health are the nature of the body; the laws of God are the nature of God; and these are also the laws of man because man is made in the image of God. The authority of law is from within; law is inherent, eternal, immutable. God is righteous and his commands are righteous, but righteousness is not created by the commands which define and interpret it; the careful observation of life confirms the practical wisdom of righteousness in all its various applications, but righteousness does not depend on the results which proceed from it. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has given an ancient prophet's utterance of this view in the phrase "it is impossible for God to lie." F. W. Faber has given a modern prophet's utterance of it in the verse, "For right is right, since God is God; And right the day must win: To falter would be sin." The moralists of the eighteenth century and the stoics of the first century may be regarded as a type of the first school; the Puritans of the seventeenth century and the nobler spirits among the Pharisees of the first century may be regarded as a type of the second; the mystics of all ages and the Hebrew prophets of the period before and during the exile may be regarded as a type of the third. Often these schools are critical of and antagonistic to each other. The empiric condemns the legalist as dogmatic, and the prophet as vague and mystical; the legalist condemns the empiric as unauthoritative and unscientific, and the prophet as unauthoritative and mystical; and the prophetic teacher condemns the empiric as one who substitutes prudence for virtue, and the legalist as one who substitutes the obedience of fear for the spontaneous life of love. Yet they are not necessarily antagonistic except as they are made mutually exclusive. The religious teacher may believe with the prophet that righteousness is inherent in the nature of God; with the legalist that law is more than a principle, it is also the expression of the righteous will of a righteous God; and with the empiric that the observation and experience of life interpret and confirm the intuitive moral perception of these divine embodiments of this eternal principle. The greatest teachers combine the three methods of ascertaining, interpreting, and confirming moral truth. When in the Sermon on the Mount Christ gives to his disciples the counsel, 66 Agree with thine adversary quickly whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison," he commends the pacific disposition by a purely prudential motive derived from an observation of the facts of life;1 when he says: "I say 66 This part 1 "Lest the adversary deliver thee to the judge." is explained by some in a metaphorical sense, that the Heavenly Judge will act toward us with the utmost rigor, so as to forgive unto you, "Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King," he promulgates a definite law, and bases it not on the experience of life, but on the authority of the conscience and the reason interpreting the laws of God; and when he says, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven," he enunciates a divine principle of righteousness which inheres in the nature of God, and of man as the child of God, made in God's image, dependent for its authority neither on the results which it produces, nor on the will of the lawgiver who formulates it, but on its own inherent, eternal, absolute rightfulness. All three of these voices, that of the empiric, that of the legalist, and that of the prophet or intuitionalist, are found in the Old Testament. The Book of Job may be taken as the voice of the prophet. Job will pay no reverence to Jehovah if Jehovah be not righteous. Righteousness of character, that is, conformity to the eternal principles us nothing, if we do not labor to settle those differences which we have with our neighbors. But I view it more simply, as an admonition that, even among men, it is usually advantageous for us to come to an early agreement with adversaries, because, with quarrelsome persons, their obstinacy often costs them dear." Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, by John Calvin, vol. i. p. 288. of justice, is the only ground of authority which he will recognize. The Hebrew code may be regarded as the voice of the legalist: its message is summed up in the words, "If ye will obey my voice and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: " all virtue is summed up in obedience to a supreme, a divine King. The voice of the empiric, who derives moral maxims from an observation of life, and commends them by their practical results as seen in life, is chiefly interpreted in two books, - the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes. As the Levitical code is the expression of the religious life as interpreted by the priesthood; as the Deuteronomic code is the expression of that life as interpreted by the statesmen; as the Book of Psalms is the expression of that life as interpreted by the lyric poets; as the Books of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah are perhaps the sublimest expression of that life as interpreted by the intuitionalists or prophets, so the Books of Proverbs and of Ecclesiastes are the expression of that life as interpreted by the Wise Men.1 These Wise Men constituted no order, as did the priests; they did not profess to have received a special divine call, as did the prophets; rarely if ever do they claim to speak in the name or on behalf of Jehovah; but they did constitute an unorganized and 1 For an excellent account of this school see The Wise Men of Ancient Israel and their Proverbs, by C. T. Kent, Ph. D., pp. 1731. undefined school of thought; their analogue in our times is to be found in the equally inorganic School of Ethical Culture. Proverbs are the coined experience of a people. The maker of a proverb is not one who has seen deeply into the inward nature of things; he is not a poet, nor one who has a clear apprehension of great laws; he is not a philosopher: the maker of a proverb is one who has a keen observation of the actual phenomena of life, and has been able to put the result of his observation into a single sentence so that it flashes light like a diamond. The Book of Proverbs is the experience of the Hebrew people coined into current aphorisms by men of native wit. These proverbs are not written by men of remarkable spiritual vision; nor by men notable for their clear vision of great laws, whether discovered by philosophical inquiry or divinely revealed; they are aphorisms which have been struck out of human experience by the attrition of life, have received concise interpretation in compact sentences, and have passed current among the people. Such a book can have no author; rather it has many authors, though it may have one editor. No man can with deliberate purpose sit down to write proverbs. One man once made the endeavor, but since Martin Farquar Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy" no man has repeated the experiment. The book is called in our Bible "The Proverbs of Solomon," not because he wrote them, nor because he gathered them together, but because he was one |