Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ecclesiastes 3:2
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted;
2. A time to be born ] Literally, a time to bear. It should be noted that in Hebrew MSS. and printed texts, the list of Times and Seasons appears in two parallel columns, as if forming a kind of rhythmical catalogue, what the Greeks called a , or Table of Contrasts. It seems at first strange that the list should begin with events which are (putting aside the exceptional case of suicide) involuntary. It may be, however, that they were chosen for that very reason as representative instances of the fixed order on which the writer dwells. We shrink from the thought of an untimely birth (ch. Ecc 6:3) or an untimely death; we shudder at the thought of accelerating either, or of hindering the former, and yet the other incidents of life have, not less than these, each of them, their appointed season, if only we could discern it.
a time to plant ] Human life in its beginning and its end is seen to have a parallel in that of plants. Here also there is a time for sowing, and after the fruits of the earth have been gathered in (this and not a wanton destruction, which would be a violation of the natural order, is clearly meant) to pluck up that the planting may again come. It is, perhaps, over fanciful to make the words include the “planting” and “uprooting” of nations and kingdoms as in Jer 1:10. It is significant, however, that the word for “pluck up” is an unusual word, and, where it occurs elsewhere, in the O. T. is used figuratively of the destruction of cities as in Zep 2:4.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Ecc 3:2
A time to be born, and a time to die.
How to make the most of life
(with Ecc 7:17):–The verse has two parts: There is a time to be born; and a time to die: and it seems as if man had as little control over the one as over the other–over the day of his death as over the day of his birth. These are the two milestones between which is included the whole of mans life on earth. Here is no place for free-will. All is blind, remorseless destiny. And yet the correlative text, Why shouldest thou die before thy time? seems to imply that life and death are in a mans own power. And in a plain sense this also is true, so that the two are only the opposite poles of one great truth, which in its completeness embraces a whole philosophy of life. That philosophy is summed up in this: That life is a gift of God–a sacred gift–to be wisely used and soberly enjoyed, and not to be trifled with, nor thrown away. But life on earth is not immortal: There is a time to die. Nor is this a harsh decree. If only the end for which life was given be attained, man may surrender it, at the last, not only without regret, but in perfect peace. The only thing he has to fear is that he be called out of life before his time, with all his plans unfulfilled, his hopes disappointed, and his great destiny unattained. The latter half of our text, Why shouldest thou die before thy time? teaches us this practical lesson: That we are to make the most of life by a prudent economy of it–not a petty economy of money (which is often but the smallest element in the total of influences which make up the being that we are), but an economy of life itself, of all the vital forces, of health and reason and the elements of happiness. All this is embraced in the one great word, Life. This is the prize which the Creator offers to every being to whom He gives a living body and a reasonable soul. Why shouldest thou die before thy time? In one sense no man can die before his time, for is not the day of death fixed? Hath not God appointed His bound that he cannot pass? Yet, in another sense, it is quite possible to cut short the term of life That is the evident meaning here. By a mans time is meant the natural limit to which one of his vitality and strength, living a sober, temperate life, might attain. Anything short of that may be ascribed to his own folly or guilt. Thus, all will admit that a man dies before his time who takes his own life, which he has no more right to take than that of his neighbour. Even though the existence that is left to him have to be endured rather than enjoyed a man must stand like a sentinel at his post, keeping watch through the long night hours, and waiting for the breaking of the day. But the wretched suicide is not the only man who is guilty of taking his own life. There are other ways of ending ones existence than by violence. The drunkard. The number of those who thus untimely perish is beyond all counting. Vice has slain its thousands, and drunkenness its ten thousands. And now turn and look at another picture. If it be a shame so to die, on the other hand what a glorious thing it is to live–to enjoy a rational, intelligent, and moral existence! Even as a matter of selfish calculation, the purely intellectual enjoyment of a man of science far transcends the vulgar delights of a life of pleasure. What a life must have been that of Kepler or Galileo! Who would throw away an existence that contains such possibilities of knowledge? Make it, then, your resolve to live a life of the strictest temperance and purity and virtue, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God giveth you. But this is only half the truth of my text. Why shouldest thou die before thy time? But at the last there is a time to die. O God, I thank Thee for that word! There is a time to die! And religion, while it condemns the reckless throwing away of life, equally condemns the cowardly clinging to life when duty requires it to be sacrificed. Dear as life is, there are things which are a thousand times dearer–truth, honour, justice, and liberty, ones country and religion; and it may become a duty to sacrifice the lesser interest to the greater. It does not follow that a man dies before his time because he dies young. That life is long which answers lifes great end; and though one may finish his course on the very threshold of manhood, that end may be gloriously fulfilled. (H. M. Field, D. D.)
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
The periodicities of the religious world
The seasons succeed each other, and each has its own use and purpose. The spring with its fresh loveliness comes first on the stage, and then, after a due interval, follows autumn with its sad decay. The sower takes possession of the field in the bright days of April, and he is the most appropriate figure in the landscape, while he is scattering the seeds of promise over the bare, brown furrows. He departs, and his place is taken by the reapers, who form a pleasant company on the golden harvest field, and gather in the sheaves under the bright smile of the blue September day. The time of planting is associated with all that is fresh and animated and hopeful. But the time of plucking up that which was planted is associated with failure and disappointment, with vanity and death. And Nature makes her work of decay particularly unsightly, in order to force its moral lesson more emphatically upon our notice. We cannot help feeling how disconsolate the apple-tree looks after its rosy-white petals have fallen and when the small green fruit is setting, how dim the much fine gold of the laburnum tresses become in fading, and how the hawthorn blossoms in their withering leave a dirty-brown stain upon the country hedges like the parched bed of a belated snow-wreath that has melted away beneath the summer sun. While we are thus impressively reminded of the periodicity of Nature, the ebb and flow of her seasons and productions, we can apply the lesson to our human affairs. There are periods in human history that are analogous to the season of spring when we sow and plant with a bright enthusiasm and a large hopefulness. Our minds are ardent and vigorous. Everything is fresh and full of interest. It seems as if we had only newly awakened to the beauty and glory of the world. Looking but upon the past we can recall ages of creative genius when man conceived and executed great things in art and literature, when every work had on it the hallmark of original inspiration. Such an age was that of Pericles in Greece, and of Queen Elizabeth in England. Such periods were times of planting, and they had all the glory and freshness of spring. But they were followed by ages in which a woeful reaction of weariness and decay took place. Rules and precedents were followed instead of the fresh insight, freedom and spontaneity of nature; criticism assumed the function of inspiration; and everywhere might be seen the slavish conventionality of exhausted capacity. They were ages in which whatever intellectual energies men had left to them were expended in plucking up that which nobler ages had planted. The commencement of the Victorian epoch was a period of remarkable creative power, a springtime of exuberant mental fertility. But the close of it seems to be characterized by a kind of listless decay. Like the fruit-tree that has one season been too productive, and must rest till it recover and accumulate fresh stores of vitality, so this age seems to be suffering from the reaction of over-production. The largest proportion of our literature is given up to criticism or imitation. It is a time to pluck up that which was planted. And the same periodicity that distinguishes the intellectual also characterizes the religious world. It has its ages of faith and its ages of doubt; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which was planted. We seem to have reached at the present day a period of listlessness and analytical indifference in regard to religious things. On every side we see, instead of a noble enthusiasm in the highest of all studies, a carping finical criticism on the most sacred subjects. However much we may deplore this state of things, we cannot say that it is absolutely evil. It has, indeed, a good purpose to serve. Winter periods are necessary in the spiritual world as testing times, to find out what is merely superficial and transient, and what is substantial and has in it the elements of endurance. It is a winter desolation to make ready for a spring of revival; and many of its evils are caused by the quickening of new life. The best thing, therefore, to do during the disquietude of a time of plucking up in the religious world is to dwell much in thought upon the ages of faith when men lived heroic lives and died blessed deaths in the heartfelt belief of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The criticism and analysis of the present time can best be counteracted by the synthesis and construction of a nobler time when men created instead of destroyed, built up instead of east down, planted instead of plucked up the springtime of divine grace. And this synthesis is practically always possible to the meek in spirit to whom God will teach His way. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 2. A time to be born, and a time to die – plant]
“As in its mother’s womb the embryo lies
A space determined; to full growth arrived,
From its dark prison bursts, and sees the light;
So is the period fix’d when man shall drop
Into the grave. – A time there is to plant,
And sow; another time to pluck and reap.
Even nations have their destined rise and fall:
Awhile they thrive; and for destruction ripe,
When grown, are rooted up like wither’d plants.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
A time to die; a certain period unknown to man, but fixed by God, in which a man must unavoidably die; of which see Job 14:5; Joh 13:1.
A time to plant; wherein God inclines a mans heart to planting.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. time to die (Psa 31:15;Heb 9:27).
plantA man can no morereverse the times and order of “planting,” and of “diggingup,” and transplanting, than he can alter the times fixed forhis “birth” and “death.” To try to “plant”out of season is vanity, however good in season; so tomake earthly things the chief end is vanity, however good theybe in order and season. GILLtakes it, not so well, figuratively (Jer 18:7;Jer 18:9; Amo 9:15;Mat 15:13).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
A time to be born,…. The Targum is,
“to beget sons and daughters;”
but rather it is to bear them, there being a time in nature fixed for that, called the hour of a woman, Job 14:1;
and a time to die; the time of a man’s coming into the world and going out of it, both being fixed by the Lord f: this is true of all men in general, of all men that come into the world, for whom it is appointed that they shall die; and particularly of Christ, whose birth was at the time appointed by the Father, in the fulness of time; and whose death was in due time, nor could his life be taken away before his hour was come, Joh 7:30; and this holds good of every individual man; his birth is at the time God has fixed it; that any man is born into the world, is of God; no man comes into it at his own pleasure or another’s, but at the will of God, and when he pleases, not sooner nor later; and the time of his going out of the world is settled by him, beyond which time he cannot live, and sooner he cannot die, Job 14:5; and though no mention is made of the interval of life between a man’s birth and death, yet all events intervening are appointed by God; as the place of his abode; his calling and station of life; all circumstances of prosperity and adversity; all diseases of body, and what lead on to death, and issue in it: the reason why these two are put so close together is, to show the certainty of death; that as sure as a man is born, so sure shall he die; and the frailty and shortness of life, which is but an hand’s breadth, passes away like a tale that is told, yea, is as nothing; so that no account is made of it, as if there was no time allotted it, or that it deserved no mention; and also to observe that the seeds of mortality and death are in men as soon as they are born; as soon as they begin to live they begin to die, death is working in them;
a time to plant; a tree, as the Targum, or any herb;
and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted; a tree or herb, as before, when grown to its ripeness, and fit for use; or when grown old, barren, and unfruitful; there are particular seasons for planting plants, and some for one and some for another. This may be applied in a civil sense to planting and plucking up kingdoms and states; see Jer 1:10; as it is by the Jews, particularly to the planting and plucking up of the kingdom of Israel; the people of Israel were a vine brought out of Egypt and planted in the land of Canaan, and afterwards plucked up and carried captive into Babylon; and afterwards planted again, and then again plucked up by the Romans; and will be assuredly planted in their own land again; see Ps 80:8; It may be illustrated in a spiritual sense by the planting of the Jewish church, sometimes compared to a vineyard; and the plucking it up, abolishing their church state and ordinances; and by planting Gospel churches in the Gentile world, and plucking them up again, as in the seven cities of Asia; or removing the candlestick out of its place; and by planting particular persons in churches, and removing them again: some indeed that are planted in the house of the Lord are planted in Christ, and rooted and grounded in the love of God; are plants which Christ’s Father has planted, and will never be rooted up; but there are others who are planted through the external ministry of the word, or are plants only by profession, and these become twice dead, plucked up by the roots; and there are times for these things,
Ps 92:14.
f “Stat sua cuique dies, breve et irreparabile tempus omnibus est vitae”; Virgil. Aeneid. l. 10.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(Note: These seven verses, 2-8, are in Codd and Edd., like Jos 12:9., and Est 9:7., arranged in the form of a song, so that one (time) always stands under another, after the scheme described in Megilla 16 b, Massecheth Sofrim xiii. 3, but without any express reference to this passage in Koheleth. J has a different manner of arranging the words, the first four lines of which we here adduce: –
‘eth lamoth veeth laledeth ‘eth ‘eth nathu’a la’aqor veeth latha’ath ‘eth lirpo veeth laharog ‘eth livnoth veeth liphrots )
“To be born has its time, and to die has its time; to plant has its time, and to root up that which is planted has its time.” The inf. signifies nothing else than to bring forth; but when that which is brought forth comes more into view than she who brings forth, it is used in the sense of being born (cf. Jer 25:34, = ); ledah, Hos 9:11, is the birth; and in the Assyr., li – id – tu , li – i – tu , li – da – a – tu , designates posterity, progenies. Since now laladeth has here lamuth as contrast, and thus does not denote the birth-throes of the mother, but the child’s beginning of life, the translation, “to be born has its time,” is more appropriate to what is designed than “to bring forth has its time.” What Zckler, after Hitzig, objects that by ledeth a an undertaking, and thus a conscious, intended act must be named, is not applicable; for standing at the beginning comprehends doing and suffering, and death also (apart from suicide) is certainly not an intended act, frequently even an unconscious suffering. Instead of (for which the form
(Note: This Abulwalid found in a correct Damascus ms., Michlol 81 b.)
is found, cf. , Psa 66:9), the older language uses , Jer 1:10. In still more modern Heb. the expression used would be , i.e., ( Shebith ii. 1). has here its nearest signification: to root up (denom. of , root), like , 2Ki 3:25, where it is the Targ. word for (to fell trees).
From out-rooting, which puts an end to the life of plants, the transition is now made to putting to death.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(2) The list of times and seasons is ranged in Hebrew MSS. and printed books in two parallel columns.
A time to die.Job. 14:5.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. A time to be born to die The hour of our birth is set independently of us; that of our death is reached with more complication, and our will is an element to some degree in the case; but the uniform teaching of the Old Testament is, that there is an appointed time to man upon earth, and that he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day. So in the vegetable world. A vegetable must be planted, it matures, and must then be gathered.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ecc 3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted;
Ver. 2. There is a time to be born, and a time to die ]. We do not hear the wise man say, There is a time to live. What is more fleeting than time? yet life is not long enough to be worthy the title of time. Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in our grave. Orimur, morimur. we spring forth, we die.
“ Multos ostendunt terris bona faeta, nec ultra
Esse sinunt Finisque ab origine pendet. ”
How many have we seen carried from the womb to the tomb; a
A time to plant, &c.
“ Roma diu titubans variis erroribus acta
Corruet, et mundi definet esse caput. ” b
a Ab utero ab urnam.
b Frid. secund. Imper.
Ecclesiastes
‘A TIME TO PLANT’
Ecc 3:2 The writer enumerates in this context a number of opposite courses of conduct arranged in pairs, each of which is right at the right time. The view thus presented seems to him to be depressing, and to make life difficult to understand, and aimless. We always appear to be building up with one hand and pulling down with the other. The ship never heads for two miles together in the same direction. The history of human affairs appears to be as purposeless as the play of the wind on the desert sands, which it sometimes piles into huge mounds and then scatters.
So he concludes that only God, who appoints the seasons that demand opposite courses of conduct, can understand what it all means. The engine-driver knows why he reverses his engine, and not the wheels that are running in opposite directions in consecutive moments according to his will.
Now that is a one-sided view, of course, for it is to be remembered that the Book of Ecclesiastes is the logbook of a voyager after truth, and tells us all the wanderings and errors of his thinking until he has arrived at the haven of the conclusion that he announces in the final word: ‘Hear the sum of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.’
I have nothing to do just now with the conclusion which he arrives at, but the facts from which he starts are significant and important. There are things in life, God has so arranged it, which can only be done fittingly, and for the most part of all, at certain seasons; and the secret of success is the discernment of present duty, and the prompt performance of it.
And this is especially true about your time of life, my young friends. There are things, very important things, which, unless you do them now, the overwhelming probability is that you will never do at all; and the certainty is that you will not do them half as well. And so I want to ask you to look at these words, which, by a legitimate extension of the writer’s meaning, and taking them in a kind of parabolic way, may sum up for us the whole of the special duties of youth. ‘A time to plant.’
I. Now, my first remark is this: that you are now in the planting time of your lives.
You have wide possibilities before you, of moulding your characters into beauty, and purity, holiness, and strength.
For one thing, you have got no past, or next to none written all over, which it is hard to erase. You have substantially a clean sheet on which to write what you like. Your stage of life predisposes you in favour of novelty. New things are glad things to you, whereas to us older people a new thought coming into some of our brains is like a new bit of furniture coming into a crowded room. All the other pieces need to be arranged, and it is more of a trouble than anything else. You are flexible and plastic as yet, like the iron running out of the blast furnace in a molten stream, which in half an hour’s time will be a rigid bar that no man can bend.
You have all these things in your favour, and so, dear young friends, whether you think of it or not, whether voluntarily or not, I want you to remember that this awful process is going on inevitably and constantly in every one of you. You are planting, whether you recognise the fact or no. What are you planting?
Well, for one thing, you are making habits , which are but actions hardened, like the juice that exudes from the pine-tree, liquid, or all but liquid, when it comes out, and when exposed to the air, is solidified and tenacious. The old legend of the man in the tower who got a slim thread up to his window, to which was attached one thicker and then thicker, and so on ever increasing until he hauled in a cable, is a true parable of what goes on in every human life. Some one deed, a thin film like a spider’s thread, draws after it a thicker, by that inevitable law that a thing done once tends to be done twice, and that the second time it is easier than the first time. A man makes a track with great difficulty across the snow in a morning, but every time that he travels it, it is a little harder, and the track is a little broader, and it is easier walking. You play with the tiger’s whelp of some pleasant, questionable enjoyment, and you think that it will always keep so innocent, with its budding claws not able to draw blood, but it grows- it grows . And it grows according to its kind, and what was a plaything one day is a full-grown and ravening wild beast in a while. You are making habits, whatever else you are making, and you are planting in your hearts seeds that will spring and bear fruit according to their kind.
Then remember, you are planting belief .-Most of us, I am afraid, get our opinions by haphazard; like the child in the well-known story, whose only account of herself was that ‘she expected she growed.’ That is the way by which most of you come to what you dignify by the name of your opinions. They come in upon you, you do not know how. Youth is receptive of anything new. You can learn a vast deal more easily than many of us older people can. Set down a man who has never learned the alphabet, to learn his letters, and see what a task it is for him. Or if he takes a pen in his hand for the first time, look how difficult the stiff wrist and thick knuckles find it to bend. Yours is the time for forming your opinions, for forming some rational and intelligent account of yourself and the world about you. See to it, that you plant truth in your hearts, under which you may live sheltered for many days.
Then again, you are planting character, which is not only habit, but something more. You are making yourselves , whatever else you are making. You begin with almost boundless possibilities, and these narrow and narrow and narrow, according to your actions, until you have laid the rails on which you travel-one narrow line that you cannot get off. A man’s character is, if I may use a chemical term, a ‘precipitate’ from his actions. Why, it takes acres of roses to make a flask of perfume; and all the long life of a man is represented in his ultimate character. Character is formed like those chalk cliffs in the south, built up eight hundred feet, beetling above the stormy sea; and all made up of the relics of microscopic animals. So you build up a great solid structure-yourself-out of all your deeds. You are making your character, your habits, your opinions.-And you are making your reputation too. And you will not be able to get rid of that. This is the time for you to make a good record or a bad one, in other people’s opinions.
And so, young men and women, boys and girls, I want you to remember the permanent effects of your most fleeting acts. Nothing ever dies that a man does. Nothing! You go into a museum, and you will see standing there a slab of red sandstone, and little dints and dimples upon it. What are they? Marks made by a flying shower that lasted for five minutes, nobody knows how many millenniums ago. And there they are, and there they will be until the world is burned up. So our fleeting deeds are all recorded here, in our permanent character. Everything that we have done is laid up there in the testimony of the rocks:-
‘Through our soul the echoes roll,
And grow for ever and for ever.’
II. Notice, in the next place, that as surely as now is the time to plant, then will be a time to reap.
Now what lies in that law? Two things-that the results are similar in kind, and more in number. The law of likeness, and the law of increase, both of them belong to the working of the law of retribution. And so, be sure that you will find out that all your past lives on into your present; and that the present, in fact, is very little more than the outcome of the past. What you plant as a youth you will reap as a man. This mysterious life of ours is all sowing and reaping intermingled, right away on to the very end. Each action is in turn the child of all the preceding and the parent of all that follows. But still, though that be true, your time of life is predominantly the time of sowing; and my time of life, for instance, is predominantly the time of reaping. There are a great many things that I could not do now if I wished. There are a great many things in our past that I, and men of my age, would fain alter; but there they stand, and nothing can do away the marks of that which once has been. We have to reap, and so will you some day.
And I will tell you what you will have to reap, as sure as you are sitting in those pews. You will have the enlarged growth of your present characteristics. A man takes a photograph upon a sensitive plate, half the size of the palm of my hand; and then he enlarges it to any size he pleases. And that is what life does for all of us. The pictures, drawn small on the young man’s imagination, on the young woman’s dreaming heart, be they of angels or of beasts, are permanent; and they will get bigger and bigger and bigger, as get older. You do not reap only as much as you sowed, but ‘some sixty fold, and some an hundred fold.’
And you will reap the increased dominion of your early habits. There is a grim verse in the Book of Proverbs that speaks about a man being tied and bound by the chains of his sins. And that is just saying that the things which you chose to do when you were a boy, many of them you will have to do when you are a man; because you have lost the power, though sometimes not the will, of doing anything else. There be men that sow the wind, and they do not reap the wind, but the law of increase comes in and they reap the whirlwind. There be men who, according to the old Greek legend, sow dragon’s teeth and they reap armed soldiers. There are some of you that are sowing to the flesh, and as sure as God lives, you will ‘of the flesh reap corruption.’ ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that,’ even here, ‘shall he also reap.’
And let me remind you that that law of inheriting the fruit of our doings is by no means exhausted by the experience of life. Whenever conscience is awakened it at once testifies not only of a broken law, but of a living Law-giver; and not only of retribution here, but of retribution hereafter. And I for my part believe that the modern form of Christianity and the tendencies of the modern pulpit, influenced by some theological discussions, about details in the notion of retribution that have been going on of late years, have operated to make ministers of the Gospel too chary of preaching, and hearers indisposed to accept, the message of ‘the terror of the Lord.’ My dear friends! retribution cannot stop on this side of the grave, and if you are going yonder you are carrying with you the necessity in yourself for inheriting the results of your life here. I beseech you, do not put away such thoughts as this, with the notion that I am brandishing before you some antiquated doctrine, fit only to frighten old women and children. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes was no weak-minded, superstitious fanatic. He was far more disposed to scepticism than to fanaticism. But for all that, with all his sympathy for young men’s breadth and liberality, with his tolerance for all sorts and ways of living, with all his doubts and questionings, he came to this, and this was his teaching to the young men whom in idea he had gathered round his chair,-’Rejoice, oh young man, in thy youth. And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes.’ By all means, God has put you into a fair world, and meant you to get all the good out of it. ‘But,’ and that not as a kill-joy, ‘know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment,’ and shape your characters accordingly.
III. Still further, let me say, these things being so, you especially need to ponder them.
‘If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is there that could live an hour?’
Then, still further, it is especially needful for you that you should ponder these things, because unless you do you will certainly go wrong. If you do not plant good, somebody else will plant evil. An untilled field is not a field that nothing grows in, but it is a field full of weeds; and the world and the flesh and the devil, the temptations round about you and the evil tendencies in you, unless they are well kept down and kept off, are sure to fill your souls full of all manner of seeds that will spring up to bitterness, and poison, and death. Oh! think, think! for it is the only chance of keeping your hearts from being full of wickedness-think what you are sowing, and think what will the harvest be. There are some of you, as I said, sowing to the flesh, young men living impure and wicked lives, and ‘their bones are full of the sins of their youth.’ There are some of you letting every wind bring the thistledown of vanities, and scatter them all across your hearts, that they may spring up prickly, and gifted with a fatal power of self-multiplication. There are some of you, young men, and young women too, whose lives are divided between Manchester business and that ignoble thirst for mere amusement which is eating all the dignity and the earnestness out of the young men of this city. I beseech you, do not slide into habits of frivolity, licentiousness, and sin, for want of looking after yourselves. Remember, if you do not ponder the path of your feet, you are sure to take the turn to the left.
Again, it is needful for you to ponder these things, for if you waste this time, it will never come back to you any more. It is useless to sow corn in August. There are things in this world that a man can only get when he is young, such as sound education, for instance; business habits, habits of industry, of application, of concentration, of self-control, a reputation which may avail in the future. If you do not begin to get these before you are five-and-twenty, you will never get them.
And although the certainty is not so absolute in regard to spiritual and religious things, the dice are frightfully weighted, and the chances are terribly small that a young man who, like some of you, has passed his early years in church or chapel, in weekly contact with earnest preaching, and has not accepted the Saviour, will do it when he grows old. He may; he may. But it is a great deal more likely that he will not.
IV. The conclusion of the whole matter is, Begin on the spot, to trust and to serve Jesus Christ.
If you will plant a cutting of the tree of life in your heart it will yield everything to you when it grows. The people in the South Seas, if they have a palm-tree, can get out of it bread and drink, food, clothing, shelter, light, materials for books, cordage for their boats, needles to sew with, and everything. If you will take Jesus Christ, and plant Him in your hearts, everything will come out of that. That Tree ‘bears twelve manners of fruits, and yields His fruit every month.’ With Christ in your heart all other fair things will be planted there; and with Him in your heart, all evil things which you may already have planted there, will be rooted out. Just as when some strong exotic is carried to some distant land and there takes root, it exterminates the feebler vegetation of the place to which it comes; so with Christ in my heart the sins, the evil habits, the passions, the lusts, and all other foul spawn and offspring, will die and disappear. Take Him, then, dear friend! by simple faith, for your Saviour. He will plant the good seed in your spirit, and ‘instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.’ Your lives will become fruitful of goodness and of joy, according to that ancient promise: ‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.’
to be born = to bear. Gen 17:17, Gen 17:21; Gen 18:14; Gen 21:2.
to die. Psa 31:5, Psa 31:15. Heb 9:27.
to plant (Compare Ecc 2:5): it is beyond man’s power to alter the seasons. Applied to a kingdom. Psa 44:2; Psa 80:8, Psa 80:12, Psa 80:13. Jer 18:9. Amo 9:15.
to pluck up, &c. Jer 18:7, Jer 18:9.
Eternity in the Heart
He hath made everything beautiful in its time; also he hath set the world [eternityR.V. marg.] in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.Ecc 3:2
1. This text, like the book of which it forms a part, has been a puzzle to interpreters. In the Authorized and Revised Versions it is translated He hath set the world in their heart. But the word translated world, which suggests the boundlessness of space, is elsewhere and generally used to denote the boundlessness of time. It is the word used in the phrase for ever and ever. The best modern interpreters, therefore, translate it in this place by the word eternity. So taken, the text is a nugget of pure gold, shining out from the dry sand and bare rock. The book which mourns over the vanity of earthly things, and sees so clearly the limitations of human knowledge, recognizes, notwithstanding, a Divine element in man. In spite of mans ignorance and weakness, God has put eternity in his heart.
2. By the word heart here, as elsewhere, we are to understand not mans affections alone, but his whole mental and moral being. The assertion is that all mans powers and processes, whether of reason or of will, involve and imply an eternal constituent, whether man is aware of it or not. And by eternity we are to understand not the endless prolongation of time, the everlasting continuance of successions, but rather superiority to time, elevation above successions. God Himself is not under the law of timehe is King of the ages. And we are made in His image. Though we have a finite and temporal existence, we are not wholly creatures of time. To some extent we are above its laws. We have thoughts that wander through eternity, a consciousness that we are too large for our dwelling-place, a conviction that the past and the future are ours as well as the present.
3. The drift of the passage, then, appears to be something like this: God has made everything beautiful in accordance with its function and the relation in which it stands to other created things; it is beautiful as He sees it, whether it seems so to mortal eyes or not, for its beauty consists in the truth it expresses and the spiritual work it does; and, when the time comes for it to pass away, the effects of its work will still remain, for whatever God does is done for eternity. Whatsoever God doeth it shall be for ever. Also God hath set the feeling of the eternal in the human heart; all men have it in some degree, even though they do not know why they should have it, cannot justify it to their reason, and cannot find out what God is doing by means of the things of time from beginning to end. Interpreted in this way, this great saying at once becomes luminous as well as profound, and the sage who originally uttered it might have been speaking for our day as well as his own in thus giving expression to his thought about the mystery of life. For three distinct things are emphasized here as present to human experience everywhere. The first is the sense of beauty; the second, mysteriously allied to the first, is the feeling of the eternal; and the third is our confession of perplexity and helplessness in the endeavour to find out what the purpose is, if any, which is being effected by means of the flux and travail of our earthly existence.
Commenting on this passage Bacon says: Solomon declares, not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light. In his funeral sermon on Dr. Livingstone, Dean Stanley worked out a thought of a kindred kind. The earth, he said, is, broken up by seas and mountains, so that the nations seem destined to live apart; but in mans breast there is a thirst for exploration and discovery, an unquenchable longing to know all that can be known of the world in which he lives; and as this desire takes shape in action, obstacles vanish, and all ends of the world are brought close together. The fact that the world is thus set in mans heart, so that he is prepared to explore it, to understand it, to use and to enjoy it, is surely a proof of design in Nature and of the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.
I
The Sense of Beauty
He hath made everything beautiful in its time.
Beauty is the most elusive and analysable thing that enters within the range of our perceptions. We have the idea of the beautiful, but we can never say just why any particular thing is to be pronounced beautiful, or wanting in beauty, as the case may be. Beauty is Gods art, Gods manner of working. Beauty is the necessary conception of the Creators thought, the necessary product of His hand; variety in beauty is the necessary expression of His infinite mind. In created things there are, of course, necessary limitations; but the Creator seems to have impressed upon the things that He has made all the variety of which they are capable; no two faces, or forms, or voices, or flowers, or blades of grass are alike. Even decay and disorganization have an iridescence of their own. Beauty is not merely the surface adornment of creation, like paint upon a house, like pictures upon its walls, like jewellery upon a woman. Beauty permeates nature through and through; the microscope, the dissecting knife, reveal it; there is no hidden ugliness, no mere surface beauty, in Gods works. If you try to eliminate their element of beauty, you destroy them. The core of the fruit is as beautiful as its rind. Beauty is an essential part of the nature of things. Equally with substance it inheres in everything that God has made. It is part of the perfection of Gods works, part of the perfection of God Himself; like truth, like holiness, like beneficence, like graciousness.
Why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. The utmost subtlety of investigations will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of human nature, for which no further reason can be given than the simple will of the Deity that we should be so created.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters.]
The nearest approach I can make myself to an explanation of what beauty isand even that is no explanation, but only an index finger pointing towards itis to say that it is the witness in the soul of that which is as opposed to that which seemsthe real of which this world is but the shadow; it is a glimpse, an intimation of the Supernal, the state of being in which there is no lack, no discord, strife, or wrong, and where nothing is wanting to the ideal perfection, whatever it may be. In other words, it is the eternal truth reminding us of its presence, though unable with our limitations to do more than brush us with its wings. Keats hits the mark in his tender line:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]
1. The beauty of the world is something quite distinct from use; it is something superadded. It is like the chasing of a goblet which would be as useful if it had no beauty of form. Whatever may be said of the beauty of true utility it is unquestionable that the most intense of the emotions called out in presence of the beautiful have no connexion whatever with any thought of the fitness or unfitness of the objects thus perceived for any particular purpose, or of the correctness of the relation occupied by them to any larger category or to creation as a whole. When we feel the beauty of a tree, for instance, or a jutting crag, we are not influenced in the slightest by anything in their appearance which suggests that they are in their right place or that in form they obey the line of development which makes in some way towards a fuller expression of life and power.
Ruskin has pointed out that the clouds could do all their work without their beauty. But they do not. They spread a perfect panorama of loveliness above us. Sometimes it is the feathery cirrus cloud, looking, as William Blake said, as if the angels had gone to worship and had left their plumes lying there. Another time the cumulus cloud, with piled, heaving bosom, throbbing with anger, fills the heavens, soon to find relief in the lightning flash and the cracking thunder. Or it is the stratus clouds, placid and level, rising step behind step, looking so solid that imagination finds it easy to mount them and reach the land which is afar off, where is the King in His beauty.2 [Note: G. Eayres.]
2. Beauty, however, is not without use. It is the messenger of Gods love to the world, showing that all creation means intensely and means good. It is the fringe of the Lords own self, the outshining of His presence, the appeal of His love. Ruskin says that beauty is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star; it is among the hills and valleys of the earth, where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage; it is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean; it is the poetry of nature; it is that which uplifts within us, until it is strong enough to overlook the shadows of our place of probation, which breaks link after link of the chain that binds us to materiality and which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness.
Wordsworth was convinced (and he gave his whole life to preaching the lesson) that to find joy in the sights and sounds of Nature actually fed a mans heart, and disposed him to the good life. In the well-known lines written on revisiting the banks of the Wye after an interval of five years, he expressed what he himself had owed to the sights seen on his former visit
Oft in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration.
So far we should all agree: but he goes on
Feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good mans life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.
Wordsworth believed that happiness found among the things of Nature, the simple leap of the heart, for example, at the sight of a rainbow, transmuted itself into acts of kindness; and this need not surprise us, if we believe, as Wordsworth believed, that behind all the outward shapes of Nature lives and works the Spirit of God, who through these things sheds into our hearts His own gifts of joy and peace.1 [Note: Canon Beeching, The Grace of Episcopacy, 134.]
All earthly beauty hath one cause and proof,
To lead the pilgrim soul to beauty above:
Yet lieth the greater bliss so far aloof
That few there be are weaned from earthly love.
Joys ladder it is, reaching from home to home,
The best of all the work that all was good:
Whereof twas writ the angels aye upclomb,
Down sped, and at the top the Lord God stood.1 [Note: Robert Bridges.]
3. Beauty has its seasons; it flushes and fades. Everything in the world must be in its true place and time, or it is not beautiful. That is true from the lowest to the highest; only with the lowest it is not easy to discover it. It does not seem to matter where the pebble lies, on this side of the road or on the other. It may indeed do sad mischief out of its place; but its place is a wide one. It may lie in many spots and do no harm, and seem to show all the beauty and render all the use of which it is capable. But the things of higher nature are more fastidious in their demands. The plant must have its proper soil to feed its roots upon, or its bright flowers lose their beauty, and even there, only in one short happy season of the year is it in its glory, while the pebble keeps its lustre always. Higher still comes the animal, and he has more needs that must be met, more arrangements that must be made, a more definite place in which he must be set, before he can do his best. And then, highest of all, comes man, and with his highest life comes the completest dependence upon circumstances. He is the least independent creature on the earth. The most beautiful in his right time and place, he is the most wretched and miserable out of it. He is the most liable of all the creatures to be thrown out of place. He must have all the furnishings of life, friendships, family, ambitions, cultures of every kind, or his best is not attained. It belongs then to the highest and most gifted lives to seek their places in the world. It is the prerogative of their superiority. Surely it would be good for men if they could learn this early. It would scatter many delusions. It would dissipate the folly of universal genius.
The perfect woodwork of the carpenter, the strong ironwork of the smith, the carved marble of the sculptor, the August fields of the farmer, the cloth of the weaver, the school of the master, the quiet room of the student, the college with its turrets, the cottage with its hollyhocks and vines, all come with their separate charm, and help to compose the magnificence of the world. In the thrilling page of history, the poverty of the learned is seen now to be as grand as the gold of the merchant or the estates of royalty. We do not feel that Socrates needed riches, and we are glad that Jesus Christ had nothing but a soul. The isolation of His soul made it stand forth like white figures upon a dark background. His soul reposes upon poverty like a rainbow upon a cloud.1 [Note: D. Swing.]
I cannot feel it beautiful when I find men still at their business when they ought to be at home with their children. I cannot feel it beautiful to see the common work of the world going on on Sundays. I cannot feel it beautiful to see little children at hard work when they ought to be in school, or aged people still obliged to toil and moil to the very end. But good honest work, done with some pride and zest, and done in season, becomes in a way transfigured, and is beautiful in its time.2 [Note: Brooke Herford, Anchors of the Soul, 251.]
II
The Capacity for the Infinite
He hath set eternity in their heart.
The doctrine of immortality does not seem to be stated in the Book of Ecclesiastes, except in one or two very doubtful expressions. And it is more in accordance with its whole tone to suppose the Preacher here to be asserting, not that the heart or spirit is immortal, but that, whether it is or not, in the heart is planted the thought, the consciousness of eternityand the longing after it.
We differ from all around us in this perishable world in that God hath set eternity in our hearts. All creation around us is satisfied with its sustenance, we alone have a thirst and a hunger for which the circumstances of our life have no meat and drink. In the burning noonday of lifes labour man sitsas the Son of Man once satby well-sides weary, and while other creatures can slake their thirst with that, he needs a living water; while other creatures go into cities to buy meat, he has need of and finds a sustenance that they know not of.
It is said that Napoleon was asked to suggest the subject for a historical picture that would perpetuate his name, and he asked how long the picture would last. He was told that under favourable conditions it might last five hundred years. But that would not satisfy him; he craved for a more enduring memorial. It was suggested that the sculptor might take the place of the painter, and genius might come nearer to conferring immortality. Now what was the meaning of that ambitious craving? It was a perverted instinct; it was a solemn and impressive testimony to the fact that God has set eternity in mans heart. That demand for earthly immortality was but the echothe hollow, mocking echoof the voice of eternity in the great conquerors soul.1 [Note: A. Jenkinson, A Modern Disciple, 40.]
1. God has set the eternal in the mind of man.It is the essential nature of thought to move out into the boundless, and to overleap all limitations of time and space. This seems to be precisely the meaning of the Preacher in the text. Also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end. The eternal in the mind of man is a movement, not a fulfilment. He cannot comprehend the boundless, and yet he must for ever feel the dynamic of it. He is bound on an endless quest because he is, on the one hand, a finite creature, and because, on the other hand, God has set eternity in his heart.
I had been attracted by Whewells essay on The Plurality of Worlds, where it is argued that our planet is probably the only world in existence that is occupied by intelligent and morally responsible persons; the stars of heaven being a material panorama existing only for the sake of the human inhabitants of one small globe. This paradox, we are to-day told, is fully fortified by scientific proof that the earth is mathematically placed in the centre of the limited portion of space which, according to the theorist, contains the whole material world. And all this is taken as an apology for the faith that a Divine incarnation has been realized upon this apparently insignificant planet, for the sake of persons otherwise unfit occasions of the stupendous transaction. But I do not see how science can put a limit to the space occupied by suns and their planetary systems, or how the universe can be proved to have any boundary, within a space whose circumference must be nowhere and its centre everywhere; or even a limit within time, in its unbeginning and unending duration. It seems a poor theistic conception to suppose God incapable of incarnation in man, unless this planet were thus unique in space and time. With the infinite fund of Omnipotent and Omniscient Goodness, what need to exaggerate the place of man, in order to justify his recognition, even according to the full economy of the Christian ?Revelation 1 [Note: A. Campbell Fraser, Biographia Philosophica, 259.]
2. God has set eternity in the moral nature of man.This was what the philosopher Kant felt when he affirmed that the contemplation of the moral imperative filled him with awe, and with a sense of the sublime like that with which he looked upon the starry heavens. The moral law of which man is conscious, and by which he knows himself bound, belongs to the eternal order of things. In bestowing upon man the stupendous obligation of the moral consciousness, God has set eternity in his heart. Ill-success has attended the foolish attempt to deduce the majesties of the moral law from an accumulation of temporal experiences. A poor, little, broken code can be made out of the ingenious manipulation of mans interests and pleasures, and some lingering sentiments may be tortured out of forced theories of evolution. But the simple majesty of the moral imperative and the incomparable sublimity of moral truth bear a stamp which is known only in the heavenly places. The simple explanation is all-sufficing and manifestly true; the Lord proclaimed His law from heaven.
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
If you came across a piece of gold reef in the midst of a peat bog you could do no other than infer that it had been brought there by some ancient flood from some great system to which it truly belonged, or else that down beneath the blackness and ooze of the peat bog there lay a solid stratum wholly different in quality and worth. Or again, if, as is the case in some parts of the world, you saw a valley watered and made fertile by a stream that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth, you would want to know where the reservoir was from which that stream got its volume. It is not otherwise with the heart of man. Right in the midst of the sombre ugliness of our common life lies the gold-bearing rock which tells of a nobler origin for the soul, and of a stratum of being in which there is nothing of the blackness and the slime of evil. And in the valley of our cumulative experience, wherein so much that is gracious and beautiful springs and grows, watered by the flowing crystal river of spiritual ideals and aspirations that rises unceasingly from the mysterious deeps of our being, surely there is that which tells of our eternal home. It is in our heart because God has put it there, and because it is the fundamental fact, the most essential fact, of our strangely complex nature.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]
Tennyson has drawn a wonderful picture of a man of noble nature who has been led captive by lust. He knows the right and admires it. His soul has been filled with aspirations after it. But this one sin has crept slily in and made its home in his heart; it has fascinated and mastered him, so that he cannot shake it off. Sometimes his better nature rises up; he tries to break his chainshe fancies himself free; but the next time the temptation faces him he lays down his arms, and is willingly made captive. Though his passion is gratified he has no peace. The very nobility of that nature which is now degraded only makes his misery the greater. The fact that he knows the right so well, and yet, somehow, cannot be man enough to do it, makes his life at times intolerable.
Another sinning on such heights with one,
The flower of all the west and all the world,
Had been the sleeker for it; but in him
His mood was often like a fiend, and rose
And drove him into wastes and solitudes
For agony, who was yet a living soul.
Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made
Full many a holy vow and pure resolve.
These, as but born of sickness, could not live.
I needs must break
These bonds that so defame me; not without
She wills it. Would I, if she willed it? nay
Who knows? but if I would not, then may God
I pray Him, send a sudden Angel down
To seize me by the hair and bear me far,
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere,
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills.
Such is man as we find him. He sits down in this poor, sinful world and, gathering everything he can reach around him, he tries to be content. But there is enough of God and eternity within him to confound him and make him miserable.1 [Note: W. Park.]
3. God has set eternity in the spiritual outreaching of man.Man is by nature a worshipping creature. He cannot help stretching forth his hands towards the heavens, and seeking communion with the everlasting invisible Power which is felt to dwell there. He cannot rest in temporal companionship and in the interests of time and place. His spirit summons him to unknown heights and bids him wistfully wait at the gates of eternal glory.
When Shelley sought to dethrone and deny God, he was fain to set up in His stead an eternal Power which he called the Spirit of Nature. To this his spirit went pathetically out in earnest longing, and to this he rendered a homage indistinguishable from worship. God had set eternity in Shelleys heart, and he could not escape from the impulses of worship in his own spirit. The spirit of man, even when encompassed with much darkness of ignorance, must still stand
Upon the worlds great altar stairs
That slope thro darkness up to God.2 [Note: J. Thomas, The Mysteries of Grace, 251.]
III
The Tyranny of Circumstances
He hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.
1. Here are two antagonistic facts. There are transient things, a vicissitude which moves within natural limits, temporary events which are beautiful in their season. But there is also the contrasted fact that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some great battledore wielded by giant powers in mockery, from one changing thing to another, has relations to something more lasting than the transient. He lives in a world of fleeting change, but he has eternity in his heart. So between him and his dwelling-place, between him and his occupation, there is a gulf of disproportion. He is subjected to these alternations, and yet bears within him a repressed but immortal consciousness that he belongs to another order of things, which knows no vicissitude and fears no decay. He possesses stifled and misinterpreted longingswhich, however starved, do yet surviveafter unchanging Being and Eternal Rest. And thus endowed, and by contrast thus situated, his soul is full of the blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized.
This creature with eternity in his heart, where is he set? What has he got to work upon? What has he to love and hold by, to trust to, and anchor his life on? A crowd of things, each well enough, but each having a time; and though they be beautiful in their time, yet fading and vanishing when it has elapsed. No multiplication of times will make eternity. And so, with that thought in his heart, man is driven out among objects perfectly insufficient to meet it.
A great botanist made what he called a floral clock to mark the hours of the day by the opening and closing of flowers. It was a graceful and yet a pathetic thought. One after another they spread their petals, and their varying colours glow in the light. But one after another they wearily shut their cups, and the night falls, and the latest of them folds itself together and all are hidden away in the dark. So our joys and treasureswere they sufficient did they lastcannot last. After a summers day comes a summers night, and after a brief space of them comes winter, when all are killed and the leafless trees stand silent.
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
2. We may be sure that this contrast between our nature and the world in which we are set is not in vain. We are better for having these cravings in our heart, which can never be satisfied here. Were we without them, we should sink to the level of creation. We sometimes say half sadly, half in jest, that we envy the peaceful contented lives of the lower animals. But we do not mean what we say. We would rather have our human life, with its hopes and fears, its pathetic yearnings, its storms and its calms, its immortal outlook, than a life without cares and without hopes beyond those of the present moment. Picture some tropical forest, where animal and vegetable life luxuriates to the full, and where the swarms exuberant of life know no discontent. Would you give up your high though unsatisfied yearnings for bright but unreasoning life like theirs? Or when, in spring, you wander through the fields, burdened with cares and doubts and fears about the future, while the birds, in utter freedom from care, are filling the air with song, would you exchange with them, and part with your hopes of an endless life, your longings for the Father in heaven? Why, just to ask the question gives it its answer.
When Alexander of Macedon, after he had subjugated the whole of the known world, shed tears that his conquests were over because there was nothing left for him to conquer, however much we may disapprove of the ambition to which he had surrendered his life, yet we admire him more than if he had sat down in selfish ease to enjoy himself for the rest of his days. The soul that aspires is nearer to God than the soul that is content and still. Or if we meet with one who cares for nothing higher than the worldly wealth and ease and pleasure he enjoys, would you change your noble discontent for his ignoble content with what perishes in the using? When we think of the future which lies before each one of us, we shall regard it as a crowning mercy and blessing, that, though at present God does not bestow the life we crave, He does give us longings for it, and refuses to let us forget it, since even in time he has set eternity in our heart. It is this that keeps us from utter degradation; without it how base we should be.1 [Note: Memorials of R. T. Cunningham, 96.]
3. This universal presentiment itself goes far to establish the reality of the unseen order of things to which it is directed. The great planet that moves in the outmost circle of our system was discovered because that next it wavered in its course in a fashion which was inexplicable, unless some unknown mass was attracting it from across millions of miles of darkling space. And there are perturbations in our spirits which cannot be understood, unless from them we may divine that far-off and unseen world which has power from afar to sway in their orbits the little lives of mortal men. It draws us to itselfbut, alas, the attraction may be resisted and thwarted. The dead mass of the planet bends to the drawing, but we can repel the constraint which the eternal world would exercise upon us; and so that consciousness which ought to be our nobleness, as it is our prerogative, may become our shame, our misery and our sin.
This is the marvellous thing, that there is something in the heart of man constantly and successfully contradicting the sight of the eyes. For the eyes of manand no one realized this more intensely than the Preacherare weary with the sight of the things that fade and die. From the first time they look out upon the world, they behold the sad and continuous process of decay. All things are in flux, all things decay, nothing continues. Every voice speaks of mortality. Not only do leaves and flowers wither and fade, but a more educated eye beholds the stars fade in their orbits. The man that the eye beholds is a mortal creature passing swiftly from the cradle to the grave. For the eye of man mortality is signed and sealed in the dust of the tomb. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: surely the people is grass. What a tremendous witness to immortality must exist in the heart of man, to scorn the partial vision of the eye, and to transfigure its scenes of mortality into the light of immortal hope!
The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, said the author of the Book of Proverbs. Yes, a candle, but not necessarily one lighted; a candle, but one that can be kindled only by the touch of the Divine flame. To the natural man immortality is only a future of possibilities. To make it a future of realities we need to join ourselves to Jesus Christ. Take Christ, and eternity in the heart will not be an aching void, an unsatisfied longing, a consuming thirst. There is satisfaction here and now. He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life. Immortality is a present possession. The present is potentially the future. As Newman Smyth has said: Just as the consciousness of the child contains in it the germ of his manhood, and just as gravitation on earth tells us what gravitation is among the constellations, so eternity in the heart here shows us what eternity will be hereafter.1 [Note: A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, i. 331.]
In that delightful book The House of Quiet there is a striking passage where The Life of Charles Darwin is thus characterized: What a wonderful book this isit is from end to end nothing but a cry for the Nicene Creed. The man walks along, doing his duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single-heartedness and simplicity, and just misses the way all the time; the gospel he wanted is just the other side of the wall.1 [Note: David Smith, Mans Need of God, 9.]
Two worlds are ours; tis only sin
Forbids us to descry
The mystic heaven and earth within,
Plain as the sea and sky.2 [Note: Keble.]
Literature
Allon (H.), in Harvest and Thanksgiving Services, 17.
Beeching (H. C.), The Grace of Episcopacy, 130.
Brooks (P.), Twenty Sermons, 244.
Calthrop (G.), In Christ, 12.
Campbell (D.), The Roll-Call of Faith, 21.
Cunningham (R. T.), Memorials, 88.
Frst (A.), Christ the Way, 168.
Hall (E. H.), Discourses, 26.
Hamilton (J.), Works, iii. 100.
Herford (B.), Anchors of the Soul, 245.
Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 33.
Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, iii. 209.
Newbolt (W. C. E.), The Gospel of Experience, 1.
Peabody (A. D.), Kings Chapel Sermons, 179.
Shore (T. T.), The Life of the World to Come, 23.
Smith (D.), Mans Need of God, 3.
Snell (B. J.), The Widening Vision, 49.
Strong (A. H.), Miscellanies, i. 313.
Swing (D.), Sermons, 166.
Thomas (J.), The Mysteries of Grace, 243.
Christian Commonwealth, xxxii. (1912) 405 (R. J. Campbell).
Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 259 (W. Park); 1. 374 (J. Stalker); lxi. 181 (J. W. Walls); lxxiv. 123 (G. Eayres).
time to be born: Heb. time to bear, Gen 17:21, Gen 21:1, Gen 21:2, 1Sa 2:5, 1Ki 13:2, 2Ki 4:16, Psa 113:9, Isa 54:1, Luk 1:13, Luk 1:20, Luk 1:36, Joh 16:21, Act 7:17, Act 7:20, Gal 4:4
and a time: Gen 47:29, Num 20:24-28, Num 27:12-14, Deu 3:23-26, Deu 34:5, Job 7:1, Job 14:5, Job 14:14, Isa 38:1, Isa 38:5, Joh 7:30, Heb 9:27
a time to plant: Psa 52:5, Isa 5:2-5, Jer 1:10, Jer 18:7-10, Jer 45:4, Mat 13:28, Mat 13:29, Mat 13:41, Mat 15:13
Reciprocal: 1Sa 26:10 – his day Jer 18:9 – to build Jer 31:28 – so
Ecc 3:2-8. A time to die And as there is a time to die, so there is a time to rise again, a set time, when they that lie in the grave shall be remembered. A time to kill When men die a violent death. A time to heal When he who seemed to be mortally wounded is healed. A time to weep When men have just occasion for weeping, as they frequently have in the present life, both for their own sins and for the sins and miseries of mankind. It is in vain, says Castalio, here, to expect our happiness in this world: for this is no more the time and the place for it, than the seed- time is the harvest. But we must stay till the next life for it; which is the proper time for complete happiness: here we must be content with a great many tears. A time to cast away stones Which were brought together in order to the building of a wall, or house, but are now castaway, either because the person who gathered them hath changed his mind, and desists from his project, or for other causes. A time to embrace When persons enter into friendship, and perform all friendly offices one to another; and a time to refrain, &c. Either through alienation of affection, or grievous calamities. A time to get, and a time to lose In our traffic and commerce one with another, there is a time of gaining much; but there are other times, when a man must be content to lose by his commodities. A time to keep, &c. Sometimes also it is fit for a man to keep and lay up what he hath gotten; but at another time it will be as fit for him to spend or to give it away to those that need. A time to rend When men rend their garments, as they did in great and sudden griefs. A time to love When God stirs up love, or gives occasion for the exercise of it.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments