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There is but one wisdom for God and man. Man's true wisdom is a pattern of God's wisdom. A man to prosper in the world must get the very same wisdom by which God made and rules the world. In the last hundred years science has improved in a most wonderful way, and is improving every day. This improvement has taken place simply by mankind understanding this text, and obeying it. For more than sixteen hundred years after our Lord's time mankind seem to have become hardly any wiser about earthly things, nay, even to have gone back; but about two hundred and fifty years ago it pleased God to open the eyes of one of the wisest men who ever lived, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and to show him the real and right way of learning by which men can fulfil God's command to replenish the earth and subdue it. He taught that the only way for man to be wise was to get God's wisdom, the wisdom with which He had founded the earth, and find out God's laws by which He had made this world. "You can only subdue nature by obeying her." You can only subdue a thing and make it useful to you by finding out the rules by which God made that thing, and by obeying them. If you want to rule, you must obey. If you want to rise to be a master, you must stoop to be a servant. If you want to be master of anything in earth or heaven, you must obey God's will revealed in that thing; and the man who will go his own way, and follow his own fancy, will understand nothing, and master nothing, and get comfort out of nothing in earth or heaven. The same rule which holds good in this earthly world which we do see holds good in the heavenly world which we do not see. The same rules which hold good about men's bodies hold good about their souls. The heavenly wisdom which begins in trusting in the Lord with all our hearts, the heavenly wisdom which is learnt by chastenings and afflictions, and teaches us that we are the sons of God, is the very same wisdom by which God founded the earth, and makes the clouds drop down dew. God's wisdom is one — unchangeable, everlasting, and always like itself; and by the same wisdom by which He made our bodies has He made our souls; and therefore we can, and are bound to, glorify Him alike in our bodies and our spirits, for both are His. Illustrate: The only sure way of getting power over people is by making friends of them, making them love and trust us. The Lord Jesus ate and drank with publicans and sinners, who went out into the highways and hedges, to bring home into God's kingdom poor wretches whom men despised and cast off. Christ also "pleased not Himself." There was the perfect fulfilment of the great law — stoop to conquer. Christ stooped lower than any man, and therefore He rose again higher than all men.

(Charles Kingsley.)

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KJV: The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

WEB: By wisdom Yahweh founded the earth. By understanding, he established the heavens.