CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 3:12. For who knoweth the Spirit of man that goeth upward.] Man has no distinct and certain knowledge of his own future destiny, or of that of other forms of life. The subject is altogether beyond the range of human experience. Like God Himself, the future state is unseen and unknown by us. We can indeed apprehend both these truths by faith; yet, from the mere human standpoint, we may reason with equal plausibility, so far as outward appearances are concerned, for or against immortality.
Ecclesiastes 3:14. It shall be forever.] God’s order is fixed—His law is eternal.
Ecclesiastes 3:15. God requireth that which is past.] Literally, God seeketh that which was crowded out. Thus God seeks out again what the revolutions of history have pushed back into the past, as if it were entirely done with. The meaning is—that the past ages of wrong and unjust suffering shall be called up again. God will investigate the case of those who have been persecuted.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 3:12-15
THE WAY TO FRONT OUR DESTINY
I.—By a cheerful acceptance of our Providential lot. We should wisely use the gifts of God, and rejoice in them. (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13.) This will give to life the smoothness of contentment, and the comfort of resignation. Such is the greatest good that we can extract from life. Whatever our lot may be, let us accept it with cheerfulness, and receive whatever good it offers. This is the wisest course for man.
1. To fret and worry ourselves is useless. We cannot contend with the inevitable, nor rectify the apparent perversity of things. It will be best to allow God to arrange all for us.
2. A rebellious temper hinders the course of true happiness. If we murmur against the appointments of God, we are only adding an unnecessary burden to life, and sending the iron of affliction deeper into the soul. Unless we have sympathy with the Supreme Ruler, all must be unpleasant to us. A sour, complaining disposition would make true happiness impossible.
3. The power to enjoy the good of this life is the gift of God. There may be even a refined enjoyment of life, which is not godly. But the sober and joyful use of the provisions of Providence, while keeping in mind the higher aims of existence, is a special gift of heaven.
II.—By a practical recognition of the high claims of duty. “To do good in his life.” (Ecclesiastes 3:12.) This will make the appointments of Providence grateful and delightful to us. We can make even our trials and vexations the occasions of cheerful and devoted service—the school wherein our graces are refined and perfected. Thus we can maintain an heroic bearing against the hardest fate.
1. Doing good brings a man into sympathy with the Supreme Disposer of all things. We are thus imitating God Himself, and, in any case, this must put us into the best position. To do good is to enjoy some of the pleasures of the Highest.
2. Whatever else may be mysterious, our present duty is always clear. The reasons of God’s dealings are obscure, and the ways of Providence seem altogether a tangled maze: but our duty is written in clear outline, quite obvious and familiar. To follow therefore what is clearly known is the surest means to lead us to further knowledge, and solution of mystery. If we are faithful to the light we have, a superior light will be granted us, in which all things will be transfigured.
3. The faithful discharge of duty is the only lasting foundation for solid joy. There is a joy of the world which glitters, but it is not lasting. It is like the sparkle of shallow streams as the water flows over the pebbles, or like the dispersion of it in foam. But the joy that God gives is powerful and deep. The reason is, that the only lasting joy is that which arises from a good conscience. Righteousness gives peace, and peace is the true home of joy.
III.—By an acknowledgment of the inflexible rule of the Divine Government. (Ecclesiastes 3:14.) God’s ways in the government of the world are not by the method of trial and failure, by added light from experience. They are all fixed from the beginning.
1. God’s counsels are for ever. They are sure from eternity, and cannot be set aside. This seems an iron rule only to the rebellious. The good have nothing to fear from the wise ordering of Him who is perfect in knowledge, and infinite in mercy. Such are ready with joy to front their destiny.
2. God’s counsels are so certain that they are not complicated with our human distinctions of time. (Ecclesiastes 3:15.) We speak of time—past, present, and future. Our weak faculties need such a device as this. But to the Infinite Intelligence “an eternal now does ever last.” All things are eternally present to Him, and with one quick glance He sees from the beginning to the end. The past lives now—the future is already here.
IV.—By recognising the righteous ends contemplated by the Divine Government. (Ecclesiastes 3:14-15, latter part.) There are certain ends which the Supreme Ruler proposes to Himself in His administration. These are of a practical nature; they relate to human conduct, and as such are revealed. The methods of the Divine Government are designed—
1. To tame and subdue the heart of man. Men are “to fear before Him.” This want of mastery over the future tends to bring man to submission. He is convicted of ignorance, and the pride of knowledge is abated. He can never presume to be the God of God when his rebellion is proved to be a vain and hopeless attempt, and the future is kept in terrible reserve. The only sane result of the contemplation of the ways of Providence is resignation, humility, and the fear of God. It is madness for a man to dash his head against the iron walls of destiny. The course of Providence in the world is the great tamer of the human breast.
2. To vindicate the wrongs of His people. That which has fled away, and seemed to have escaped altogether, God will summon to His presence again. He will cause the great gulf of time to deliver up all that is in it. The past ages of wrong shall be called up again—reviewed and judged. Men think when they have persecuted the righteous that all is done with. They have silenced the testimony of truth. They have triumphed over the meek. But the end will come, and a day of reckoning, when the wrongs and oppressions of the past shall utter their voice, emphatic, decisive, and terrible. The Christian knows that his “Vindicator” liveth—that the time must come when all wrongs shall be adjusted, and all precedency set right.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 3:12. There is no lasting good in the things of this life; yet a joyful heart lends a beauty and grace to those fading and vanishing delights.
Doing good should always go hand in hand with joy; because good deeds spring from love, and joy is but the recreation of love.
Duty is the watchword of humanity, the herald of progress, the pledge of final emancipation. In the confusion and general uproar of things that amaze our ears, the voice of duty is clearly heard, and calls us to the skies.
When good actions become pleasant to us, then joy is the very sinews of duty.
Active goodness and joy are Godlike properties, for He is the unwearied worker of good, and the Blessed One.
They whose hearts are cheered by the proofs of the Lord’s bounty in His dealing with them, and do express that cheerfulness by their activity in duties that may honour Him; they have found that true good which is attainable in this life [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 3:13. The purest earthly joys are those which are won by toil. What we passively receive stirs up only a languid feeling. The idle and luxurious blunt the edge of joy.
It requires peculiar skill to use creature comforts wisely and well. This power is the gift of God.
The means of our common sustenance are turned into manna by a joyful spirit, and the remembrance of the giver.
When the gifts of God are not cheerfully acknowledged and enjoyed, our table becomes a snare.
Ecclesiastes 3:14. As the omnipotency of God is without defect, so the counsel of God is without change. For how can there be any change in Him to whom nothing is past, or to come, but all things are present? [Jermin.]
Men form opinions which change in the different situations of the mind through the course of time. It has been said that opinion is but knowledge in the making. It is but provisional where absolute certainty cannot be attained. But the thoughts of God stand “to all generations.”
The whole scheme of an Oriental court, and eminently that of the Great King, was laid out on the idea that it was the visible representation of the court of heaven, and the king himself a visible incarnation of the highest God. The sense of this speaks out in every arrangement, in the least, as in the greatest, and is the key to them all. Thus, the laws of that kingdom, when once uttered, could not be reversed or changed (Daniel 6:8), because the king who gave them was the incarnation of God, and God cannot repent, or alter the thing which has gone out from His lips [Trench].
The thought of the perfection of God’s plan raises our admiration, but, at the same time, inspires a wholesome fear. There is behind all a mysterious and terrible power which we may well fear to offend.
Fear should be the instrument of caution, and the sentinel of loving obedience.
The works of God are so perfect that no improvement can be made, and, left to themselves, they will be perpetual. How true is this regarding God’s greatest work—redemption! What more could He have done to make it a great salvation than what He has already done? Or what feature of the glorious plan could we afford to want? And now that He has Himself pronounced it a “finished” work, what is there that man can put to it? What is there that he dare take from it? And in doing it He has done it “for ever” [Dr. J. Hamilton].
Ecclesiastes 3:15. In all the seeming irregularities of Divine Providence, there are fixed principles which are never departed from. And thus it is that a science of history is possible. So certain is God’s method of procedure, that though we know not the special events of the future, we can predict the results of great principles.
The future will be but a repetition of the past. Thus the course of humanity through time may be likened to the movements of the solar system. The planets run their fixed cycles, and go over the same paths again. Yet there is with all these movements another by which the whole system is itself travelling in space. So human history, though revealing a perfect sameness from age to age, may yet be travelling towards some certain goal.
The deeds of oppression, cruelty, and wrong have not passed away for ever. God will seek them out again, and measure their deserts. The persecutors of the righteous cannot hide themselves even in the abyss of time.
THE IMPOTENCE OF TIME
Time has not done much, notwithstanding all; “for that which hath been is now.” This language will apply—
I. To all the elements of material existence. The forms of the material world are constantly changing, but the elements, of which the first types of all were formed, are the same. The raw materials, out of which the principle of life constructs its organs, and weaves its garments from age to age, are always here. Time, through all its mighty revolutions, cannot destroy an atom.
II. To all the spirits of mankind. All human souls that ever have been are now. Not one of the mighty millions who spent his short and misty day of life under these heavens is lost. All are thinking, feeling, acting, still. Their bodies are dust, but their bodies were theirs, not they; their instruments, not themselves.
“Distinct as is the swimmer from the flood,
The lyrist from his lyre.”
III. To all the general types of human character. All the varieties of human character may be traced to five or six different regal sympathies. There is the inordinate love of pleasure, the undue love of gain, the vain love of show, the mere love of inquiry, the inordinate love of power, the false love of religion, the holy love of God. All these great types of character have been here almost from the earliest dawn of history. Herods and Hamans, Athenians and Pharisees, seem to be living again in every age.
IV. To all the principles of the Divine Government. All the principles by which both the physical and moral provinces have been controlled from the beginning are the same now as ever. Harmony with God’s laws is the creature’s highest de stiny. Rebellion against them is his inevitable ruin. They neither pause nor change, either for angels or men.
V. To the grand design of all things. This must ever be the holy development of creature-minds in gratitude, reverence, love, and assimilation to Himself.
VI. To the recollections of the human memory. Memory gathers up every fragment of all “that hath been,” so that none may be lost. The history of man is recorded, not in books, but in souls.
VII. To all the conditions of man’s well-being. Physical, intellectual, spiritual [Homilist].