‘Let the wise listen and add to their learning.’

(Pr 1:5) 5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, ESV

     In order to keep growing, you must understand three principles: 1) You grow to the extent you give. By giving out, you create more room to grow on the inside. So, give until it hurts, and keep giving until it feels good. Always endeavour to leave people better off than you found them, and you’ll be better off too. Solomon said, ‘The liberal man shall be rich! By watering others, he waters himself’ (Proverbs 11:25 TLB). This epitaph on a tombstone says it all: ‘What I gave, I have. What I spent, I had. What I kept, I lost.’ 2) To accomplish more, you’ve got to grow more. Do you feel stuck spiritually, relationally, career-wise, or at home? You won’t get unstuck by making external changes, like pursuing a new career, leaving your family, or changing churches. Nobody’s keeping you down but yourself. The lid on your life is - you. So, if you’re serious about getting unstuck, instead of looking for quick fixes take a long hard look at yourself, accept responsibility for what you see, pray, and decide to do something about it. 3) It’s not enough to dream; you must do. The Tartar tribes of Central Asia are reputed to have used a particular curse against their enemies. They didn’t call for their swords to rust or their people to die of disease. They simply said, ‘May you stay in one place forever.’ If you don’t work daily to improve yourself, that will be your fate too. You’ll end up stuck in the same place, doing the same things, dreaming the same dreams, and never getting anywhere. So, keep growing!

Jer 24-26
1 Tim 5

     His barn in Pennsylvania was a station on the Underground Railway, helping slaves escape to freedom. But on this day, October 16, 1859, John Brown and 21 men raided Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and seized the armory. He was captured, sentenced, and hanged. Labeled insane by some, Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, called him Saint John the Just. Years before, after hearing the story of how abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy was murdered, John Brown stood up in the back of church and declared: “Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.”

     II

     Public prayer is, on the whole, the most difficult part of the work of the minister. To help the difficulty I have always claimed that pulpit notes of prayer may be used. “The Lord’s Prayer” itself is of this nature. It is not a prayer, but a scheme of prayer, heads of prayer, or buoys in the channel. But even with the use of all helps there are perils enough. There are prayers that, in the effort to become real, are much too familiar in their fashion of speech. A young man began his prayer, in my own hearing, with the words, “O God, we have come to have a chat with Thee.” It was gruesome. Think of it as a sample of modern piety for the young! No prayers, certainly no public prayers, should be “chats with God.” Again, other prayers are sentimental prayers. George Dawson’s volume has this fault. The prayers of the Church should not be exposures of the affectional man. The public prayer of the Church, as the company of grace, is the saved soul returning to God that gave it; it is the sinner coming to the Saviour, or the ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion; it is the sanctified with the sanctifier; it is not primarily the child talking to the Father—though that note may prevail in more private prayers. We are more than stray sheep reclaimed. We are those whose defiant iniquity has lain upon Christ for us all.

     But the root of the difficulty of public prayer lies further back than in the matter of style. It lies in the difficulty of private prayer, in its spiritual poverty, its inertia, its anemia. What culture can deal with the rooted difficulty that resides there, out of sight, in the inner man of the heart, for lack of the courage of faith, for sheer spiritual fecklessness? Yet the preparation for prayer is to pray. The prayer is the practice of prayer. It is only prayer that teaches to pray. The minister ought never to speak before men in God’s name without himself first speaking to God in man’s name, and making intercession as for himself so for his people.

     Intercession! We are properly vigilant that the minister do not sever himself from his people in any sacredotal way. But for all that, is the minister’s personal and private prayer on exactly the same footing as a layman’s? It is a question that leads to the distinction between intercessory and vicarious prayer. The personal religion of the minister is vicarious even when it is not intercessory. Great indeed is the spiritual value of private intercession. The intercessory private prayer of the minister is the best corrective of the critical spirit or the grumbling spirit which so easily besets and withers us to-day. That reconciliation, that pacification of heart, which comes by prayer opens in us a fountain of private intercession, especially for our antagonists. Only, of course, it must be private. But the minister is also praying to his people’s good even when he is not interceeding on their behalf, or leading them in prayer. What he is for his Church he is with his whole personality. And so his private and personal prayers are vicarious for his people even when he does not know it. No Christian man lives for himself, nor believes for himself. And if the private Christian in his private prayers does not pray, any more than he lives, unto himself alone, much more is this true for the minister. His private prayers make a great difference to his people. They may not know what makes his spell and blessing; even he may not. But it is his most private prayers; which, thus, are vicarious even where not intercessory.

     What he is for his Church, I have said, he is with his whole personality. And nothing gives us personality like true prayer. Nothing makes a man so original. We cannot be true Christians without being original. Living faith destroys the commonplaceness, the monotony of life. Are not all men original in death? “Je mourrai seul.” Much more are they original and their true selves in Christ’s death, and in their part and lot in that. For true originality we must be one, and closely one, with God. To be creative we must learn with the Creator. The most effectual man in history was he who said, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” What a reflection on our faith that so much piety should be humdrum, and deadly dull! Private prayer, when it is real action, is the greatest forge of personality. It places a man in direct and effective contact with God the Creator, the source of originality, and especially with God the Redeemer as the source of the new creation. For the minister personality is everything—not geniality, as it is the day’s fashion to say, but personality; and prayer is the spring of personality. This impressive personality, due to prayer, you may often have in “the peasant saint.” And in some cases its absence is as palpable. Hence comes vulgarity in prayer, essential vulgarity underlying much possible fineness of phrase or manner. Vulgarity in prayer lies not so much in its offenses to good taste in style as in its indications of the absence of spiritual habit and reality. If the theology of rhetoric destroys the theology of reality in the sermon, how much more in prayer!

--- Forsyth, P. T. (1848-1921).

Indulgence says, “Drink your way out.”
Philosophy says, “Think your way out.”
Science says, “Invent your way out.”
Industry says, “Work your way out.”
Communism says, “Strike your way out.”
Militarism says, “Fight your way out.”
Christ says, “I AM THE WAY OUT!”
--- Unknown

God understands our prayers
even when we can’t find the words to say them.
--- Anonymous

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.
--- Wendell Berry

     CHAPTER 3.

     Concerning A Stratagem That Was Devised By The Jews, By Which They Burnt Many Of The Romans; With Another Description Of The Terrible Famine That Was In The City.

     1. But now the seditious that were in the temple did every day openly endeavor to beat off the soldiers that were upon the banks, and on the twenty-seventh day of the forenamed month [Panemus or Tamuz] contrived such a stratagem as this: They filled that part of the western cloister 14 which was between the beams, and the roof under them, with dry materials, as also with bitumen and pitch, and then retired from that place, as though they were tired with the pains they had taken; at which procedure of theirs, many of the most inconsiderate among the Romans, who were carried away with violent passions, followed hard after them as they were retiring, and applied ladders to the cloister, and got up to it suddenly; but the prudent part of them, when they understood this unaccountable retreat of the Jews, stood still where they were before. However, the cloister was full of those that were gone up the ladders; at which time the Jews set it all on fire; and as the flame burst out every where on the sudden, the Romans that were out of the danger were seized with a very great consternation, as were those that were in the midst of the danger in the utmost distress. So when they perceived themselves surrounded with the flames, some of them threw themselves down backwards into the city, and some among their enemies [in the temple]; as did many leap down to their own men, and broke their limbs to pieces; but a great number of those that were going to take these violent methods were prevented by the fire; though some prevented the fire by their own swords. However, the fire was on the sudden carried so far as to surround those who would have otherwise perished. As for Caesar himself, he could not, however, but commiserate those that thus perished, although they got up thither without any order for so doing, since there was no way of giving the many relief. Yet was this some comfort to those that were destroyed, that every body might see that person grieve, for whose sake they came to their end; for he cried out openly to them, and leaped up, and exhorted those that were about him to do their utmost to relieve them; So every one of them died cheerfully, as carrying along with him these words and this intention of Caesar as a sepulchral monument. Some there were indeed who retired into the wall of the cloister, which was broad, and were preserved out of the fire, but were then surrounded by the Jews; and although they made resistance against the Jews for a long time, yet were they wounded by them, and at length they all fell down dead.

     2. At the last a young man among them, whose name was Longus, became a decoration to this sad affair, and while every one of them that perished were worthy of a memorial, this man appeared to deserve it beyond all the rest. Now the Jews admired this man for his courage, and were further desirous of having him slain; so they persuaded him to come down to them, upon security given him for his life. But Cornelius his brother persuaded him on the contrary, not to tarnish his own glory, nor that of the Roman army. He complied with this last advice, and lifting up his sword before both armies, he slew himself. Yet there was one Artorius among those surrounded by the fire who escaped by his subtlety; for when he had with a loud voice called to him Lucius, one of his fellow soldiers that lay with him in the same tent, and said to him, "I do leave thee heir of all I have, if thou wilt come and receive me." Upon this he came running to receive him readily; Artorius then threw himself down upon him, and saved his own life, while he that received him was dashed so vehemently against the stone pavement by the other's weight, that he died immediately. This melancholy accident made the Romans sad for a while, but still it made them more upon their guard for the future, and was of advantage to them against the delusions of the Jews, by which they were greatly damaged through their unacquaintedness with the places, and with the nature of the inhabitants. Now this cloister was burnt down as far as John's tower, which he built in the war he made against Simon over the gates that led to the Xystus. The Jews also cut off the rest of that cloister from the temple, after they had destroyed those that got up to it. But the next day the Romans burnt down the northern cloister entirely, as far as the east cloister, whose common angle joined to the valley that was called Cedron, and was built over it; on which account the depth was frightful. And this was the state of the temple at that time.

     3. Now of those that perished by famine in the city, the number was prodigious, and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable; for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did any where appear, a war was commenced presently, and the dearest friends fell a fighting one with another about it, snatching from each other the most miserable supports of life. Nor would men believe that those who were dying had no food, but the robbers would search them when they were expiring, lest any one should have concealed food in their bosoms, and counterfeited dying; nay, these robbers gaped for want, and ran about stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs, and reeling against the doors of the houses like drunken men; they would also, in the great distress they were in, rush into the very same houses two or three times in one and the same day. Moreover, their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew every thing, while they gathered such things as the most sordid animals would not touch, and endured to eat them; nor did they at length abstain from girdles and shoes; and the very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed: the very wisps of old hay became food to some; and some gathered up fibres, and sold a very small weight of them for four Attic [drachmae]. But why do I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought on men in their eating inanimate things, while I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates, 15 either among the Greeks or Barbarians? It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard. I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity of ours, that I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age; and besides, my country would have had little reason to thank me for suppressing the miseries that she underwent at this time.

     4. There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary; her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezob, which signifies the house of Hyssop. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon, such I mean as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either out of the indignation she had raised against herself, or out of commiseration of her case, would take away her life; and if she found any food, she perceived her labors were for others, and not for herself; and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with any thing but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, "O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews." As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and eat the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them, "This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also." After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at any thing as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately; and while every body laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled, as if this unheard of action had been done by themselves. So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries.

     5. This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under; but there were many of them who were hereby induced to a more bitter hatred than ordinary against our nation. But for Caesar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said that he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine. That they had begun with their own hands to burn down that temple which we have preserved hitherto; and that therefore they deserved to eat such food as this was. That, however, this horrid action of eating an own child ought to be covered with the overthrow of their very country itself, and men ought not to leave such a city upon the habitable earth to be seen by the sun, wherein mothers are thus fed, although such food be fitter for the fathers than for the mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these. And at the same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to sobriety of mind, after they had endured those very sufferings, for the avoiding whereof it only was probable they might have repented.

     The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, by Flavius Josephus Translator: William Whiston

                The key to the Master’s orders

     Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest. --- Matthew 9:38.

     The key to the missionary problem is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work, that is, not work as the word is popularly understood to-day, because that may mean the evasion of concentration on God. The key to the missionary problem is not the key of common sense, nor the medical key, nor the key of civilization or education or even evangelization. The key is prayer. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest.” Naturally, prayer is not practical, it is absurd; we have to realize that prayer is stupid from the ordinary commonsense point of view.

     There are no nations in Jesus Christ’s outlook, but the world. How many of us pray without respect of persons, and with respect to only one Person, Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced by distress and conviction of sin, and this is the harvest we have to pray that labourers may be thrust out to reap. We are taken up with active work while people all round are ripe to harvest, and we do not reap one of them, but waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities. Suppose the crisis comes in your father’s life, in your brother’s life, are you there as a labourer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? ‘Oh, but I have a special work to do!’ No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, one who is not above his Master, one who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls to no special work: He calls to Himself. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,” and He will engineer circumstances and thrust you out.

                Narrator

Did you notice the farm on the hill side
  A bit larger than the others, a bit more hay
  In the Dutch barn, four cows instead of two?
  Prosperity is a sign of divine favour:
  Whoever saw the righteous forsaken
  Or his seed begging their bread? It even entitles
  A chapel deacon to a tame pastor.

  There were people here before these,
  Measuring truth according to the moor's
  Pitiless commentary and the wind's veto.
  Out in the moor there is a bone whitening,
  Worn smooth by the long dialectic
  Of rain and sunlight. What has that to do
  With choosing a minister? Nothing, nothing.

Thick darkness is about us, we cannot see
  The future, nor the thin face
  Of him whom necessity will bring
  To this lean oasis at the moor's rim,
  The marginal land where flesh meets spirit
  Only on Sundays and the days between
  Are mortgaged, mortgaged, mortgaged,
  But we can see the faces of the men
  Grouped together under the one lamp,
  Waiting for the name to be born to them
  Out of time's heaving thighs.

     Abraham, Maimonides’ model of pre-Mosaic man, illustrates a relationship of man to God that is not grounded in Halakhah. Maimonides, who claimed that talmudic Aggadah reflects the philosophical tradition in Judaism, utilizes Aggadah for his understanding of Abraham.

     The Bible introduces Abraham at the age of seventy-five and is silent about his activities prior to his calling. Maimonides appeals to the aggadic picture of Abraham which fills the gaps. Maimonides accepts the view that Abraham discovered God when he was forty years old and not when he was three. Maimonides ascribes Abraham’s discovery of God to Abraham’s relentless attempts to understand the nature and origin of celestial movements.

     Abraham rejected the teachings of his father and his environment solely on the convictions which he gained through reason. He is able to stand alone against the ethos of his generation because of the certainty he possessed from discovering demonstrative truth:

     For when something has been demonstrated, the correctness of the matter is not increased and certainty regarding it is not strengthened by the consensus of all men of knowledge with regard to it. Nor could its correctness be diminished and certainty regarding it be weakened even if all the people on earth disagreed with it.

     Reason not only provides Abraham with demonstrative knowledge of God but is also the source of his attack on idol-worship. Maimonides does not quote a biblical text to indicate that Abraham’s missionary activity is the result of a divine command; rather, Maimonides writes, “having attained this knowledge he began to refute the inhabitants of Ur of the Chaldees.” The midrashic picture of Abraham provides Maimonides with an archetype of how the tradition understood reason’s way to God. By reflecting on nature one comes to realize that without recognizing God as the source of existence, the universe is unintelligible. Equally crucial is that aggadic man feels compelled to challenge an idolatrous world. Abraham recognized the factor of human alienation in transforming the idol- and star-worshiper into a pagan:

     He realized that the whole world was in error, and that what had occasioned their error was that they worshiped the stars and the images, so that the truth perished from their minds.

     Abraham’s arguments againts idol-worship are intelligible to those who are made to understand the process of alienation, i.e., that “the multitude grasp only the actions of worship, not their meanings or the true reality of the Being worshiped through them.”

     Although intermediary worship, as distinct from belief in God’s corporeality, is compatible with truth, it is not compatible with one’s responsibility to safeguard belief in God within the broader community. Abraham appeals to this sense of responsibility toward community in his confrontation with the wise men of his generation:

     He broke the images and commenced to instruct the people that it was not right to serve anyone but the God of the Universe to whom alone it was proper to bow down, offer up sacrifices and make libations, so that all human creatures might, in the future, know Him; and that it was proper to destroy and shatter all the images, so that the people might not err like these who thought that there was no God but these images.

     Maimonides selects only one biblical text in his treatment of Abraham, “And invoked there the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God” (Gen. 21:33). This text shows how man is driven to act on God’s behalf without having to appeal to God’s legislative authority. This is the paradigm text of aggadic man. This way of reasoning, including a concern for both thought and action, is the basis for Maimonides’ description of the community forged by the patriarchs as “a people that knew God.” The community of the patriarchs, embodying the way of Abraham, is organized around the knowledge of God provided by reason. Maimonides knew of other views in the tradition which presented the patriarchs as observing the laws of the Torah. The model of God as legislative authority, however, is completely absent from Maimonides’ description of the patriarchs. The patriarchs are, for Maimonides, models of the aggadic personality to which he refers in his halakhic works.

     Given the emergence of the Abrahamic way to God, what factors could explain the appearance in history of Moses and the legislative model of God?

     When the Israelites had stayed a long while in Egypt, they relapsed, learned the practices of their neighbors, and, like them, worshiped idols, with the exception of the tribe of Levi, which steadfastly kept the charge of the Patriarch. This tribe of Levi never practiced idolatry. The doctrine implanted by Abraham, would in a very short time, have bean uprooted, and Jacob’s descendants would have relapsed into the error and perversities universally prevalent. But because of God’s love for us and because He kept the oath made to our ancestor Abraham, He appointed Moses to be our teacher and the teacher of all the Prophets, and charged him with his mission. After Moses had begun to exercise his Prophetic functions and Israel had been chosen by the Almighty as His heritage, he crowned them with precepts, and showed them the way to worship Him, and how to deal with idolatry and with those who go astray after it.

     Abraham’s community, based exclusively on knowledge of God, could not sustain its belief in God within a broader society which was idolatrous and pagan. The experience of the Israelites in Egypt revealed the inadequacy of sustaining a community solely on the basis of knowledge. Maimonides points to an actual—but not a necessary—process in history which created the need for Torah. He specifically notes that the tribe of Levi was able to withstand the influences of their environment. Singular individuals can remain steadfast in their loyalty to God through Aggadah. However the community which is composed of a variety of people—not all of whom are scholars—cannot sustain its allegiance to God if it is not supported by a total way of life. Abraham instituted worship of God based upon knowledge. Moses was compelled to promulgate laws whose actualization reinforces and sustains this belief: “… He crowned them with precepts and showed them the way to worship Him.…”

     God appointed Moses the legislative teacher of Israel. The mode of discourse changes correspondingly. Where Abraham appeals to reason and offers convincing arguments, Moses appeals to divine authority and legislates a comprehensive way of life. Abraham rejects practices which can lead to the forgetting of God, Moses introduces practices which support and reinforce the belief in God.

     Our analysis. of Maimonides’ introduction to the laws of idolatry now puts us in a better position to understand both his model of pre-Mosaic man and how the way of Aggadah leads to the way of Halakhah. If we are correct in claiming that integration is the model according to which one should understand Maimonides, we should also discover an account of how Halakhah is enhanced by Aggadah.

     After describing laws dealing with the prohibitions against divination, astrology, magic, and necromancy, Maimonides writes in the Laws of Idolatry:

     These practices are all false and deceptive, and were means employed by the ancient idolaters to deceive the peoples of various countries and induce them to become their followers. It is not proper for Israelites who are highly intelligent to suffer themselves to be deluded by such inanities or imagine that there is anything in them, as it is said, “Lo, there is no augury in Jacob, no divining in Israel” (Num. 23:23); and further, “These nations that you are about to dispossess do indeed resort to soothsayers and augurs; to you, however, the Lord your God has not assigned the like” (Deut. 18:14). Whoever believes in these and similar things, and in his heart, holds them to be true and scientific and only forbidden by the Torah, is nothing but a fool, deficient in understanding, who belongs to the same class with women and children whose intellects are immature. Sensible people, however, who possess sound mental faculties, know by clear proofs that all these practices which the Torah prohibited have no scientific basis but are chimerical and inane; and that only those deficient in knowledge are attracted by these follies and, for their sake, leave the ways of truth. The Torah, therefore, in forbidding all these follies, exhorts us, “You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God” (Deut. 18:13).

     In this short but powerful statement Maimonides presents two approaches to the observance of the law. The approach of those who are ignorant of science is to obey the law exclusively because of divine authority. This attitude is similar to that previously discussed—the approach of those who accept aggadic statements as true even though those statements conflict with what could be observed in nature: Obedience to authority enables one to live by a tradition which has no connection with the structure of nature. Maimonides rejects this approach to Halakhah for the same reason that he rejects a literalist approach to Aggadah. Commitment to Torah is wholehearted only if the individual understands the laws and teachings of the Torah from a rational perspective. Although the model of the legal authority of God is introduced by Moses, and the Jew is now called upon to obey God’s commandments, one must not think that obedience unsupported by reason’s understanding of nature is a new path to God. Commandments and truth form a unity, if one understands that Moses consummates—without altering—the way of Abraham.

     The unification of Aggadah and Halakhah by Maimonides is an attempt to protect the tradition from the risks involved in separating the one from the other. Aggadah divorced from Halakhah cannot sustain a community in history. Halakhah organizes the community and thus enables its members to withstand the influences of competing ways of life. The mind’s understanding of God gains living expression in the norms which structure one’s daily activities. Halakhah continuously sets God before the individual:

     A person should pay heed to the precept of the mezuzah; for it is an obligation perpetually binding upon all. Whenever one enters or leaves a home with the mezuzah on the doorpost he will be confronted with the declaration of God’s unity, blessed be His holy name; and will remember the love due to God, and will be aroused from his slumbers and his foolish absorption in temporal vanities. He will realize that nothing endures to all eternity save knowledge of the Ruler of the Universe. This thought will immediately restore him to his right senses and he will walk in the paths of righteousness. Our ancient teachers said: He who has phylacteries on his head and arm, fringes on his garment, and a mezuzah on his door may be presumed not to sin, for he has many monitors—angels that save him from sinning, as it is said (Ps. 34:8): “The angel of the Lord encamps round about them that fear Him, and delivers them.”

     Halakhah provides concrete symbols which remind a person of his ultimate task: to know God. Halakhah prevents the individual from becoming totally absorbed in the demands of economic and political survival. It provides, within the everyday framework, a means by which to achieve spiritual transcendence beyond the dehumanizing effect of mundane routines.

     However, the minute symbolic details of Halakhah present a risk as well. The risk of a religious, legal tradition is that man may focus on what one must or must not do, and forget or misunderstand for whom these actions are performed. Maimonides cannot tolerate the possible separation of Halakhah from God; the law must express the relationship of a man with God. He cannot overlook the person who observes the law yet conceives of God in corporeal terms. To Maimonides, to believe that God is corporeal is to believe in that which does not exist. Maimonides can accept imperfect motives in one’s performance of commandments—but he will not tolerate belief in God’s corporeality. Such a belief makes the halakhic mode a monologue—not a dialogue.

     The Mishneh Torah begins with four chapters dealing with norms which cannot be separated from the understanding of God as He is revealed in nature. The existence, unity, and non-corporeality of God are presented as the content of norms even though they are demonstrative truths. One is wholehearted in fulfilling these norms only when he understands, through his own intellect, that God exists—is one and is non-corporeal. By beginning the Mishneh Torah in this way the halakhic Jew is forced to perceive God’s reality as extending beyond the structure of the law.

     Halakhah is a means to serve God. Maimonides, who is so sensitive to the problem of alienation, as is revealed in his treatment of the origins of paganism, is equally aware of the possibilities of alienation within Halakhah itself. In his “Treatise on Resurrection,” he explains why he dealt with matters of belief in his legal works. He was aware that one could become enamored and totally preoccupied with details of Halakhah at the expense of knowledge of God. His concern with the fundamental principles of Judaism in his legal works, and his insistence upon a correct conception of God in the Mishneh Torah, are not the result of philosophical intellectualism. ( Philosophies of Judaism ) They are based, rather, on a fear that a student of Halakhah can become an expert in legal matters and a pagan in matters of belief. The aggadic themes briefly discussed in the legal works are addressed to legal students in the hope that their passion for law will lead to a passion for God.

     Thus far, we have argued against the alleged schism between Maimonides’ philosophic and halakhic writings. There still remains the explanation of how the studies of nature and metaphysics alter the practices of the halakhic Jew. The talmudic student of Maimonides will have followed his guidance well by studying both the written and oral law and then devoting most of his time to Talmud, a study which includes pardes, i.e., physics and metaphysics.

     Insofar as we are dealing with a spiritual outlook, we must expect that such cognitive development will alter one’s perception of self, nature, history, and God. Philosophy, to Maimonides, not only points to the contemplative ideal, but also suggests a method of changing the religious attitudes and perspectives of a person. This leads directly to an exploration of the ḥasid.

     For your sakes he became poor. --- 2 Corinthians 8:9.

     Christ humbled himself in his birth.  Samuel Willard, “Christ Humbled Himself,” preached May 12, 1696, the second in a series of twelve sermons on this question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism; downloaded from Fire and Ice, Puritan and Reformed Writings, at www.puritansermons.com, accessed Aug. 21, 2001.  The humiliation of the birth of Christ consists mainly in its humble state. There were indeed notable flashes of his glory attending his birth by which God testified that he was the Messiah. But his birth itself was accompanied with an awe-inspiring humility, as he abased himself through it. He was born for us, and so he was born in a condition appropriate to our need. He showed in his birth what sin had made us. There are a few things we may take notice of as properly belonging to his humiliation:

     1.     He was born under a sentence of condemnation. As soon as he put on our nature, he stood under the doom of the Law. He was born to die and was adjudged by it as soon as he was human. We are all born children of wrath in our natural state, and he put himself in our place, and therefore came to fulfill the Law (Matt. 5:17), and this is the main article of it. He intended to be made a sacrifice; God prepared him a body for this (Heb. 12:5). Justice took hold on him as soon as he came into the world and did not discharge him until it had taken its satisfaction of him, and he lived in view of it all his days and spoke of it frequently.

     2.     He was born of a sinful woman. It was a particular condescension of the Son of God to be born of any of Adam’s sinful children. True honor in God’s account consists in holiness, and sin is to him the vilest disgrace. Original sin in Christ’s mother had made her more contemptible and ignoble than anything else could; had she been an empress, it would yet have been to Christ a degrading of himself to derive his humanity from her. As it is a disgrace to have a traitor as one’s father, so it is no less to have a sinner for one’s mother. Thus Christ, though without sin, would be intimately related to sinners, for whose sake he came into the world.

     3.     Joseph and Mary were very poor and wretched. Mary was his true mother, as really as any other mother is the mother of her children. And Joseph, though not really his father, was commonly accepted so, and the honor or contempt of his father’s condition reflected on him. They were indeed descendants of King David, but they were reduced to an inferior condition, little to be regarded among rich and wealthy neighbors. Joseph was a carpenter, a laborious calling that was not very profitable.
--- Samuel Willard

     It is a mistake to nail the English Reformation just to the door of King Henry VIII. While Henry broke relations with Rome, he still believed Catholic doctrine. He just wanted Catholicism without the pope. The real English Reformation is better credited to a scholar at Cambridge University named Thomas Bilney who embraced Reformation truth after reading Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. Bilney gathered a group at White Horse Inn for secret Bible study and prayer. He was eventually found out, and he perished in the flames at Norwich on August 19, 1531—but not before influencing Hugh Latimer, a spiritual giant who is known as the “Apostle to the English.”

     Latimer had bitterly opposed the Reformation; but Bilney, hearing him preach a scathing sermon at Cambridge against Lutheranism, sought him out and succeeded in persuading him otherwise. Soon Latimer was preaching the faith he had once labored to destroy. As a result, he fell from favor during Henry’s reign and spent time in the Tower of London. When Edward VI came to the throne, Latimer was released for ministry; but when Edward died, Latimer was among those caught and condemned by officials of Queen Mary. On October 16, 1555 he and Nicholas Ridley were tied back-to-back to the stake in Oxford and set aflame. “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley,” Latimer cried. “Play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

  And the flames leaped up, but the blinding smoke
  Could not the soul of Hugh Latimer choke;
  For, said he, “Brother Ridley, be of good cheer,
  A candle in England is lighted here,
  Which by the grace of God shall never go out!”—
  And that speech in whispers was echoed about—
  Latimer’s Light shall never go out,
  However the winds may blow it about.
  Latimer’s Light can come to stay
  Till the trump of a coming judging day.*

     So keep your mind on Jesus, who put up with many insults from sinners. Then you won’t get discouraged and give up.
--- Hebrews 12:3.

          Morning - October 16

     “Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine.” --- John 21:12.

     In these words the believer is invited to a holy nearness to Jesus. “Come and dine,” implies the same table, the same meat; aye, and sometimes it means to sit side by side, and lean our head upon the Saviour’s bosom. It is being brought into the banqueting-house, where waves the banner of redeeming love. “Come and dine,” gives us a vision of union with Jesus, because the only food that we can feast upon when we dine with Jesus is himself. Oh, what union is this! It is a depth which reason cannot fathom, that we thus feed upon Jesus. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” It is also an invitation to enjoy fellowship with the saints. Christians may differ on a variety of points, but they have all one spiritual appetite; and if we cannot all feel alike, we can all feed alike on the bread of life sent down from heaven. At the table of fellowship with Jesus we are one bread and one cup. As the loving cup goes round we pledge one another heartily therein. Get nearer to Jesus, and you will find yourself linked more and more in spirit to all who are like yourself, supported by the same heavenly manna. If we were more near to Jesus we should be more near to one another. We likewise see in these words the source of strength for every Christian. To look at Christ is to live, but for strength to serve him you must “come and dine.” We labour under much unnecessary weakness on account of neglecting this percept of the Master. We none of us need to put ourselves on low diet; on the contrary, we should fatten on the marrow and fatness of the Gospel that we may accumulate strength therein, and urge every power to its full tension in the Master’s service. Thus, then, if you would realize nearness to Jesus, union with Jesus, love to his people and strength from Jesus, “come and dine” with him by faith.


          Evening - October 16

     “With thee is the fountain of life.” --- Psalm 36:9.

     There are times in our spiritual experience when human counsel or sympathy, or religious ordinances, fail to comfort or help us. Why does our gracious God permit this? Perhaps it is because we have been living too much without him, and he therefore takes away everything upon which we have been in the habit of depending, that he may drive us to himself. It is a blessed thing to live at the fountain head. While our skin- bottles are full, we are content, like Hagar and Ishmael, to go into the wilderness; but when those are dry, nothing will serve us but “Thou God seest me.” We are like the prodigal, we love the swine-troughs and forget our Father’s house. Remember, we can make swine-troughs and husks even out of the forms of religion; they are blessed things, but we may put them in God’s place, and then they are of no value. Anything becomes an idol when it keeps us away from God: even the brazen serpent is to be despised as “Nehushtan,” if we worship it instead of God. The prodigal was never safer than when he was driven to his father’s bosom, because he could find sustenance nowhere else. Our Lord favours us with a famine in the land that it may make us seek after himself the more. The best position for a Christian is living wholly and directly on God’s grace—still abiding where he stood at first—“Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Let us never for a moment think that our standing is in our sanctification, our mortification, our graces, or our feelings, but know that because Christ offered a full atonement, therefore we are saved; for we are complete in him. Having nothing of our own to trust to, but resting upon the merits of Jesus—his passion and holy life furnish us with the only sure ground of confidence. Beloved, when we are brought to a thirsting condition, we are sure to turn to the fountain of life with eagerness.

          MUST JESUS BEAR THE CROSS ALONE?

     Thomas Shepherd, 1665–1739

     Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” (Mark 8:34)

     The scriptural qualifications for discipleship are very clear: Self-denial and a resolve to bear a cross of consecration for the sake of the Gospel. Each true follower of Christ will have a cross to bear at various times throughout life. The cross is the badge that identifies us as a worthy representative and servant of our Master. For some, the cross might be a physical weakness; for others it could be an unachieved goal, a discouraging situation, or a concern for a loved one. Whatever it may be, the way we bear our individual cross can in itself be a testimony to the power of the Gospel as well as a source of encouragement to weaker Christians.

     The text for this hymn was the work of several different authors through the centuries. Thomas Shepherd, a 17th century English dissenter preacher, published a volume of poems in 1693 titled Penitential Cries. At least the first stanza with some possible alterations is believed to have come from that volume. One of the original stanzas from this work reads as follows:

     Shall Simon bear the Cross alone, and other Saints be free?
     Each Saint of Thine shall find his own— And there is one for me.

     George Nelson Allen, music teacher at Oberlin College, collected the verses and composed the music for the text in 1844 for inclusion in his collection, Oberlin Social and Sabbath School Hymn Book. “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?” has since challenged Christians in their commitment to Christ and His service with the realization that an earthly cross always precedes the heavenly crown.

     Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for ev’ry one, and there’s a cross for me.
     The consecrated cross I’ll bear till death shall set me free, and then go home my crown to wear, for there’s a crown for me.
     How happy are the saints above, who once went sorrowing here! But now they taste unmingled love, and joy without a tear.
     O precious cross! O glorious crown! O resurrection day! Ye angels, from the stars come down and bear my soul away.

     For Today: Matthew 16:24–27; Philippians 3:10; 1 Peter 2:21–24

     Reflect on the example of our Lord, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame …” (Hebrews 12:2). Relate this to the cross you may be bearing. Carry this musical truth with you ---

     I. What wisdom is. Wisdom, among the Greeks, first signified an eminent perfection in any art or mystery; so a good statuary, engraver, or limner, was called wise, as having an excellent knowledge in his particular art. But afterwards the title of wise was appropriated to those that devoted themselves to the contemplation of the highest things that served for a foundation to speculative sciences. But ordinarily we count a man a wise man, when he conducts his affairs with discretion, and governs his passions with moderation, and carries himself with a due proportion and harmony in all his concerns. But in particular, wisdom consists,

     1. In acting for a right end. The chiefest part of prudence is in fixing a right end, and in choosing fit means, and directing them to that scope; to shoot at random is a mark of folly. As he is the wisest man that hath the noblest end and fittest means, so God is infinitely wise; as he is the most excellent being, so he hath the most excellent end. As there is none more excellent than himself, nothing can be his end but himself; as he is the cause of all, so he is the end of all; and he puts a true bias into all the means he useth to hit the mark he aims at: “Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things” (Rom. 11:36).

     2. Wisdom consists in observing all circumstances for action. He is counted a wise man that lays hold of the fittest opportunities to bring his designs about, that hath the fullest foresight of all the little intrigues which may happen in a business he is to manage, and times every part of his action in an exact harmony with the proper minutes of it. God hath all the circumstances of things in one entire image before him; he hath a prospect of every little creek in any design. He sees what second causes will act, and when they will act this or that; yea, he determines them to such and such acts; so that it is impossible he should be mistaken, or miss of the due season of bringing about his own purposes. As he hath more goodness than to deceive any, so he hath more understanding than to be mistaken in any thing. Hence the time of the incarnation of our blessed Saviour is called the fulness of time, the proper season for his coming. Every circumstance about Christ was timed according to the predictions of God; even so little a thing as not parting his garment, and the giving him gall and vinegar to drink; and all the blessings he showers down upon his people, according to the covenant of grace, are said to come “in his season” (Ezek. 34:25, 26).  ( God is never, never late. )

     3. Wisdom consists in willing and acting according to the right reason, according to a right judgment of things. We can never count a wilful man a wise man; but him only that acts according to a right rule, when right counsels are taken and vigorously executed. The resolves and ways of God are not mere will, but will guided by the reason and counsel of his own infinite understanding (Eph. 1:11); “Who works all things according to the counsel of his own will.” The motions of the Divine will are not rash, but follow the proposals of the Divine mind; he chooses that which is fittest to be done, so that all his works are graceful, and all his ways have a comeliness and decorum in them. Hence all his ways are said to be “judgment” (Deut. 32:4), not mere will. Hence it appears, that wisdom and knowledge are two distinct perfections.  Knowledge hath its seat in the speculative understanding, wisdom in the practical.  Wisdom and knowledge are evidently distinguished as two several gifts of the Spirit in man (1 Cor. 12:8); “To one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit.” Knowledge is an understanding of general rules, and wisdom is a drawing conclusions from those rules in order to particular cases.    ( Every day, at least once a day, sometimes more, I pray that my bride will be filled with Godly wisdom, Godly discernment and Godly understanding, the joy of the Lord and the peace of God. )  A man may have the knowledge of the whole Scripture, and have all learning in the treasury of his memory, and yet be destitute of skill to make use of them upon particular occasions, and untie those knotty questions which may be proposed to him, by a ready application of those rules. Again, knowledge and wisdom may be distinguished, in our conception, as two distinct perfections in God: the knowledge of God is his understanding of all things; his wisdom is the skilful resolving and acting of all things. And the apostle, in his admiration of him, owns them as distinct; “O the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33)! Knowledge is the foundation of wisdom, and antecedent to it; wisdom the superstructure upon knowledge: men may have knowledge without wisdom, but not wisdom without knowledge; according to our common proverb, “The greatest clerks are not the wisest men.” All practical knowledge is founded in speculation, either secundum rem, as in a man; or, secundum rationem, as in God. They agree in this, that they are both acts of the understanding; but knowledge is the apprehension of a thing, and wisdom is the appointing and ordering of things. Wisdom is the splendor and lustre of knowledge shining forth in operations, and is an act both of understanding and will; understanding in counselling and contriving, will in resolving and executing: counsel and will are linked together (Eph. 1:11).

     II. . The second thing is to lay down some propositions in general, concerning the wisdom of God. First, There is an essential and a personal wisdom of God.  The essential wisdom, is the essence of God; the personal wisdom is the Son of God.  Christ is called Wisdom by himself (Luke 7:35). The wisdom of God by the apostle (1 Cor. 1:24). The wisdom I speak of belongs to the nature of God, and is considered a necessary perfection. The personal wisdom is called so, because he opens to us the secrets of God. If the Son were that wisdom whereby the Father is wise, the Son would be also the essence whereby the Father is God. If the Son were the wisdom of the Father, whereby he is essentially wise, the Son would be the essence of the Father, and the Father would have his essence from the Son, since the wisdom of God is the essence of God; and so the Son would be the Father, if the wisdom and power of the Father were originally in the Son.

     Secondly, Therefore the wisdom of God is the same with the essence of God. Wisdom in God is not a habit added to his essence, as it is in man, but it is his essence. It is like the splendor of the sun, the same with the sun itself; or like the brightness of crystal, which is not communicated to it by anything else, as the brightness of a mountain is by the beam of the sun, but it is one with the crystal itself. It is not a habit superadded to the Divine essence; that would be repugnant to the simplicity of God, and speak him compounded of divers principles; it would be contrary to the eternity of his perfections: if he be eternally wise, his wisdom is his essence; for there is nothing eternal but the essence of God. As the sun melts some things, and hardens others; blackens some things, and whitens others, and produceth contrary qualities in different subjects, yet it is but one and the same quality in the sun, which is the cause of those contrary operations; so the perfections of God seem to be diverse in our conceptions, yet they are but one and the same in God.  The wisdom of God, is God acting prudently; as the power of God, is God acting powerfully; and the justice of God, is God acting righteously;  and therefore it is more truly said, that God is wisdom, justice, truth, power, than that he is wise, just, true, &c. as if he were compounded of substance and qualities. All the operations of God proceed from one simple essence; as all the operations of the mind of man, though various, proceed from one faculty of understanding. Thirdly, Wisdom is the property of God alone: He is “only wise.” It is an honor peculiar to him. Upon the account that no man deserved the title of wise, but that it was a royalty belonging to God, Pythagoras would not be called Ζὸφος, a title given to their learned men, but Φ ιλόσοφος. The name philosopher arose out of a respect to this transcendent perfection of God.

     1. God is “only wise” necessarily. As he is necessarily God, so he is necessarily wise; for the notion of wisdom is inseparable from the notion of a Deity. When we say, God is a Spirit, is true, righteous, wise; we understand that he is transcendently these, by an intrinsic and absolute necessity, by virtue of his own essence, without the efficiency of any other, or any efficiency in and by himself. God doth not make himself wise, no more than he makes himself God. As he is a necessary Being in regard of his life, so he is necessarily wise in regard of his understanding. Synesius saith, that God is essentiated; οὐσιοῦοθαι, by his understanding. He places the substance of God in understanding and wisdom: wisdom is the first vital operation of God. He can no more be unwise than he can be untrue; for folly in the mind is much the same with falsity in speech. Wisdom among men is gained by age and experience, furthered by instructions and exercise; but the wisdom of God is his nature. As the sun cannot be without light, while it remains a sun, and as eternity cannot be without immortality, so neither can God be without wisdom as he only hath immortality (1 Tim. 6:16), not arbitrarily, but necessarily; so he only hath wisdom: not because he will be wise, but because he cannot but be wise. He cannot but contrive counsels, and exert operations, becoming the greatness and majesty of his nature.

     2. Therefore “only wise” originally. God is αν 􀀀 δίδακτος αν 􀀀 τόσοφος. Men acquire wisdom by the loss of their fairest years; but his wisdom is the perfection of the Divine nature, not the birth of study, or the growth of experience, but as necessary, as eternal, as his essence. He goes not out of himself to search wisdom: he needs no more the brains of creatures in the contrivance of his purposes, than he doth their arm in the execution of them. He needs no counsel, he receives no counsel from any (Rom. 11:34): “Who hath been his counsellor?” and (Isa. 40:14) “With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, or taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the path of understanding?” He is the only Fountain of wisdom to others; angels and men have what wisdom they have, by communication from him. All created wisdom is a spark of the Divine light, like that of the stars borrowed from the sun. He that borrows wisdom from another, and doth not originally possess it in his own nature, cannot properly be called wise. As God is the only Being, in regard that all other beings are derived from him, so he is only wise, because all other wisdom flows from him. He is the spring of wisdom to all; none the original of wisdom to him.

     3. Therefore “only wise” perfectly. There is no cloud upon his understanding. He hath a distinct and certain knowledge of all things that can fall under action; as he hath a perfect knowledge without ignorance, so he hath a beautiful wisdom without mole or wart. Men are wise, yet have not an understanding so vast as to grasp all things, nor a perspicacity so clear, as to penetrate into the depths of all being. Angels have more delightful and lively sparks of wisdom, yet so imperfect, that in regard of the wisdom of God they are charged with folly (Job 4:18). Their wisdom as well as their holiness is veiled in the presence of God. It vanisheth, as the glowing of a fire doth before the beauty of the sun, or as the light of a candle in the midst of a sunshine contracts itself, and none of its rays are seen, but in the body of the flame. The angels are not perfectly wise, because they are not perfectly knowing: the gospel, the great discovery of God’s wisdom, was hid from them for ages.

     4. Therefore “only wise” universally. Wisdom in one man is of one sort, in another of another sort; one is a wise tradesman, another a wise statesman, and another a wise philosopher: one is wise in the business of the world, another is wise in divine concerns. One hath not so much of plenty of one sort, but he may have a scantiness in another; one may be wise for invention, and foolish in execution; an artificer may have skill to frame an engine, and not skill to use it.  The ground that is fit for olives may not be fit for vines; that will bear one sort of grain and not another.  But God hath an universal wisdom, because his nature is wise; it is not limited, but hovers over everything, shines in every being. His executions are as wise as his contrivances: he is wise in his resolves, and wise in his ways: wise in all the varieties of his works of creation, government, redemption. As his will wills all things, and his power effects all things, so his wisdom is the universal director of the motions of his will, and the executions of his power: as his righteousness is the measure of the matter of his actions, so his wisdom is the rule that directs the manner of his actions. The absolute power of God is not an unruly power: his wisdom orders all things, so that nothing is done but what is fit and convenient, and agreeable to so excellent a Being: as he cannot do an unjust thing because of his righteousnesness, so he cannot do an unwise act, because of his infinite wisdom. Though God be not necessitated to any operation without himself, as to the creation of anything, yet supposing he will act, his wisdom necessitates him to do that which is congruous, as his righteousness necessitates him to do that which is just: so that though the will of God be the principle, yet his wisdom is the rule of his actions. We must, in our conceiving of the order, suppose wisdom antecedent to will none that acknowledges a God can have such an impious thought as to affix temerity and rashness to any of his proceedings. All his decrees are drawn out of the infinite treasury of wisdom in himself. He resolves nothing about any of his creatures without reason; but the reason of his purposes is in himself, and springs from himself, and not from the creatures: there is not one thing that he wills but “he wills by counsel, and works by counsel” (Eph. 1:11). Counsel writ down every line, every letter, in his eternal Book; and all the orders are drawn out from thence by his wisdom and will: what was illustrious in the contrivance, glitters in the execution. His understanding and will are infinite; what is therefore the act of his will, is the result of his understanding, and therefore rational. His understanding and will join hands; there is no contest in God, will against mind, and mind against will; they are one in God, one in his resolves, and one in all his works.

     5. Therefore he is “only wise” perpetually. As the wisdom of man is got by ripeness of age, so it is lost by decay of years; it is got by instruction, and lost by dotage. The perfectest minds, when in the wane, have been darkened with folly: Nebuchadnezzar, that was wise for a man, became as foolish as a brute.

     But the Ancient of Days is an unchangeable possessor of prudence; his wisdom is a mirror of brightness, without a defacing spot. It was “possessed by him in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old” (Prov. 8:22), and he can never be dispossessed of it in the end of his works. It is inseparable from him: the being of his Godhead may as soon cease as the beauty of his mind; “with him is wisdom” (Job 12:13); it is inseparable from him; therefore, as durable as his essence. It is a wisdom infinite, and therefore without increase or decrease in itself. The experience of so many ages in the government of the world hath added nothing to the immensity of it, as the shining of the sun since the creation of the world hath added nothing to the light of that glorious body. As ignorance never darkens his knowledge, so folly never disgraces his prudence. God infatuates men, but neither men nor devils can infatuate God; he is unerringly wise; his counsel doth not vary and flatter; it is not one day one counsel, and another day another, but it stands like an immovable rock, or a mountain of brass. “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, and the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11).

     6. He is only wise incomprehensibly. “His thoughts are deep” (Psalm 92:5); “His judgments unsearchable, his ways past finding out” (Rom. 11:33): depths that cannot be fathomed; a splendor more dazzling to our dim minds than the light of the sun to our weak eyes. The wisdom of one man may be comprehended by another, and over-comprehended; and often men are understood by others to be wiser in their actions than they understand themselves to be; and the wisdom of one angel may be measured by another angel of the same perfection. But as the essence, so the wisdom of God is incomprehensible to any creature; God is only comprehended by God. The secrets of wisdom in God are double to the expressions of it in his works (Job 11:6, 7): “Canst thou, by searching, find out God?” There is an unfathomable depth in all his decrees, in all his works; we cannot comprehend the reason of his works, much less that of his decrees, much less that in his nature; because his wisdom, being infinite as well as his power, can no more act to the highest pitch than his power. As his power is not terminated by what he hath wrought, but he could give further testimonies of it, so neither is his wisdom, but he could furnish us with infinite expressions and pieces of his skill. As in regard of his immensity he is not bounded by the limits of place; in regard of his eternity, not measured by the minutes of time; in regard of his power, not terminated with this or that number of objects; so, in regard of his wisdom, he is not confined to this or that particular mode of working; so that in regard of the reason of his actions, as well as the glory and majesty of his nature, he dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16); and whatsoever we understand of his wisdom in creation and providence, is infinitely less than what is in himself and his own unbounded nature. Many things in Scripture are declared chiefly to be the acts of the Divine will, yet we must not think that they were acts of mere will without wisdom, but they are represented so to us, because we are not capable of understanding the infinite reason of its acts: his sovereignty is more intelligible to us than his wisdom. We can better know the commands of a superior, and the laws of a prince, than understand the reason that gave birth to those laws. We may know the orders of the Divine will, as they are published, but not the sublime reason of his will. Though election be an act of God’s sovereignty, and he hath no cause from without to determine him, yet his infinite wisdom stood not silent while mere dominion acted. Whatsoever God doth, he doth wisely, as well as sovereignly; though that wisdom which lies in the secret places of the Divine Being be as incomprehensible to us as the effects of his sovereignty and power in the world are visible, God can give a reason of his proceeding, and that drawn from himself, though we understand it not. The causes of things visible lie hid from us. Doth any man know how to distinguish the seminal virtue of a small seed from the body of it, and in what nook and corner that lies, and what that is that spreads itself in so fair a plant, and so many flowers? Can we comprehend the justice of God’s proceedings in the prosperity of the wicked, and the afflictions of the godly? Y et as we must conclude them the fruits of an unerring righteousness, so we must conclude all his actions the fruits of an unspotted wisdom, though the concatenation of all his counsels is not intelligible to us; for he is as essentially and necessarily wise, as he is essentially and necessarily good and righteous. God is not only so wise that nothing more wise can be conceived, but he is more wise than can be imagined; something greater in all his perfections than can be comprehended by any creature. It is a foolish thing, therefore, to question that which we cannot comprehend; we should adore it instead of disputing against it; and take it for granted, that God would not order anything, were it not agreeable to the sovereignty of his wisdom, as well as that of his will. Though the reason of man proceed from the wisdom of God, yet there is more difference between the reason of man, and the wisdom of God, than between the light of the sun, and the feeble shining of the glow-worm; yet we presume to censure the ways of God, as if our purblind reason had a reach above him.

     7. God is “only wise” infallibly. The wisest men meet with rubs in the way, that make them fall short of what they aim at; they often design, and fail; then begin again; and yet all their counsels end in smoke, and none of them arrive at perfection. If the wisest angels lay a plot, they may be disappointed; for though they are higher and wiser than man, yet there is One higher and wiser than they, that can check their projects. God always compasseth his end, never fails of anything he designs and aims at; all his undertakings are counsel and will; as nothing can resist the efficacy of his will, so nothing can countermine the skill of his counsel: “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). He compasseth his ends by those actions of men and devils, wherein they think to cross him; they shoot at their own mark, and hit his. Lucifer’s plot, by divine wisdom, fulfilled God’s purpose against Lucifer’s mind.  The counsel of redemption by Christ, the end of the creation of the world, rode into the world upon the back of the serpent’s temptation.  God never mistakes the means, nor can there be any disappointments to make him vary his counsels, and pitch upon other means than what before he had ordained. His “word that goeth forth of his mouth shall not return to him void, but it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto he sent it” (Isa. 55:11). What is said of his word is true of his counsel; it shall prosper in the thing for which it is appointed; it cannot be defeated by all the legions of men and devils; for “as he thinks, so shall it come to pass; and as he hath purposed, so shall it stand; the Lord hath purposed, and who shall disannul it” (Isa. 14:24, 27)? The wisdom of the creature is a drop from the wisdom of God, and is like a drop to the ocean, and a shadow to the sun; and, therefore, is not able to meet the wisdom of God, which is infinite and boundless. No wisdom is exempted from mistakes, but the Divine: he is wise in all his resolves, and never “calls back his words” and purposes (Isa. 31:2).

     III. The third general is to prove that God is wise. This is ascribed to God in Scripture (Dan. 2:20); “Wisdom and might are his;” wisdom to contrive, and power to effect. Where should wisdom dwell, but in the head of a Deity? and where should power triumph, but in the arm of Omnipotency? All that God doth, he doth artificially, skilfully; whence he is called the “Builder of the heavens” (Heb. 11:10), Τεχ νίτης an artifical and curious builder, a builder by art: and that word (Prov. 8:30) meant of Christ; “Then I was by him as one brought up with him;” some render it, Then I was the curious artificer; and the same word, is translated, a cunning workman (Cant. 7:5). For this cause, counsel is ascribed to God; not properly, for counsel implies something of ignorance, or irresolution, antecedent to the consultation, and a posture of will afterwards, which was not before. Counsel is, properly, a laborious deliberation, and a reasoning of things; an invention of means for the attainment of the end, after a discussing and reasoning of all the doubts which arise, pro re natâ, about the matter in counsel. But God hath no need to deliberate in himself what are the best means to accomplish his ends: he is never ignorant or undetermined what course he should take, as men are before they consult. But it is an expression, in condescension to our capacity, to signify that God doth nothing but with reason and understanding, with the highest prudence and for the most glorious ends, as men do after consultation and the weighing of every foreseen circumstance. Though he acts all things sovereignly by his will, yet he acts all things wisely by his understanding; and there is not a decree of his will but he can render a satisfactory reason for, in the face of men and angels. As he is the cause of all things, so he hath the highest wisdom for the ordering of all things. If wisdom among men be the knowledge of divine and human things, God must be infinitey wise, since knowledge is most radiant in him; he knows what angels and men do. and infinitely more; what is known by them obscurely, is known by him clearly; what is known by man after it is done, was known by God before it was wrought. By his wisdom, as much as by anything, he infinitely differs from all his creatures, as by wisdom man differs from a brute. We cannot frame a notion of God, without conceiving him infinitely wise. We should render him very inconsiderable, to imagine him furnished with an infinite knowledge, and not have an infinite wisdom to make use of that knowledge, or to fancy him with a mighty power destitute of prudence. Knowledge without prudence, is an eye without motion; and power without discretion, is an arm without a head; a hand to act, without understanding to contrive and model; a strength to act, without reason to know how to act: it would be a miserable notion of a God, to fancy him with a brutish and unguided power. The heathens, therefore, had, and could not but have, this natural notion of God. Plato, therefore, calls him Mens; and Cleanthes used to call God Reason; and Socrates thought the title of Ζοφός too magnificent to be attributed to anything else but God alone.

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