+II. Wisdom is to be preferred to wealth, because it had an existence before wealth.+ The world, with all its precious stones, and rich mines of gold and silver, is but of yesterday compared with wisdom. The mental and spiritual wealth of God was before matter; upon that wisdom--as we learn in this chapter--depended the existence of the material (vers. 22-32; chap. iii. 19, 20). Mental wealth is eternal, material wealth belongs only to time. Gold had a beginning, because the earth had a birthday, but wisdom is as old as God. +III. Wisdom is to be preferred to wealth, because it is an absolute necessity to man's well-being, which gold is not.+ The first man, in his state of sinlessness, had no need of what men now call wealth, but wisdom--spiritual wisdom--was absolutely necessary to his continuation in a state of blessedness. Men need worldly, intellectual wisdom, even to make money. Many who inherit wealth lose it because they lack wisdom to use it rightly. But they can be blest without wealth, but not without the wisdom which leads to holiness. Wealth may bring pleasure with it, but to do so it must be united to true wisdom. Many who roll in riches have no pleasure in them; sometimes their very wealth adds to their unhappiness. Mental wealth enables men to extract some enjoyment from material wealth, but the riches of goodness makes gold and silver a means of increasing men's happiness. +IV. Wisdom is to be preferred to wealth, because the latter may be destructive to character, and the former is its constructive power.+ Many men have been morally destroyed by their riches. But true wisdom is that by which a holy character is formed, the sustenance of the spiritual life. Riches may ruin; the wisdom which God gives to those who seek it at His hand can but bless. _OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._ Verse 10. Thou canst not make as thy chief aim the acquisition of silver and that of true wisdom at one and the same time, for those aims mutually conflict, and each claims the whole man (Matt. vi. 24). To accept the one involves the rejection of the other as the chief portion. He who lives for money is void of wisdom (Luke xii. 16, 20), and is called in Scripture a "fool."--_Fausset._