perceived that they had a genius for religion, but they have had genius for many other things besides, as their strange fortunes testify. Their hand prospers, whithersoever it is turned. Who but the Jews can claim to have had a Golden Age in proverbs? In utilising their popular sayings for a definite purpose, and in thus making them literature, the Jews succeeded in a feat that other nations have scarcely emulated, far less equalled. Moreover in the process the Jews made their proverbs superlatively good. Some think that for wit and acuteness the ancient sayings of the Chinese are unsurpassed; for multitude and variety those of the Arabs and the Spaniards. But the Jewish proverbs of this “Wisdom” period excel all others in the supreme quality of being possession of all men for all time. They are marvellously free from provincial and temporary elements; and this is the more remarkable in that the Jews were intensely nationalistic, and their literature, as a rule, is steeped in racial sentiment. Of these proverbs, however, very few must be considered Hebraic in an exclusive sense, or indeed Oriental. The mass of them have been at home in many lands and many centuries, because they speak to the elemental needs of men. Again and again they touch the very heart of Humanity. They are universal. But that is the characteristic of genius. If therefore proverbs be our study, we could ask no better subject than these proverbs of the Jews. Even so our theme is far from easy. Life, when visible before us, can with difficulty be portrayed. Harder by far is it to recall life from literature, translating the symbols of letters into the sound of speech and looking through words into the colour and movement of the scenes that by the magic of human language are there preserved, accurately enough, yet only like pale shadows of the reality. Hardest of all is it, when the documents to be studied are records of a far-past age and the life that of an alien people. But how well worth every effort is the task! “Many of us,” writes Mark Rutherford, “have felt that we would give all our books if we could but see with our own eyes how a single day was passed by a single ancient Jewish, Greek, or Roman family; how the house was opened in the morning; how the meals were prepared; what was said; how the husband, wife, and children went about their work; what clothes they wore, and what were their amusements.”[11] Information so detailed as Mark Rutherford desired will not be afforded by the Jewish proverbs. Nevertheless they are full of frank, intimate, comment on the ways of men and women, and of reflection on the experiences we all suffer or enjoy, and certainly should learn how best to encounter. If they yield less than might be wished for, still what they show is shown in the naïve and homely fashion that is so illuminating. Such being the difficulty of our task, and such the encouragement to pursue it, the reader will perhaps permit at the outset a short statement