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The temporal interests of one man are so bound up with those of many others that you can scarcely find the individual of whom it may be said that he plans for himself alone, or acts for himself alone. If we stretch our thoughts from temporal things and fix them on spiritual, will the same thing hold? Hardly perhaps, for we can scarcely suppose that, through destroying his own soul, a man may also destroy the souls of many others. Unto every one amongst us there is vouchsafed a sufficiency of means, so that he who perishes does not perish through being involved in the ruin of another, but through having wrought his own individual destruction. Neither religion nor irreligion can be said to propagate themselves, as industry and idleness in temporal things. Religion, in the most emphatic sense, is a thing between each of us and God.

I. THE CRITERION OF WISDOM. If a man be wise at all, he is wise for himself. The prime object of every class of society is the advancing its own interests. Men are set down as wise chiefly in proportion as practical results shall prove them to have been wise for themselves. Nevertheless, unless the wisdom have a heavenly character it cannot in any degree render the possessor truly wise for himself. If I be wise for myself I must be wise by making provision for the vast expansion of my being, and not by limiting attention to that period which is nothing but its outset. He cannot be wise for himself who dishonours himself, who degrades himself, who destroys himself. Can a man be pronounced to have been wise for himself before whose tomb a nation may be burning its incense of gratitude for his discoveries, whilst his spirit is brooding in darkness, and silence, and anguish over the vast infatuation which caused God to be forgotten whilst science is pursued? A man may be wise in all that the world calls wisdom, and yet in no sense wise for himself. Unless a man has been wise for eternity he has not been wise for himself. Only that wisdom which is from above, the wisdom which consists in knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, can make a man truly wise.

II. THE ADVANTAGE OF POSSESSING THIS WISDOM IS ALTOGETHER PERSONAL. So far as the present life is concerned the consequences of the possession or non-possession of wisdom are not confined to the individual himself. The words of Solomon had respect to the future rather than to the present. The future consequences are altogether personal. From this flows the final woe of the impenitent. A terrible punishment is solitary confinement. There may be solitariness in hell. "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."

(H. Melvill, B.D.)

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KJV: For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.

WEB: For by me your days will be multiplied. The years of your life will be increased.