Many proverbs have achieved popularity, not on account of what they say, but of the way they say it; the secret of their success has been some spice of originality or of humour in their composition. Originality, however, is a tender plant, and nothing fades more quickly than humour. A graphic or unexpected metaphor will delight the imagination for a little while, but how swiftly and inexorably “familiarity breeds contempt”; a phrase which is itself a case in point. Whenever therefore, in studying the Jewish proverbs, we come upon famous and familiar words, we must endeavour to let the saying for a moment renew its youth, by deliberately quickening our sympathy and attention, by counting it certain that words which have not failed through so many centuries to touch the hearts and minds of men deserve from us more than a passing glance of recognition. Many proverbs speak truth, but a true word can be spoken too often. Every preacher in Christendom knows how little, through much iteration, the words “Hope” and “Love” may convey to his hearers, although most men are conscious that of the realities of Hope and Love they cannot possess too much. So also with the truths expressed in proverbs. For example, many excellent men have lacked only promptitude to win success, and we have need to be warned thereby; but when the fact is put before us in the words “Procrastination is the thief of time,” what copybook boredom rises in our indignant soul! We will not learn the lesson from so stale a teacher. Every effort to indicate the genius of proverbs is attended by this disadvantage of verbal familiarity; and, of course, it is the finest sayings that suffer most. But just here the tragedy of the great European War lends unwelcome aid. The intensity of human experience has been raised to a degree not known for centuries; and, as a recent writer in the _Spectator_ admirably puts it, “In all times of distress dead truisms come to life. They confront the mind at every turn. We are amazed at the vividness of our thoughts, and confounded at the banality of their expression. We imagined that only fools helped themselves out with the musty wisdom of copybooks, but now it seems that even a fool may speak to the purpose. There is nothing so new as trouble, nothing so threadbare as its expression. ‘All is fair in love and war’.... How vividly that falsehood has been impressed upon us by our enemies. Yet how dull and indisputable it seemed such a little while ago. Even those of us who have least personal stake in the war grow terribly impatient at its slow movement. Almost every man who buys an afternoon paper thinks of the ‘watched pot.’ How many people have lately known the heart-sickness of ‘hope deferred’? ‘Dying is as natural as living’: that is a dull enough expression of fact, when death is far off: but, when it is near, it cuts like a two-edged sword.”[1] Life for the present generation has verily been transformed; it is both more terrible and