A Little Learning – Sunday, June 07, 1953
It has often been observed that a little learning is a dangerous thing. And if a little learning is dangerous, surely a little ignorance is also dangerous—and much ignorance also. Both learning and ignorance are dangerous when accompanied by conceit.
If we want some idea of how little we know of what there is to know, to begin with we need only look into a large library and see the almost endless shelves of books that no man in this life will ever have time to read. We sometimes marvel that all men who ever lived found time or reason to write them.
There are literally millions of titles in our own libraries. Add to these all the other written works in all the libraries of the world; add to these all that has been written and lost in all ages past—and we begin to have some inkling of an idea how little we know of what all men have thought or known, or have thought they have known. Then add to all this all there is to learn that isn’t to be found in books; and add all the questions that no man can answer, all the things that no man can do, and we may begin to have some small idea of our need for humility.
We marvel at the mind of man. We marvel at the things that men have made. But how much more should we marvel at the intelligence and power of Him who made us in His own image, and who made so many things beyond the comprehension of the mind of man.
As Montaigne observed: We cannot even make a worm. We are as children on the fringe of truths so far reaching and profound that conceit of learning ill becomes anyone. We may know some of the answers; we may think we know many more; but there is still so much that no man knows, so much that all of us together do not know, so much which we must accept in faith, so much which we shall find only with faith. And those who are now leaving the halls of learning, and those who yet remain within, would well hold close to their hearts (as well as all of us) the simple scriptural sentence: “walk humbly with thy God.”1 *
*Revised.
1Micah 6:8
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June 07, 1953
Broadcast Number 1,242