Epimenides the Cretan and his estimate of the Cretans— Lies the coward's weapons-Consummate artists in lying- Liars deliberate, inventive, and circumstantial-Industrious, unscrupulous, and incorrigible liars-Audacities of inventive Corrupting example and influence-Noscitur ex sociis' -Contaminated by veterans in vice-'Maxima debetur pueris SCRIPTURE PROVERBS. I I. SAUL AMONG THE PROPHETS. I SAMUEL X. II, 12. T was they that were his old acquaintance, "all that knew him beforetime," that exclaimed, one to another, "What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?" when they saw and heard him prophesying among the company of prophets. Sent out to seek his father's stray asses,-well and good; there he might be in his element, and in the success of such a mission there would be nothing for his acquaintance to wonder at. But prophesying was altogether another matter. Was not the young man stepping, or striding rather, out of his sphere? And so it became a proverb, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" Ages later, another Saul excited a quite equal amount of astonishment, when from anti-christian zealot he turned Christian all at once and altogether. Saul of Tarsus a disciple! The disciples themselves believed not that he was a disciple. The original proverb connected with the name may be variously interpreted and applied. The most obvious interpretation seems to be that which makes it in effect identical with the New Testament adage, or saw, about the prophet being of no account in his own country, or B 2 SAUL AMONG THE PROPHETS. in his father's house.* An old divine speaks of men as naturally given to malign the greatness of a fellowcitizen or one of the same household: they think the nearness of it upbraids and obscures them: "A prophet may, without the help of his prophetic spirit, foresee that he shall have but little honour in his own country." Is not this the carpenter's son? and have we not seen Him in His shop and His cottage among His pitiful kindred? Que j'ai toujours haï les pensées du vulgaire! avows La Fontaine : "Qu'il me semble profane, injuste, et téméraire, "Le maître d'Épicure en fit l'apprentissage. Son pays le crut fou. Petits esprits! Mais quoi! Trying to interest Sir Robert Peel-who, of all our leading public men, had the credit of being the one who perhaps best appreciated science-in the fortunes of Robert Brown, Humboldt sarcastically said, "When Robert Brown travels in Germany, his arrival in a town is no sooner known than the young men gather under the great man's window, and salute him with a serenade; when he returns to his own country, nobody notices his existence, and the Minister who claims to be the especial friend and patron of science does not know the name of the man whose work will survive when the British Parliament itself is forgotten." Prave 'ords! as Parson Evans has it. * Of which saw, or adage, a chapter of illustrations may be seen in Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts, First Series, pp. 143-147. + Démocrite et les Abdéritains. SAUL AMONG THE PROPHETS. 3 In conversation with James Smith, Crabbe is said to have expressed great astonishment at his own popularity in London, adding, "In my own village they think nothing of me." When Mr. Crabb Robinson was sojourning in the Lake Country in 1816, he entered in that omnivorous Journal of his what he regarded as "a singular illustration of the maxim, 'A prophet is not without honour save in his own country.' Mr. Hutton, a very gentlemanly and seemingly intelligent man, asked me, 'Is it true-as I have heard reported—that Mr. Wordsworth ever wrote verses?"" The villagers in Schiller's Maid of Orleans are as much taken by surprise at Joan's ecstatic previsions as were the neighbours of Kish at the prophesyings of his stalwart son. Hath seized the maiden?-Mark her flashing eye, Hark how she speaks! Why, whence can she obtain Archbishop Trench's comment on what grew to be a proverb in Israel, is, that when the son of Kish revealed of a sudden that nobler life which had hitherto been slumbering in him, alike undreamt of by himself and by others, took his part and place among the sons of the prophets, and, borne along in their enthusiasm,* praised and prophesied as they did, showing that he was indeed turned into another man, the question raised, by * It is characteristic of Lord Shaftesbury of the Characteristics to "pretend not to determine" how far (his are the italics and his the capitals) "that dark ENTHUSIASM or evil Spirit" which pert irbed the first monarch of the Jewish nation, himself "of a Melancholy Complexion," "might resemble that of Prophecy, experienced by him even after his Apostacy [1 Sam. xix. 23, 24]." Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. iii. p. 116, edit. 1732. 4 UNRECOGNIZED MERIT. some probably in sincere astonishment, by some in irony and unbelief, was one which found and still finds its application so often as any reveals of a sudden, at some crisis of his life, qualities for which those who knew him the longest had hitherto given him no credit, a nobleness which had been latent in him until now, a power of taking his place among the worthiest and the best, which none until now had at all given him credit for. Milverton the essayist disputes the correctness of Ellesmere's phrase, "domestic malignity," in such cases. It is not malignity, he contends; at least very often not; frequently it is mere ignorance. "If you had a younger brother, of great musical talents, his gaining any honour or reward for their exercise would prove to you the existence of those talents in a way which you would never have arrived at for yourself." Such honours, in such a case, not only reward merit, but declare. its existence. In a more recent publication, Sir Arthur Helps begs attention to a "most important" bit of advice, and that is, to praise those you live with, if they really deserve it; not to be silent upon their merits, for you should cultivate their reasonable self-esteem. If they have merits, other people-strangers-will, he argues, tell them of it, and they think it unkind of you who have lived with them, and ought to love them, not to have recognized their merits. A person shall live with a person his junior, and during the whole of his life shall never have told that junior of his good qualities or his merits; and it is only perhaps when that first person dies, that the other finds out that, during the time they had lived together, he had been thoroughly appreciated; but, unfortunately, it has been a silent appreciation." The late Lord Lytton reckoned it a singular fact that we never seem to judge of our near kindred so well as |