to reach out. "The natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit." She must begin, therefore, without. The impenitent can only hear natural reasons. "The law is a schoolmaster." The terrors of death are applied by the Almighty to draw us nearer, within, and finally into the region that is spiritual. It is "out of doors," therefore, that Wisdom must lift up her voice.-Miller.

The voice of wisdom is heard everywhere. It sounds from the pulpit. From every creature it is heard (Job xii. 7, 8). The word is in our very hearts, and conscience echoes the voice in our souls. Let us go where we will we must hear it, unless we wilfully shut our ears.-Lawson.

In the Temple she crieth for holiness and reverence, in the gates she crieth for justice and equity, in the city she crieth for honesty and charity. Or else by accommodation we may thus take the words, the head is the chief place of concourse in man, where all the faculties do meet and all affairs are handled the openings of the gate are the outward fences, the city is the heart, to all which wisdom strongly applieth her instructions. In the head she crieth for a right understanding, in the outward fences for watchfulness, in the heart for upright sincerity. -Jermin.

Verse 22. Men are always going to be wise, and, therefore, Wisdom plunges upon this very difficulty.

You are

going to repent; but when? And, as a still more imperative question, "How long first? You are, perhaps, a grey old man, and your resolutions have been for fifty years.-Miller.

Lovers of simplicity and haters of knowledge are joined together; for where there is a love of simplicity, there is a hatred of knowledge, where there is a love of vice there is a hatred of virtue.-Jermin.

Scorners love scorning. The habit The habit grows by indulgence. It becomes a second nature.-Arnot.

These simplicians are much better than scorners, and far beyond those

fools that hate knowledge. All sins are not alike sinful, and wicked men grow worse and worse.- -Trapp.

Verse 23. The two things mentioned here are to be taken in connection with each other. The latter is the result of the former-the former in order to the latter. There can be no plea, therefore, for continued ignorance. The Word of God is in possession, and the Spirit of God is in promise.- Wardlaw.

When it is said: "Turn," &c., could any essay to turn be without some influence of the Spirit? But that, complied with, tends to pouring forth a copious effusion not to be withstood. J. Howe.

When we turn at His reproof, He will pour out His Spirit; when He pours out His Spirit, we will turn at His reproof blessed circle for the saints to reason in.-Arnot,

Little as we might have expected it, the teaching of the Book of Proverbs anticipates the prophecy of Joel (ii. 28) and the promise of our Lord (John xiv. 26; xv. 26.) Not the Spirit alone, with no articulate expression of truths received and felt nor words alone, spoken or written, without the Spirit to give them life.-Plumptre.

He that reproves and then directs not how to do better, is he that snuffs a lamp, but pours not in oil to maintain it.-Trapp.

There are no words that can make known Wisdom's words but her own, and there is no one that can make known Wisdom's words but herself. She can, and here she saith: "I will." And it is as she will, not as she can, and yet freely and fully too, whereof she saith: "I will pour out."-Jermin.

I. The reproof God administers. God reproves (1) by the Scriptures; (2) by ministers; (3) by conscience; (4) by Providence. II. The submission He requires Turn (1) with penitent hearts; (2) with believing minds; (3) with prompt obedience. III. The encouragements He imparts. The Spirit is (1) convincing; (2) quickening; (3) comforting; (4) sanctifying. -Sketches of Sermons.

Verse 24. It is an honour to be invited to the feast of an earthly prince; how much more to be bidden unto the banquet of the King of kings! And as the desiring of any to dinner or supper is a sign of love and goodwill in him that offereth this courtesy, so it is a point of great ungentleness and sullenness for a man, without just cause, to refuse so kind a proffer; for, in so doing, he sheweth that he maketh none account at all of him, who not only hath borne toward him a loving affection, but made declaration thereof in some sort, and gone about to seal it by certain pledges of friendship; yea, that which is yet more, he causeth him to lose the cost which he hath bestowed about provisions and entertainment, and his messengers to lose their pains and their travail. Then, when those who are bidden to the kingdom of God (Luke xiv. 18) desire to be excused, how can this be but a great sin? but, when God shall not only call with His voice, but all day long stretch out His hand to a rebellious people, continuing His Word preached with all means pertaining thereunto; as the grace offered in this respect is doubled, so the sin of not profiting thereby is mightily increased.-Muffet.

God called for a famine on the land, and was not refused; God called for a drought upon the land, and was not refused; and, no doubt, should God call any other of His creatures, they would not refuse to come unto Him, seeing those things which are not, when they are called, do come to God. Only man refuseth. Surely hence it is that the prophets of God do so often speak unto insensible things, as: Hear, O heavens: give ear, O earth." For it is not seldom that God calleth to men and is refused.-Jermin.

Verse 26. There is not in the Lord any such affection or disposition of mocking as in man; but when in the course of His providence He so worketh that He leaves the wicked to his misery, or maketh him a mocking stock to the world, He is said in the Scripture to scorn, or have them in derision (Ps. ii.),

because He dealeth as a man which scorneth.-Muffet.

If God laugh, thou hast good cause to cry.-Trapp.

There is, as has been said, a Divine irony in the Nemesis of history. It is, however, significant that in the fuller revelation of the mind and will of the Father in the person of the Son, no such language meets us. Sadness, sternness, severity there may be, but from first to last no word of mere derision.-Plumptre.

Even I, not, "I also," I, who have warned you so often, so tenderly, so earnestly. Stuart.

Verse 27. Cataline was wont to be afraid at any sudden noise, as being haunted with the furies of his own evil conscience. So was our Richard the Third after the murder of his two innocent nephews, and Charles the Ninth of France after the Parisian massacre. These tyrants became more terrible to themselves than ever they had been to others.—Trapp.

You cannot paint an angel upon light so mercy could not be represented-mercy could not be, unless there were judgment without mercy, a ground of deep darkness lying beneath, to sustain and reveal it.-Arnot.

Here also the parallelism which we have traced before holds good. The coming of the Son of Man" shall be

as

the lightning" in its instantaneous flashing. And at that coming He will have to utter the same doom. "Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able."-Plumptre.

Verse 28. Does the sinner ever cry, and not get answered? Does he ever seek diligently, and God laugh at him? The passage is the profoundest Gospel. A man has two ways of seeking, before he becomes a Christian, and after he becomes a Christian. Before he becomes a Christian he seeks from natural motives, otherwise he would be already spiritual. We cannot say that natural seeking has no promise. We think it has. A man can only start outside the camp to get in. The man who

out of a deep sense of terror flies toward the wicket.gate under that schoolmaster the law, will reach it if he keep on, and that by promise. If he begs God to make him spiritual and to give him the true motives of the kingdom with even a proper common spirit though it be under the terrors of escape, he draws nearer all the time to being spiritual. The light will at last break. If he keeps on in that way he will emerge some day into the light of the blessed. The action of common grace will merge into that which is saving. But if his motives are too carnal; if his state is mere terror; if his moral part has been so abused that it has passed the boundary which our text suggests; if there be the mere terror of the lost, and the mere selfishness, such as wakes up at the judgment day, we could easily understand that oceans of such tears would drift a man only farther off. They are only a more insidious carnality. The sum of the doctrine is, that natural motives may become instruments of conversion if we seek God early, but if we sin away ne day of grace, no terror, however selfishly and therefore passionately expressed, can become a saving prayer to bring us any nearer to the Redeemer. -Miller.

This was Saul's misery: "The Philistines are upon me, and God will not answer me. This was Moab's curse (Isa. xvi. 12). This was the case of David's enemies (Ps. xviii. 41). Even if God answer him at all, it is according to the idols of his heart (Ezek. xiv. 3, 4) with bitter answers, as in Judges x. 13, 14. Or, if better, it is but as He answered the Israelites for quails and afterwards for a king; better have been without. Giftless gifts God gives sometimes.-Trapp.

Verse 29. Those who do not choose the fear of the Lord are condemned no less than those who hate it. Not to choose is virtually to dislike, and ends in positive hatred. (Matt. xii. 30.) Men are free in choosing destruction, so that the blame rests wholly on themselves. "Ye judge yourselves

unworthy of everlasting life." (Acts xiii. 46.)-Fausset.

God will give them a reason of their punishment. No marvel if they who hate knowledge do not choose the fear of the Lord. For knowledge is the guide of election, and if the guide be bad the choice cannot be good. And to show the badness of the choice, there being many fears proposed to man's choice to which man's life is subject; to choose the fear of the Lord, freeth from all the rest; not to choose that, is to be a slave to all the rest.-Jermin.

Verse 30. There is not a word here of disability, it is all unwillingness. Point me to one passage in the Bible where sinners are represented as being condemned for not doing what they could not do. The blessed God is no such tantaliser. When, at any time, inability is spoken of, it is inability all of a moral nature, and resolves itself into unwillingness.-Wardlaw.

Can it be that none of God's counsel should be followed? Can it be that all his reproof should be despised? Yes; not to have a care of following all God's counsel is to follow none: not to have a mind that regardeth all His reproof, is to despise all. . . . As the wings of the living creature which Ezekiel saw, were joined together, so is the joining together of God's commandments, our desire of yielding a general obedience unto them, that must carry us up to heaven.-Jermin.

Verse 31. Their miserable end is the fruit-not of God's way, but of their own. His plan, His device for them, was a plan of salvation.Wardlaw.

If a man plants and dresses a poisonous tree in his garden, it is just that he should be obliged to eat the fruit. If our vine is the vine of Sodom, and our clusters the clusters of bitterness, we must leave our complaint on ourselves, if we drink till we are drunken, and fall, and rise no more.-Lawson.

The sinner's sin is its own punishment (Isa. iii. 9-11. Hell is not an

arbitrary punishment, like human penalties, which have no necessary connection with the crimes, but a natural development of the seed and the bud (Isa. lix. 4; Gal. vi. 8). "Filled with their own devices"-i. e. filled even to loathing, which is the final result of the pleasures of sin. "They did eat, and were well filled; for He gave them their own desire; but while the meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them" (Psa. lxxviii. 29). Men's own desires fulfilled are made their sorest plagues (Psa. cvi. 11).—Fausset.

own.

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Bad will it be for them that shall eat of it; and yet due will it be to them to eat of it, because it is their It is not said they shall gather the fruit of their ways, which were some expression of their misery, but they shall eat it, it shall enter into them, and be made, as it were, their very substance. This it is that filleth up the misery, and that the filling is of their own devices, that it is, that maketh it be pressed down.Jermin.

Ver. 32. When Jeshurun waxed fat, he kicked (Deut. xxxii. 15). Thus the objection is met, that sinners often prosper now. Yes, replies wisdom; but that very prosperity proves their curse, and accelerates the judgment of God. It is they who are "settled on their lees" that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil (Zeph. i. 12)—Fausset.

Prosperity ever dangerous. 1. Because every foolish or vicious person is either ignorant or regardless of the proper ends and rules for which God designs the prosperity of those to whom He sends it. 2. Because prosperity, as the nature of man now stands, has a peculiar force and fitness to abate men's virtues and heighten their corruptions. 3. Because it directly indisposes them to the proper means of amendment and recovery.- South.

Because they are fools, they turn God's mercies to their own destruction; and because they prosper, they are confirmed in their folly.-Baxter.

When sinners are moved a little by wisdom, and turn away, it is deadly; it is worse than if they had never listened. Prosperity or tranquillity (see "Critical Notes"). The mere doing nothing of impenitent men is carrying them downward.-Miller.

Bernard calls prosperity a mercy that he had no mind to. What good is there in having a fine suit with the plague in it. A man may miscarry upon the soft sands as soon as upon the hard rocks.-Trapp.

Not outward prosperity, but the temper which it too often produces; the easy going indifference to higher truths is that which destroys.Plumptre.

Verse 33. He shall enjoy genuine security. His mind will enjoy unmoved tranquillity amidst all the turmoils and all the vicissitudes of this life (Phil. iv. 6, 7). And he shall be quiet from the fear of ultimate evil. The season of the impenitent sinner's last alarm shall be to him the season of peace, and hope, and joy.-Wardlaw.

Be it so, that some fits of fear, like grudgings of an ague, in the midst of fiery temptations, begin sometimes to cause the faithful to quake a little, yet the grace of God's Spirit will drive them out in time, and put them all to flight in such manner at the end, that instead of timorousness, stoutness; of unquietness, peace; of bashfulness, boldness; of shrinking, triumph will arise.

Ó, the valiant courage and unterrified heart of the Christian knight and spiritual champion, who is furnished with the whole armour of God (Eph. vi.), and fighteth under the banner of Divine wisdom, his renowned lady and mistress!-Muffet.

1. Temporally. 2. Mentally. 3. Spiritually. 4. Eternally. (Isa. xxvi. 3, xxxiii. 15, 16; Jer. xxiii. 6; Deut. Xxxiii. 12, 28.-Fausset.

His ark is pitched within and without; tossed, it may be, but not drowned shaken, but not shivered.— Trapp.

Eternal life, secure in the world to come, casts a bright beam of hope across, sufficient to quiet the anxieties.