'Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.'--ECCLES. vii. 8.
This Book of Ecclesiastes is the record of a quest after the chief
good. The Preacher tries one thing after another, and tells his
experiences. Amongst these are many blunders. It is the final lesson
which he would have us learn, not the errors through which he reached
it. 'The conclusion of the whole matter' is what he would commend to
us, and to it he cleaves his way through a number of bitter
exaggerations and of partial truths and of unmingled errors. The text
is one of a string of paradoxical sayings, some of them very true and
beautiful, some of them doubtful, but all of them the kind of things
which used-up men are wont to say--the salt which is left in the pool
when the tide is gone down. The text is the utterance of a wearied man
who has had so many disappointments, and seen so many fair beginnings
overclouded, and so many ships going out of port with flying flags and
foundering at sea, that he thinks nothing good till it is ended;
little worth beginning--rest and freedom from all external cares and
duties best; and, best of all, to be dead, and have done with the
whole coil. Obviously, 'the end of a thing' here is the parallel to
'the day of death' in verse 1, which is there preferred to 'the day of
one's birth.' That is the godless, worn-out worlding's view of the
matter, which is infinitely sad, and absolutely untrue.
But from another point of view there is a truth in these words. The
life which is lived for God, which is rooted in Christ, a life of
self-denial, of love, of purity, of strenuous 'pressing towards the
mark,' is better in its 'end' than in its 'beginning.' To such a life
we are all called, and it is possible for each. May my poor words help
some of us to make it ours.