'He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also He hath set the
world in their heart.'--ECCLES. iii. 11.
There is considerable difficulty in understanding what precise meaning
is to be attached to these words, and what precise bearing they have
on the general course of the writer's thoughts; but one or two things
are, at any rate, quite clear.
The Preacher has been enumerating all the various vicissitudes of
prosperity and adversity, of construction and destruction, of society
and solitude, of love and hate, for which there is scope and verge
enough in one short human life; and his conclusion is, as it always is
in the earlier part of this book, that because there is such an
endless diversity of possible occupation, and each of them lasts but
for a little time, and its opposite has as good a right of existence
as itself; therefore, perhaps, it might be as well that a man should
do nothing as do all these opposite things which neutralise each
other, and the net result of which is nothing. If there be a time to
be born and a time to die, nonentity would be the same when all is
over. If there be a time to plant and a time to pluck, what is the
good of planting? If there be a time for love and a time for hate, why
cherish affections which are transient and may be succeeded by their
opposites?
And then another current of thought passes through his mind, and he
gets another glimpse somewhat different, and says in effect, 'No! that
is not all true--God has made all these different changes, and
although each of them seems contradictory of the other, in its own
place and at its own time each is beautiful and has a right to exist.'
The contexture of life, and even the perplexities and darknesses of
human society, and the varieties of earthly condition--if they be
confined within their own proper limits, and regarded as parts of a
whole--they are all co-operant to an end. As from wheels turning
different ways in some great complicated machine, and yet fitting by
their cogs into one another, there may be a resultant direct motion
produced even by these apparently antagonistic forces.
But the second clause of our text adds a thought which is in some
sense contrasted with this.
The word rendered 'world' is a very frequent one in the Old Testament,
and has never but one meaning, and that meaning is _eternity_.
'He hath set _eternity_ in their heart.'
Here, then, are two antagonistic facts. They 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
occupations, 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 longings which, however starved, do yet survive, after
unchanging Being and eternal Rest, And thus endowed, and by contrast
thus situated, his soul is full of the 'blank misgiving of a creature
moving about in worlds not realised.' Out of these two facts--says our
text--man's _where_ and man's _what_, his nature and his
position, there rises a mist of perplexity and darkness that wraps the
whole course of the divine actions--unless, indeed, we have reached
that central height of vision above the mists, which this Book of
Ecclesiastes puts forth at last as the conclusion of the whole
matter--'Fear God, and keep His commandments.' If transitory things
with their multitudinous and successive waves toss us to solid safety
on the Rock of Ages, then all is well, and many mysteries will be
clear. But if not, if we have not found, or rather followed, the one
God-given way of harmonising these two sets of experiences--life in
the transient, and longings for the eternal--then their antagonism
darkens our thoughts of a wise and loving Providence, and we have lost
the key to the confused riddle which the world then presents. 'He hath
made everything beautiful in his time: also He hath set Eternity in
their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from
the beginning to the end.'
Such, then, being a partial but, perhaps, not entirely inadequate view
of the course of thought in the words before us, I may now proceed to
expand the considerations thus brought under our notice in them. These
may be gathered up in three principal ones: the consciousness of
Eternity in every heart; the disproportion thence resulting between
this nature of ours and the order of things in which we dwell; and
finally, the possible satisfying of that longing in men's hearts--a
possibility not indeed referred to in our text, but unveiled as the
final word of this Book of Ecclesiastes, and made clear to us in Jesus
Christ.