December 21

If ye will inquire, inquire ye. - Isaiah 21:12.

“WISDOM,” says Solomon, “is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom, and, with all thy getting, get understanding.” One mode of obtaining this is by inquiry; for all knowledge is originally external, and we fetch it in by application and labour. “Through desire, a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.” A very superior man once said, “Much of the little knowledge I possess has been obtained by my never being above asking questions of others,” adding that there is hardly any one but knows something which we do not, or know not so well. If it be inquired, Of whom are we to ask? we say, first and supremely of God himself. And how encouraging is the assurance,-“If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.”

Next, we consult his inspired servants, the prophets and the apostles. Then we ask good men, who in his light see light, and are led by his Spirit into all truth. And surely the old should not be overlooked. “With the aged is wisdom, and in length of days is understanding.” “The old, indeed,” says Elihu, “are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment;” yet “I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.” And we should naturally conclude that the young would pay some deference to those who have gone before them, and occasionally, at least, ask their advice; and they would, if young men were not “wise in their own conceit.” Yea, we are sent for information even to the brute creation:-“Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee.” Therefore says Solomon, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” And says the Saviour, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Yea, we are sent even to the material creation:-“Go speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.” “Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these;” “Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.”

Yea, time is to be one of our preceptors, and time, though senseless in itself, is full of lessons of importance. While we should readily give the future to providence, and the present to duty,-so that “whatsoever our hands find to do, we may do it with our might,”-yet we should never forget that “God also requires that which is past,” and he requires us to remember it. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what is in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no.” But how is this to be done without consulting former times and seasons?