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The two main truths here taught have been anticipated by a foregoing proverb, viz. the advantage to society of promoting the good; and the injury done by the advancement of the wicked (see Proverbs 11:10). But there is a truth suggested by the wise man's language which does not elsewhere appear; he says that when the wicked rise "a man is hidden," that "men hide themselves." The fact here alluded to is clear enough; we have often read, or have frequently observed, that the best men retire to seclusion and inactivity when iniquity is on the throne, when unprincipled cleverness holds the reins; they will not serve under a sovereign whom they despise, or in circumstances which make office holding a disgrace, if not a danger. But beyond and beneath this fact the language is fitted to suggest to us that there is much of hidden manhood amongst us. We find it in -

I. PREMATURE RETIREMENT. Not only under the conditions stated in the text, when the withdrawal of honorable men is necessary to the upright and the high-minded, but also under very different conditions. When men are allured by a desire for quietude and ease, or when they are disheartened by disappointment, or are disgusted by the slowness of their ascent to place and power, or when they underestimate their capacity and their opportunity, and they therefore lay down the weapon and leave the field. This is a serious loss. Then "a man is hidden;" a man is burying the wisdom of maturity, the large result of manifold experience, the gathered fruit of many years. He is hiding in his own home the cultured capacity he should be expending on the city, on the country of his birth.

II. UNDEVELOPED FACULTY. We do not know how often it happens that men are born with great capacities in their nature, and who live and die without manifesting them to the world. They fail to receive the education which would bring them forth, or they are confined within a range so narrow that they have no chance of showing what they could be and do. They "die with all their music in them;" they pass away, unknown, unproved, unfelt. That is expended upon unimportant trifles which might have directed the affairs of some great company, or guided the activities of some influential Church, or decided the course of some powerful nation. A "man is hidden," and a community is left unenriched.

III. UNDISCIPLINED FORCE. When God gives to a human spirit a strong power of will, there is an imperative necessity that it should be wisely and rightly guided and controlled in youth. Faithfully disciplined, such a one becomes a most useful man, who will contribute largely to the advancement and happiness of the world. But if that discipline be withheld, and the clever, wilful boy be allowed to grow up into untrained and uncultured manhood, there will be a sad waste of power. He will be more likely than not to do harm rather than good to his generation; he may be a blight instead of a blessing. There is "a man hidden;" one who has it in him to be one of the highest and worthiest, but who, as it is, is lost or even worse than lost, to his contemporaries and his country.

IV. UNRESCUED WRONG. Even when we see humanity at its very worst, in its very foulness and baseness, we do well to feel that beneath the humiliating and pitiful exterior is a hidden manhood. It is the noble work of Christian beneficence to get down to this, to lay its kind and holy hand upon it, to raise and to restore it, to bring it into the sunshine of truth and love, to make it visible and even beautiful in the sight of God and in the estimate of man. - C.

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KJV: When righteous men do rejoice, there is great glory: but when the wicked rise, a man is hidden.

WEB: When the righteous triumph, there is great glory; but when the wicked rise, men hide themselves.