'Fools make a mock at sin; but among the righteous there is
favour.'--Proverbs xiv, 9.
The wisdom of this Book of Proverbs is not simply intellectual, but it
has its roots in reverence and obedience to God, and for its
accompaniment, righteousness. The wise man is the good man, and the
good man is the godly man. And as is wisdom, so its opposite, folly,
is not only intellectual feebleness--the bad man is a fool, and the
godless is a bad man. The greatest amount of brain-power cultivated to
the highest degree does not make a man wise, and about many a student
and thinker God pronounces the sentence 'Thou fool!'
That does not mean that all sin is ignorance, as we sometimes hear it
said with a great show of tolerant profundity. There is some ignorance
in all sin, but the essence of sin is the aversion of the will from a
law and from a Person, not the defect of the understanding. So far
from all sin being but ignorance, and therefore blameless, there is no
sin without knowledge, and the measure of ignorance is the measure of
blamelessness; unless the ignorance be itself, as it often is,
criminal. Ignorance is one thing, folly is another.
One more remark by way of introduction must be made on the language of
our text. The margin of the Revised Version correctly turns it
completely round, and for 'the foolish make a mock at guilt,' would
read, 'guilt mocketh at the foolish.' In the original the verb in our
text is in the singular, and the only singular noun to go with it is
'guilt.' The thought then here is, that sin tempts men into its
clutches, and then gibes and taunts them. It is a solemn and painful
subject, but perhaps this text rightly pondered may help to save some
of us from hearing the mocking laugh which echoes through the empty
chambers of many an empty soul.