It will be my endeavour in the three lectures which I have still
to deliver to justify the attention which I have claimed on behalf
of proverbs from you, not merely by appealing to the authority of
others, who at different times have prized and made much of them,
but by bringing out and setting before you, so far as I have the
skill to do it, some of the merits and excellencies by which they
are mainly distinguished. Their wit, their wisdom, their poetry, the
delicacy, the fairness, the manliness which characterize so many of
them, their morality, their theology, will all by turns come under
our consideration. Yet shall I beware of presenting them to you as
though they embodied these nobler qualities only. I shall not keep out
of sight that there are proverbs, coarse, selfish, unjust, cowardly,
profane; “maxims” wholly undeserving of the honour implied by that
name.[89] Still as my pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather in the
wheat than in the tares, I shall, while I do not conceal this, prefer
to dwell in the main on the nobler features which they present.
[Sidenote: Poetic imagery.]
And first, in regard of the poetry of proverbs—whatever is _from_ the
people, or truly _for_ the people, whatever either springs from their
bosom, or has been cordially accepted by them, still more whatever
unites both these conditions, will have poetry, imagination, in it.
For little as the people’s craving after wholesome nutriment of the
imaginative faculty, and after an entrance into a fairer and more
harmonious world than that sordid and confused one with which often
they are surrounded, is duly met and satisfied, still they yearn after
all this with an honest hearty yearning, which must put to shame
the palled indifference, the only affected enthusiasm of too many,
whose opportunities of cultivating this glorious faculty have been so
immeasurably greater than theirs. This being so, and proverbs being, as
we have seen, the sayings that have found favour with the people, their
peculiar inheritance, we may be quite sure that there will be poetry,
imagination, passion, in them. So much we might affirm beforehand; our
closer examination of them will confirm the confidence which we have
been bold to entertain.
Thus we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery,
striking comparisons; and such they do. Let serve as an example our
own: _Gray hairs are death’s blossoms_;[90] or the Italian: _Time
is an inaudible file_;[91] or the Greek: _Man a bubble_;[92] which
Jeremy Taylor has expanded into such glorious poetry in the opening
of the _Holy Dying_; or that Turkish: _Death is a black camel which
kneels at every man’s gate_; to take up, that is, the burden of a
coffin there; or this Arabic one, on the never satisfied eye of desire:
_Nothing but a handful of dust will fill the eye of man_; or another
from the same quarter, worthy of Mecca’s prophet himself, and of the
earnestness with which he realized Gehenna, whatever else he may have
come short in: _There are no fans in hell_; or this other, also from
the East: _Hold all skirts of thy mantle extended, when heaven is
raining gold_; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises of
thy spiritual life; or this Indian, to the effect that good should be
returned for evil: _The sandal tree perfumes the axe that fells it_;
or this one, current in the Middle Ages: _Whose life lightens, his
words thunder_;[93] or once more, this Chinese: _Towers are measured by
their shadows, and great men by their calumniators_; however this last
may have somewhat of an artificial air as tried by our standard of the
proverb.
There may be poetry in a play upon words; and such we shall hardly
fail to acknowledge in that beautiful Spanish proverb: _La verdad es
siempre verde_, which I must leave in its original form; for were I to
translate it, _The truth is always green_, its charm and chief beauty
would be looked for in vain. It finds its pendant and complement in
another, which I must also despair of adequately rendering: _Gloria
vana florece, y no grana_; which would express this truth, namely, that
vain glory can shoot up into stalk and ear, but can never attain to the
full grain in the ear. Nor can we, I think, refuse the title of poetry
to this Eastern proverb, in which the wish that a woman may triumph
over her enemies, clothes itself thus: _May her enemies stumble over
her hair_;—may she flourish so, may her hair, the outward sign of this
prosperity, grow so rich and long, may it so sweep the ground, that her
detractors and persecutors may be entangled by it and fall.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Witty proverbs.]
And then, how exquisitely witty many proverbs are. Thus, not to speak
of one familiar to us all, which is perhaps the queen of all proverbs:
_The road to hell is paved with good intentions_;[94] take this Scotch
one: _A man may love his house well, without riding on the ridge_; it
is enough for a wise man to know what is precious to himself, without
making himself ridiculous by evermore proclaiming it to the world;
or this of our own: _When the devil is dead, he never wants a chief
mourner_; in other words, there is no abuse so enormous, no evil so
flagrant, but that the interests or passions of some will be so bound
up in its continuance that they will lament its extinction; or this
Italian: _When rogues go in procession, the devil holds the cross_;[95]
when evil men have it thus far their own way, then worst is best,
and in the inverted hierarchy which is then set up, the foremost in
badness is foremost also in such honour as is going. Or consider how
happily the selfishness and bye-ends which too often preside at men’s
very prayers are noted in this Portuguese: _Cobblers go to mass, and
pray that cows may die_;[96] that is, that so leather may be cheap.
Or, take another, a German one, noting with slightest exaggeration a
measure of charity which is only too common: _He will swallow an egg,
and give away the shells in alms_; or this from the Talmud, of which I
will leave the interpretation to yourselves: _All kinds of wood burn
silently, except thorns, which crackle and call out, We too are wood_.
The wit of proverbs spares few or none. They are, as may be supposed,
especially intolerant of fools. _We_ say: _Fools grow without
watering_; no need therefore of adulation or flattery, to quicken them
to a ranker growth; for indeed _The more you stroke the cat’s tail, the
more he raises his back_;[97] and the Russians: _Fools are not planted
or sowed; they grow of themselves_; while the Spaniards: _If folly were
a pain, there would be crying in every house_;[98] having further an
exquisitely witty one on learned folly as the most intolerable of all
follies: _A fool, unless he know Latin, is never a great fool_.[99] And
here is excellently unfolded to us the secret of the fool’s confidence:
_Who knows nothing, doubts nothing_.[100]
[Sidenote: Bohemian proverb.]
The shafts of their pointed satire are directed with an admirable
impartiality against men of every degree, so that none of us will
be found to have wholly escaped. To pass over those, and they are
exceedingly numerous, which are aimed at members of the monastic
orders,[101] I must fain hope that this Bohemian one, pointing at
the clergy, is not true; for it certainly argues no very forgiving
temper on our parts in cases where we have been, or fancy ourselves to
have been, wronged. It is as follows: _If you have offended a clerk,
kill him; else you never will have peace with him_.[102] And another
proverb, worthy to take its place among the best even of the Spanish,
charges the clergy with being the authors of the chiefest spiritual
mischiefs which have risen up in the Church: _By the vicar’s skirts the
devil climbs up into the belfry_.[103] Nor do physicians appear in the
middle ages to have been in very high reputation for piety; for a Latin
medieval proverb boldly proclaims: _Where there are three physicians,
there are two atheists_.[104] And as for lawyers, this of the same
period, _Legista, nequista_,[105] expresses itself not with such
brevity only, but with such downright plainness of speech, that I shall
excuse myself from attempting to render it into English. Nor do other
sorts and conditions of men escape. “The miller tolling with his golden
thumb,” has been often the object of malicious insinuations; and of him
the Germans have a proverb: _What is bolder than a miller’s neckcloth,
which takes a thief by the throat every morning?_[106] Evenhanded
justice might perhaps require that I should find caps for other heads;
and it is not that such are wanting, nor yet out of fear lest any
should be offended, but only because I must needs hasten onward, that
I leave this part of my subject without further development.
[Sidenote: Proverbs about pride.]
What a fine knowledge of the human heart will they often display. I
know not whether this Persian saying on the subtleties of pride is a
proverb in the very strictest sense of the word, but it is forcibly
uttered: _Thou shalt sooner detect an ant moving in the dark night on
the black earth, than all the motions of pride in thine heart_. And on
the wide reach of this sin the Italians say: _If pride were as art, how
many graduates we should have_;[107] and how excellent and searching
is this word of theirs on the infinitely various shapes which this
protean sin will assume: _There are who despise pride with a greater
pride_,[108] one which might almost seem to have been founded on the
story of Diogenes, who, treading under his feet a rich carpet of
Plato’s, exclaimed, “Thus I trample on the ostentation of Plato;” ‘With
an ostentation of thine own,’ was the other’s excellent retort;—even
as on another occasion he observed, with admirable wit, that he saw the
pride of the Cynic peeping through the rents of his mantle: for indeed
pride can array itself quite as easily in rags as in purple; can affect
squalors as earnestly as splendours; the lowest place and the last is
of itself no security at all for humility; and out of a sense of this
_we_ very well have said: _As proud go behind as before_.
Sometimes in their subtle observation of life, they arrive at
conclusions which we would very willingly question or reject, but to
which it is impossible to refuse a certain amount of assent. Thus it
is with the very striking German proverb: _One foe is too many; and an
hundred friends too few_.[109] There speaks out in this a sense of how
much more _active_ a principle in this world will hate be sometimes
than love. The hundred friends will _wish_ you well; but the one foe
will _do_ you ill. Their benevolence will be ordinarily passive; his
malevolence will be constantly active; it will be _animosity_, or
spiritedness in evil. The proverb will have its use, if we are stirred
up by it to prove its assertion false, to show that, in very many cases
at least, there is no such blot as it would set on the scutcheon of
true friendship. In the same rank of unwelcome proverbs I must range
this Persian one: _Of four things every man has more than he knows: of
sins, of debts, of years, and of foes_; and this Spanish: _One father
can support ten children; ten children cannot support one father_;
which, in so far as it rests upon a certain ground of truth, suggests a
painful reflection in regard of the less strength which there must be
in the filial than in the paternal affection, since to the one those
acts of self-sacrificing love are easy, which to the other are hard,
and often impossible. But yet, seeing that it is the order of God’s
providence in the world that fathers should in all cases support
children, while it is the exception when children are called to support
parents, one can only admire that wisdom which has made the instincts
of natural affection to run rather in the descending than in the
ascending line; a wisdom to which this proverb, though with a certain
exaggeration of the facts, bears witness.
[Sidenote: French proverb.]
How exquisitely delicate is the touch of this French proverb: _It is
easy to go afoot, when one leads one’s horse by the bridle_.[110] How
fine and subtle an insight into the inner workings of the human heart
is here; how many cheap humilities are here set at their true worth. It
_is_ easy to stoop from state, when that state may be resumed at will;
easy for one to part with luxuries and indulgences, which he only parts
with exactly so long as it may please himself. No reason indeed is to
be found in this comparative easiness for the not ‘going afoot;’ on the
contrary, it may be to him a most profitable exercise; but every reason
for not esteeming the doing so too highly, nor setting it on a level
with the trudging upon foot of him, who has no horse to fall back on at
whatever moment he may please.
There is, and always must be, some rough work to be done in the world;
work which, though rough, is not therefore in the least ignoble; and
the schemes, so daintily conceived, of a luxurious society, which
repose on a tacit assumption that nobody shall have to do this work,
are touched with a fine irony in this Arabic proverb: _If I am master,
and thou art master, who shall drive the asses?_[111]
Again, how clever is the satire of the following Haytian proverb,
which, however, I must introduce with a little preliminary explanation.
It was one current among the slave population of St. Domingo, and with
it they ridiculed the ambition and pretension of the mulatto race
immediately above them. These, in imitation of the French planters,
must have their duels too—duels, however, which had nothing earnest or
serious about them, invariably ending in a reconciliation and a feast,
the kids which furnished the latter being in fact the only sufferers,
their blood that which alone was shed. All this the proverb uttered:
_Mulattoes fight, kids die_.[112]
[Sidenote: Fuller’s use of proverbs.]
And proverbs, witty in themselves, often become wittier still in their
application, like gems that acquire new brilliancy from their setting,
or from some novel light in which they are held. No writer that I know
of has an happier skill in thus adding wit to the witty than Fuller,
the Church historian. Let me confirm this assertion by one or two
examples drawn from his writings. He is describing the indignation,
the outcries, the remonstrances, which the thousandfold extortions, the
intolerable exactions of the Papal See gave birth to in England during
the reigns of such subservient kings as our Third Henry; yet he will
not have his readers to suppose that the Popes fared a whit the worse
for all this outcry which was raised against them; not so, for _The
fox thrives best when he is most cursed_;[113] the very loudness of
the clamour was itself rather an evidence how well they were faring.
Or again, he is telling of that Duke of Buckingham, well known to us
through Shakespeare’s _Richard the Third_, who, having helped the
tyrant to a throne, afterwards took mortal displeasure against him;
this displeasure he sought to hide, till a season arrived for showing
it with effect, in the deep of his heart, but in vain; for, as Fuller
observes, _It is hard to halt before a cripple_; the arch-hypocrite
Richard, he to whom dissembling was as a second nature, saw through
and detected at once the shallow Buckingham’s clumsier deceit. And
the _Church History_ abounds with similar happy applications. Fuller,
indeed, possesses so much of the wit out of which proverbs spring,
that it is not seldom difficult to tell whether he is adducing a
proverb, or uttering some proverb-like saying of his own. Thus, I
cannot remember ever to have met any of the following, which yet sound
like proverbs—the first on solitude as preferable to ill fellowship:
_Better ride alone than have a thief’s company_;[114] the second
against certain who disparaged one whose excellencies they would have
found it very difficult to imitate: _They who complain that Grantham
steeple stands awry, will not set a straighter by it_,[115] and in this
he warns against despising in any the tokens of honourable toil: _Mock
not a cobbler for his black thumbs_.[116]
But the glory of proverbs, that, perhaps, which strikes us most often
and most forcibly in regard of them, is their shrewd common sense,
the sound wisdom for the management of our own lives, and of our
intercourse with our fellows, which so many of them contain. In truth,
there is no region of practical life which they do not occupy, for
which they do not supply some wise hints and counsels and warnings.
There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have
committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson,
might have saved us from it. “Adages,” indeed, according to the more
probable etymology of that word, they are, _apt for action_ and
use.[117]
[Sidenote: Wisdom of silence.]
Thus, how many of these popular sayings and what good ones there are on
the wisdom of governing the tongue,—I speak not now of those urging
the _duty_, though such are by no means wanting,—but the wisdom,
prudence, and profit of knowing how to keep silence as well as how to
speak. The Persian, perhaps, is familiar to many: _Speech is silvern,
silence is golden_; with which we may compare the Italian: _Who speaks,
sows; who keeps silence, reaps_;[118] and on the _safety_ that is in
silence, I know none happier than another from the same quarter, and
one most truly characteristic of Italian caution: _Silence was never
written down_;[119] while, on the other hand, we are excellently warned
of the irrevocableness of the word which has once gone from us in this
Eastern proverb: _Of thine unspoken word thou art master; thy spoken
word is master of thee_; even as the same is set out elsewhere by many
striking comparisons; it is the arrow from the bow, the stone from the
sling; and, once launched, can as little be recalled as these.[120]
Our own, _He who says what he likes, shall hear what he does not
like_, gives a further motive for self-government in speech; while
this Spanish is in an higher strain: _The evil which issues from thy
mouth falls into thy bosom_.[121] Nor is it enough to abstain ourselves
from all such words; we must not make ourselves partakers in those of
others; which it is only too easy to do; for, as the Chinese have
said very well: _He who laughs at an impertinence, makes himself its
accomplice_.
And then, in proverbs not a few what profitable warnings have we
against the fruits of evil companionship, as in that homely one of our
own: _He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas_;[122] or,
again, in the old Hebrew one: _Two dry sticks will set on fire one
green_; or, in another from the East, which has to do with the same
theme, and plainly shows whither such companionship will lead: _He that
takes the raven for a guide, shall light upon carrion_.
[Sidenote: Good sense in proverbs.]
What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations,
against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and
generally a demanding of more from life than life can yield. _We_ note
very well the folly of one addicted to this, saying: _He expects better
bread than can be made of wheat_; and the Portuguese: _He that will
have an horse without fault, let him go afoot_; and the French: _Where
the goat is tied, there she must browse_.[123] Again, what a good word
of caution in respect of the wisdom of considering oftentimes a step
which, being once taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following
Russian proverb: _Measure thy cloth ten times; thou canst cut it but
once_. And in this Spanish the final issues of procrastination are
well set forth: _By the street of “By-and-bye” one arrives at the
house of “Never.”_[124] In how pleasant a way discretion in avoiding
all appearance of evil is urged in the following Chinese: _In a field
of melons tie not thy shoe; under a plum-tree adjust not thy cap_.
And this Danish warns us well against relying too much on other men’s
silence, since there is no rarer gift than the capacity of keeping a
secret: _Tell nothing to thy friend which thine enemy may not know_.
Here is a word which we owe to Italy, and which, laid to heart, might
keep men out of law-suits, or, being in them, from refusing to accept
tolerable terms of accommodation: _The robes of lawyers are lined with
the obstinacy of suitors_.[125] Other words of wisdom and warning, for
so I must esteem them, are these; this, on the danger of being overset
by prosperity: _Everything may be borne, except good fortune_;[126]
with which may be compared our own: _Bear wealth, poverty will bear
itself_; and another Italian which says: _In prosperity no altars
smoke_.[127] This is on the disgrace which will sooner or later follow
upon dressing ourselves out in intellectual finery that does not belong
to us: _Who arrays himself in other men’s garments, is stripped in the
middle of the street_;[128] he is detected and laid bare when and where
detection is most shameful.
Of the same miscellaneous character, and derived from quarters the
most diverse, but all of them of an excellent sense or shrewdness, are
the following. This is from Italy: _Who sees not the bottom, let him
not pass the water_.[129] This is current among the free blacks of
Hayti: _Before fording the river, do not curse Mrs. Alligator_;[130]
provoke not wantonly those in whose power you presently may be. This is
Spanish: _Call me not “olive,” till you see me gathered_;[131] being
nearly parallel to our own: _Praise a fair day at night_; and this
French: _Take the first advice of a woman, and not the second_;[132]
a proverb of much wisdom; for in processes of reasoning, out of which
the second counsels would spring, women may and will be, inferior to
us; but in intuitions, in moral intuitions above all, they surpass us
far; they have what Montaigne ascribes to them in a remarkable word,
“l’esprit _primesautier_,” the leopard’s spring, which takes its prey,
if it be to take it at all, at the first bound.
And I cannot but think that for as many as are seeking diligently to
improve their time and opportunities of knowledge, with at the same
time little of either which they can call their own, a very useful
hint and warning against an error which lies very near, is contained
in the little Latin proverb: _Compendia, dispendia_. Nor indeed for
them only, but for all, and in numberless respects it often proves true
that a short cut may be a very long way home; yet the proverb can never
be applied better than to those little catechisms of science, those
skeleton outlines of history, those epitomes of all useful information,
those thousand delusive short cuts to the attainment of that knowledge,
which can indeed only be acquired by them that are content to travel on
the king’s highway, on the old, and as I must still call it, the royal
road of patience, perseverance, and toil. Surely these _compendia_, so
meagre and so hungry, with little food for the intellect, with less for
the affections, we may style with fullest right _dispendia_, wasteful
as they generally prove of whatever time and labour and money is
bestowed upon them; and every wise man will set his seal to this word,
as wisely as it is grandly spoken: “All spacious minds, attended with
the felicities of means and leisure, will fly abridgements as bane.”
[Sidenote: Proverbs about books.]
And being on the subject of books and the choice of books, let me put
before you a proverb, and in this reading age a very serious one; it
comes to us from Italy, and it says: _There is no worse robber than a
bad book_.[133] Indeed, none worse, nor so bad; other robbers may spoil
us of our money; but this robber of our “goods”—of our time at any
rate, even assuming the book to be only negatively bad; but of how
much more, of our principles, our faith, our purity of heart, supposing
its badness to be positive, and not negative only. And one more on
books may fitly find place here: _Dead men open living men’s eyes_; at
least I take it to be such; and to contain implicitly the praise of
history, and an announcement of the instruction which it will yield
us.[134]
Here are one or two prudent words on education. _A child may have
too much of its mother’s blessing_; yes, for that blessing may be no
blessing, but rather a curse, if it take the shape of foolish and fond
indulgence; and in the same strain is this German: _Better the child
weep than the father_.[135] And this, like many others, is found in so
many tongues, that it cannot be ascribed to one rather than another:
_More springs in the garden than the gardener ever sowed_.[136] It is a
proverb for many, but most of all for parents and teachers, that they
lap not themselves in a false dream of security, as though nothing was
at work or growing in the minds of the young in their guardianship, but
what they themselves had sown there, as though there was not another
who might very well have sown his tares beside and among any good seed
of their sowing. At the same time the proverb has also its happier
side. There may be, there often are, better things also in this garden
than ever the earthly gardener set there, seeds of the more immediate
sowing of God. In either of its aspects this proverb is one deserving
to be laid to heart.
[Sidenote: Gold’s worth is gold.]
Proverbs will sometimes outrun and implicitly anticipate conclusions,
which are only after long struggles and efforts arrived at as the
formal and undoubted conviction of all thoughtful men. After how long
a conflict has that been established as a maxim in political economy,
which the brief Italian proverb long ago announced: _Gold’s worth is
gold_.[137] What millions upon millions of national wealth have been as
much lost as if they had been thrown into the sea, from the inability
of those who have had the destinies of nations in their hands to grasp
this simple proposition, that everything which could purchase money,
or which money would fain purchase, was as really wealth as the money
itself. What forcing of national industries into unnatural channels
has resulted from this, what mischievous restrictions in the buying
and selling of one people with another. Nay, can the truth which this
proverb affirms be said even now to be accepted without gainsaying—so
long as the talk about the balance of trade being in favour of or
against a nation, as the fear of draining a country of its gold, still
survive?
Here is a proverb of many tongues: _One sword keeps another in its
scabbard_;[138]—surely a far wiser and far manlier word than the
puling yet mischievous babble of our shallow Peace Societies, which,
while they fancy that they embody, and they only embody, the true
spirit of Christianity, proclaim themselves in fact ignorant of all
which it teaches; for they dream of having peace the fruit, while at
the same time the root of bitterness out of which have grown all the
wars and fightings that have ever been in the world, namely the lusts
which stir in men’s members, remain strong and vigorous as ever. But
no; it is not they that are the peacemakers: in the face of an evil
world, and of a world determined to continue in its evil, _He who bears
the sword_, and though he fain would not, yet knows how, if need be, to
wield it, _he bears peace_.[139]
One of the most remarkable features of a good proverb is the singular
variety of applications which it will admit, which indeed it challenges
and invites. Not lying on the surface of things, but going deep down to
their heart, it will be found capable of being applied again and again,
under circumstances the most different; like the gift of which Solomon
spake, “whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth;” or like a diamond cut
and polished upon many sides, which reflects and refracts the light
upon every one. There can be no greater mistake than the attempt to
tie it down and restrict it to a single application, when indeed the
very character of it is that it is ever finding or making new ones for
itself.
[Sidenote: Scriptural proverb.]
It is nothing strange that with words of Eternal Wisdom this should be
so, and in respect of them my assertion cannot need a proof. I will,
notwithstanding, adduce as a first confirmation of it a scriptural
proverb, one which fell from the Lord’s lips in his last prophecies
about Jerusalem: _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles
be gathered together_; (Matt. xxiv. 28;) and which probably He had
taken up from Job. (xxxix. 30.) Who would venture to say that he had
exhausted the meaning of this wonderful saying? For is it not properly
inexhaustible? All history is a comment on these words. Wherever
there is a Church or a people abandoned by the spirit of life, and
so a carcase, tainting the atmosphere of God’s moral world, around
it assemble the ministers and messengers of Divine justice, “the
eagles,” (or vultures more strictly, for the true eagle does not feed
on aught but what itself has slain,) the scavengers of God’s moral
world; scenting out as by a mysterious instinct the prey from afar,
and charged to remove presently the offence out of the way. This
proverb, for the saying has passed upon the lips of men, and thus has
become such, is being fulfilled evermore. The wicked Canaanites were
the carcase, when the children of Israel entered into their land, the
commissioned eagles that should remove them out of sight. At a later
day the Jews were themselves the carcase, and the Romans the eagles;
and when in the progress of decay, the Roman empire had quite lost
the spirit of life, and those virtues of the family and the nation
which had deservedly made it great, the northern tribes, the eagles
now, came down upon it, to tear it limb from limb, and make room for
a new creation that should grow up in its stead. Again, the Persian
empire was the carcase; Alexander and his Macedonian hosts, the eagles
that by unerring instinct gathered round it to complete its doom. The
Greek Church in the seventh century was too nearly a carcase to escape
the destiny of such, and the armies of Islam scented their prey, and
divided it among them. In modern times Poland was, I fear, such a
carcase; and this one may affirm without in the least extenuating their
guilt who partitioned it; for it might have been just for it to suffer,
what yet it was most unrighteous for others to inflict. Nay, where do
you not find an illustration of this proverb, from such instances on
the largest scale as these, down to that of the silly and profligate
heir, surrounded by sharpers and black-legs, and preyed on by these?
Everywhere it is true that _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the
eagles be gathered together_.
[Sidenote: Extremes meet.]
[Sidenote: Too far East is West.]
Or, again, consider such a proverb as the short but well-known one:
_Extremes meet_. Short as it is, it is yet a motto on which whole
volumes might be written, which is finding its illustration every
day,—in small and in great,—in things trivial and in things most
important,—in the histories of single men, and in those of nations
and of Churches. Consider some of its every-day fulfilments,—old age
ending in second childhood,—cold performing the effects of heat, and
scorching as heat would have done,—the extremities alike of joy and
of grief finding utterance in tears,—that which is above all value
declared to have no value at all, to be “invaluable,”—the second
singular “thou” instead of the plural “you,” employed in so many
languages to inferiors and to God, never to equals; just as servants
and children are alike called by the Christian name, but not those who
stand in the midway of intimacy between them. Or to take some further
illustrations from the moral world, of extremes meeting; observe how
often those who begin their lives as spendthrifts end them as misers;
how often the flatterer and the calumniator meet in the same person:
out of a sense of which the Italians say well: _Who paints me before,
blackens me behind_;[140] observe how those who yesterday would have
sacrificed to Paul as a god, will to-day stone him as a malefactor;
(Acts xiv. 18, 19; cf. xxviii. 4-6;) even as Roman emperors would one
day have blasphemous honours paid to them by the populace, and the next
their bodies would be dragged by a hook through the streets of the
city, to be flung into the common sewer. Or note again in what close
alliance hardness and softness, cruelty and self-indulgence (“lust hard
by hate”), are continually found; or in law, how the _summum jus_,
where unredressed by equity, becomes the _summa injuria_, as in the
case of Shylock’s pound of flesh, which was indeed no more than was in
the bond. Or observe on a greater scale, as lately in France, how a
wild and lawless democracy may be transformed by the base trick of a
conjuror into an atrocious military tyranny.[141] Or read thoughtfully
the history of the Church and of the sects, and you will not fail
to note what things apparently the most remote are yet in the most
fearful proximity with one another: how often, for example, a false
asceticism has issued in frantic outbreaks of fleshly lusts, and those
who avowed themselves at one time ambitious to live lives above men,
have ended in living lives below beasts. Again, take note of England at
the Restoration exchanging all in a moment the sour strictness of the
Puritans for a licence and debauchery unknown to it before. Or, once
more, consider the exactly similar position in respect of Scripture,
taken up by the Romanists on the one side, the Quakers and Familists
on the other. Seeming, and in much being, so remote from one another,
they yet have this fundamental in common, that Scripture, insufficient
in itself, needs a supplement from without, those finding it in a Pope,
and these in the “inward light.”[142] With these examples before you,
not to speak of the many others which might be adduced,[143] you will
own, I think, that this proverb, _Extremes meet_, or its parallel, _Too
far East is West_, reaches very far into the heart of things; and with
this for the present I must conclude.