Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: January 11th

HIDDEN FROM THE WISE AND PRUDENT

I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes. - Matthew 11:25-26

There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of Christ’s love for the wise or the prudent. The understanding is no more the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than is the ear the organ for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathematics. Blessed be God! The highest gifts are not bestowed upon the clever people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, on the cultivated and the refined, - but they are open for all men; and when we say that love is the parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of Christ’s heart is simple love, which is the child of faith, we are only saying in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving prayer, "I thank Thee, Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."

And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can only address itself to fools; not because Christianity, contradicting wisdom, cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, - but because a man’s brains have as little to do with his acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a man’s eyes have to do with his capacity of hearing a voice. Therefore, seeing that the wise and prudent, and the cultured, and the clever, and the men of genius are always the minority of the race, let us vulgar folk, that are neither wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, be thankful that that has nothing to do with our power of knowing and possessing the best wisdom and the highest treasures; but that upon this path the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err, and all narrow foreheads and limited understandings, and poor, simple, uneducated people, as well as philosophers and geniuses, have to learn of their hearts and not of their heads, and, by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily experience, have to appropriate and suck out the blessings that lie in the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that great truth, that we possess the deepest knowledge and the highest wisdom when we love and by our love.

There is no true wisdom which does not rest calmly upon a basis of truthfulness of heart, and is not guarded and nurtured by righteousness and purity of life. Man is one - one and indissoluble. The intellect and the conscience are but two names for diverse parts of the one human being, or rather they are but two names for diverse workings of one immortal soul. And though it be possible that a man may be enriched with all earthly knowledge, whilst his heart is the dwelling-place of all corruption; and that, on the other hand, a man may be pure and upright in heart, whilst his head is very poorly furnished and his understanding very weak - yet these exceptional cases do not touch the great central truth, " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding."