The Book of Proverbs

1909

Stored-Up Wisdom for the Wise

Proverbs are the small coins of truth's currency. They are in a form to be possessed and used by the common people. They are useful for the dally needs of life, and much comfort and strength and safety may be purchased by them. The authorship of a wise saying matters little; even as it is of no importance to know the names of the workmen who minted a coin. Because human nature is essentially the same throughout all the ages and in all lands the proverbs which embody a philosophy of conduct are everywhere and always valuable.

The stored-up wisdom of the wise is only useful to him who has the wisdom to make right use of it. It is easier to make a proverb than to cultivate a virtue. The Book of Proverbs is not a mystical, nor yet a distinctively spiritual production. It is rather a compendium of the crystallized experience of shrewd men who lived in a world of material realities. The proverbs treat of things as they are. They are worldly wisdom. Whitelaw Reid once called them the best guides to a successful career that any young man could study. A wise saying is a fingerboard on life's highroad — but of no use to the traveler who will not, or cannot, read it.

The hard-headedness of the Book of Proverbs is its most striking quality. It treats of the common themes. Life as alert men know it is mirrored in these pages. The people we all meet walk through the book. Here is the flatterer, the guileful, politic man of the world, with honeyed words meant only to facilitate his own ends; here are the sluggard and the fool; the usurer and the boaster; the scarlet woman and the drunkard; the courtier and the slanderer; the jealous person and the envious; the faithful friend who is closer than a brother, and the righteous man who is as bold as a lion. A veritable portrait gallery of human life is the Book of Proverbs, and whoso studies it well may find his own image and the labeled likeness of all classes of persons with whom he is likely to meet.

Life's greatest lessons have to be learned in the school of experience; but some books, of which Proverbs is one, afford useful preparatory studies and sharpen one's understanding.