The Proverbs | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 29, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 41.

The Proverbs.

THE Proverbs are of highest use, and ought to be studied for their wisdom, their broad interpretation of life, and their ethical value. They are specially strong in the warnings they sound against indulgence of the passions,—lust, greed, anger, pride, envy, drunkenness. They protest against every form of social unrighteousness. They touch tenderly upon the family, and press its duties. They smite folly of all sorts, and many of them are rods for a fool's back. They insist on truth and simplicity and justice and moderation, on humility and patience and charity. Everywhere they identify wisdom with goodness, and folly with evil, and their universal characteristic is common sense. They are reverential, and many of them reach a long way toward the sermon on the mount, and some touch the deepest springs of the human heart. In practical wisdom, and in daily guides of conduct, they surpass any other utterances of truth that can be compared with them. If heeded and obeyed, they would bring the individual, the family, the community, the nation, into a state of ideal perfection.—Sel.