There are proverbs which reach the height of evangelical morality. “Little gospels”[193] the Spaniard has somewhat too boldly entitled his; and certainly there are many which at once we feel could nowhere have arisen or obtained circulation but under the influence of Christian faith, being in spirit, and often in form no less than in spirit, the outbirths of it. Thus is it with that exquisitely beautiful proverb of our own: _The way to heaven is by Weeping-Cross_;[194] nor otherwise with the Spanish: _God never wounds with both hands_;[195] not with _both_, for He ever reserves one with which to bind up and to heal. And another Spanish, evidently intended to give the sum and substance of all which in life is to be desired the most, _Peace and patience, and death with penitence_,[196] gives this sum certainly only as it presents itself to the Christian eye. And this of ours is Christian both in form and in spirit: _Every cross hath its inscription_;—the name, that is, inscribed upon it, of the person for whom it was shaped; it was intended for those shoulders upon which it is laid, and will adapt itself to them; that fearful word is never true which a spirit greatly vexed spake in the hour of its impatience: “I have little faith in the paternal love which I need; so ruthless, or so negligent seems the government of this earth.”[197] So too is it with that ancient German proverb: _When God loathes aught, men presently loathe it too_.[198] He who first uttered this must have been one who had watched long the ways by which shame and honour travel in this world; and in this watching must have noted how it ever came to pass that even worldly honour tarried not long with them from whom the true honour which cometh from God had departed. For the worldly honour is but a shadow and reflex that waits upon the heavenly; it may indeed linger for a little, but it will be only for a little, after it is divorced from its substance. Where the honour from Him has been withdrawn, he causes in one way or another the honour from men ere long to be withdrawn too. When He loathes, presently man loathes also. The saltless salt is not merely cast out by Him, but is trodden under foot of _men_. (Matt. v. 13.) A Louis the Fifteenth’s death-bed is in its way as hideous to the natural as it is to the spiritual eye.[199] [Sidenote: Sir Matthew Hale’s proverb.]