Col. ii. 3. In ivhom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.
" WISDOM," we are told, " is the principal thing ; and therefore we should get wisdom." In all civilized countries, wisdom has been held in the highest repute: and institutions have been set on foot for the cultiva- tion of it. How highly it was esteemed amongst our ancestors, we may judge from the provision which they made for the education of youth in all succeed- ing ages. Not that the establishments in this seat of learning were intended merely to reward those who distinguished themselves by early attainments ; they were designed to give them also an opportunity of bestowing an undivided attention to literature and science throughout the remainder of their days : and if they be not improved for this end, the fault is not in the institutions themselves, but in those who have been admitted into them. We can have seen but little of the world, if we have not noticed the supe- riority which a cultivated mind possesses over one that is rude and uninstructed. And though it must be granted, that human learning will not change and sanctify the heart, yet we assert, that it will give a very great advantage for the understanding and ex- plaining of the Holy Scriptures.
We say not that God could not, or did not, make use of weak and unlettered men for the diffusion of his Gospel : but, as he selected Moses, a man " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," for the instruc- tion and government of the Jewish Church, so he selected Paul, who had ''been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," to be his messenger of grace to the Gentile world : and, if he was pleased so to adapt the instrument to the work in that age of miracles, much more is such a qualification desirable for his chosen servants, now that miracles have ceased. We must