The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1896-10-17
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THE LESSON AT BETHANY.


maker designated the name of yesterday
lesson in breezy talk before the Bethany
Bible Union An unavoidable absence on
the Sunday afternoon before had made the
Bethany band doubly appreciative of their
popular teacher, and it was good, solid,
substantional crowd of faces, with few
vacant spaces in between, which looked up
at him from the huge horseshoe-shaped
auditorium at three o'clock yesterday. The
lesson, that from the 10Th chapter of Prov
cribs, was headed obstructive Vices. /"
''I'd like to know" said Mr.. Wanamaker
at the beginning 'what vices are not de-
structive
"a proverb," he continued, 'is chunk
of experience. Here today we have whole
package of them bundled together by the
wisest man who ever lived" Although all
of them, he explained in passing, were
not written by Solomon, some of them hav-
ing been collected by Hezekiah. GAS we
90 through life we need guide boards, and
here Solomon has put up 5000 of them for
us. So many of these, you notice, are
about the way the way of pleasantness
the way of wickedness, the way of death,
of judgment and of blessedness.
"That is what the proverbs of Solomon
are for-to show us the way. Sir Walter
Scott has said, and | think said truly,
that there is not so much in what a man
says, as in who says it, That is the start
ing point of our lesson-the fact that the
man who makes these statements has for
nearly 5000 years occupied a pedestal as
the wisest Of men, the illustrious ruler.
Proverbs, in fact form Bible in them
selves. II all the Rothschilds and Goulds,
all the great iinanciers and business men of
the world were to join together they could
not produce half so good business book
to put in the hands of a young man.
Passing rapidly over the various points
of the lesson, he showed how fully demon
strates the evil of folly, of obstinacy, of
malice, of tale-bearing and of violence. He
summed up its quaint teachings in nine
teenth century paraphrase as follows: 'The
man who has spiritual understanding has a
uever-failing well-spring of wisdom within
him. Folly may come near him in the
shape of the instruction OF fools, but he
resists it with his heaveninspired wisdom.
The wise mans four eyes, the physical ones
and what the book of Ephesians calls the
eyes of the understanding. Commenting
on the verse pheasant words are as honey
comb, sweet to the SOUL" he vigorously
scored the people who have not learned
how to keep quiet when they have nothing
to say.
''Some people," he added, "never put up
anything but sour jam. Others again, as
our text says, dig up evil there is not
enough of it already in the world to satisfy
them, so they dig up some old wrong some
old feud, some buried scandal with which
to make fresh trouble. The latter forms a
good part of the population of Philadel-
phia' ~ Soou iVCclpt lol uedllHS WIFI tillS
nuisance comes from Hannah More. When
anyone came to her with tale about some
one else, she would say: Come along now
let us go to see that person and ascertain
the truth about this matter. "
The most important point of the lesson,
the verse over which Mr.. Wanamaker said
he felt like planting big flag, was this,
the 25th verse of the 10th chapter of Prov
cribs: ''There is way that seemeth right
to a man, but the end there is the way of
death" 1t seems to him right, because he
persuades himself it is right; but there is
an end to it, ard that end brings destruc-
ton with it.-Phladelphi Times, Sept. u.