and all the wisdom of Egypt" and "he was wiser than all men," comparatively few of his sayings have been preserved. Of the three thousand that are attributed to him, scarcely eight hundred are found in the Scriptures. Some of the old Rabbinical scholars were fond of believing that those on record admitted of a double and triple interpretation and were therefore nearly if not quite equal in number to three thousand.

Unlike the proverbs of India, that are largely agricultural, the sayings of Solomon are for the most part precepts of the town and reflect conditions incident to city life; furthermore they differ from others in that they were the production of one man and did not take their rise from the "voice of the multitude."

Solomon was a king and spoke as a king; his counsels were not so much the counsels of a man to his fellow men as of a sovereign to his subjects. His station and wisdom gave him a wide hearing and his words were repeated as words of authority. Possessing a well informed mind, superior judgment, and a wide knowledge of men and things, he took a broad view of life and was able to speak of many objects, of trees, herbs, beasts, birds, fishes, and creeping things (I Kings iv 33), throwing his observations in the form of parallelisms.

:

Most of the proverbs quoted in this volume from the Old Testament are those of Solomon and show the general characteristics and forms

of sayings used among the people of the East. They bear a striking resemblance to the aphorisms of the roving Arabs. Solomon was wise not merely in what he said but in the way he expressed himself. Whether his adages were adaptations of maxims current at the time, as some suppose, or were original with him, he was able to speak in a way that he knew would appeal to his contemporaries. The Jews have always held them in high esteem and the Christian Church has regarded them as unrivalled among the counsels of men. They are not only wonderful as literary productions and wise precepts, but "they bear," as Philip Schaff declared, "the stamp of divine wisdom and inspiration."

NEW-TESTAMENT PROVERBS

The writers of the New Testament were not only familiar with the sayings of the Rabbis, but with many Grecian, Indian, Babylonian, and Persian aphorisms that had come into common use among the people. Homer, Æsop, Solon, Aristotle, and others had introduced a large number of adages to the Jews of Palestine and the number was increased by the addition of such as were wrought out of daily experience. Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was undoubtedly in the habit of quoting them; thus the logia of the Hebrew sages, the aphorisms of the wise, and the sayings of the town's people would

be heard by Jesus in His childhood and youth and would be used by Him in His intercourse with men; furthermore the quotation of proverbs in public instruction was common among teachers, particularly when addressing large assemblies. Jesus was a man among men; His language was that of the home and the street and the "common people heard him gladly." Those who listened to His words wondered not so much that He repeated the precepts of every-day life, for that was expected, as that he was able to so transfigure them by spiritual application that they seemed to have a new beauty and power.

The Sermon on the Mount has many phrases that are now used as proverbs; some of them may have been similarly used in Jesus' day and have been quoted by Him. We know that after talking with the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well He repeated to His disciples the saying, “One soweth and another reapeth," and that at other times He said, "No prophet is accepted in his own country" and "Physician, heal thyself." It is not unlikely that when He declared that His generation was like children in the marketplace who called to their companions, "We have piped unto you and you have not danced," He quoted a familiar saying taken from Æsop's fable of "The Fisherman Piping."

The use of proverbs was natural to Jesus, not only because they were apt and authoritative, but also because they were picturesque and

suggestive. They were germs of allegories and He loved to enforce His teachings with stories of life familiar to His countrymen. Many of His parables, as well as those spoken by the Rabbis, might well be amplifications of existing proverbs. Men of the East have always been fond of both forms of speech, and it is not strange that some confusion should have arisen in referring to them as though they were the same. (See Ps. 1xxviii : 2; Matt. xxiv: 32; Mark iii: 23; Luke iv: 23; v: 36; John x: 6; xvi: 25, 29.)

David Smith, in his recent life of Christ, refers to thirty or forty proverbs found in the New Testament that were either quoted by Jesus or the Jews in conference with Him.

It is the same with the writers of the Epistles: they quoted freely from the sayings of the people and used phrases that were proverbs in process of formation.

PROVERBS SUGGESTED BY THE BIBLE

The student of proverbs is often surprised to find among the familiar sayings of non-Christian nations phrases that teach lessons closely resembling those that are found in the Bible. In some cases the form is almost identical. This is explained by the influence of missionaries, foreign residents, and tourists, and by the fact that the law of righteousness is written in the hearts of all men. (Rom. i: 18-23.)

Speaking of the apparent reverence for sacred things among Orientals, W. M. Thomson, the missionary and traveller, says that it is quite common: "No matter how profane, immoral, and even atheistical a man may be, yet will he, on all appropriate occasions, speak of God-the one God, our God-in phrases the most proper and pious." "We are abashed and confounded in the presence of such holy talkers," said he, "and have no courage, or rather have too much reverence for sacred things to follow them in their glib and heartless verbiage. The fact is, I suppose, that Oriental nations, although they sank into various forms of idolatry, never lost the phraseology of the pure original theosophy." In Persia it is common to speak of a place of safety as "Noah's Ark" and call the babblings of a boaster "Moses' Rod," and in Turkey the people refer to men who uncomplainingly await the development of events as possessing "the patience of Job," and indicate the great antiquity of events or monuments by saying that they belong to "the age of Moses."

It must be remembered that many, if not most, Eastern proverbs and phrases that seem to indicate familiarity with the Bible came into existence through the medium of the Koran.

Such phrases as "To rob Peter to pay Paul" and "Nothing so deaf as an adder" have travelled from one land to another until they have become almost universal in their use and are

773223