The Knowledge of God's Word the Highest Wisdom.
In opening a Department to be called The Commentary, in which we design to present from time to time, such comments upon the word of God, as shall throw light upon its meaning, and excite an interest in its study, we feel that we cannot better introduce it than with the following beautiful thoughts from J. F. Tuttle, D. D., President of Wabash College, Ind. They are taken from the baccalaureate discourse delivered in 1864 to the graduating class of that Institution. Speaking of a knowledge of the word of God, surpassing in value all other wisdom, President Tuttle says:— “In closing the religious instructions of another term, allow me to say to you, young gentlemen, that time deepens my convictions that he has the highest wisdom who combines in himself the clearest knowledge of God's Word, and the most earnest purpose to make that Word “a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path.” In Heaven's estimation, he is not the wisest who can most easily and elegantly translate the illumined pages of the ancient classics, or most comprehensively and clearly demonstrate the theorems of the higher mathematics. Gesenius was a scholar of vast attainments, who like some other great scholars was ever learning, yet never able to come to the knowledge of the truth which teaches a sinner how he may be saved. La Place is regarded as one of the greatest of mathematicians, achieving his place by demonstrating some of the most astounding problems ever announced; and yet La Place belonged to a class described in these words by the inspired pen, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God!” What folly does he commit who pursues learning merely for its own sake, and who lays the ripe product of a gifted intellect on the altar of a selfish heart, forgetful of what Dr. Chalmers so finely terms “the two magnitudes—the littleness of time, and the greatness of eternity.” Oh, how cheerless the prospect of such a one! How dreary the anticipation! God forbid that it shall be our portion at the last. “You will bear me witness as your religious instructor, that I have never hinted—at least intentionally—that any accumulations of worldly learning can be a compensation for ignorance of God's Word, and especially that magnificent central truth that it seeks to impart. We have heard of David Hume, an aged and insincere trifler in the midst of the deepening shadows of eternity; of the refined, the courtly, the scholarly Campbell, in old age, possessed of a brilliant fame as a poet and an ample competence, yet sick at heart because of the cheerless future. We have seen the man of wealth weeping as his eye wandered wearily over the princely domain, with all the harvest-fields and meadows, the herds and the flocks, which he called his own, a possession from which death was just ejecting him. We have seen the statesman dying at Marshfield, at the Hermitage, or at Mount Vernon, and have perceived that all the splendors of their past achievements brought very little comfort aside from that which flowed from the Gospel. We have seen earth's great men despondent as their worldly grandeur was paling and their worldly joys fleeing away at the approach of death. Oh, what deep meaning there is in the oft-repeated remark of the man whose genius has left so bright an illumination behind it, ever since the hour when he flung up into the sky, like a many-colored rocket, his ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ to be succeeded by others so brilliant that the very heavens seemed ablaze! He said to his son-in-law, ‘Lockhart, for a dying man there is but one book!’ The Lay, Marmion, Waverly, Ivanhoe, the Antiquary, the Heart of Mid-Lothian—the sirens whose incantations have bewitched the world—all were nothing to their author when he was dying. There was no mirth-provoking wit, no elegantly-turned sentiment, no word of lofty daring, which he could recall in all his works, as appropriate to one who was about to pass into the presence of God. One word from God's Book was, at such a time, worth more to him than all human literature. He was right, and the brilliant example justifies me in closing the religious services of this term by reiterating and inculcating the truth, that all your acquirements should ripen themselves into the sweetest joy and richest attainment of them all—the knowledge of God as he is revealed in the person of Christ.”