This passion of acquiring knowledge is not the least remarkable fact
recorded of Solomon. We are told that "he spake of trees, and of
beasts, and of creeping things." He himself says of God, "He hath made
things beautiful in time: also He hath put it into man's heart to
survey the world, and to find out the work that God maketh from the
beginning to the end." "When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and
to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is
that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:) then I beheld
all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done
under the sun; because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he
shall not find it; yea, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall
he not be able to find it." There was in all this no doubt "vanity and
vexation of spirit," for the attempt was vain to find satisfaction
for the soul in the knowledge of things themselves apart from the
knowledge of a personal God, or in any truth rather than in Him who is
true. And therefore many, perceiving how intellect is often allied
to ungodliness, and fails of itself to insure either goodness or
happiness, are disposed to refuse to it the high place which God has
assigned to it in the soul, and to suspect the reality of the exalted
delight which He has designed His saints and angels to enjoy in its
exercise. But while the deifiers of mere intellect are ever reminded
that it alone cannot deify, but may be abused so as to demonise man,
yet let those who slight it remember also that it is the head without
whose inventive genius or directing skill the strong arms of labour
would be idle. Let the man of material wealth or material power
recollect that it is the wealth of science and the power of mind,
possessed perhaps by unknown and lonely students who have all their
lifetime been struggling to obtain their daily bread, and to snatch
"the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table," which have created
our manufactures, filled our warehouses, crossed our oceans, healed