The Wise Fool<\/p>\n
We have seen many strange sights in our time\u2014many horrible sights; but none so strange, none so horrible, as that of a wise man making himself a fool. Solomon did that; and he was a wise man, even the wisest of men. If the deep sagacity of Solomon\u2014if his keen discernment\u2014if his strong reason\u2014if his profound knowledge of human life and character\u2014if even his intimate acquaintance with the law and counsels of the Lord\u2014did not preserve his name from that stamp of \u201cfoolishness\u201d which we find impressed upon so many of the great names and great acts of men, who is there that can hope to stand? Not one, as of himself; but there is without us and above us a power that can exalt even the lowly to high things, and can sustain them in all true wisdom, so long as they rest upon it, and think not that the light which shines upon their path and glorifies their way, shines out of themselves, and not into them. Solomon was wise: Solomon was foolish. Astonishing contradiction and contrast of terms! Yet it does not astonish. It may astonish angels, but not us. We are used to this kind of experience. We see it\u2014the same in kind, if not in degree\u2014every day; and that which would amaze us from any other point of view than that from which we look, becomes familiar to our thoughts. Look around. We see men who are foolish without being wise; but we see not one who is wise without being also foolish. It is \u201cfoolishness,\u201d and not wisdom; that \u201cis bound up in the heart of a child.\u201d Foolishness, which every man certainly has, is his nature; wisdom, if he has it, is a gift bestowed upon him\u2014bestowed as freely upon him as it was upon Solomon. The wisdom does not suppress or drive out the foolishness, but is a weapon\u2014it may be a staff, it may be a glittering sword\u2014given into his hands to fight against it, to keep it under; a weapon to be used with daily and ever-watchful vigilance, and not to rest idly in the scabbard. This was king Solomon\u2019s fault. Having been victor in many a deadly fray, until victory became easy and habitual, he forgat that the enemy of his greatness and peace still lived\u2014was not mortally wounded\u2014did not even sleep. He suffered his weapon to rest until its keen edge was corroded\u2014until it clung in rust to the scabbard, and could not be drawn forth.<\/p>\n
If there be on earth one sight more sorrowful than that of wisdom become foolishness\u2014or, rather, suffering foolishness to be victorious\u2014it is that of the fall of an old man whose youth had been promising, and whose manhood glorious and beautiful. Yet this also was the case of Solomon, and the thought of it is enough to draw forth most bitter tears. The fall of an old tree, or of some noble old ruin, is beheld with some regret, but it occasions no rending of heart. It was their doom. Age ripened them but for their fall; and we wondered more that they stood so long, than that they fell so soon. But man is expected to ripen in moral and religious strength\u2014to harden into rock-like fixedness as his age increases. He whom we have looked up to so long\u2014he whose words were wise as oracles, and from whose lips we had so long gathered wisdom\u2014he who had borne noble testimonies for the truth\u2014he who had labored for the glory of God, who had withstood many storms of human passion and many temptations of human glory, and in whose capacious mind are garnered up the fruits of a life\u2019s knowledge and experience\u2014for such a man to fall from his high place fills the most firm of heart with dread, and makes the moral universe tremble. It is altogether terrible. It is a calamity to mankind: it is more than that\u2014it is a shame, a wrong, and a dishonor. The righteous hide their heads, and the perverse exult\u2014hell laughs.<\/p>\n
There is something more: the grace of God is blasphemed. To see a man set forth as one specially gifted of God\u2014as endowed with a surpassing measure of wisdom from above, to fit him to become a king and leader of men\u2014 for him to fall, is, with the unthinking, an awful scandal upon the gifts of God. If he who ascribes heaven-given powers to the influence of demons commits, as most suppose, the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, of what sin, think you, is he guilty, who gives occasion to that blasphemy by his misconduct and his fall?<\/p>\n
Yet amid this dreadful scene of wreck and ruin something profitable to our own souls may be gathered up.<\/p>\n
Let it teach us not to rely too implicitly upon any past attainments or present convictions. Let us never think that the time of danger to our souls is past, or that the great troubler of spirits is wholly discomfited, and despairs of all advantage over us. There is no time wherein we can be safe, while we carry this body of sin about us. \u201cYouth is impetuous, mid-age stubborn, old age weak\u2014all dangerous.\u201d In the conviction of this ever-present peril, and of the sleepless vigilance of the enemy, may we be led to look out of ourselves altogether for strength and sustainment. When we are the strongest, it is best to be weak in ourselves; and when at our weakest, strong in him in whom we can do all things. \u201cIf God uphold us not, we cannot stand; if God uphold its, we cannot fall.\u201d Then, why did he not uphold Solomon, that he might not fall? There can be but one answer\u2014Solomon did not want to be upheld. He thought he could stand alone\u2014he relied upon his own strength\u2014he trusted in his own heart; and we have Scripture and experience to tell us, that \u201che who trusteth in his own heart is a fool.\u201d He, in the pride of his intellectual wealth, was like the rich man in the parable with his material goods\u2014\u201cI am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing.\u201d It was at that moment, when he had realized the conviction that he had need of nothing, that the word went forth against him\u2014\u201cThou fool!\u201d So also, assuredly, was it then\u2014when Solomon thought himself perfect in wisdom, and that he had need of nothing\u2014that the word went forth\u2014\u201cThou fool!\u201d and he became foolish indeed. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn<\/p>\n
Which once he wore!<\/p>\n
The glory from his gray hairs gone<\/p>\n
For evermore!<\/p>\n
Of all we loved and honored, naught<\/p>\n
Save power remains;<\/p>\n
A fallen angel\u2019s pride of thought,<\/p>\n
Still strong in chains.<\/p>\n
All else is gone; from those great eyes<\/p>\n
The soul has fled:<\/p>\n
When faith is lost, and honor dies,<\/p>\n
The man is dead.<\/p>\n
Then pay the reverence of old days<\/p>\n
To his dead fame;<\/p>\n
Walk backward with averted gaze,<\/p>\n
And hide the shame.\u201d\u2014Whittier.<\/p>\n
Did Solomon repent? Scripture says nothing positively but it may be hoped that he did. If the book of Ecclesiastes be correctly ascribed to Solomon\u2014and we are of those who think that it is\u2014it is most natural to suppose that it exhibits his maturest convictions and experiences; and although there are no such direct expressions of repentance as we find in the Psalms of David\u2014no such lamenting cries for sin, it may be considered that the framework of the book did not well admit them. But there is much in the warnings against the vanity and vexation of spirit by which the wicked and profligate are deceived and tormented, to remind us of the sad and sorrowful experience which the history ascribes to the latter days of Solomon.<\/p>\n
Autor: JOHN KITTO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Wise Fool We have seen many strange sights in our time\u2014many horrible sights; but none so strange, none so horrible, as that of a wise man making himself a fool. Solomon did that; and he was a wise man, even the wisest of men. If the deep sagacity of Solomon\u2014if his keen discernment\u2014if his … Continue reading ““342. THE WISE FOOL””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}