Proverbs 12:25

Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.

Ver. 25. Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop.] Grief is like lead to the soul, - heavy and cold; it sinks downward, and carries the soul with it; Aιφα γαρ εν κακοτητι βροτοι καταγηρασκουσι. a How decrepit was David grown with much grief at seventy years of age. The like we may say of Jacob, who "attained not to the days of the years of the life of his fathers," Gen 47:9 as being a man of many sorrows. And this, some think, was the reason that our Saviour Christ, at little past thirty, was reckoned to be toward fifty. Joh 8:57 He was "the man that had seen affliction by the rod of God's wrath." Lam 3:1

But a good word maketh it glad.] Such as was that of our Saviour to the poor paralytic, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." The promises are called a "good word." Jer 29:10 So David found them; Psa 119:92 medicine for the soul b - more truly so called than the library at Alexandria; cordials of comfort, "breasts of consolation"; Isa 66:11 "wells of salvation"; Isa 12:3 μαλακτικα miserarium, - as Plato said of wine and music; - that which mitigates man's miseries; and without which wine, music, merry company, &c., will prove but miserable comforters, and at the best, but the devil's anodynes.

a Homer, Odyss., i. Man's mind is like the stone Tyrrhenus, which, so long as it is whole, swimmeth, but being once broken sinketh.

b η της ψυχης ιατρεια .