+III. This knowledge and wisdom will be used for the benefit of others.+ It will be found in the lips. The man who is "instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old" (Matt. xiii. 52). He has a store from which he draws according to the need of those whom his words can benefit. His instructions are like the viands of the thrifty housewife, stored up in abundance against the time of need, and suited, both as to quantity and quality, to the wants of the needy soul (verse 21). +IV. The influence and the fate of him who refuses to lay up knowledge.+ His mouth is a near destruction (see rendering in Critical Notes). The man who refuses to lay up the knowledge of some calling or profession is both a fool and a knave, because by such neglect he makes himself dependent when he might be independent, and because he eats the bread earned by industrious men. How much more foolish is he who will not lay up that by which he may acquire a character which would make him an equal with the angels of God. But his neglect injures others beside himself. He wrongs his fellow-men by withholding his influence from the side of that which is righteous, and consequently defrauds the world of that which it is the duty of every man to give it. But he does not stop here. (1) He adds the positive evil influence of sinful words. The Bible speaks often of the evil influence of sinful speech. It likens it to the poison of venomous reptiles (see Psalm lviii. 4; cxl. 3; Jas. iii. 8). But these creatures can only destroy the body, whereas the fool's mouth is often a destruction to both body and soul. (On this subject see homiletical remarks on chapter i. 10-19). (2) But he is a curse to his own existence as well as to that of others. That which is a destruction to them makes a rod for his own back (verse 13). Such a man's mouth utters falsehood and slander by which he creates enemies _without._ That which he speaks brings guilt upon his conscience, which becomes an instrument of chastisement _within._ And a guilty conscience creates imaginary enemies as well as keeps us in remembrance of real ones. An old writer says, "The guilty conscience conceives every thistle to be a tree, every tree a man, every man, a devil,--afraid of every man that it sees, nay, many times of those that it sees not. Not much unlike to one that was very deep in debt and had many creditors, who, as he walked London streets in the evening, a tenter-hook caught his cloak. 'At whose suit?' said he, conceiving some sergeant had arrested him. Thus the ill-conscienced man counts every creature he meets with a bailiff sent from God to punish him." Such a conscience is indeed a "rod for the fool's back" (chap. xxvi. 3). _OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._