the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
DIVINE WISDOM
If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. - James 1:5
What does James mean by "wisdom"? He means the sum of practical religion. With him, as with the Psalmist, sin and foil are two names for the same thing, and so are religion and wisdom. He, and only he, has wisdom who knows God with a living heart-knowledge which gives a just insight into the facts of life and the bounds of right and wrong, and which regulates conduct and shapes the whole man with power far beyond that of knowledge, however wide and deep, illuminating intellect, however powerful. "Knowledge" is poor and superficial in comparison with this wisdom, which may roughly be said to be equivalent to practical religion.
The use of this expression to indicate the greatest deficiency in the average Christian character just suggests this thought, that if we had a clear, constant, certain God-regarding insight into things as they are, we should lack little. Because, if a man habitually kept vividly before him the thought of God, and with it the true nature and obligation and blessedness of righteous-loving obedience, and the true foulness and fatalness of sin - if he saw these with the clearness and the continuity with which we may all see the things that are unseen and eternal; if he " saw life steadily, and saw it whole "; if he saw the rottenness and the shallowness of earthly things and temptations, and if he saw the blessed issue of every God-pleasing act - why! the perfecting of conduct would be secured.
It would be an impossibility for him, with all that illumination blazing in upon him, not to walk in the paths of righteousness with a glad and serene heart. I do not believe that all sin is a consequence of ignorance, but I do believe that our average Christian life would be revolutionized if we each carried clear before us, and continually subjected our lives to the influence of, the certain verities of God’s Word. The thing that we want most is clearer and more vivid conceptions of the realities of the Christian revelation and of the facts of human life. These will act as tests, and up will start in his own shape the fiend that is whispering at our ears, when touched by the spear of this Divine wisdom. So here is our root deficiency; therefore, instead of confining ourselves to trying to cure isolated and specific faults, or to attain isolated and specific virtues, let us go deeper down, and realise that the more our whole natures are submitted to the power of God’s truth, and of the realities of the future and of the present, of Time and Eternity, the nearer shall we come to being " perfect and entire," lacking nothing.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
