From time to time in this season after Pentecost, we have a reading from the Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible. For instance a couple of weeks ago we had a reading from Proverbs and in a couple of weeks time we have another from the Wisdom of Solomon. In that latter there is a verse concerning reason:

“For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, ‘Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end, and no one has been known to return from Hades.’”

Just by chance I had read that Andrew Carnegie had this carved above the fireplace in his library at Skibo “He that cannot reason is a fool, He that will not a bigot, He that dare not a slave.” Having checked with someone that this was indeed the case, I set about trying to discover where the quote comes from.  In his autobiography Andrew Carnegie described a visit he made to the house of a Major Stokes who was the chief counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Carnegie was deeply impressed by a passage he read displayed in Stokes’s residence:

“The grandeur of Mr. Stokes’s home impressed me, but the one feature of it that eclipsed all else was a marble mantel in his library. In the center of the arch, carved in the marble, was an open book with this inscription:

He that cannot reason is a fool,
He that will not a bigot,
He that dare not a slave.

These noble words thrilled me. I said to myself, ‘Some day, some day, I’ll have a library and these words shall grace the mantel as here.’ And so they do in New York and Skibo to-day.”

I wondered who had actually written it in the first place and in what context.  Eventually I found the answer.  Sir William Drummond the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Scottish poet and writer wrote a philosophical treatise published in 1805 called ‘Academical Questions’, which contains this passage: 

“Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while Reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty, support each other: he who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.”

Now does that tendency to suspend reason and instead rely simply on prejudice, apply to so much that has happened recently and is still happening in our world today and is it not something that we should all guard against?

The Reverend Billy Graham apparently suggested as a discipline reading the chapter of Proverbs which matched the number of the day the month. Now it’s possible that perhaps it’s for no better reason than there are 31 chapters in Proverbs though of course reading a bit of Solomon’s Wisdom each day is probably a good thing anyway.

Blessings
James