LECTURE IV. THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS 70 LECTURE V. THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS 96 LECTURE VI. THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS 121 APPENDIX 149 PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS. LECTURE I. THE FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB. It is very likely that from some of us proverbs have never attracted the notice which I am persuaded they deserve; and from this it may follow that, when invited to bestow even a brief attention on them, we are in some doubt whether they will repay our pains. We think of them but as sayings on the lips of the multitude; not a few of them have been familiar to us as far back as we can remember; often employed by ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight and trivial occasions: and thus, from these and other causes, it may very well be, that, however sometimes one may have taken our fancy, we yet have remained blind in the main to the wit, wisdom, and imagination, of which they are full; and very little conscious of the amusement, instruction, insight, which they are capable of yielding. Unless too we have devoted a certain attention to the subject, we shall not be at all aware how little those more familiar ones, which are frequent on the lips of men, exhaust the treasure of our native proverbs; how many and what excellent ones remain behind, having now for the most part fallen out of sight; or what riches in like kind other nations possess. We may little guess how many aspects of interest there are in which our own by themselves, and our own compared with those of other people, may be regarded. And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider our judgment, should we be thus tempted to slight them, and to count them not merely trite, but trivial and unworthy of a serious attention. The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages,—that they possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation’s existence,—nay, that many of them have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves an home in the most different lands,—and further, that they have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of that great stream of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its waves,—all this, I think, may well make us pause, should we be tempted to turn away from them with anything of indifference or disdain.