Wisdom for the simple
We may divide the simple into three classes.
1. There are those who think themselves wise while they are but fools: there is no hope for such.
2. There are people who make no pretence to wisdom, but who have chosen folly, and are quite indifferent to the claims and charms of wisdom.
3. There are anxious seekers after wisdom, who feel their present ignorance and incompetence with acute distress, and long to be among the wise, but despair of reaching the privileged circle. The first class will refuse to believe that the call of wisdom is for them, but to the other two it may come with effect.
I. THE SIMPLE NEED WISDOM. This reflection should concern the second class—those who as yet have despised and rejected wisdom.
1. Wisdom is a joy. Even pleasure is rejected in the renunciation of truth, knowledge, thought, the vision of God, and the revelation of his will. The narrow mind is a dark mind, and when the light of God breaks in it will be seen that many new delights of knowledge and joys of Divine truth, which have long been missed, can now be happily received.
2. Wisdom is a safeguard. Men stumble in the dark. Snares are set for the unwary. In this great, mysterious world we may easily go astray and be lost, perhaps be entrapped in fearful soul perils. It is much to know the way, to know ourselves, to know our dangers, to know the will of God and how to have his guiding and saving help.
3. Wisdom is life. The foolish soul is but half alive, and it is on the road to destruction. Mere knowledge itself is a free intellectual life, and the exercise of thought in the practical application of the truth which we have assimilated, i.e. wisdom, is a living activity. It is moil;. unfortunate that many young men in the present day seem to despise all intellectual pursuits, and confine the attention of their leisure moments to idle amusements or at best to athletics. They fail to see the mental death that they are courting. But infinitely worse are they who turn from the moral side of wisdom—the fear of the Lord—and pursue the folly of godlessness, for this is soul death.
II. THE SIMPLE MAY HAVE WINDOW. Here is the encouragement for the third class of the simple. It is for children, for weak minds, and for uneducated people.
1. Mental improvement is attainable. Where there is a will to rise, the young man under most disadvantageous circumstances will find the means to cultivate self-education.
2. The highest wisdom is spiritual. This wisdom is not like Greek philosophy—only open to intellectual culture. It is the truth of God that may be rewaled to "babes and sucklings" (Matthew 21:16), and yet it is the highest truth. To be spiritually wise we need. not be mentally clever. What is wanted is a sincere love of truth, a pure heart, and a childlike teachableness.
3. The gospel brings wisdom to the simple. That gospel was scoffed at for its apparent simplicity. Yet it was indeed the wisdom as well as the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). Christ comes to us as the eternal Wisdom incarnate. The simple may know him, and when such receive Christ they receive the Light of the world and a loftier wisdom than was ever reached by the sages of antiquity or can ever be attained in the cold light of science.