God's Wisdom: The Foundation of Earth and Soul

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth.—There is but one wisdom for God and man. Man's true wisdom is a pattern of God's wisdom. A man to prosper in the world must obtain the very same wisdom by which God made and rules the world.

In the last hundred years, science has improved in a most wonderful way, improving every day. This improvement has taken place simply by mankind understanding this text and obeying it. For more than sixteen hundred years after our Lord's time, mankind seemed hardly any wiser about earthly things, nay, even to have gone backward. But about two hundred fifty years ago, it pleased God to open the eyes of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and show him the real and right way of learning by which men can fulfill God's command to replenish the earth and subdue it.

Bacon taught that the only way for man to be wise was to get God's wisdom—the wisdom with which He founded the earth—and find out God's laws by which He made this world. "You can only subdue nature by obeying her." If you want to rule, you must obey. If you want to be master of anything in earth or heaven, you must obey God's will revealed in that thing.

The same rule which holds good in the earthly world holds good in the heavenly world. The heavenly wisdom which begins in trusting in the Lord with all our hearts, learned through chastenings and afflictions, is the very same wisdom by which God founded the earth. God's wisdom is one—unchangeable, everlasting, and always like itself.