1. All writers on the gifts of the Holy Ghost place wisdom as the
highest gift of all. It takes this high position partly because
its work is done in the intelligence, which is man's highest
power, and partly because it is that highest power occupied to its
highest capacity. Like knowledge and understanding, its business
is to make us see God everywhere, in the material and spiritual
creation of God, in the concrete facts of existence, and in the
revealed truths of faith. It produces in a soul a sense of
complete certainty and hope. Hence it is sometimes described as
neighbor to hope; indeed, its finest side is often just that
determined and resolute conviction with which the soul rises
superior to every possible disaster, and is prepared to brave
every contingency in its sureness of God's final power and the
efficacy of His will. It comes closer, therefore, to God Himself
than do either understanding or knowledge. These do, indeed,
enable the soul to be continuously conscious of the divine
presence, of God immanent as well as transcendent, God in the
heart of the world as well as wholly above the world, and they
affect this consciousness by enabling the soul to see Him
everywhere. They lift the veil. They show His footprints. They
trace everywhere the marks of His power, wisdom, love. But it is
noticeable that they lead to God from the world. I see a flower,
and by the gift of knowledge I am immediately aware of the author
of its loveliness; by understanding I perceive with clearness the
wonder of God's working in the world. By them I lift my eyes from
earth to Heaven, by wisdom I look from Heaven to see the earth.
2. Wisdom, therefore, implies an understanding of the world
through God, whereas knowledge and understanding suppose a
perception of God through the world. Wisdom takes its stand upon
causes, the other two on effects. They work from creatures to
Creator; wisdom looks upon all the world through the eyes of God.
Consequently the effect of wisdom is that the soul sees life as a
whole. Matter and truth are to it no longer separate planes of
thought, but one. There is at once no distinction between them in
the eyes of God, for both are manifestations of Himself and
creatures of His making. Hence the soul that is dowered with
wisdom climbs up to God's own height, and looking down upon the
world sees it "very good," noticing how part fits in with part,
and how truths of faith, and truths of science and sunset, and
flower and Hell, are linked one with another to form the pattern
of God's design. Each has its place in the divine economy of God's
plan, each is equally of God, equally sharing in His purposes,
though some more than others able to express God better. The
effect, then, is largely that the whole of life is co-ordinated,
and equality, fraternity, liberty, become not the motto of a
revolution, but of the ordered government of God.
3. The opposite to this gift is folly, for a man who fails in
wisdom loses all true judgment of the values of human life. He is
perpetually exchanging the more for the less valuable, bestowing
huge gifts in just barter, as he imagines, for what is merely
showy and trivial. Not by causes, but by effect does he consider
life and its activities. The wise man, then, estimates everything
by its highest cause. He compares and discovers, gleans the reason
of God's providence, its purpose, its fitness. First principles
are his guide, not the ready and practical proverbs that display
the wit and worldly wisdom of the lesser man. Eternity becomes of
larger moment than time, since time is merely for eternity. God's
law is more convincing than man's, for man's enactments are not
laws at all when they come in conflict with divine commands. Faith
is so deeply in him that he judges between propositions, and
discovers truth against heresy. He has climbed to the heights of
God and sees all the world at his feet, and knows it as God knows
it, the world and its Lord and the glory of it.