Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all your getting get understanding. I. WHAT IS MEANT BY WISDOM? Cicero calls wisdom the knowledge of things Divine and human, and of their efficient causes. II. WISDOM IS THE GUIDE TO VIRTUE. Virtue is the right discharge of our duty in every station of life. Virtue contains the whole art of right and happy living. Did learning afford no assistance to virtue; were pleasure the only benefit arising from study; it must on every account be allowed to be an amusement of the noblest kind, and every way best suited to the nature of man. He is most likely to prosper in this life whose mind is best cultivated and enlarged with the truest notions of things, and who joins to that cultivated understanding a corresponding practice, not less excelling in virtue than in knowledge. Honour, too, is a general attendant upon wisdom. Moreover, the love of wisdom and the practice of virtue, will tend above all things to lengthen our present existence. 1. God, the great Father of the world, has created you a reasonable being, and endowed you with faculties. The duty lies on you to improve and enlarge them. 2. Your parents on earth do everything to help you in getting wisdom. 3. Society has a claim upon you. Then cultivate liberal science as the handmaid of sublimer knowledge. Moral virtue and the improvement of the heart are graces which give to science its lustre, and to life its worth. They expand and enlarge the soul. Cultivate liberal science under the sanction and guidance of religion. (W. Dodd, LL.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.WEB: Wisdom is supreme. Get wisdom. Yes, though it costs all your possessions, get understanding. |
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