The Wisdom of the Wise.

From: The Gospel Messenger: Volume 10 (1895)

By: T.W.P. Wolston, Editor

YOUR knowledge does not amount to much after all. It seems to me the lines of the poet―

“What am I?

An infant crying in the night,

An infant crying for the light,

And with no language but a cry”―

would about express where you are. You have not yet discovered where man has come from; you are equally in the dark as to where he is going. His origin and destiny are as great secrets as ever they were; and I can read upon your temples, as clearly inscribed today, as eighteen hundred years ago it was upon the shrine at Athens, “THE UNKNOWN GOD.” Yes, I know you have got your telescopes, telegraphs, steam-engines, and printing-presses; and the masses are better fed, better clothed, better housed, and better educated than they were even one hundred years ago. But if people lived in mirth and splendor every day, I want to know WHAT IS TO BECOME OF US WHEN WE DEPART HENCE OUT OF THIS WORLD? Why are you silent? You cannot tell? With all your education? What has it done for you? Are men easier governed now they are educated? Are your children more obedient? Has it made better husbands and wives, better masters and servants? Will your sanitary arrangements shut up the graveyards, and take away the fear of death? Do I think these things are useless? I say not that, but I say you are fast hastening out of the world you are seeking to embellish, and what then? Where will you SPEND ETERNITY?

You tell me you are on the way to make some great discovery. I believe you are, but it will not be in the planetary system. The Lord says “Behold, I come as a thief.” This will be a terrible discovery to a Christ-rejecting world. Men have lived and died as happy as you, who did not know Venus from Mercury, and who, if they thought anything about it, may have thought the earth as large as all the stars put together.

You thought you saw a snowstorm in Mars; what if you did? I have seen many a snowstorm on earth, and thought it nothing to make a noise about. But let me ask you, “WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?”

You think the other planets may be inhabited. Very likely. Did anyone say they were not? Has it no interest for me? I do not say so, but it is not the first thing that should interest you. What would you think of a man in a sinking vessel in the North Sea perplexing his mind over the rise and fall of the tide in the Mediterranean? You do not see the analogy? It is not a question whether a thing is interesting, but what is there which claims my first care? Are not you a dying man? Can you call the next hour your, own? Is not death upon your track? Why perplex your mind about the starry heavens while there is an unsettled question between you and the One who made both them and you. Bear with me while I again press the question, “WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?”

Who would have objected to Cain and his posterity studying astronomy, building cities where science and art flourished, and embellishing the world? But it was in the land of the Vagabond (Nod) they were doing it, and the flood was about to engulf all they gloried in. At present the judgment of an angry God, whose majesty has been instated, His laws broken, and His Son murdered, is hanging over this godless world, and your eyes are on to everything except your own exposed conditions and your ears to every voice except the voice of Him who speaks from heaven. May God awakens you! You do not believe in all this? I am aware of it. Neither did the antediluvians in the testimony of God through Noah. He preached a hundred and twenty years, and as far as we can learn never made a convert; but their unbelief was a poor, bulwark against the torrent of Almighty wrath. The unbelieving have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone (Rev. 12:9⁹And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelation 12:9)). Where will YOU spend eternity?

Perhaps you tell me you are only studying the works of God, and what more glorious occupation or more pleasing to the Creator? What would a great painter think of his servant who, having in a wanton moment horribly disfigured his greatest work, coolly lit his cigar and went around inspecting the picture gallery? Would that master not think his servant was adding insult to injury? And what must God think of the man behind his telescope, as careless of His call to repentance as if the command had never been given? “BE NOT DECEIVED, GOD IS NOT MOCKED” (Gal. 6:7⁷Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7)).

They used to think it was 10,000 miles to the sun, now they know (?) it is 91,000,000. I don’t think I could have much conception of either distance, they would be about equal to me. But can anyone tell me, Does the One who made both earth and sun, and put them so far apart, CARE FOR ME? Put this question in the scale with all the others, and they are lighter than vanity. You say no one knows His nature. But I MUST, or farewell forever to happiness.

There are spots in the sun, you tell me, and tongues of flame, which leap up from its surface to the height of thousands of miles; and man has made all these discoveries. Marvelous! Do you see you man by the wayside, a cripple from his birth? Who put the spots in the sun and surrounded it with those fiery tempests? You do not know. Then I need not ask you who made that cripple. Oh, yes, you say, there were laws that regulated both. Had the laws no AUTHOR? Was there no One that cared when the iron heel of adversity struck a lifelong cry of anguish from the center of his quivering soul? Was there no one that put his tears into a bottle Go and tell him of your glorious discoveries. Perhaps he will tell you that his cry of distress has risen so much higher from his poor palpitating heart, than from the sun those fragments of flame, that it has entered into the ear of the Creator Himself, and an answer of peace has been returned to him more quickly than if borne upon the wings of lightning.

You don’t know anything about these things. You only know it is 91,000,000 of miles to the sun, and that some of the planets have moons. Why, I knew this planet had a moon when I was four years old. But, tell me, is there anything lives of a man when the breath is out of his body? Is there going to be a RESURRECTION? IS THE LAKE OF FIRE A REALITY? You tell me it has never been discovered by the telescope. Nor heaven either? No. You have heard of Stephen, who looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the GLORY OF GOD AND JESUS. You say that could not be true. Why? Did you ever hear of any man having the hardihood to tell such a bold lie in the hour of his execution? And Saul saw the same Person in the same place when on his way to Damascus. Was this a lie also? What did he gain by it? “He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once.” It was a strong conspiracy that, and to think not one of them should betray the others. And, after all, you prefer to believe that the “disciples stole him away while the watch slept.”

So man dies like a dog, and the worms eat him; and there is no resurrection, angel, or spirit, and responsibility to God is all a fable. And this is the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the prudent! Man, after all his discoveries, is only a brute-an intelligent brute, if you please, but none the happier that he is so. But it is only the history of the Gentile world (Rom. 1:21-32²¹Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²²Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, ²³And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. ²⁴Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: ²⁵Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. ²⁶For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: ²⁷And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. ²⁸And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; ²⁹Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, ³⁰Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, ³¹Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: ³²Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:21‑32)) repeated in Christendom. When man does not glorify God he dishonors himself. There is nothing new under the sun. Man would rather believe himself the offspring of a chattering ape than listen to the version of Moses, because it brings in responsibility to God, and treats man as a fallen creature under sentence of death.

Ah, it is a troublesome book that Holy Bible. It is the candle of the Lord in this dark world. When you take it up, or hear it read, you feel the eye of God is upon you. It is a heart searcher. It “told me all that ever I did.” It will not flatter you. It is no respecter of persons. It is a light above the brightness of the sun. You say you cannot believe it. Do not deceive yourself, YOU DO NOT LIKE IT. It tells you, you have got God to meet about your sins. It is too straight for you. It calls the pharisee a hypocrite, and the philosopher a fool, and has no good thing to say about anyone but the blessed God. It tells the man whose face is as fair as the morning sun, that his heart is deceitful above all things and incurably wicked. It makes no apology. Blessed be God forever for it! It tells me in the heart of the Creator of the universe THERE IS LOVE FOR ME.

It tells me of Jesus! Precious name! It tells me of my scarlet sins, tells me also of His precious blood. It reveals to me Him with whom I have to do. I see myself a sinner, but I see in Him a Saviour. I joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, the blessedness of being under His searching eye! of being detected, exposed, but seeing all put away in the death of Christ, and to know that I am loved as the Son is loved!

And this is the book you want to get rid of, and you love to be left in the dungeons of uncertainty? What a choice! It is too humbling to be a subject of the grace of God; to confess you needed mercy and a Saviour. Alas, if you will not have Jesus as Saviour, you must have Him as Judge. MEET HIM YOU MUST. You say you do not believe it. Better say you will not believe it. As wise men naturally as ever have been in the world have believed it. All the objections that are before you were before them. Do not say it is only stupid people believe the Bible. I admit―yea, it is the teaching of the Bible―that God has destroyed by the Cross the wisdom of the wise; but as great minds as have ever existed have found in the Word of God life and salvation, have examined all man’s infidel writings, and have been amazed at the blindness and stupidity of the authors. The blind man the Spirit of God brings before us in the 9th of John no doubt thought the leaders of the people remarkably wise, but when he got his eyesight he marveled at their stupidity. “Why,” he says, “herein is a marvelous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine-eyes.” There is no ignorance so dense as willful ignorance. May the Lord awaken you Soon all that will be left of you in this world will be a lump of dust, and your spirit―oh, where? Is yours to be a Christless death, a Christless burial, a Christless resurrection, and a Christless eternity in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone?

If you reject the Saviour, you must have the Judge. If you turn your book upon the love, you must have the wrath. If you despise God’s truth, you must have the devil’s lie. If you refuse life, salvation, and the glory of God, you must have death, damnation, and the lake of fire. God give you to see your danger.

“Oh! what fatal folly and madness most strange,

Thus to blindly pass over

The Scripture of truth, and the universe range

The truth to discover!

Oh, how the proud mind of the flesh must recoil

From the knowledge of God, thus to struggle and toil,

And hide, like the ostrich, his head in the soil,

From that INFINITE LOVER!

Oh, sweet would thy lot be if thou wouldst but fly

To the bosom of God!

Who bids thee, as lost, for salvation rely

On a Saviour’s blood.