specie eternitatis_ be imparted; for to know life fully must be to know not only its infinite extension and its Divine splendour, but also the exquisite perfection of its fleeting moments. I Proverbs are one of the most ancient inventions of Man, far older than history. Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Aristotle, gazing as far into the past as his glance could reach, saw proverbs still beckoning him back. He spoke of them as “fragments of an older wisdom which on account of their brevity or aptness had been preserved from the general wreck and ruin.” Even the _Book of Proverbs_, late as it is in date, has features which, if we follow out their significance, will lead us back to the life of men in long forgotten years. The signs, of course, are slight, but they are none the less real; and even a faint trace may be a sure thread of guidance. Only some grooves upon the surface of the rock, but the lines were indubitably made by the movement of ice in the glacial age. Only a piece of jagged flint, but the edge we finger was chipped by human hands for an object conceived in a human brain. See how the conical marks where each stroke of the hammer fell are still as clear and purposeful as on the day when they were made. Flaking a flint is skilled work: the blows must be cunningly aimed and exactly struck, or the stone will be shattered instead of sharpened. This one, being well wrought, is doubtless a Neolithic weapon. But here is a specimen more rude and primitive. It is probably a thousand years older than the one we have just examined. Nevertheless, we know that it also was worked by man, and that human eyes chose it and human hands held it, and fashioned it, in days when man shared Europe with the mammoth. What faint but real traces of a far antiquity can be seen in the Jewish proverbs? (1) The first trace is to be found in the Numerical Sayings, a curious type of aphorism, half proverb and half riddle. Four of these occur in _Proverbs_ 30. FOUR THINGS UNSATISFIED. _Three things there be unsatisfied, Yea! four that say not “Enough”-- The land of death; the barren womb; Earth unsated with water; And fire that says not “Enough”_ (Pr. 30^{15b, 16}). FOUR SMALL WISE THINGS. _There be four things upon the earth small but exceeding wise_: _The_ ANTS--_a people little of strength, but in summer they store up food_: _The_ CONIES--_these be a feeble folk, but they make their homes in the rock_: _The_ LOCUSTS--_are they that have no king, but they march in an ordered host_: _The_ LIZARDS--_on which thou canst lay thine hand, though they dwell in his majesty’s court_ (Pr. 30^{24-28}). FOUR THINGS UNBEARABLE.