Wisdom in eternity and in time
This sublime view lifts us at once above the seeming contradictions of time, and suggests the solution of all its problems in God.
I. SHE IS OF THE DIVINE BEGINNINGS OR ELEMENTS. (Proverbs 8:22.) An element in chemistry is the last simple substance we can reach in analysis. An element in thought is the last simple notion yielded by the dialectic of the understanding. Wisdom is thus before the visible creation—the earth, the sea, the mountains. The verses do but repeat and iterate this one simple and sublime thought. We may in like manner vary it in any form of thought and expression familiar to us. She is the Divine a priori; the logic of nature and spirit; the last and first, the ground of all existence; the eternal reason, the transcendent cause, the alpha and omega of the cosmic alphabet. We are trying to express the inexpressible, utter the unutterable, define the undefinable, find out God to perfection, if we press beyond these poor forms of speech and ignore the limit which separates the known from the unknowable, and reason from faith.
II. THE CREATION PROCEEDING FROM THE DIVINE WISDOM FULFILS ITS COURSE BY WISDOM. (Proverbs 8:27.) What we term in science the discovery of law is for religion the revelation of the mind of God in the world and in us. The cosmos is here conceived under the forms of the poetic imagination—the heavens and their outstretched circle or vault; the clouds as massive bags or skins; the springs on earth as set in motion by direct Divine activity; the sea as bounded by a positive fiat; the earth as fixed on firm pillars, by one act as it were of the Divine Architect. And then was Wisdom at his side as mistress of the work (Proverbs 8:30), and was in delight day by day (Proverbs 8:30), "playing before him always; playing on the circle of the earth, and I had my delight in men" (Proverbs 8:31). One of the best illustrations of the poetical force and sense of this passage is in the Wisdom of Sirach 24: "I went forth from the mouth of the Highest, and as a mist I covered the earth. I pitched my tent in the heights, and my throne was as a pillar of cloud. The gyre of heaven I encircled alone, and in the depths of abysses I walked about. In the billows of the sea, and in all the earth, and among every people and nation, I was busy" (verses 3-6).
III. WISDOM'S APPEAL AND PROMISES, (Verses 32-36.)
1. The appeal. "Listen to me, listen to instruction!" Drink out of this spring of eternity, whose currents flow through all the tracts of nature and of man. "Resist not!" for to resist is to oppose the law of things and to invite destruction. Let them be so eager to listen and to know that they shall daily apply, daily stand as suppliants or visitors at her door!
2. The promises. Happiness is repeatedly foretold (verses 32, 34). Life in all senses, intensive and extensive (verse 35). Favour with Jehovah (verse 35). And it follows, as the night the day, that he who sins against Wisdom, whether by neglect or direct disobedience, is guilty of a moral suicide, and shows a contempt for life and happiness, a perverse preference for death (see on Proverbs 4:13, Proverbs 4:22; Proverbs 7:27; comp. Ezekiel 18:21).—J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON