, and
involves in it nothing of that over-study which is dreaded as so
injurious.

Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to manhood, as
a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly; but yet, rare as
knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge, unhappily, can exist
without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a very inferior degree of
knowledge. We shall see this, if we consider what we mean by knowledge;
and, without going into a more general definition of it, let us see what
we mean by it here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of
scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a
knowledge of history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or,
it may be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge of
none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there are
games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which is only
the result of much thought and calculation. There is no doubt that the
game of chess may properly be called an intellectual study; but why does
it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because, in the first place, the
calculations do but respect the movements of little pieces of wood or
ivory, and not those of our own minds and hearts; and, again, they are
calculations which have nothing to do whatever with our being better
men, or worse, with our pleasing God or displeasing him. And what is
true of this game, is true no less of the highest calculations of
Astronomy, of the profoundest researches into language; nay, what may
seem stranger still, it is often true no less of the deepest study even
of the actions and principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it
may be, and is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture
itself; and that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed, we are
considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits enshrined. We
are very near her, we see the place where she abides; but her very self
we ob