KNOWLEDGE, FALSE AND TRUE.
A MAXIM of Bacon reads, "Knowledge is power." It depends on the kind of knowledge. Here is a knowledge that is of infinite value: "And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." John 17:3. However, before we consider the knowledge of the text, let us view for a little space the knowledge of the world. "Science Falsely So Called."
Much that is called knowledge, or science, nowadays, and in fact through all human ages, is mere guesswork. The "science" of to-day knows that much of the "science" of the past was myth or fable, but it follows in the same old path of vain conjecture. The highest among the devotees of human science are, at the best, but— "On the lowest benches of Truth's great college,
To guess at what grown-up angels know." Much of the knowledge of to-day is the "science falsely so called" ("knowledge" in the R.V.), which seeks to interest the receptive student, as it has intoxicated its devotees, in "profane and vain babbling," "old wives' fables," "endless genealogies," "empty jangling," "foolish questions," "strivings about law," and "commandments of men," which "turn from the truth" and minister to vanity. This guesswork or hypothetical sort of knowledge is to a great extent the basis of nearly all the various sciences and arts. How much of conjecture and mere hypothesis is found in natural philosophy, psychology, astronomy, geology, medicine, and theology! Certain phenomena are witnessed, certain effects seem to follow certain causes, but apart from a higher revelation, how little man knows of the real origin of these phenomena or manifestations! Let a practical physician speak for the science of medicine, and in speaking for that speak for all. I quote from the November Arena for 1896:— Practical medicine is an old hulk out on the professional sea, without sail, oar, rudder, compass, or north star. It has no head. It has no body, unless we accept as such the conglomerate mass of discordant elements seen in the opposing schools—the allopaths, eclectics, homeopaths, hydropaths, etc. Its reliance is on its voluminous tail, a prehensile tail, by which it clings tenaciously to old-time theories and dogmas. . . . Practical medicine . . . has not even the impulse center of the starfish. It looks to its prehensile tail, with its old theories, dogmas, and traditions, for impulse and guidance. . . . The physician is the only man in the wide world who has charge of a machine without having been taught what its power is, and how it is secured, applied, and controlled—and this machine the acme of all mechanism! What a burning shame that this machine, man, while thrilled with life and its aspirations that are human, can only live at the sufferance of blind chance, while for the management and maintenance of the inanimate machine the highest degree of skill that is known to the science of progress is at command. In the pillory of the condemned, medicine does not stand alone. It is a frequent thing to find in our leading periodicals and reviews sweeping condemnation by leading men of the whole popular system of education. The theories of astronomy, geology, and theology as sciences, are undergoing constant change according as the little fires kindled by human investigators set new areas of scientific atmosphere in motion, and the great result is that the minds of thousands are unsettled, but the great world is moved no nearer the stars of God, nor is man more of an ideal character. And yet this uncertain theorizing on the part of learned, energetic men is not unfruitful of results. It brings bread and butter from the ignorant to the equally ignorant. It gets gold. Its favorites acquire fame. It soothes into self-satisfaction its egotistical and more indolent devotees. It heaps up sunshine friends. It fosters pride. "Knowledge puffeth up." All purely worldly knowledge is in its getting based on a wrong conception, a false notion. It reverses true processes. It builds the pyramid on its apex in shifting desert sands and wonders that it is not more stable. This wrong notion is education from the standpoint of the imperfect human. It is heathen in its cradling, and satanic in its origin. It is set forth in a maxim attributed to Solon, and inscribed over the portal to the temple of the old Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." Alexander Pope enlarges the thought thus:— "Know well thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man." The thought has been enshrined in so-called Christian literature and education. In one of the latest books, "What a Young Man Should Know," by an esteemed Eastern clergyman, we read: "The only proper study of man is man. The only way to arrive at the correct knowledge of human nature is by a study of human nature." This is the repetition of the same old falsehood, continuing the same old system of search and guess, and ignorance, the more refined, is as colossal as ever. As of old Inspiration may unchallenged make the same statement, and ask the same question: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" And the true student will find response in the words of the ancient prophet: "O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." What is the end of all this worldly knowledge?—Apart from its few days of despairing pleasure, it is death. It leads men to hope, but it disappoints. It blinds where it can not instruct. If we prize knowledge by what it brings, surely we should estimate lightly the knowledge of the world. Like beautiful soap bubbles, its results vanish while we gaze upon them. All knowledge of all worldly languages, sciences, arts, and ologies will sometime be locked in the archives of oblivion. Man's earthly tenure of stay at the longest is but a little while, and he enters the tabernacle whose door never outward swings. His life here is as a shadow which appeareth for a little time and vanisheth away. Like a flower he blooms in the morning; at evening it is withered and fallen. His existence is as the grass, and his glory as its fleeting flower. His fame perishes in eclipse, oftentimes of a meaner body. His riches take to themselves wings and fly away. His great strength of body or mind enfeebles with fast-approaching age. Earthly friends leave him for some newer and more favored child of fortune or fame. Changing theories crowd his knowledge out of fashion or stigmatize it ignorance. Death ends all. Well said the prophet, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches." There is no ground for glory. Using one of the coveted objects of earth for a type of all, our Lord presents us this picture lesson of the emptiness of human life:— "And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And He spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do; I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." Luke 12:15-21.