No teaching of the inspired Word and no counsel of experience is more frequently repeated or more earnestly emphasized than this, that men acquire and exercise wisdom. It is made the specific theme of extended treatment and illustration in Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and the other so-called wisdom-literature. Here, in all the poetic extravagance of oriental symbolism, it is declared that "it cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire ... for the price of wisdom is above rubies." Further, the very heart of the Master's teaching respecting human living may be found in his appeal to his followers, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." In the compass of the meaning of the term as he used it, there is found all that lies between the simplest expressions of good judgment and the highest discernments of spiritual intuition, a knowledge of and a devotion to the true, the beautiful, and the good, which speaks for ascendant man in every event and possibility of experience. Throughout the complex of human relations, wisdom is to be expressed in unfailing breadth of view, in unwavering poise, in a fine sense of proportion, in insistent adherence to justice, in unswerving loyalty to God and His idea. All this characterizes and constitutes the divine order which we are called upon to fulfill.
In entire harmony with this recognition of wisdom as supremely essential to blameless and efficient living, Mrs. Eddy speaks in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 78) of the danger attending the unfortunate fact that "The neophyte in Christian Science acts like a diseased physique,—being too fast or too slow. He is inclined to do either too much or too little. In healing and teaching the student has not yet achieved the entire wisdom of Mind-practice." She further reminds her students that "Extremists in every age either doggedly deny or frantically affirm what is what: one renders not unto Caesar 'the things that are Cæsar's;' the other sees 'Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.'" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 374.)
The sufficient reason for these counsels is clearly perceived as one notes the tendency of human thought to fall into the prevailing political classification of radical or conservative, and to become ultra in attitude as the result of partisan prejudice, or the challenge of loyalty to some humanly imposed standard of requirement. To be sane and reliable, judgment must be supplied an intelligently thoughtful basis. Thus grounded it can be neither undermined nor disqualified. If, however, ignorance and its accompanying superstition are permitted to determine the angle of vision, and thus shape conviction, then the soberest and sincerest sense may have no value whatever. It serves simply to increase contentious disputation.
