Exposition of the Book of Proverbs Author:George Lawson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXL Verse 1. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. It is men's ordinary way to ... more »court the favour of princes and great men, as if their happiness depended on the smiles of kings, whilst they make little scruple of forfeiting the favour of God, by bending their consciences into a compliance with the humours of those for whom they entertain such undue respect. The like compliances are too often made, to avoid the displeasure of those that have power to hurt or kill the body. Solomon directs us not to forfeit the favour of princes, or incur their displeasure, by any needless or wanton instances of disrespect. At the same time, he instructs us in the first place, to seek the favour of God, which is infinitely more necessary for us, than the friendship of the greatest men, and to avoid every thing that may displease him, if we should offend the mightiest tyrant in the world ; for the favour of God is all in all to us, and his wrath is tremendous beyond all conception, whilst kings are entirely dependent on the King of kings, and have their hearts governed by him, in such a powerful, though invisible manner, that they must, whether they design it or not, execute his unchangeable counsels. The currents of water may be directed into any channel that is cut out for them by the hands of men ; even the mighty river Euphrates had its course changed by Cyrus, at the siege of Babylon. The waters still retained their nature and properties, and yet the power of that great prince managed their natural tendency to descend, in such a manner as to gain his purpose, and to take that great city, whereof they were reckonedthe sure defence. The like influence has God upon the hearts of kings. He destroys not their natur...« less