Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/21

 having its origin in God, and its perpetual increase in them. With what joy, then, may every Christian take up the language of David, and say to his heavenly Father, "My times are in thy hand!" Yes, we are all safe while our states of life are in the power of the Lord; for "the steps of a good man are ordered by Jehovah, and he delighteth in His way." (Psalm xxxvii. 23.)

T is at once self-evident that although a wise man may be learned, in the sense of the world, yet every learned man is not a wise man. A learned man is one who has acquired an abundance of knowledge in science, morals, philosophy, and language; yet in the possession of all these mental riches, which should make him humble and good, he may be proud and vain! He may look down contemptuously upon others less gifted than himself, and thus fan his selflove by his own vanity and pride. This is what the apostle calls "the knowledge that puffeth up." (1 Cor. viii. 1.) Learning, considered abstractedly from Wisdom, can do what wisdom cannot do; it can pour a rapid strain of fervid language to make the worse appear the better cause: and thus we fear that

The merely learned man often attributes all things