April 13

"Fools die for lack of wisdom." Proverbs 10:21

There is such a connection between true wisdom, which is "a knowledge of the holy" (Prov. 30:3), and the fear of the Lord; and such a connection between ignorance of the Lord and sin, that saved saints are called "wise," and lost sinners are called "fools," not only in the Old Testament, as continually in the Proverbs, but in the New. Many of the Lord's people look with suspicion upon knowledge, from not seeing clearly the vast distinction between the spiritual, experimental knowledge for which we are now contending, and what is called "head knowledge." They see that a man may have a well-furnished head and a graceless heart, that he may understand "all mysteries and all knowledge," and yet be "nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2); and as some of these all-knowing professors are the basest characters that can infest the churches of truth, those who really fear the Lord stand not only in doubt of them, but of all the knowledge possessed by them. But put it in a different form; ask the people of God whether there is not such a divine reality, such a heavenly blessing, as being "taught of God" (John 6:45); having "an unction from the Holy One, whereby we know all things" (1 John 2:20)--knowing the truth for oneself, and finding it makes free (John 8:32); whether there is not a "counting of all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord," and a stretching forth of the desires of the soul to "know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings;" whether there is not "a knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins" (Luke 1:77); "a knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6); a being "filled with the knowledge of his will" (Col. 1:9); an "increasing in the knowledge of God" (Col. 1:10); "a growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. 3:18);--ask the living family of God whether there be not such a knowledge as this, and if this knowledge is not the very pith and marrow, the very sum and substance of vital godliness, and they will with one voice say, "It is!"

April 13