To pass to lesser things, Ben Sira could not suffer fools gladly. The fact that so few Jews fail in the characteristics of shrewdness and practical common-sense must largely be due to the harsh, ironical things said of fools again, again, and ever again, in their much-studied literature. “The discourse of a fool is like a burden in the way.” One can almost hear the sage yawning at the close of a bout of boredom. “The life of a fool is worse than death.” This is final enough. So, also, of the man, too talkative. “Contend not with a man that is full of tongue, and heap not wood upon his fire.” The spirit and picture in those words--there are many such sayings in these ripe and stimulating books--are vivid: they fit these our times as they did the days of Jesus, son of Sirach. Indeed, there is nothing new! The ninny, the bore, the nagging wife, the man of empty tongue, Paul Pry, Sir Peter Pomposity--these and many others, a tiresome company, are of the eternal people, they who can never die. Ben Sira shows that he knew them well. So also--so alas!--do we. Of various aspects of work he speaks: the dignity of labour was hardly realised in those very pre-Carlylean days. His advice to masters is shrewd--“Be not as a lion in thy house, nor fanciful among thy servants”--and (probably with the prototype of Jeames in his mind’s eye) contemptuous. “Fodder, a stick and burdens for an ass; bread, and discipline and work for a servant”--which is reminiscent of the sea-captain who, to keep his crew from grumbling in idleness, set them in spare hours to scrape the rust from the anchor-chains. There is, however, a broader spirit and more humanity in his consideration of the workers in the fields and their aristocratic brothers in industry, the artisan-artists, makers of the useful and beautiful, the graver, the smith, and the potter. Of them he points a contrast which indirectly exalts what we call the glory of the work. Here are words shrewd, pregnant with meaning, worthy to be noted and kept in remembrance: “The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure, and he that hath little business shall become wise. “How shall he become wise that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the shaft of the goad, that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labours, and whose discourse is of the stock of bulls?” (Ecclus. xxxviii.). I need quote no more of this passage, as it is to be read in the pages that follow. It is but one instance, of many, showing the insight and truth, applicable to all times, of Ben Sira’s philosophy.