Part 10

It would be interesting to collect, as with reverence one might, variations on scriptural proverbs or sayings, which the proverbs of this world supply; and this, both in those cases where the latter have grown out of the former, owing more nearly or more remotely their existence to them, and in those also where they are independent of them,—so far, that is, as anything true can be independent of the absolute Truth. Some of those which follow evidently belong to one of these classes, some to the other. Thus Solomon has said: “It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house;” (Prov. xxi. 9;) and again: “Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.” (Prov. xvii. 1.) With these compare the two proverbs, a Latin and Spanish, adduced below.[201] The Psalmist has said: “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him.” (Ps. cix. 17.) The Turks express their faith in this same law of the divine retaliations: _Curses, like chickens, always come home to roost_; they return, that is, to those from whom they went forth, while in the Yoruba language there is a proverb to the same effect: _Ashes always fly back in the face of him that throws them_; while our own, _Harm watch, harm catch_, and the Spanish, _Who sows thorns, let him not walk barefoot_,[202] are utterances of very nearly the same conviction. Our Lord declares, that without his Father there falls no single sparrow to the ground, that “not one of them is forgotten before God.” (Luke xii. 6.) The same truth of a _providentia specialissima_, (between which and no providence at all there is indeed no tenable position,) is asserted in the Catalan proverb: _No leaf moves, but God wills it_.[203] Again, He has said: “No man can serve two masters.” (Matt. vi. 24.) And the Spanish proverb: _He who must serve two masters, must lie to one_.[204] Or compare with Matt. xix. 29, this remarkable Arabic proverb: _Purchase the next world with this; so shalt thou win both_. He has spoken of “mammon of unrighteousness”—indicating hereby, in Leighton’s words, “that iniquity is so involved in the notion of riches, that it can very hardly be separated from them;” and this phrase Jerome illustrates by a proverb that would not otherwise have reached us; “that saying,” he says, “appears true to me: _A rich man is either himself an unjust one, or the heir of one_.”[205] Again, the Lord has said: “Many be called, but few chosen;” (Matt. xx. 16;) many have the outward marks of a Christian profession, few the inner substance. Some early Christian Fathers loved much to bring into comparison with this a Greek proverb, spoken indeed quite independently of it, and long previously; and the parallel certainly is a singularly happy one: _The thyrsus-bearers are many, but the bacchants few_;[206] many assume the signs and outward tokens of inspiration, whirling the thyrsus aloft; but those whom the god indeed fills with his spirit are few all the while.[207] With our Lord’s words concerning the mote and the beam (Matt. vii. 3, 5) compare this Chinese proverb: _Sweep away the snow from thine own door, and heed not the frost upon thy neighbour’s tiles_.

[Sidenote: Proverbs in sermons.]

It has been sometimes a matter of consideration to me whether we of the clergy might not make larger use, though of course it would be only occasional, of proverbs in our public teaching than we do. Great popular preachers of time past, or, seeing that this phrase has now so questionable a sound, great preachers for the people, such as have found their way to the universal heart of their fellows, addressing themselves not to that which some men had different from others, but to that rather which each had in common with all, have been ever great employers of proverbs. Thus he who would know the riches of those in the German tongue, with the vigorous manifold employment of which they are capable, will find no richer mine to dig in than the works of Luther. And such employment of them would, I believe, with our country congregations, be especially valuable. Any one, who by after investigation has sought to discover how much our rustic hearers carry away, even from the sermons to which they have attentively listened, will find that it is hardly ever the course and tenor of the argument, supposing the discourse to have contained such; but if anything was uttered, as it used so often to be by the best puritan preachers, tersely, pointedly, epigrammatically, this will have stayed by them, while all beside has passed away. Now, the merits of terseness and point, which have caused other words to be remembered, are exactly those which signalize the proverb, and generally in a yet higher degree.

It need scarcely be observed, that, if thus used, they will have to be employed with prudence and discretion, and with a careful selection. Thus, even with the example of so grave a divine as Bishop Sanderson before me, I should hesitate to employ in a sermon such a proverb as _Over shoes, over boots_—one which he declares to be the motto of some, who having advanced a certain way in sin, presently become utterly wretchless, caring not, and counting it wholly indifferent, how much further in evil they advance. Nor would I exactly recommend such use of a proverb as St. Bernard makes, who, in a sermon on the angels, desiring to shew _à priori_ the extreme probability of their active and loving ministries in the service of men, adduces the Latin proverb: _Who loves me, loves my dog_;[208] and proceeds to argue thus; We are the dogs under Christ’s table; the angels love Him, they therefore love us.

But, although not exactly thus, the thing, I am persuaded, might be done, and with profit. Thus, in a discourse warning against sins of the tongue, there are many words which we might produce of our own to describe the mischief it inflicts that would be flatter, duller, less likely to be remembered than the old proverb: _The tongue is not steel, but it cuts_. On God’s faithfulness in sustaining, upholding, rewarding his servants, there are feebler things which we might bring out of our own treasure-house, than to remind our hearers of that word: _He who serves God, serves a good Master_. And this one might sink deep, telling of the enemy whom every one of us has the most to fear: _No man has a worse friend than he brings with him from home_. It stands in striking agreement with Augustine’s remarkable prayer “Deliver me from the evil man, from myself.”[209] Or again: _Ill weeds grow apace_;—with how lively an image does this set forth to us the rank luxuriant up-growth of sinful lusts and desires in the garden of an uncared-for, untended heart. I know not whether we might presume sufficient quickness of apprehension on the part of our hearers to venture on the following: _The horse which draws its halter is not quite escaped_; but I can hardly imagine an happier illustration of the fact, that so long as any remnant of a sinful habit is retained by us, so long as we draw this halter, we make but an idle boast of our liberty; we may, by means of that which we still drag with us, be at any moment again entangled altogether in the bondage from which we seemed to have entirely escaped.

In every language some of its noblest proverbs, such as oftentimes are admirably adapted for this application of which I am speaking, are those embodying men’s confidence in God’s moral government of the world, in his avenging righteousness, however much there may be in the confusions of the present evil time to provoke a doubt or even a denial of this. Thus, _Punishment is lame, but it comes_, which, if not old, yet rests on an image derived from antiquity, is good; although inferior in every way, in energy of expression, as in fulness of sense, to the ancient Greek one: _The mill of God grinds late, but grinds to powder_;[210] for this brings in the further thought, that his judgments, however long they tarry, yet, when they arrive, are crushing ones. There is indeed another of our own, not unworthy to be set beside this, announcing, though with quite another image, the same fact of the tardy but terrible arrivals of judgment: _God comes with leaden feet, but strikes with iron hands_. And then, how awfully sublime another which has come down to us as part of the wisdom of the ancient heathen world; I mean the following: _The feet of the (avenging) deities are shod with wool_.[211] Here a new thought is introduced,—the noiseless approach and advance of these judgments, as noiseless as the steps of one whose feet were wrapped in wool,—the manner in which they overtake secure sinners even in the hour of their utmost security. Who that has studied the history of the great crimes and criminals of the world, but will with a shuddering awe set his seal to the truth of this proverb? Indeed, meditating on such and on the source from which we have derived them, one is sometimes tempted to believe that the faith in a divine retribution evermore making itself felt in the world, this sense of a Nemesis, as men used to call it, was stronger and deeper in the earlier and better days of heathendom, than alas! it is in a sunken Christendom now.

[Sidenote: Proverbs not profane.]

But to resume. Even those proverbs which have acquired an use which seems to unite at once the trivial and the profane, may yet on closer inspection be found to be very far from having either triviality or profaneness cleaving to them. There is one, for instance, often taken lightly enough upon the lips: _Talk of the devil, and he is sure to appear_; or as it used to be: _Talk of the devil, and his imps will appear_; or as in German it is: _Paint the devil on the wall, and he will shew himself anon_;—which yet contains truth serious and important enough, if we would only give heed to it: it contains, in fact, a very solemn warning against a very dangerous sin, I mean, curiosity about evil. It has been often noticed, and is a very curious psychological fact, that there is a tendency in a great crime to reproduce itself, to call forth, that is, other crimes of the same character: and there is a fearful response which the evil we may hear or read about, is in danger of finding in our own hearts. This danger, then, assuredly makes it true wisdom, and a piece of moral prudence on the part of all to whom this is permitted, to avoid knowing or learning about the evil; especially when neither duty nor necessity oblige them thereto. It is men’s wisdom to talk as little about the devil, either with themselves or with others, as they can; lest he appear to them. “I agree with you,” says Niebuhr very profoundly in one of his letters,[212] “that it is better not to read books in which you make the acquaintance of the devil.” And certainly there is a remarkable commentary on this proverb, so interpreted, in the earnest warning given to the children of Israel, that they should not so much as _inquire_ how the nations which were before them in Canaan, served their gods, with what cruelties, with what abominable impurities, lest through this inquiry they should be themselves entangled in the same. (Deut. xii. 29, 30.) They were not to talk about the devil, lest he should appear to them.

And other proverbs, too, which at first sight may seem over-familiar with the name of the great enemy of mankind, yet contain lessons which it would be an infinite pity to lose; as this German: _Where the devil cannot come, he will send_;[213] a proverb of very serious import, which excellently sets out to us the _penetrative_ character of temptations, and the certainty that they will follow and find men out in their secretest retreats. It rebukes the absurdity of supposing that by any outward arrangements, cloistral retirements, flights into the wilderness, sin can be kept at a distance. So far from this, temptations will inevitably overleap all these outward and merely artificial barriers which may be raised up against them; for our great enemy is as formidable from a seeming distance as in close combat; _where he cannot come, he will send_. There are others of the same family, as the following: _The devil’s meal is half bran_; or _all bran_, as the Italians still more boldly proclaim it;[214] unrighteous gains are sure to disappoint the getter; the pleasures of sin, even in this present time, are largely dashed with its pains. And this: _He had need of a long spoon that eats with the devil_;—men fancy they can cheat the arch-cheater, can advance in partnership with him up to a certain point, and then, whenever the connexion becomes too dangerous, break it off at their will; being sure in this to be miserably deceived; for, to quote another in the same tone: _He who has shipped the devil, must carry him over the water_. Granting these and the like to have been often carelessly uttered, yet they all rest upon a true moral basis in the main. This last series of proverbs I will close with an Arabic one, to which not even this appearance of levity can be ascribed; for it is as solemn and sublime in form as it is profoundly deep in substance: _The blessings of the evil Genii are curses_. How deep a meaning the story of Fortunatus acquires, when taken as a commentary on this.

But I am warned to draw my lecture to an end. I have adduced in the course of these lectures no inconsiderable number of proverbs, and have sought for the most part to deduce from them lessons, which were lessons in common for us all. There is one, however, which I must not pass over, for I feel that it contains an especial lesson for myself, and a lesson which I should do wisely and well at this present time to lay to heart. When the Spaniards would describe a tedious writer, one who possesses the art of exhausting the patience of his readers, they say of him: _He leaves nothing in his inkstand_. The phrase is a singularly happy one, for assuredly there is no such secret of tediousness, no such certain means of wearing out the attention of our readers or our hearers, as the attempt to say everything ourselves, instead of leaving something to be filled up by their intelligence; while the merits of a composition are often displayed as really, if not so prominently, in what is passed over as in what is set down; in nothing more than in the just measure of the confidence which it shows in the capacities and powers of those to whom it is addressed. I would not willingly come under the condemnation, which waits on them who thus _leave nothing in their inkstand_; and lest I should do so, I will bring now this my final lecture to its close, and ask you to draw out for yourselves those further lessons from proverbs, which I am sure they are abundantly capable of yielding.

Footnotes

[182] Perhaps the Spanish form of this proverb is still better: La mentira tiene _cortas_ las piernas; for the lie does go, though not far. Compare the French: La vérité, comme l’huile, vient au dessus.

[183] La verdad es hija de Dios.

[184] Vox populi, vox Dei.

[185] Tant vaut l’homme, tant vaut sa terre.

[186] Κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

[187] Le bruit est si fort, qu’on n’entend pas Dieu tonner.

[188] Εἷς ἀνὴρ, οὐδεὶς ἀνήρ.

[189] Sensus est nihil egregium præstari posse ab uno homine, omni auxilio destituto.

[190] Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.

[191] The deepening of a proverb’s use among Christian nations as compared with earlier applications of the same may be illustrated by an example, which however, as not being directly theological, and thus not bearing immediately upon the matter in hand, I shall prefer to append in a note. An old Greek and Latin proverb, _A great city, a great solitude_, (Magna civitas, magna solitudo,) seems to have dwelt merely on the outside of things, and to have meant no more than this, namely, that a city ambitiously laid out and upon a large scheme would with difficulty find inhabitants sufficient, would wear an appearance of emptiness and desolation; as there used to be a jest about Washington, that strangers would sometimes imagine themselves deep in the woods, when indeed they were in the centre of the city. But with deeper cravings of the human heart after love and affection, the proverb was claimed in an higher sense. We may take in proof these striking words of De Quincey, which are the more striking that neither they nor the context contain any direct reference to the proverb: “No man,” he says, “ever was left to himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have felt saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belongs to his situation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable that have ‘no speculation’ in their orbs which _he_ can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a stranger, seeming like a masque of maniacs, or a pageant of shadowy illusions.” A direct reference to the proverb is to be found in some affecting words of Lord Bacon, who glosses and explains it exactly in this sense;—“For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”

[192] Chi ha l’amor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi.—Amor regge senza legge. (Cf. Rom. xiii. 9, 10.)—Amor regge il suo regno senza spada.—Amor non conosce travaglio. (Cf. Gen. xxix. 20, 30.)—Di tutte le arti maestro è amore.—Di tutto condimento è amore.

[193] Evangelios pequeños.

[194] Der Weg zum Himmel geht durch Kreuzdorn. Compare the medieval obverse of the same: Via Crucis, via lucis.

[195] No hiere Dios con dos manos.

[196] Paz y paciencia, y muerte con penitencia.

[197] _Memoirs of Margaret Fuller_, vol. 3, p. 266. In respect of words like these, wrung out from moments of agony, and not the abiding convictions of the utterer, may we not venture to hope that our own proverb, _For mad words deaf ears_, is often graciously true, even in the very courts of heaven?

[198] Wenn Gott ein Ding verdreufst, so verdreufst es auch bald die Menschen.

[199] The following have all a right to be termed Christian proverbs: Chi non vuol servir ad un solo Signor, à molti ha da servir;—E padron del mondo chi lo disprezza, schiavo chi lo apprezza;—Quando Dios quiere, con todos vientos llueve.

[200] Perimus licitis.

[201] Non quam late sed quam læte habites, refert.—Mas vale un pedazo de pan con amor, que gallinas con dolor.

[202] Quien siembra abrojos, no ande descalzo. Compare the Latin: Si vultur es, cadaver expecta; and the French: Maudissons sont feuilles; qui les seme, il les recueille.

[203] No se mou la fulla, que Deu no ha vulla. This is one of the proverbs of which the peculiar grace and charm nearly disappears in the rendering.

[204] Quien à dos señores ha de servir, al uno ha de mentir.

[205] Verum mihi videtur illud: Dives aut iniquus, aut iniqui hæres. Out of a sense of the same, as I take it, the striking Italian proverb had its rise: Mai diventò fiume grande, chi non v’entrasse acqua torbida.

[206] Πολλοί τοι ναρθηκοφόροι, παῦροι δέ τε βάκχοι.

[207] The fact which this proverb proclaims, of a great gulf existing between what men profess and what they are, is one too frequently repeating itself and thrusting itself on the notice of all, not to have found its utterance in an infinite variety of forms, although none perhaps so deep and poetical as this. Thus there is another Greek line, fairly represented by this Latin:

Qui tauros stimulent multi, sed rarus arator;

and there is the classical Roman proverb: Non omnes qui habent citharam, sunt citharœdi; and the medieval rhyming verse:

Non est venator quivis per cornua flator;

and this Eastern word: _Hast thou mounted the pulpit, thou art not therefore a preacher_; with many more.

[208] Qui me amat, amat et canem meum. (_In Fest. S. Mich. Serm._ 1, § 3.)

[209] Libera me ab homine malo, a meipso.

[210] Ὀψὲ Θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά. We may compare the Latin: Habet Deus suas horas, et moras; and the Spanish: Dios no se queja, mas lo suyo no lo deja.

[211] Dii laneos habent pedes.

[212] _Life_, vol. i. p. 312.

[213] Wo der Teufel nicht hin mag kommen, da send er seinen Boten hin.

[214] La farina del diavolo se ne và in semola.

APPENDIX.

ON THE METRICAL LATIN PROVERBS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. (See p. 29.)

I have not seen anywhere brought together a collection of these medieval proverbs cast into the form of a rhyming hexameter. Erasmus, though he often illustrates the proverbs of the ancient world by those of the new, does not quote, as far as I am aware, through the whole of his enormous collection, a single one of these which occupy a middle place between the two; a fact which in its way is curiously illustrative of the degree to which the attention of the great Humanists at the revival of learning was exclusively directed to the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Yet proverbs in this form exist in considerable number; being of very various degrees of merit, as will be seen from the following selection; in which some are keen and piquant enough, while others are of very subordinate value; those which seemed to me utterly valueless—and they were not few—I have excluded altogether. The reader familiar with proverbs will detect correspondents to very many of them, besides the few which I have quoted, in one modern language or another, often in many.

Accipe, sume, cape, tria sunt gratissima Papæ.

Let me observe here, once for all, that the lengthening of the final syllable in _capê_, is not to be set down to the ignorance or carelessness of the writer; but in the theory of the medieval hexameter, the unavoidable stress or pause on the first syllable of the third foot was counted sufficient to lengthen the shortest syllable in that position.

Ad secreta poli curas extendere noli.

Ægro sanato, frustra dices, Numerato.

Amphora sub veste raro portatur honeste.

Ante Dei vultum nihil unquam restat inultum.

Ante molam primus qui venit, non molat imus.

A rule of natural equity: Prior tempore, prior jure;—_First come, first serve_.—“Whoso first cometh to the mill, first grint.”—_Chaucer._

Arbor naturam dat fructibus atque figuram.

Arbor ut ex fructu, sic nequam noscitur actu.

Ars compensabit quod vis tibi magna negabit.

Artem natura superat sine vi, sine curâ.

Aspera vox, Ite, sed vox est blanda, Venite.

An allusion to Matt. xxv. 34, 41.

Cari rixantur, rixantes conciliantur.

Carius est carum, si prægustatur amarum.

Casus dementis correctio fit sapientis.

Catus sæpe satur cum capto mure jocatur.

Cautus homo cavit, si quem natura notavit.

Conjugium sine prole, dies veluti sine sole.

Contra vim mortis non herbula crescit in hortis.

Cui puer assuescit, major dimittere nescit.

The same appears also in a pentameter, and under an Horatian image: Quod nova testa capit, inveterata sapit.

Cui sunt multa bona, huic dantur plurima dona.

Cum jocus est verus, jocus est malus atque severus.

So the Spanish: Malas son las burlas verdaderas.

Curvum se præbet quod in uncum crescere debet.

Curia Romana non quærit ovem sine lanâ.

Dat bene, dat multum, qui dat cum munere vultum.

“He that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.” (Rom. xii. 8.) Cf. Ecclus. xxxv. 9; SENECA, _De Benef._, i. 1.

Deficit ambobus qui vult servire duobus.

Dormit secure, cui non est functio curæ.

_Far from court, far from care._

Ebibe vas totum, si vis cognoscere potum.

Est facies testis, quales intrinsecus estis.

Est nulli certum cui pugna velit dare sertum.

Ex linguâ stultâ veniunt incommoda multa.

Ex minimo crescit, sed non cito fama quiescit.

Fœmina ridendo flendo fallitque canendo.

Frangitur ira gravis, cum fit responsio suavis.

Fures in lite pandunt abscondita vitæ.

So in Spanish: Riñen las comadres, y dicense las verdades.

Furtivus potus plenus dulcedine totus.