In the small affairs of every day these sages can help us: and they--especially the writer of _The Wisdom of Solomon_--are not unmindful of the larger life, the lighted truths, the eternal verities. These wisdom-books taken together, as we are taking them, give helpful, strengthening counsel on the great and the little troubles, fears, comforts, questions which--all in a tangle and somehow--comprise human life. Death these writers could contemplate with a resignation which challenges comparison with the attitude of Omar, who was, before all else, anxious to squeeze wine from the grapes and to take and give kisses while still the sun was shining; he knowing full well that in the emptiness and darkness to come there could be no joys of company, no laughter, wine, or love such as he lived for: a sorry delight wedded to a sorrier expectation, given to us, as it is, in verses so moving and sweet that they accentuate the sadness ever brooding. “Fear not the sentence of death, remember them that have been before thee and that come after,” is a far nobler appeal to those who tremble at the thought of the coming of the grey angel. And still there is God. “The Eyes of the Lord are ten-thousand times brighter than the sun.” He is omniscient and rules with beneficence; that confidence which the Jews in their religion created was not extinguished, despite past trouble and great national disappointments. As to the manner of travelling along the road of life, between the dim but certain gates of birth and death: “One praying and another cursing, whose voice will the Lord listen to?” These sayings show how well they view man in the individual and the abstract: for what always tells is character. “A man’s attire, and grinning laughter and gait shew what he is,” and--this to be remembered by the public man whose heart is breaking from the ingratitude of those he serves, whose shoulders are galled by the thankless burden which duty has compelled him to bear--“The man of low estate may be pardoned in mercy, but mighty men shall be searched out mightily.” On that true note--a strengthening message from the east to the duty-doers of all times--it is well to close. THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON =1= Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth, think ye of the Lord with a good mind, and in singleness of heart seek ye him; Because he is found of them that tempt him not, and is manifested to them that do not distrust him. For crooked thoughts separate from God; and the supreme Power, when it is brought to the proof, putteth to confusion the foolish: Because wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil, nor dwell in a body that is held in pledge by sin. For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will start away from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be put to confusion when unrighteousness hath come in.