Solomon was a great man. He inherited the throne of his father David, king of Israel. The Lord promised to answer his prayer, and was pleased when Solomon asked for wisdom. God gave him a wise and understanding heart, to be the wisest man in all history (1 Ki. 3:12; 4:30-31). In Solomon’s fourth year, […]
A proverb is a truth encapsulated in a succinct way. As such it is portable. You may not readily remember great passages of Scripture, but you can always pack a few proverbs in your emergency kit to be used at a moment’s notice. Almost all of the proverbs that are quoted in the New Testament […]
The book of Proverbs has a deep historical interest, as well as a moral, social, industrial, and pious one. Solomon doubtless did not compose all the proverbs contained in it. Many of them he selected, digested, and arranged. But the mass of the book passed through his hands, or at least his mind; therefore it […]
Broadly speaking, the wisdom of the Hebrews covers the whole domain of what we should call science and philosophy. It is the consistent effort of the human mind to know, to understand, and to explain all that exists. It is, to use the modern phrase, the search for truth. The “wise men” were not, like […]
It is not an easy thing to write a final testimonial to one’s own father. He would be embarrassed to hear himself praised when he lived his whole Christian life praising the Lord and encouraging others to do so. But it is a good thing, a right thing, I believe, to give “honor to whom […]
On October 12, Thomas Liddon Sheridan was called to Glory. He was 82, and had been my husband for 62 years. The previous day, he fell and hit his head, fracturing his skull. This caused internal bleeding into the brain. After a few hours of semi-consciousness, he went into a deep coma and died at […]
It is not always true that generosity is the grace of kings. It ought to be, but as Paul remarked to the Corinthians, it was the “deep poverty” of the Macedonian Christians coupled with “the abundance of their joy” that “abounded unto the riches of their liberality” (2 Cor. 8:2). Of course, if the truth […]
“And the women also, which came with Him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and how His body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” (Lk. 23:55-56). Think about these women for a moment. They had just returned from the funeral […]
The poor man is the man without a margin. His income, even when it does come in–and he has no assurance that it will not fail–barely covers the irreducible minimum of the subsistence expenditure of his family. Life for him is a straitened business, in which he has no room to move about, no sense […]