_ CHAPTER EIGHT. GOD THE SOURCE OF COURAGE
III. PRACTICAL PRECEPTS FROM PROVERBS
There is nothing like the Bible to put heart into a man. This is not strange, for the Book was written for this purpose by men of God's choosing whose business it was to strengthen their fellows.
One of the most vivid parts of the Bible is the book of Proverbs.
"Would that our young men were saturated with its thought," Albert J. Beveridge said of it, while he was a member of the United States Senate. "It is rich in practical wisdom for the minute affairs of practical life. It abounds in apt and pointed suggestions and pungent warnings concerning our companionship, our personal habits, our employments, our management of finance, our speech, the government of tongue and temper, and many other such things, which daily perplex the earnest soul, and daily occasion harm to the thoughtless and misguided."
Years earlier, another eminent American, Washington Irving, used what is the keynote of the book in an earnest talk with George Bancroft, later the historian of his country, then a student in Europe. The two were taking a walking excursion, when the older man said something the student remembered all his life. It was natural, then, that Bancroft's biographer should give this in his subject's own words, in "Life and Letters of George Bancroft:"
"At my time of life, he tells me, I ought to lay aside all care, and only be bent on laying in a stock of knowledge for future application. If I have not pecuniary resources enough to get at what I would wish for, as calculated to be useful to my mind, I must still not give up the pursuit. Still follow it; scramble to it; get at it as you can, but be sure to get at it. If you need books, buy them; if you are in want of instruction in anything take it. The time will soon come when it will be too late for all these things."
More than a century ago an immigrant from Scotland landed in New York. In the story of his life he later told how the book of Proverbs became his rock. The first night he slept in an old frame building with a shingle roof. During the night he was aroused by a storm of rain accompanied by thunder and lightning such as he had never experienced in Scotland. Homesick, terrified, unable to sleep, he rose and took from his chest the Bible his father had carefully packed with his clothes. He wrote later that as the book was opened, "My eyes fell on the words, 'My Son.' I was thinking of my father. I read on with delight. Having finished the last verse I found I had been reading the third chapter of the Proverbs of Solomon. Get a Bible and read the chapter. Then suppose yourself in my situation--sore in body, sick at heart, and commencing life among a world of strangers, and see if words more suitable could be put together to fit my case. I looked upon it as a chart from heaven, directing my course among the rocks, shoals and storms of life.... I went forth with a light heart to work my way through the world, resolved to keep this chapter as a pilot by my side."
The importance for to-day of the message in Proverbs 30:8, "Remove far from me vanity and lies," is illustrated by several incidents told by Lucy Elliot Keeler, in "If I Were a Boy:"
"The son of a distinguished American recently entered business in New York, beginning, at his father's request, at the foot of the ladder, and receiving the princely salary of $20 a month. At a time when his father's name was in everybody's mouth the editor of a yellow journal sent for the son and invited him to join the staff. 'You need not write any articles,' he said, with a smile, 'nor do any reporting. Just sign your name to an article which I will furnish you each day, and I will pay you $200 a month....' The young man's reply was too emphatic to be accurately reported here, but it was to the effect that he would rather starve than pick untold dollars out of the gutter.
"A few years ago an American commissioner occupying a house in the West Indies hired a man to wash the windows and another to scrub the floors. The bills submitted were for $12 and $7, respectively. 'What does this mean?' was the astonished query. '$12 for a day's work? Man, you are crazy!' 'Oh,' came the soft reply, 'of course, I only expect a dollar and a half for myself, but that was the way we always made out bills for the Spanish officers.' 'Take back your bills,' was the American's emphatic reply, 'and make them out honestly.'"
The wisdom of the warning in Proverbs 27:2, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," has seldom been more strikingly illustrated than at a large convention when several thousand people listened attentively as a speaker of reputation was introduced to them. He talked fluently for several minutes, then began to ramble. He made several attempts to regain his lost hold on his hearers, then took his seat.
"I can't imagine what was wrong to-day," he said to his neighbor on the platform. "I had all ready what I felt sure would be a telling address, but somehow I couldn't say what I wanted." A sympathetic answer was given by the man to whom he had spoken, but if he had said all that was in his heart this would have been his message: "I know you had a telling argument to present, for I read your manuscript. But you spent the first three minutes in talking about yourself. It was there you lost the attention of the people; they did not come to hear about you, but to learn of your Master. And when you had put yourself in the foreground, it was impossible for you to present Him with power."
The speaker's mistake is repeated every day, not merely by men on the platform, but by everyday people in the home, in the school, and at work. It is fatal to usefulness to put ourselves in the foreground; but those who forget self and remember others are welcome wherever they go. _