he cannot be too young to
teach to obey. Never let the watchfulness to check the buddings of
evil, and to cherish the first tenderness of right feeling, be relaxed.
The ceaseless activity of the great enemy teaches the value of early
training. Be beforehand with him. Pre-occupy the ground with good
seed, as the most effectual exclusion of his evil tares. (Matt. xiii. 25-28.)
Be at the mouth of the way with wholesome food, ere he has the oppor-
1 Eccles. xi. 6. Isa. xxviii. 9, 10. Lam. iii. 27.
* Heb. See Schult-ens and the general voice of critics. i
| Mr. Locke does not hesitate to affirm, 'that of all the men we meet with, nine parts
out of ten are what they are, good or bad, useful or. not, according to their education.
Thoughts concerning Education. The heathen moralists seem well to have understood
the subject. Horace, after alluding to the early discipline of the colt and the hound,
applies it--
----Nunc adbibe puro I
Pectore verba, puer; nunc te melioribus offer.
Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem ,
Testa diu.--Epist. lib. i. ii. 67-70.
------Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est.'-VIRG. Georg. ii. 272.
Udum et molle lutum es; nunc, nunc, properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota.'--PERSIUS, Sat. iii. 23, 24.
404 EXPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.
tunity of pouring in his "bread of deceit;" ere nature is hardened by
the habits of sin, or brutalized by familiarity with vice.
But this training must be practical. The mere talk to a child about
religion, without bringing it to bear upon his loose habits, and self-
willed tempers, is utterly ineffective. None of us liveth to himself
alone. We are all spreading around us an influence, whether for good
or for evil. Here therefore in our families lies the responsibility of
Christian consistency. If the child hears of godliness, and sees but
wickedness, this is bringing him bread with one hand, and poison with
the other; 'beckoning him with the hand to heaven, and at the same
time taking him by the hand, and leading him in the way to destruc-