THE book of Proverbs was the fruit of experience, not fancy. Between the antithetical proverb in the seventh verse of the first chapter and the far-seeing demand in the last verse of the last chapter, that in justice woman be given the fruit of her hands,—a demand that is only now being at all fully granted, —the book runs the gamut of human experience. The folly, weakness, and extravagance of human life are first portrayed, and then opposed by the true concept of the spiritual reality, hidden or obscured by the mortal seeming; for the compilers of the book were wise enough to give the remedy for the false concepts of life. Accordingly the admonition, "Forsake the foolish, and live," is followed by the exhortation to "go in the way of understanding."
Many of the proverbs are attributed to Solomon, and this vast and fruitful experience may have come to him as the result of his experiment in seeking happiness by the pursuit of material pleasures. He was in what every worldly-minded person would call the enviable position of being able to satisfy his every wish. In the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, verses 1-10, we read of the Preacher that whatsoever his eyes desired he kept not from them, and withheld not his heart from any joy. What an enjoyable position to be in: he could do as he pleased! But farther on he says that he hated life because the work that was wrought under the sun was grievous unto him, "for all is vanity and vexation of spirit." "Vanity and vexation of spirit"—the fruits of indulging material desire without stint! Solomon traveled a disappointing road, and he was compassionate enough to leave a signpost clearly marked: Impassable, because impossible. Then why need we desire to travel along that road?
Now let us consider some of the foolish things to be avoided or forsaken if we would truly live. From the merely frivolous amusements dangled before the eyes of those who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, there are all the intermediate grades of folly, up through the foolish excesses of the bibulous and the gluttonous, and the killing blasts of crime, to the consummate folly of him of whom the Psalmist says, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Here is one who seems to have cast aside that which is really worth while. Yet he is only a little more foolish than the one who has other gods besides the true God. The gods of this world constitute a subtle claim on mortals, and lead them into many an experience of foolishness. In its efforts to find happiness and prosperity in the flesh, the world has gorged itself with materiality; but its cry of vanity is as lusty as ever; and it will never find relief until it forsakes the foolish endeavor to find happiness and peace outside of God, Spirit.
Wearily and vainly the world has searched in matter for surcease from pain and sorrow. The sick and the sinning have searched vainly in the fields of material medicine and scholastic theology for permanent relief from their predicaments: the search has too often been far away from the place of God's appointing, and they have turned a deaf ear and an unseeing eye to God's call and guidance. In so far as all materialism may be designated as foolishness, they must learn to forsake the foolish before they can truly live.
A kind of folly which is not so readily recognized, but which must be forsaken if one would find his full measure of life, consists in believing that God is not available as a means of salvation from sickness and disease. This sense of folly victimizes even those who may place the utmost reliance on God to save from sin, for it causes them to believe that the sick can be healed only by material means. Therefore, they charge with folly those who consistently maintain and prove that God is "a very present help in trouble;" that He is the God who heals all our diseases as willingly as He forgives all our iniquities. In due course, God has revealed His purpose, His willingness and ability to help us in every experience in life; and this revelation has come through Christian Science.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, pleads with mankind to forsake all error. She herself so thoroughly lived the higher life that she could write with unimpeachable authority (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 106): "The list of cases healed by me could be made to include hopeless organic diseases of almost every kind. I name those mentioned above simply to show the folly of believing that the immutable laws of omnipotent Mind have not power over and above matter in every mode and form, and the folly of the cognate declaration that Christian Science is limited to imaginary diseases!"
In Jesus' parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins, it is pointed out that the foolish ones could not win their way into heaven or harmony by borrowing from those who had been wise enough to forsake the foolish temptation to rely on others for their supply of oil. The wise watchers had scientifically prepared for the coming of the bridegroom, and so they went in with him to the marriage feast. The door was then shut against the foolish, who went away either to profit by the experience or to continue the round of what Mrs. Eddy has so aptly described, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 203), as "illegitimate living" and "fearful and doleful dying."
"O foolish Galatians," writes Paul, "who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?" Verily, mortal man has been betrayed into paths of foolishness. If he would live, in the true sense of the word, in contradistinction to the meaning of life implied in his material experience, he must forsake all foolishness, and, like the prodigal son, press home to his Father, God, in whom we really "live, and move, and have our being." This spiritual sense of existence is the sense of living that Solomon and, later, Jesus strove to make plain to those of their day. Christian Science again reveals this life, and it is ours to live as we successfully and permanently "forsake the foolish."
