However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him, for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression: "Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above them both." "Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?" "The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in his heart." "There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of the heart." "Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow." "The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself." "The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe of honour." About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this conjecture: Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned) who hideth his wisdom. In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London, I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom": "He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial." "He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom that multiplieth bitterness." To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following: "Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out: he is great beyond his works." This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of the Persian Sâdi: "They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture, surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our first encomium of thee!"