The morality of proverbs is a subject which I have not been able to
leave wholly untouched until now, for of necessity it has offered
itself to us continually, in one shape or another; yet hitherto I
have not regularly dealt with or considered it. To it I propose to
devote the present lecture. But how, it may be asked at the outset,
can any general verdict be pronounced about them? In a family like
theirs, spread so widely over the face of the earth, must there not
be found worthy members and unworthy, proverbs noble and base, holy
and profane, heavenly and earthly;—yea, heavenly, earthly, and
devilish? What common judgment of praise or censure can be pronounced
upon all of these? Evidently none. The only question, therefore, for
our consideration must be, whether there exists any such large and
unquestionable preponderance either of the better sort or of the worse,
as shall give us a right to pronounce a judgment on the whole in their
favour or against them, to affirm of them that their preponderating
influence and weight is thrown into the balance of the good or of the
evil.
And here I am persuaded that no one can have devoted any serious
attention to this aspect of the subject, but will own, (and seeing
how greatly popular morals are affected by popular proverbs, will own
with thankfulness,) that, if not without serious exceptions, yet still
in the main they range themselves under the banners of the right and
of the truth; he will allow that of so many as move in an ethical
sphere at all, very far more are children of light and the day than
of darkness and night. Indeed, the comparative paucity of unworthy
proverbs is a very noticeable fact, and one to the causes of which I
shall have presently to recur.
[Sidenote: Coarse proverbs.]
At the same time, when I affirm this, I find it necessary to make
certain explanations, to draw certain distinctions. In the first place,
I would not, by what I have said, in the least deny that an ample
number of coarse proverbs are extant: it needs but to turn over a page
or two of Ray’s _Collection of English Proverbs_, or of Howell’s, or
indeed of any collection in any tongue, which has not been weeded
carefully, to convince oneself of the fact;—nor yet would I deny, that
of these many may, more or less, live upon the lips of men. Having
their birth, for the most part, in a period of a nation’s literature
and life, when men are much more plain-spoken, and have far fewer
reticences than is afterwards the case, it is nothing strange that some
of them, employing words forbidden now, but not forbidden then, should
sound coarse and indelicate enough in our ears: while indeed there are
others, whose offence and grossness these considerations, while they
may mitigate, are quite insufficient to excuse. But at the same time,
gross words and images, (I speak not of wanton ones,) bad as they may
be, are altogether different from immoral maxims and rules of life. And
it is these immoral maxims, unrighteous, selfish, or otherwise unworthy
rules, of which I would affirm the number to be, if not absolutely, yet
relatively small.
And then further, in estimating the morality of proverbs, this also
will claim in justice not to be forgotten. In the same manner as coarse
proverbs are not necessarily immoral, so the application which is made
of a proverb by us may very often be hardhearted and selfish, while
yet the proverb itself is very far from so being. This selfishness and
hardness lay not in it of primary intention, but only by our abuse; and
in the cases of several, these two things, the proverb itself, and the
ordinary employment of it, will demand to be kept carefully apart from
one another. For instance: _He has made his bed, and now he must lie on
it_;—_As he has brewed, so he must drink_;—_As he has sown, so must
he reap_;[144]—if these are employed to justify us in refusing to save
others, so far as we may, from the consequences of their own folly, or
imprudence, or even guilt, why then one can only say that they are very
ill employed; and there are few of us with whom it would not have gone
hardly, had all those about us acted in the spirit of these proverbs
so misinterpreted; had they refused to mitigate for us, so far as they
could, the consequences of our errors. But if the words are taken
in their true sense, as homely announcements of that law of divine
retaliations in the world, according to which men shall eat of the
fruit of their own doings, and be filled with their own ways, who shall
gainsay them? What affirm they more than every page of Scripture, every
turn of human life, is affirming too, namely, that the everlasting
order of God’s universe cannot be violated with impunity, that there
is a continual returning upon men of what they have done, and that in
their history we may read their judgment?
[Sidenote: Charity begins at home.]
_Charity begins at home_, is the most obvious and familiar of these
proverbs, selfishly abused. It may be, no doubt it often is, made
the plea for a selfish withholding of assistance from all but a few,
whom men may include in their “at home,” while sometimes the proverb
receives a narrower interpretation still; and self, and self only, is
accounted to be “at home.” And yet, in truth, what were that charity
worth, which did _not_ begin at home, which did _not_ preserve the
divine order and proportion and degree? It is not for nothing that we
have been grouped in families, neighbourhoods, and nations; and he who
will not recognise the divinely appointed nearnesses to himself of some
over others, who thinks to be a cosmopolite without being a patriot,
a philanthropist without owning a distinguishing love for them that
are peculiarly “his own,” who would thus have a circumference without
a centre, deceives his own heart; and affirming all men, to be equally
dear to him, is indeed affirming them to be equally indifferent. Home,
the family, this is as the hearth at which the affections which are
afterwards to go forth and warm in a larger circle, are themselves to
be kept lively and warm; and the charity which did not exercise itself
in outcomings of kindness and love in the narrower, would be little
likely to seek a wider range for itself. Wherever else it may _end_,
and the larger the sphere which it makes for itself the better, it must
yet _begin_ at home.[145]
[Sidenote: Prudential morality.]
There are, again, proverbs which, from another point of view, might
seem of an ignoble cast, and as calculated to lower the tone of
morality among those who received them; proposing as they do secondary,
and therefore unworthy, motives to actions, which ought to be performed
out of the highest. I mean such as this: _Honesty is the best policy_;
wherein honesty is commended, not because it is right, but because it
is most prudent and politic, and has the promise of this present world.
Now doubtless there are proverbs not a few which, like this, move in
the region of what has been by Coleridge so well called “prudential
morality;” and did we accept them as containing the whole circle of
motives to honesty or other right conduct, nothing could be worse, or
more fitted to lower the moral standard of our lives. He who resolves
to be honest because, and only because, it is _the best policy_, will
be little likely long to continue honest at all. But the proverb does
not pretend to usurp the place of an ethical rule; it does not presume
to cast down the higher law which should determine to honesty and
uprightness, that it may put itself in its place; it only declares
that honesty, let alone that it is the right thing, is also, even
for this present world, the wisest. Nor dare we, let me further add,
despise prudential morality, such as is embodied in sayings like this.
The motives which it suggests are helps to a weak and tempted virtue,
may prove great assistances to it in some passing moment of a violent
temptation, however little they can be regarded as able to make men
_for a continuance_ even outwardly upright and just.
And once more, proverbs are not to be accounted selfish, which announce
selfishness; unless they do it, either avowedly recommending it as a
rule and maxim of life, or, if not so, yet with an evident complacency
and satisfaction in the announcement which they make, and in this
more covert and perhaps still more mischievous way, taking part with
the evil which they proclaim. There are a great many proverbs, which
a lover of his race would be very thankful if there had been nothing
in the world to justify or to provoke; for the convictions they
embody, the experiences on which they rest must be regarded as very
far from complimentary to human nature: but seeing they express that
which is, however we might desire it were not, it would be idle to
wish them away, to wish that this evil had not found its utterance.
Nay, it is much better that it should so have done; for thus taking
form and shape, and being brought directly under notice, it may be
better watched against and avoided. Such proverbs, not selfish, but
rather detecting selfishness and laying it bare, are the following;
this Russian, on the only too slight degree in which we are touched
with other men’s troubles: _The burden is light on the shoulders of
another_; with which the French may be compared: _One has always enough
strength to bear the misfortunes of one’s friends_.[146] Such is this
Italian: _Every one draws the water to his own mill_;[147] or as it
appears in its eastern shape, which brings up the desert-bivouack
before one’s eyes: _Every one rakes the embers to his own cake_. Such
this Latin, on the comparative wastefulness wherewith that which is
another’s is too often used: _Men cut broad thongs from other men’s
leather_;[148] with many more of the same character, which it would be
only too easy to bring together.
[Sidenote: Selfish proverbs.]
With all this, I would not of course in the least deny that immoral
proverbs, and only too many of them, exist. For if they are, as we
have recognised them to be, the genuine transcript of what is stirring
in the hearts of men, then, since there is cowardice, untruth,
selfishness, unholiness, profaneness there, how should these be wanting
here? The world is not so consummate an hypocrite as the entire absence
of all immoral proverbs would imply. There will be merely selfish
ones, as our own: _Every one for himself and God for us all_; or as
this Dutch: _Self’s the man_;[149] or more shamelessly cynical still,
as the French: _Better a grape for me, than two figs for thee_;[150]
or again, such as proclaim a doubt and disbelief in the existence of
any high moral integrity anywhere, as _Every man has his price_; or
assume that poor men can scarcely be honest, as _It is hard for an
empty sack to stand straight_; or take it for granted that every man
would cheat every other if he could, as the French: _Count after your
father_;[151] or, if they do not actually “speak good of the covetous,”
yet assume it possible that a blessing can wait on that which a wicked
covetousness has heaped together, as the Spanish: _Blessed is the son,
whose father went to the devil_; or find cloaks and apologies for sin,
as the German: _Once is never_;[152] or such as would imply that the
evil of a sin lay not in its sinfulness, but in the outward disgrace
annexed to it, as the Italian: _A sin concealed is half forgiven_.[153]
Or again there will be proverbs dastardly and base, as the Spanish
maxim of caution, which advises to _Draw the snake from its hole by
another man’s hand_; to put, that is, another, and it may be for your
own profit, to the peril from which you shrink yourself;—or more
dastardly still, “scoundrel maxims,” an old English poet has called
them; as for instance, that one which is acted on only too often: _One
must howl with the wolves_;[154] in other words, when a general cry is
raised against any, it is safest to join it, lest one be supposed to
sympathise with its object; to howl _with_ the wolves, if one would not
be hunted _by_ them. In the whole circle of proverbs I know no baser,
nor more dastardly than this. And yet who will say that he has never
traced in himself the cowardly temptation to obey it? Besides these
there will be, of which I shall spare you any examples, proverbs wanton
and impure, and not merely proverbs thus earthly and sensual, but
devilish; such as some of those Italian on revenge which I quoted in my
third lecture.
[Sidenote: Immoral proverbs rare.]
But for all this these immoral proverbs, rank weeds among the wholesome
corn, are comparatively rare. In the minority with all people, they are
immeasurably in the minority with most. The fact is not a little worthy
of our note. Surely there lies in it a solemn testimony, that however
men may and do in their conduct continually violate the rule of right,
yet these violations are ever felt to be such, are inwardly confessed
not to be the law of man’s life, but the transgressions of the law; and
thus, stricken as with a secret shame, and paying an unconscious homage
to the majesty of goodness, they do not presume to raise themselves
into maxims, nor, for all the frequency with which they may be
repeated, pretend to claim recognition as abiding standards of action.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Alms the salt of riches.]
As the sphere in which the proverb moves is no imaginary world, but
that actual and often very homely world which is round us and about
us; as it does not float in the clouds, but sets its feet firmly on
this common earth of ours from which itself once grew, being occupied
with present needs and every-day cares, it is only natural that the
proverbs having reference to money should be numerous; and in the main
it would be well if the practice of the world rose to the height of
its convictions as expressed in these. Frugality is connected with so
many virtues—at least, its contrary makes so many impossible—that the
numerous proverbial maxims inculcating this, than which none perhaps
are more frequent on the lips of men, must be regarded as belonging
to the better order;[155] especially when taken with the check of
others, which forbid this frugality from degenerating into a sordid
and dishonourable parsimony; such, I mean, as our own: _The groat is
ill saved which shames its master_. In how many the conviction speaks
out that the hastily-gotten will hardly be the honestly-gotten, that
“he who makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent,” as when the
Spaniards say: _He who will be rich in a year, at the half-year they
hang him_;[156] in how many others, the confidence that the ill-won
will also be the ill-spent,[157] that he who shuts up unlawful gain
in his storehouses, is shutting up a fire that will one day destroy
them. Very solemn and weighty in this sense is the German proverb:
_The unrighteous penny corrupts the righteous pound_;[158] and the
Spanish, too, is striking: _That which is another’s always yearns
for its lord_;[159] it yearns, that is, to be gone and get to its
true owner. In how many the conviction is expressed that this mammon,
which more than anything else men are tempted to think God does not
concern Himself about, is yet given and taken away by Him according
to the laws of his righteousness; given sometimes to his enemies and
for their greater punishment, that under its fatal influence they may
grow worse and worse, for _The more the carle riches, he wretches_; but
oftener withdrawn, because no due acknowledgment of Him was made in its
use; as when the German proverb declares: _Charity gives itself rich;
covetousness hoards itself poor_;[160] and the Danish: _Give alms,
that thy children may not ask them_; and the Rabbis, with a yet deeper
significance: _Alms are the salt of riches_; the true antiseptic,
which as such shall prevent them from themselves corrupting, and
from corrupting those that have them; which shall hinder them from
developing a germ of corruption, such as shall in the end involve in
one destruction them and their owners.[161]
At the same time, as it is the very character of proverbs to look at
matters all round, there are others to remind us that even this very
giving itself shall be with forethought and discretion; with selection
of right objects, and in right proportion to each. Teaching this, the
Greeks said, _Sow with the hand, and not with the whole sack_;[162]
for as it fares with the seed corn, which if it shall prosper, must
be providently dispersed with the hand, not prodigally shaken from
the sack’s mouth, so is it with benefits, which shall do good either
to those who impart, or to those who receive them. Thus again, there
is a Danish which says, _So give to-day, that thou shalt be able to
give to-morrow_; and another: _So give to one, that thou shalt have to
give to another_.[163] And as closing this series, as teaching us in
a homely but striking manner, with an image Dantesque in its vigor,
that a man shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth, take this
Italian, _Our last robe_, that is our winding sheet, _is made without
pockets_.[164]
[Sidenote: Manly proverbs.]
Let me further invite you to observe and to admire the prevailing tone
of manliness which pervades the great body of the proverbs of all
nations: let me urge you to take note how very few there are which
would fain persuade you that “luck is all,” or that your fortunes are
in any other hands, under God, than your own. This our own proverb,
_Win purple and wear purple_, proclaims. There are some, but they are
exceptions, to which the gambler, the idler, the so-called “waiter
upon Providence,” can appeal. For the most part, however, they
courageously accept the law of labour, _No pains, no gains_,—_No
sweat, no sweet_,—_No mill, no meal_,[165] as the appointed law and
condition of man’s life. _Where wilt thou go, ox, that thou wilt not
have to plough?_[166] is the Catalan remonstrance addressed to one,
who imagines by any outward change of circumstances to evade the
inevitable task and toil of existence. And this is Turkish: _It is not
with saying Honey, Honey, that sweetness will come into the mouth_;
and to many languages another with its striking image, _Sloth, the
key of poverty_,[167] belongs: while, on the other hand, there are in
almost all tongues such proverbs as the following: _God helps them that
help themselves_;[168] or as it appears with a slight variation in the
Basque: _God is a good worker, but He loves to be helped_. And these
proverbs, let me observe by the way, were not strange, in their import
at least, to the founder of that religion which is usually supposed
to inculcate a blind and indolent fatalism—however some who call
themselves by his name may have forgotten the lesson which they convey.
Certainly they were not strange to Mahomet himself; if the following
excellently-spoken word has been rightly ascribed to him. One evening,
we are told, after a weary march through the desert, he was camping
with his followers, and overheard one of them saying, “I will loose my
camel, and commit it to God;” on which Mahomet took him up: “Friend,
_tie_ thy camel, and commit it to God;”[169] do, that is, whatever is
thine to do, and then leave the issue in higher hands; but till thou
hast done this, till thou hast thus helped thyself, thou hast no right
to look to Heaven to help thee.
[Sidenote: Persian proverb.]
How excellently this unites genuine modesty and manly self-assertion:
_Sit in your own place, and no man can make you rise_; and how good is
this Spanish, on the real dignity which there often is in doing things
for ourselves, rather than in standing by and suffering others to do
them for us: _Who has a mouth, let him not say to another, Blow_.[170]
And as a part of this which I have called the manliness of proverbs,
let me especially note the noble utterances which so many contain,
summoning to a brave encountering of adverse fortune, to perseverance
under disappointment and defeat and a long-continued inclemency of
fate; breathing as they do, a noble confidence that for the brave
and bold the world will not always be adverse. _Where one door shuts
another opens_;[171] this belongs to too many nations to allow of our
ascribing it especially to any one. And this Latin: _The sun of all
days has not yet gone down_,[172] however, in its primary application
intended for those who are at the top of Fortune’s wheel, to warn
them that they be not high-minded, for there is yet time for many a
revolution in that wheel, is equally good for those at the bottom,
and as it contains warning for those, so strength and encouragement
for these; for, as the Italians say: _The world is his who has
patience_.[173] And then, to pass over some of our own, so familiar
that they need not be adduced, how manful a lesson is contained in
this Persian proverb: _A stone that is fit for the wall, is not left
in the way_. It is a saying made for them who appear for a while
to be overlooked, neglected, passed by; who perceive in themselves
capacities, which as yet no one else has recognised or cared to turn to
account. Only _be fit for the wall_; square, polish, prepare thyself
for it; do not limit thyself to the bare acquisition of such knowledge
as is absolutely necessary for thy present position; but rather learn
languages, acquire useful information, stretch thyself out on this side
and on that, cherishing and making much of whatever aptitudes thou
findest in thyself; and it is certain thy turn will come. Thou wilt
not be _left in the way_; sooner or later the builders will be glad of
thee; the wall will need thee to fill up a place in it, quite as much
as thou needest a place to occupy in the wall. For the amount of real
capacity in this world is so small, that places want persons to fill
them quite as really as persons want to fill places; although it must
be allowed, they are not always as much aware of their want.
And this proverb, Italian and Spanish, _If I have lost the ring, yet
the fingers are still here_,[174] is another of these brave utterances
of which I have been speaking. In it is asserted the comparative
indifference of that loss which reaches but to things external to
us, so long us we ourselves remain, and are true to ourselves. _The
fingers_ are far more than _the ring_: if indeed those had gone, then
_the man_ would have been maimed; but another ring may come for that
which has disappeared, or even with none the fingers will be fingers
still. And as at once a contrast and complement to this, take another,
current among the free blacks of Hayti, and expressing well the little
profit which there will be to a man in pieces of mere good luck, which
are no true outgrowths of anything which is in him; the manner in
which, having no root in himself out of which they grew, they will, as
they came to him by hazard, go from him by the same: _The knife which
thou hast found in the highway, thou wilt lose in the highway_.[175]
[Sidenote: Abuse of proverbs.]
But these numerous proverbs, urging self-reliance, bidding us first
to aid ourselves, if we would have Heaven to aid us, must not be
dismissed without a word or two at parting. Prizing them, as we well
may, and the lessons which they contain, at the highest, yet it will
be profitable for us at the same time always to remember that to such
there lies very near such a mischievous perversion as this: “Aid
thyself, and thou wilt need no other aid;” even as they have been
sometimes, no doubt, understood in this sense. As, then, the pendant
and counter-weight to them all, not as unsaying what they have
said, but as fulfilling the other hemisphere in the complete orb of
truth, let me remind you of such also as the following, often quoted
or alluded to by Greek and Latin authors: _The net of the sleeping
(fisherman) takes_;[176]—a proverb the more interesting, that we
have in the words of the Psalmist, (Ps. cxxvii. 2,) when accurately
translated, a beautiful and perfect parallel: “He giveth his beloved”
(not “sleep,” as in our version, but) “in sleep;” God’s gifts gliding
into his bosom, he knowing not how, and as little expecting as having
laboured for them. Of how many of the best gifts of every man’s life
will he not thankfully acknowledge this to have been true; or, if he
refuse to allow it, and will acknowledge no _eudæmonia_, no ‘favourable
providence’ in his prosperities, but will see them all as of work, how
little he deserves, how little likely he is, to retain them to the end.
Let us hold fast, then, this proverb as the most needful complement of
those.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Proverbs for young men.]
I feel that I should be wanting to hearers such as those who are
assembled here, that I should fail in that purpose which has been,
more or less, present to me even in dealing with the lighter portions
of my subject, if I did not earnestly remind you of the many of these
sayings that there are, which, while they have their lesson for all,
yet seem more directly addressed to those standing, as not a few of us
here, at the threshold of the more serious and earnest portion of their
lives. Lecturing to a _Young Men’s Society_, I shall not unfitly press
these upon your notice. Take this Italian one, for instance: _When
you grind your corn, give not the flour to the devil, and the bran
to God_;—in the distribution, that is, of your lives, apportion not
your best years, your strength and your vigour to the service of sin
and of the world, and only the refuse and rejected to your Maker, the
wine to others, and the lees only to Him. Not so; for there is another
ancient proverb,[177] which we have made very well our own, and which
in English runs thus: _It is too late to spare, when all is spent_.
The words have obviously a primary application to the goods of this
present life; it is ill saving here, when nothing or next to nothing
is left to save. But they are applied well by a heathen moralist, (and
the application lies very near,) to those who begin to husband precious
time, and to live for life’s true ends, when life is nearly gone, is
now at its dregs; for, as he well urges, it is not the least only which
remains at the bottom, but the worst.[178] On the other hand, _The
morning hour has gold in its mouth_;[179] and this, true in respect of
each of our days, in which the earlier hours given to toil will yield
larger and more genial returns than the later, is true in a yet higher
sense, of that great life-day, whereof all the lesser days of our life
make up the moments, is true in respect of moral no less than mental
acquisition. The _evening_ hours have often only _silver_ in their
mouths at the best. Nor is this Arabic proverb, as it appears to me,
other than a very solemn one, being far deeper than at first sight it
might seem: _Every day in thy life is a leaf in thy history_; a leaf
which shall once be turned back to again, that it may be seen what was
written there; and that whatever _was_ written may be read out in the
hearing of all.
And among the proverbs having to do with a prudent ordering of our
lives from the very first, this Spanish seems well worthy to be
adduced: _That which the fool does in the end, the wise man does at
the beginning_;[180] the wise with a good grace what the fool with an
ill; the one to much profit what the other to little or to none. A word
worth laying to heart; for, indeed, that purchase of the Sibylline
books by the Roman king, what a significant symbol it is of that which
at one time or another, or, it may be, at many times, is finding place
in almost every man’s life;—the same thing to be done in the end, the
same price to be paid at the last, with only the difference, that much
of the advantage, as well as all the grace, of an earlier compliance
has past away. The nine precious volumes have shrunk to six, and these
dwindled to three, while yet the like price is demanded for the few as
for the many; for the remnant now as would once have made all our own.
[Sidenote: Study of the Classics.]
I have already in a former lecture adduced a proverb which warns
against a bad book as the worst of all robbers. In respect too of
books which are not bad, nay, of which the main staple is good, but in
which there is yet an admixture of evil, as is the case with so many
that have come down to us from that old world not as yet partaker of
Christ, there is a proverb, which may very profitably accompany us in
our study of all these: _Where the bee sucks honey, the spider sucks
poison_. Very profitably may this word be kept in mind by such as at
any time are making themselves familiar with the classical literature
of antiquity, the great writers of heathen Greece and Rome. How much
of noble, how much of elevating do they contain: what love of country,
what zeal for wisdom, may be quickened in us by the study of them;
yea, even to us Christians what intellectual, what large moral gains
will they yield. Let the student be as the bee looking for honey,
and from the fields and gardens of classical literature he may store
it abundantly in his hive. And yet from this same body of literature
what poison is it possible to draw; what loss, through familiarity
with evil, of all vigorous abhorrence of it, till even the foulest
enormities shall come to be regarded with a speculative curiosity
rather than with an earnest hatred,—yea, what lasting defilements of
the imagination and the heart may be contracted hence, till nothing
shall be pure, the very mind and conscience being defiled. Let there
come one whose sympathies and affinities are with the poison and not
with the honey, and in these fields it will not be impossible for him
to find deadly flowers and weeds from which he may suck poison enough.
With a few remarks on two proverbs more I will bring this lecture
to an end. Here is one with an insight at once subtle and profound
into the heart of man: _Ill doers are ill deemers_; and instead of
any commentary on this of my own let me quote some words which were
not intended to be a commentary upon it at all, and which furnish
notwithstanding a better than any which I could hope to give. They are
words of a great English divine of the 17th century, who is accounting
for the offence which the Pharisee took at the Lord’s acceptance of
the affectionate homage and costly offering of the woman that was a
sinner: “Which familiar and affectionate officiousness, and sumptuous
cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with, could
not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present. For that
dispensation of the law under which they lived making nothing perfect,
but only curbing the outward actions of men; it might very well be that
they, being conscious to themselves of no better motions within than
of either bitterness or lust, how fair soever they carried without,
could not deem Christ’s acceptance of so familiar and affectionate a
service from a woman of that fame to proceed from anything better than
some loose and vain principle ... for by how much every one is himself
obnoxious to temptation, by so much more suspicious he is that others
transgress, when there is anything that may tempt out the corruptions
of a man.”[181]
[Sidenote: Chinese proverb.]
And in this Chinese proverb which follows, _Better a diamond with a
flaw, than a pebble without one_, there is, to my mind, the assertion
of a great Christian truth, and of one which reaches deep down to the
very foundations of Christian morality, the more valuable as coming to
us from a people beyond the range and reach of the influences of direct
Revelation. We may not be all aware of the many and malignant assaults
which were made on the Christian faith, and on the morality of the
Bible, through the character of David, by the blind and self-righteous
Deists of a century or more ago. Taking the Scripture testimony about
him, that he was the man after God’s heart, and putting beside this the
record of those great sins which he committed, they sought to set these
great, yet still isolated, offences in the most hateful light; and
thus to bring at once him, and the Book which praised him, to a common
shame. But all this while, the question of _the man_, what he was,
and what the moral sum total of his life, to which alone the Scripture
testimony bore witness, and to which alone it was pledged, this was a
question with which they concerned themselves not at all; while yet it
was a far more important question than what any of his single acts may
have been; and it was this which, in the estimate of his character,
was really at issue. To this question _we_ answer, _a diamond_, which,
if a diamond _with a flaw_, as are all but the one “entire and perfect
chrysolite,” would yet outvalue a mountain of _pebbles without one_,
such as they were; even assuming the pebbles to _be_ without; and not
merely to _seem_ so, because their flaw was an all-pervading one, and
only not so quickly detected, inasmuch as the contrast was wanting of
any clearer material which should at once reveal its presence.