HELPING PEOPLE TO LIVE LOVINGLY TOGETHER

The best part of the teaching of the wise men had to do with even more important matters than how to keep from being cheated.  They helped people live together.  They had many sensible things to say about good manners.  For example, Joshua the son of Sirach, a wise man whose sayings are found in the book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha, gives much wise counsel about table manners: 

="Consider thy neighbor’s liking by thine own, And be discreet in every point.  Eat as becometh a man, those things which are set before thee; And eat not greedily, lest thou be hated.  Be first to leave off, for manner’s sake, And be not insatiable, lest thou offend."=

Surely courtesy at the table is one of the things which make life happy and noble.  Truly civilized people do not eat like pigs in a trough.

As they looked out upon the lives of men what made the wise men most sorry was the hatred and bitterness which they so often saw between those who should have been friends.  One of their most frequent teachings was the need for the control of one’s anger and for charity and forgiveness.

="A fool uttereth all his anger,
But a wise man keepeth it back."=
(=Proverbs 29. 11.=)

="He that covereth a transgression seeketh love: 
But he that harpeth on a matter separateth chief friends."=
(=Proverbs 17. 9.=)

=Their condemnation of tale-bearing.=—­Since the wise men felt so strongly on this point, it is not surprising that they kept their most scathing denunciations for tale-bearers and troublemakers.  Too often they saw men who were formerly dear friends passing by each other with dark looks.  Some liar had been sowing his evil seed.  If you have anything to say against a man, the wise men urged, say it to his face.  Don’t talk against him behind his back.

="A froward man scattereth abroad strife: 
And a whisperer separateth chief friends."=
(=Proverbs 16. 28.=)

THE RELIGIOUS TEACHING OF THE WISE MEN

There came a time, perhaps a century or two after Nehemiah, when the wise men were the chief moral and religious leaders of the Jewish nation.  The people had lost faith in the prophets, for there were no more prophets like Amos or Isaiah.  And these practical teachers with their warm sympathy and kind hearts had many true words to speak about the God of wisdom and of love.  The book of Job in the Bible, one of the greatest books of history, was written by one of these wise men.  It is a story of a man who found God although both his own misfortunes and also the false ideas of his friends had made him think that God was his enemy.  He found God at last because he was brave enough to think for himself.

So these teachers gave their pupils the best kind of education.  They too, like the prophets and all the leaders about whom we have studied, helped to prepare their pupils for the life of loving brotherhood with God as their common Father, which was the goal toward which all this history we have studied was slowly but surely moving.