Discourses on Public Occasions

Excerpt from Discourses on Public Occasions

The kind of knowledge, the want of which is here said to be not good, we take to be  the knowledge of divine things. For although the attainments of Solomon were so diversified that we cannot suppose him to have been an enemy to know ledge in general, yet the scope of the book is such as to con vince every attentive reader that it is religious knowledge that knowledge which leads to 'the fear of the Lord'  of which he is throughout so lavish of his praises. We need scarcely add that the scriptures are the only source from which religious knowledge is to be derived; and that the teaching of the divine Spirit is indispensable to render even these effectual. The truth of these statements, we beg it to be observed, is to be understood as taken for granted in the whole Of the following discussion. We shall endeavour, with the divine assistance, to explain how the want of religious knowledge is not good for man, and to point out some of those principles by which christians ought to be actuated in seeking the religious instruction of the rising generation. I. I am first to attempt an illustration of the text, by showing how the want of religious knowledge is not good for man.