+VI. The rejection of Wisdom's voice of invitation changes it to one of threatening.+ The refusal of the invitation to the Gospel feast shut out to retribution those who rejected it (Luke xiv. 16). The space given for repentance will not last for ever. A time is here foretold when God will not hear them who have refused to hear Him. Their cry for help will be treated as they once treated the earnest cry of wisdom. "I will mock when your fear cometh." +VII. The blessed condition of those who accept Wisdom's invitation.+ The promises given under this Old Testament dispensation referred in a large degree to the present life. Dwelling safely here doubtless has its immediate reference to a home in Canaan, as in Isaiah i. 19. "If ye be willing, and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." Yet the underlying principle is that God will take charge of the real interests of those who yield themselves to Him--who fall in with His plans for their real eternal good. _OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._ Verse 20. What was in the views of godly men, in Solomon's days, an abstraction, became concrete when Christ was manifested on earth. The manifold character of this Divine wisdom (Isa. xi. 2, 3), and the multiplicity of all messengers of this wisdom of God in all ages of the Church accord with the plural form. (See "Critical Notes.")--_Fausset._ The Orientals used the plural form to denote the highest excellence. But _wisdoms_ may be plural to denote wisdom in all forms, or all "_wisdoms_" in one; specially two forms of wisdom--wisdom in a worldly sense, and wisdom in the spiritual sense which the natural man does not discern. Wisdom in both these senses unites in piety. The pious man has spiritual wisdom of which the sinner knows nothing; and fleshly or natural wisdom to avoid hell and to secure heaven, to provide for death and get ready for an eternal world, to a degree altogether superior to a fleshly nature.--_Miller._ After that Solomon hath brought in a godly father warning and instructing his sons, now he raiseth up, as it were, a matron or queen-mother provoking her children unto virtue.--_Muffet_ The words of men may be wise; but when God speaks, Wisdom itself addresses us.--_Lawson_ Perhaps some wide law of association connecting the purity and serenity of wisdom with the idea of womanhood, determines the character of the personification. Not in solitude, but in the haunts of men, through sages, lawgivers, and teachers, and yet more through life and its experiences, she preaches to mankind. Something of the same kind was present, we may believe, to Socrates when he said that the fields and the trees taught him nothing, but that he found the wisdom he was seeking in his converse with the men whom he met as he walked in the streets and _agora_ of Athens. (Plato, "Phædrus," p. 230.)--_Plumptre._ "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and _cried_, saying 'Come unto me and drink.'" (John vii. 37.)--_Trapp._