Ecclesiastes 3

1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which 3 is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to 4 build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to 5 dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a 7 time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew: a time to 8 keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, 9 and a time for peace. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? 10 I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised 11 therewith. He hath made every thing beautiful in its time: also he hath set the world [or, eternity] in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done 12 from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them, than to rejoice, and to do good so long as they 13 live. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labour, 14 is the gift of God. I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God hath done it, that men 15 should fear before him. That which is hath been already; and that which is to be hath already been: and God seeketh again that which is passed away [or, requireth that which is past]. 16 And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, 17 that wickedness was there. I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every 18 purpose and for every work. I said in mine heart, It is because of the sons of men, that

God may prove them, and that they may see that they themselves are but as beasts. 19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no pre-eminence above the beasts: for all is 20 vanity. All go unto one place; all are of

21 the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast whether 22 it goeth downward to the earth? Wherefore I saw that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him back to see what shall be after him?

1-15. THERE is in this chapter a transition from Solomon’s personal experience of life to that of mankind generally; but it is closely connected with the preceding chapter. There (v. 26) he contemplated the different conditions of two men each leading an active life. The works of the first, through God’s ordinance, bring him a portion of happiness; but the works of the second are not beneficial to the doer. It follows that the works of men are subject in their results to another will besides that of the doer, or are under the control of God. Here we have in fact the germ of the great question of later times—how to reconcile man’s free will with God’s decrees. Solomon’s way of stating it is that to every separate work which goes to make up the great aggregate of human activity (i.e., the “travail,” 1:13; 3:10), there is a season, an appropriate time which God appoints for its being done (3:1-8). To the question (v. 9), What profit has man the worker therein? he answers that the works of men, if done according to God’s appointment, are a part of the work that God maketh (v. 11), that beautifully arranged scheme of Divine Providence which, as a whole, is, by reason of its extent and duration, incomprehensible to us, notwithstanding our far-reaching aspirations, and the power of looking before and after which God gives us (v. 11). Man’s good is to rejoice and do good in his lifetime, which he can do only as God appoints (vs. 12, 13). God’s work, of which this would be a part, is forever and is perfect (and so not subject to vanity), and calculated to teach men to fear Him (v. 14). His work, which was begun long ago, is now going on to completion; His work hereafter will be a complement of something which was done previously; and He recalls the past in order to add to it what shall make it complete and perfect (v. 15). The principle of Divine government—that every work in order to be permanent and successful must be God’s work as well as man’s work—is declared in Psalm 127:1, 2 (attributed to Solomon) quite as plainly as in this chapter. W. T. B.

That which he insists on is the thought that the circumstances and events of life form part of a Divine Order, are not things that come at random, and that wisdom and, therefore, such a measure of happiness as is attainable, lies in adapting ourselves to the order and accepting the guidance of events in great things and small, while shame and confusion come from resisting it. E. H. P.

1-8. The sense of the special clauses in this passage is for the most part clear. Every earthly life has its beginning and its close, both determined in the plan of God’s providential rule of human affairs. Planting and plucking up are to vegetables what birth and death are to men. So killing and healing relate to man; breaking down and building up to cities and the great works of human art and labor. Weeping and mourning come of calamity; but laughing and dancing express good fortune and joy. “Casting forth stones” (v. 5) was practised by an enemy to injure arable lands for cultivation. Thus Israel treated the best lands of Moab (2 Kings 3:19). I understand him to say simply that this world is so governed providentially under God’s hand that these unlike events are in fact constantly occurring, and have their place in the completed history of human affairs. They actually occur in the routine of human life, yet are thought of here rather in their relation to the agency and purpose of God in them than as related to the moral agency of man. In the Divine ordering of human affairs there is perpetual doing and undoing. Life is full of changes and even reverses. And these changes in the mortal lot of mankind come of the purposes and ways of God’s providence in His moral discipline of our race. He breaks up the smooth and even tenor of man’s earthly life for the sake of turning his eye upward to the overruling hand that shapes all. This is indicated particularly in v. 14, “God doeth it that men should fear before Him.” These frequent changes, coming in a way that baffles and defies the best foresight of men, have a most vital bearing on the pursuit of human happiness—especially on that pleasure-seeking pursuit which makes earthly good its supreme and sole end. How vain it must be for man to toil thus intensely to do, when God’s order of things in this word involves so much perpetual undoing! H. C.

We have accumulating evidence that the course of history has been directed by a Divine hand. It has not flowed for the shortest distance in a given course fortuitously. Great conquerors and rulers have arisen; God raised them up as instruments to carry out His purposes. Great nations have appeared, and when the Divine purposes in respect to them have been answered, have disappeared again. J. M. M.—Those revolutions which in their progress precipitate dynasties and nations to the dust, those heaps of ruin which we meet with in the sands of the desert, those majestic remains which the field of human history offers to our reflection, do they not testify aloud to the truth that God is in history? Gibbon, seated on the ancient capitol, and contemplating its noble ruins, acknowledged the intervention of a superior destiny. He saw—he felt its presence; wherever his eye turned it met him; that shadow of a mysterious power reappeared from behind every ruin; and he conceived the project of depicting its operation in the disorganization, the decline, and the corruption of that power of Rome which had enslaved the nations. Shall not that mighty hand, which this man of admirable genius discovered among the scattered monuments of Romulus and of Marcus Aurelius, the busts of Cicero and Virgil, Trajan’s trophies and Pompey’s horses, be confessed by us as the hand of our God? D’Aubigné.

Every human soul has a complete and perfect plan cherished for it in the heart of God—a Divine biography marked out, which it enters into life, to live. This life, rightly unfolded, will be a complete and beautiful whole, an experience led on by God and unfolded by His secret nurture; a Divine study for the man himself and for others; a study that shall forever unfold in wondrous beauty the love and faithfulness of God; great in its conception, great in the Divine skill by which it is shaped; above all, great in the momentous and glorious issues it prepares. What a thought is this for every human soul to cherish! What dignity does it add to life! What support does it bring to the trials of life! What instigations does it add to send us onward in everything that constitutes our excellence! We live in the Divine thought. We fill a place in the great everlasting plan of God’s intelligence. We never sink below His care, never drop out of His counsel. . . . Let it fill thee with cheerfulness and exalted feeling, however deep in obscurity your lot may be, that God is leading you on, girding you for a work, preparing you to a good that is worthy of His Divine magnificence. If God is really preparing us all to become that which is the very highest and best thing possible, there ought never to be a discouraged or uncheerful being in the world. H. B.

Know well this truth: of all fixed laws in the universe, the most unalterably fixed is the prevalence of that holy and unchanging will that makes for righteousness—no vague, blind tendency in a fortuitously evolving universe, but the personal will of a personal God, whose eye is now and will evermore be upon you as a person, who claims from you the personal love of your finite being, while He offers you the sustaining, personal love of His infinite personality. In this busy, self-blinded world, wherever God so touches the eyes of a man that he sees clearly this great truth, there is evoked the power that is and ever has been the soul of the world. And without this soul-power, this moral earnestness, this spirit of unselfishness, of what avail is all the progress of our nineteenth century? What is all this vast body of material wealth, increased production by machinery, facility of intercourse between nations, rapid transit, and electric thought and speech, unless there be the high-souled, noble purpose to animate it? The world has never seen, the world will never see, “that light which is the master light of all our seeing,” save as it flashes down from heaven to earth. From a higher source than self must come that light, that inspiration which is the soul of him who seeks it, and which makes the men who have it the soul of the community in which they dwell. In the proportion in which this soul-life from above, this moral energy that is poured into the lives of men, from the contemplation of the revealed will of God, from the consciousness of personal relations with a personal God who became man and died to save us from ourselves, takes hold upon the rich material life and scientific spirit of this our nineteenth century, in just that proportion will future ages call our age a blessed one. M. E. Gates.

1. To everything—i.e., as the sequel shows, to all human actions and conditions. Season used only here and Neh. 2: 6, Esth. 9: 27, 31, designates a defined, appointed, or certain time; it means specially opportune season or time. The sentiment is, that the when and the where of all actions and occurrences are constituted and ordained of God. They are not within the power of man, and cannot be controlled by him. What is thus announced here in the way of a general proposition is confirmed by the particulars that follow in vs. 2-8. The series begins with the birth and death of every man, and proceeds with recounting some of the more striking actions and occurrences of human life. M. S.

2. Solomon here mingles events which depend entirely on the will of God with those which seem to depend more upon the will of men, to teach us that the latter class of events is as much subject to His controlling providence as the former. J. M. M.—There is “a time to be born,” and however much a man may dislike the era on which his existence is cast, he cannot help himself; that time is his, and he must make the most of it. There is a time to die; and though we speak of an untimely end, no one ever died a moment sooner than God designed, nor lived a moment longer. Hamilton.

With respect to the events that may befall us, especially in reference to that great and final event, death, were the period perfectly certain, we should be tempted during the interval to sit down in the indulgence of security. Such knowledge would induce in most men the greatest rashness and presumption. While the event was at a distance they would gratify their appetites without restraint; they would, upon system, procrastinate attention to their eternal interests; whereas the uncertainty of its arrival furnishes the highest reason for being always ready, and renders the neglect of preparation the greatest folly and infatuation. R. Hall.

If length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life; think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them. And since there is something of us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this life will never be far from the next, and is in some manner already in it, by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of it. Browne.—The heavenly Divine life that is communicated by the Spirit of Christ to believers remains entire when the sensitive life is lost. The natural order is, “There is a time to be born, and a time to die.” The supernatural is, there is a time to die, and a time to be born. Bates.

3. Time to break down, . . . to build up. (By accommodation. B.) In our day, a waking rest of travel, change of scene, new society is permitted, and when it is a privilege assumed by faithful men to recruit them for their works of duty, they have it by God’s sanction, and even as a part of the sound economy of life. Going after a turn of gayety or dissipation, not after Christian rest, or going after rest only because you are wearied and worried by selfish overdoings, troubled and spent by toils that serve an idol, is a very different matter. The true blessing of rest is on you only when you carry a good mind with you, able to look back on works of industry and faithfulness, suspended for a time, that you may do them more effectively. Going in such a frame, you shall rest awhile, as none but such can rest. Nature will dress herself in beauty to your eye, calm thoughts will fan you with their cooling breath, and the joy of the Lord will be strength to your wasted brain and body. Ah! there is no luxury of indulgence to be compared with this true Christian rest. Money will not buy it, shows and pleasures cannot woo its approach, no conjuration of art or contrived gayety will compass it even for an hour; but it settles, like dew, unsought, upon the faithful servant of duty, bathing his weariness and recruiting his powers for a new engagement in his calling. Go ye thus apart and rest awhile if God permits. H. B.

There is a time to rest. And the chief value of it is not for that jaded muscle or jaded brains; but in giving larger and juster views of life, in recognizing our relations to one another and adjusting them, in evening things up in the life march of battle. When we rest we give our better selves a chance. We give the passions a chance to cool off, and some shy sentiments of our better manhood are given a hearing, which in the whirls of our ambition they never get. Life will be a rounder thing, when to the passion for getting and doing and ruling we add the sweet contentment of being—the sweet nobleness of serving; when to the egoism of self-centring action we add the altruism of benevolence and kindness. To be really great we must take counsel of our whole selves—we must have the tenderness that forbears as well as the bravery that strikes. Let us sit down with ourselves under the trees, where the birds sing and the dust of the world is far away, let us cool our foreheads and ask, “What will it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul?” Then in the silence let us insist on our souls, and the gains that come to them, through surrender of world-gains and the rest from world-toils, the gains which, being once our own, shall make toil a constant delight, and, smoothing from our foreheads the lines of care, shall crown them with that holy peace, which is the sign of right living. Interior.

4. There is a time when God’s providence calls to weep and mourn, and when man’s wisdom and grace will comply with the call; on the other hand, there is a time when God calls to cheerfulness, and then He expects we should serve Him with joyfulness and gladness of heart. The time of weeping is put before that of laughter, for we must first sow in tears and then reap in joy. H.

7. To keep silence, to speak. We must have times of solitude and spaces of withdrawing; and we must have the liberty of our own thoughts to keep them back or give them out. To have joys ventilated always by expression—the same expression or the same roundelay of praise—would drug our sensibility and become wearisome beyond endurance. H. B.—There is danger in unwise speech, but there is also danger in unwise silence. When one ought to speak and yet remains silent, silence is absolutely sinful. When one might speak to advantage and yet refrains, silence is culpable and sometimes even cruel. It may be a duty to cry out in alarm, in warning, or in protest; and to fail of so doing may make one a sharer of the unaverted evil. A word of approval or of sympathy may help a crushed or a struggling soul into new life and new achieving of success. S. S. T.—A bitter word may make a wound that will never heal. A kind word may win a friend that will never turn. A caution may save a soul; and yet silence is sometimes more stinging, and at other times more soothing than any word. Anon.

To whatever sphere speech belongs, it would seem to stand unsurpassed—nay, unequalled in it—by anything else. If it be a production of nature, it is her last and crowning production, which she reserved for man alone. If it be a work of human art, it would seem to lift the human artist to the level of a Divine Creator. If it is the gift of God, it is God’s greatest gift; for through it God spake to man, and man speaks to God in worship, prayer, and meditation. Max Müller.—Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together, so that at length they may emerge, full formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Carlyle.

There is a time when silence is the speech of faith. It is the time when the iron of bereavement and other suffering enters into the soul. “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it.” This silence, which asks not why God did, but is dumb because He did it, is the highest eloquence of faith. For the instinct of suffering is to ask a reason. Faith consists in neither asking nor answering that terrible “Why?” The highest speech of faith in such an hour is silence. C. C. Hall.

9,10. There is indeed no profit in that where-in we labor; the thing itself, when we have it, will do us little good; but if we make a right use of the disposals of Providence about it, there will be profit in that. I have seen the travail which God has given to the sons of men, not to make up a happiness by it, but to be exercised in it, to have various graces exercised by the variety of events, to have their dependence upon God tried by every change, and to be trained up to it, and taught both how to want and how to abound. H.—Here it is distinctly asserted that all the vicissitudes of life are divinely appointed, and are not left to fate or accident, and that Solomon viewed them as all under the direction of God, for the discipline of man. This he makes more clear in the next verse.

11. He asserts that there is a beauty in all the works and ways of Divine Providence. Beautiful expresses the true meaning. He is describing how these works and ways strike the mind of a beholder, who surveys them from the true standpoint. He sees how every event takes place at the proper time and fits each into its proper place, carrying forward with a steady movement the great plan of Divine wisdom; and all this vast machinery moving with as much silence as precision and order. He listens, and hears no jar, no grating. “Beautiful!” he exclaims. He next tells us what that true standpoint is, or how it is that man, amid the seeming defeats, disasters, and cross-purposes which surround him, can discover beauty in the mysteries of Divine Providence. God hath placed eternity in his heart, without which he could not understand the work which God doeth from beginning to end, i.e., he hath planted the idea or conviction of immortality in every human heart; and it is in the light of that duration that he sees the perfection and consummate, beauty of all God’s works and ways. J. M. M.

It may be difficult to define beauty. It may not be important to do so. Indeed, beauty may be simple as truth, and ultimate as the right, and undefinable as either; yet it is none the less real, and is recognized and known by a correlated, sympathetic faculty of the soul. This spiritual faculty or aesthetic sense is native to the human soul. Analysis, as it discovers delicacy and variety of color; regularity and symmetry of form; waving lines and lines of grace; ease and gentleness of motion; purity and nobility of expression; the repose of power or the calm of a meek and quiet spirit; the harmony of poetic numbers or the melody of music; nicely adjusted order and proportion; higher than all (if not comprehending all), unity in variety; and highest of all, the beauty of holiness, whether human, angelic, or Divine—such analysis may illuminate, but it cannot originate the vision of beauty. Conscience may purify and ennoble, but it would not, it cannot, nullify or abrogate this fine and kindred faculty of the soul. And this faculty or aesthetic sense of the soul may be developed by use, strengthened by judicious exercise, improved by proper discipline, quickened, refined, cultivated by careful training. Thus it may be brought to recognize more quickly, to feel more sensitively, to know more surely, to comprehend more largely, to understand more thoroughly the spiritual significance of the beautiful, rejecting more and more the sensuous and the sensual, rejoicing more and more in the pure and perfect, communing more habitually and cordially with the true and good. And Divine inspiration would enlarge our view and clarify our vision and unite—re-unite—the ministry of the beautiful with the true and the good. The Scriptures have much to say of beauty. Many of its loveliest and loftiest utterances are upon this exalted theme. We meet with them in Prophecies, and Proverbs, and Psalms, in Gospels and Epistles, in the Parables, in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. The theme is not only attractive, but is all comprehensive, e.g., in Ecclesiastes we read, “God hath made everything beautiful in His time.” We read of “the beauty of the Lord our God,” and pray that “it may be upon us;” of “the beauty of holiness,” and are directed to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” The divine promise is, “He will beautify the meek with salvation.” The prophet declares of Messiah the Prince that He shall “appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning;” and of him who walketh righteously and turneth away his eyes from beholding evil, that “he shall see the King in His beauty,” “who is the chiefest among ten thousand and the One that is altogether lovely.” And the promise transcendent is, “When He shall appear we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”—a beauty and blessedness including yet surpassing even a home in the New Jerusalem and the mansions in heaven. Thus the Divine Word with inspired vision ranges all the realms of beauty, material and mental, moral and spiritual, human and Divine. Prophets and apostles, the Psalmist and the Saviour, each and all point to the beautiful as valid and valuable, and present us ideals that are pure and purifying—related evermore to the true and the good. R. B. Welch.

God has placed us in a world that witnesses of Him in two ways. It is a world of manifold and most marvellous contrivances, and exhibits Him as a mechanician of extraordinary skill and power, working, moreover, with the manifest design of advancing man’s bodily and social interests. It is also a world of intense and varied beauty and sublimity, so arranged as, in a certain sense, to give us an adumbration of Him, “a revelation of the character of God in the way of material type and similitude.” The beauty which some would elevate into a religion is no religion in itself, but it speaks of a God, who has impressed on nature as far as was possible shadows of His attributes. It speaks of His perfection, of His glory, of His worthiness to absorb us and fill us with a passion of love. To rest in beauty without going further and tracing it to its source is to stop short where God intended us to reach forward. It is to forget that though the sublimity and beauty of nature may please the imagination and even refine and exalt it, they cannot in themselves affect the soul or change the heart. It is only when we “look through nature up to nature’s God” that we reach the real teachings of nature, and hear her true voice. G. R.

There is a chord in the human heart to which the beautiful and sublime respond, whether these appear in the material or spiritual world. If we could only take men away for a little out of the dull, dead round, and from the corroding and often debasing things that draw them down in their common life, there are objects such as these appealing to them daily and hourly, and asking them if they have not a soul. Rich sunsets and moonlit skies are there, requiring only eyes to see them, and acts of self-devotion and heroism are being performed, and lives of patient suffering led, under our sight, which are as capable of thrilling as anything recorded in history. Ker.

We see an incalculable amount of things fitted to give enjoyment—useful things, beautiful things, sublime things; things grateful to the ear, to the sight, to the soul; pleasant lights and shadows; sweet perfumes and sounds; golden grains and fruits; lovely features, forms, flowers, landscapes; glorious rivers and cataracts and mountains and oceans and skies—in thronging hosts which no arithmetic can compute. Further, mixed up with this natural good is a great amount of such as is of a still higher nature. There are many fair and noble spiritual qualities revealing themselves within our observation or knowledge; there are generous impulses and affections, exalted patiences, fortitudes, heroisms, magnanimities; above all, pure solid Christian virtue in very many incontestable and even glorious instances, the record of which thrills us as we read. If, then, we hold God responsible for the sorrows, disorders, and other disadvantages of the world, it is but fair to give Him credit for the happiness and virtue, and manifold advantages that exist. If one class of facts is allowed to argue against a good God, then the other class must be allowed to argue in His favor. And confessedly, the happiness of the world is far greater than its sorrow; almost every living creature has a thousand moments of comfort to one moment of pain. Confessedly, the noxious things, the deformed things, the things that wound the senses and the esthetical nature, bear no sensible proportion to the useful, the comely, the gratifying things that be-green and be-blossom this beautiful world. Burr.

We cannot look round us without being struck by the surprising variety and multiplicity of the sources of beauty of creation, produced by form, or by color, or by both united. It is scarcely too much to say that every object in nature, animate or inanimate, is in some manner beautiful; so largely has the Creator provided for our pleasures through the sense of sight. It is one of the revelations which the Creator has made of Himself to man. He was to be admired and loved; it was through the demonstrations of His character that we could alone see Him and judge of Him; and in thus inducing or compelling us to admire and love the visible works of His hand, He has taught us to love and adore Himself. Macculloch.

Christian thought and feeling may appropriate to its own high uses all that is noble in taste and beautiful in art, and, by the inner transforming power of devotion, ennoble and spiritualize these outer things. Nay, religion, in one sense, asserts its right to all that is beautiful and noble and lovely on earth, and by its regal touch confers on earthly things a heavenly dignity. There are ways in which all the treasures of genius, all the creations of poetry, all the resources of art, may be made tributary to the cause of Christ. Still, it should never be forgotten that the refinements of art may become not the means, but the end. Caird.—Surely beauty is a good, for it is the Divine handiwork. Surely that living God who has made the sea like amethyst and the body of heaven like paved work of a sapphire stone, who has filled the groves with song, and embroidered the meadows with flowers, and clothed the mountain with garments of glory, he who has planted in man the secret spring of music and planned that delicate organism which vibrates so sensitively to the breath of pleasure, He would not have us stand blind and deaf and dumb in the midst of His fair universe. He framed man for delight in loveliness. He gifted him with power to imitate and interpret and idealize works of nature in human art. He claimed the services of these faculties in the decoration of His own most sacred temple. And he has forever reminded us, in the words of Christ, that the beauty of the world is a Divine creation, and that the very raiment of the lilies is woven and colored by the hand of God. Christianity has no room in it for asceticism, for a silent, sullen, downcast, unbeautiful existence. Let us bring beauty into our lives; but let it be the beauty of holiness. Let us make our churches and our homes fair as well as pure, bright as well as good. Let us accept the gracious ministry of art as a service to our higher nature, and use it to adorn the doctrine of God, our Saviour. Van Dyke.

We do not sufficiently dwell upon the moral and spiritual uses of beauty in God’s universe. That everywhere His loving, wooing hand should touch the flower into grace and deck all barren places with glory and with fairness—what does that reveal to us about Him? It says to us, He does not give scantily; it is not the mere measure of what is wanted, absolutely needed to support a bare existence, that God bestows. He taketh pleasure in the prosperity of His servants. Joy, and love, and beauty, belong to Him; and the smile upon His face that comes from the contemplation of His own fairness flung out into His glorious creation is a prophecy of the gladness that comes into His heart from His own holiness and more ethereal beauty adorning the spiritual creatures whom He has made to flash back His likeness. The flowers of the field are so clothed that we may learn the lesson that it is a fair Spirit and a loving Spirit, a bountiful Spirit and a royal heart that presides over the bestowments of creation and allots gifts to men. A. M.—He hath made everything beautiful. But nothing is so “beautiful” in His sight as the heart that trusts and loves Him. He has made the laws of fitness and of grace to be steadfast and sacred; but he tells us that all the outward graces of propriety and art are but dim symbols of the clustering group of spiritual graces that His own immediate Spirit makes to bud and unfold and yield their ripened fruitage in the believing soul of man. F. D. H.

11. To set eternity in their heart means to give them the faculty of considering and being moved by the past and the future. As to the word “olam,” interpreters are divided between two meanings. “Eternity,” not as metaphysically conceived, but in the sense of a long, indefinite period of time, in accordance with the use of the word throughout this book and the rest of the Old Testament. Delitzsch says, “God has placed in the inborn constitution of man the capability of conceiving of eternity, the struggle to apprehend the everlasting, the longing after an eternal life.” The other meaning is “the world,” or the universe in which we dwell. With this meaning the context is explained as referring either to the knowledge of the objects in this world, or to the love of its pleasures. This meaning seems to be less in harmony with the context than the other; but the principal objection to it is that it assigns to the word (olam) a sense which it never bears in the language of the Old Testament. W. T. B.—Gesenius defines it, “remote time, eternity, everlasting.” Hengstenberg says it is “never used in the entire Old Testament in any other sense than of ‘unmeasured time’ and of ‘eternity;’ and in this book above all is it employed in the signification ‘eternity.’” Y.

No other meaning but that of a duration the end or beginning of which is hidden from us, and which therefore is infinite, is ever connected with this word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and this is its uniform sense in this book. We must translate, as the nearest equivalent, He hath set eternity (or, the everlasting) in their heart. Man has the sense of an order perfect in its beauty. He has also the sense of a purpose working through the ages from everlasting to everlasting, but “beginning” and “end” are alike hidden from him, and he fails to grasp it. E. H. P.

I translate, “God hath done (and is ever doing) everything beautifully in its season; also, He hath put eternity in their heart, without which man will not (or, cannot) find out the work that God doeth from beginning to end.” That is, he hath given man the thought or idea of eternity, and without its aid no man could ever understand these works of God in providence in all their just and far-reaching relations. For these providential agencies of God in their plans and results reach onward into eternity. They lap over from this world into the next, unfinished here, to be completed there. Retribution for the deeds of earth, beginning sometimes here, is to be finished there. The frustration of human plans for time has an outlook to the hopeful compensations of eternity. “These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” and therefore are wise in God’s plan and well for His children. Hence there is no understanding the ways of God here save as you take into the account their bearings upon the destiny that awaits men there. All the other words in this passage conspire to sustain this interpretation. The first word, “also,” implies something more of the same sort. This corresponds with the construction which I suggest. God hath done two things of kindred bearing and significance—viz.: First, He hath done everything in His providence most beautifully and fitly in its time; secondly, He hath also put in man’s heart the idea of eternity, without which man could not find out either the wisdom or the love of these works of God’s providence from beginning to end—another gift to man quite analogous to the former gift of a well-ordered course of Providence. First, to ordain a course of providential dealings wisely; and, secondly, to give man the idea of eternity, so that he can understand what would otherwise seem to him inexplicable and perhaps unjust—these two things complement each other, and fill out the plan of God for revealing Himself and His ways to men. Further, the words rendered, “so that,” which express the relation between God’s giving man the idea of eternity and man’s not finding out God’s works perfectly, have for their first and legitimate sense, without which. That is, without this idea of eternity man neither will nor can find out God’s work fully. Finally, the construction above suggested and defended corresponds admirably with the qualifying clause, “find out the work that God doeth from the beginning to the end;” for, without the idea of eternity, man might find out some of God’s works and ways, at least in some of their bearings and relations. But those methods of God’s providential government over men which embrace the moral discipline of suffering here, correlated to glorious compensation there; or His long-suffering endurance with sin here, to be set right at last by swift and just retribution there, can by no means be understood by the human mind save with the aid of this idea of eternity. Whenever we take in the whole range of those far-reaching plans of God which stretch “from the beginning to the end,” we must have eternity in our hearts; and hence He has given it. Thus every several point—I might say every word of this passage—harmonizes admirably with the construction above given, leaving, it would seem, nothing more in the way of sustaining proof to be desired. H. C.

I believe that God has set eternity in the hearts of men, as the royal preacher declared when discoursing on the vanity of all earthly good; that God made man an image of His own eternity, as the author of the Book of Wisdom affirmed; and that without such a postulate human life becomes a hollow mockery and a biting irony. It is a wondrous unanimity of intuitive conviction that meets us in the tombs of Egypt and the temples of China, in the hieroglyphics of Assyria and the Indian legends, and in the world’s profoundest thinkers in Greece, Rome, and Palestine. There is a swing in the soul’s thought that carries it beyond what it can prove in the affirmation of its own dignity and destiny. Behrends.—Man’s real dignity and supremacy lies in this, that he is made for immortality; that he is capacious of the Divine; that he has relations to the infinite and the eternal; that his present state is but the vestibule of his being; and that when his journey through this toilsome and hazardous waste of earth shall have been accomplished he shall, provided he have worthily achieved his probation, reach the proper home and resting-place of his spirit in heaven. W. L. A.

The sense of immortality is deepened by all that brings the personal soul consciously face to face with the personal God who made it. The sense of immortality is deepened by penitence; for penitence is the sincere exercise of memory upon our past existence, under the guidance of the love of God. It is deepened by prayer; for prayer is the voice of the inmost soul consciously speaking to its God. It is stimulated by acts of self-sacrifice, which kindle into intense consciousness the immortal germ of life, though they may for awhile depress, at the bidding of eternal principles, its earthly tenement. It prompts and is strengthened by a genuine love of man as man. Doing justice to the greatness of human destiny, it has no heart to dwell upon the accidents of birth, or station, or income, or accomplishments which overlie the mighty reality upon which alone its gaze is persistently fixed. But it attains its greatest strength, it prepares for its loftiest triumphs, at the foot of the Cross of Jesus, since the agony of the Divine Victim reveals the price and yields the measure of the life of the human soul. Thus they who, like David, have gazed on the dying Redeemer by the light of prophecy, or who, like Paul, in the full sunshine of the Gospel, have determined “to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified” have enjoyed in the highest degree the sense of immortality. H. P. L.

The more profoundly we feel the reality of the great eternity whither we are being drawn, the greater do all things here become. They are made less in their power to absorb or trouble, but they are made infinitely greater in importance as preparations for what is beyond. How absurd, how monotonous, how trivial it all is, all this fret and fume, all these dying joys and only less fleeting pains, all this mill-horse round of work which we pace, unless we are, mill-horse-like, driving a shaft that goes through the wall, and grinds something that falls into “bags that wax not old” on the other side. The end makes the means important; and if we believe that God is preparing us for immortal life with Him by all our work, then we shall do it with a will; otherwise we may well be languid as we go on for thirty or forty years, some of us doing the same trivial things, and getting nothing out of them but food, occupation of time, and a mechanical aptitude for what is not worth doing. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love the earthly shadows of the uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work. A. M.

God hath set eternity in our hearts. He has given us a hunger which can be satisfied only with the Bread of Life, a thirst which can be quenched only by the living water from the Rock of Ages. Eternity is in our hearts, and there is a strange contrast between it and the world in which we all are, for which alone some of us are living. To do our duty here, to trust calmly in a future with God, where all our higher cravings shall be satisfied—that was the conclusion at which the Preacher arrived as the sustaining power amid the wrongs, and weariness, and inequalities of life. We stand with that great teacher in the twilight, but our faces are turned toward the rising Sun. God hath set eternity in our hearts. Are we living worthy of it? Anon.

12. Over and above the life of honest labor and simple joys which had been recognized as good before, the seeker has learned that “doing good” is in some sense the best way of getting good. E. H. P.—To rejoice, and to do good. The pleasure of doing good remains after a thing is done, the thoughts of it lie easy in our minds, and the reflection upon it ministers to us ever after joy and delight. In this passage Solomon, after all his experience of wordly pleasures, pitches at last upon this as the greatest happiness of human life, and the only good use which is to be made of a prosperous fortune. Archbishop Tillotson.—What have we our beings, capacities, and estates for but to be some way serviceable to our generation? We mistake if we think we were born for ourselves; no, it is our business to do good, it is in that that there is the truest pleasure, and what is so laid out is best laid up and will turn to the best account. Observe, it is to do good in this life, which is short and uncertain; we have but a little time to be doing good in, and, therefore, had need to redeem time. Every man’s life is his opportunity of doing that which will make for him in eternity. H.

If you labor to create good company in this life by trying to make other people round you good, you shall enjoy forever in the next world the good company which you have helped to make. If you labor to make yourself good in this life, you shall enjoy the fruit of your labor in the next life by being good, and, therefore, blessed forever. Your labor is not vanity and vexation of spirit. It is solid work, which shall receive solid pay from God hereafter. Kingsley.—The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven. Richter.

Whatever apparent incompatibility there may be between having a residence in one world and a conversation in another, the religion of Christ boldly meets that difficulty and puts it out of the way. A life which reconciles these contradictory things is not only possible, but is the practical object and the triumph of every Christian man. We can be busy, neighborly, charitable, enterprising, getting our livelihood, making some earthly spot more beautiful as well as more righteous, and all the time “looking for and hastening unto” an immortality infinitely better—wearing on our whole manhood or womanhood the stamp of a consecrated purpose and an unworldly secret in the soul. No man living to himself, no man dying to himself, life and death are both transfigured by an indestructible communion with an invisible Friend and Lord. We can, by the Spirit’s help, be in the world without “minding” earthly things selfishly, greedily, ambitiously, or irreligiously. F. D. H.

Be helpful! Communicate ideas! Give out moral energy! Let the light we have shine! We do not lose moral or intellectual power by giving an impulse to our neighbor. Here is the difference between mechanical forces and intellectual, moral, social forces. If you give your neighbor a “cut-off” with half the electric current that lights your house or runs your factory, your own house must go half-lighted, your own factory can do but half its work. But when you give him your best thought and your heartiest, friendliest sympathy, there is more light, more warmth, more power for you both. By giving, you gain! Your own thoughts become clearer. Your own conviction is more intense. Your own power of right feeling and right willing is strengthened. By such unselfish efforts for others we keep the horizon broader and the heart fresher. To do such service we shall need a steady fire of love in the heart. To overcome inertia in ourselves and in others; not to be overawed and silenced by the numbers of the dull, the timid, and the vicious, who oppose all changes for the better; to make our way up steep grades of moral progress; to draw our load steadily every day, and with our own burdens to bear also the burdens of others less strong than we—this calls for an impelling power constantly renewed and unfailing. M. E. Gates.

13. Recognizes the fact that God has provided for us sources of physical enjoyment in our daily bread, and in the consciousness of power and success in producing desired results. These are gifts of God to men. An infinite Father to us, He delights to see His children enjoying His bounty, and with humble acknowledgment and grateful love exercising the powers of labor and acquisition which He has bestowed. A just sense of our relations and obligations to God will guard us against the gross and grievous mistake of living to eat and drink, and thus of eating and drinking so as to debase ourselves even below irrational animals. Hence while commending the moderate enjoyments of our constitutional appetites, Solomon continually suggests the thought that these enjoyments come to us from God, our Great Father. H. C.—Let us make ourselves easy, rejoice and enjoy the good of our labor, as it is the gift of God, and so enjoy God in it and taste His love, return Him thanks, and make Him the centre of our joy; eat and drink to His glory, and serve Him with joyfulness of heart in the abundance of all things. Grace and wisdom to do this is the gift of God, and it is a good gift, which crowns the gifts of His providential bounty. H.

14. It is a thought worthy of Almighty God that everything He touches partakes of His own immortality; that He cannot lay to His hand in vain; that what has once lain in His counsels must one day, sooner or later, stand out into the light, and that which once has taken form under His power must go on forever. J. Vaughan.—And God rules thus with supreme authority and with a wisdom all His own and a steadfastness of purpose that no created being can change, in order that men may fear before Him. Such majesty and such immutability in wisdom, justice, and love, become the infinite throne of the universe. It is altogether well that the universe has such a Father, such a Ruler, such a God! H. C.

Permanence and perfection are the two grand qualities of all God’s works. Man’s work at best is only imperfect and unenduring. The effect of a studious and earnest contemplation of God’s work is to make men “fear before Him.” To see that it is essentially unchanging through all the mutations of human affairs, and that it can neither be improved by addition nor subtraction, overwhelms us with awe. Pierson.—The works of God are distinguished by opportuneness of development and precision of purpose. There is a season for each of them, and each comes in its season. All of them have a function to fulfil, and they fulfil it. To which he here adds that they are all of their kind consummate—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 had 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 he dare take from it? And in doing it He has done it “forever.” Hamilton.

15. Requireth for judgment, as the word specially means in 2 Sam. 4:11; Ezek. 3:18, etc. It is obvious from vs. 14, 16, and 17 that this is the meaning here. The meaning of the verse is that there is a connection between events past, present, and future, and that this connection exists in the justice of God, who controls all W. T. B.

God requireth the past for our present consolation. He takes up all we have left behind in the plenitude of His existence. The friends who have gone from us live in Him; the days that are no more are revived in Him. The successive periods of our existence, like lights and shadows on a sunny hill, have not perished in the using; their fleeting moments and impressions have been laid up forever in the storehouse of the infinite mind. In converse with Him in whom thus all our life is hid, upon whose mind the whole picture of our existence is mirrored, we feel that, though lonely, we are not alone; though the perishing creatures of a day, we are living even now in eternity. God requireth the past for its restoration. As the context indicates, it is a law of the Divine manifestation, a mode of the Divine working in every department, that the past should be brought forward into the present, the old reproduced in the new. God never wearies of repeating the old familiar things. He keeps age after age, generation after generation, year after year, the same old home-feeling in His earth for us. And is not this a strong argument that He will keep the old home-feeling for us in heaven; that we shall find ourselves beyond the river of death in the midst of all the former familiar things of our life, just as when we get out of the winter gloom and desolation of any year we find ourselves in the midst of all that made the former springs and summers so sweet and precious to us? God requireth the past for judgment. It is an awful thought that the indictment of the impenitent sinner at the bar of Divine justice has been carried about with him unconsciously all his life in his own bosom, that he himself is the strongest witness against himself. “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked and slothful servant.” Macmillan.

All things are to come up again. Nor are they to come up merely for judgment; they are to come up again also for life. They are to come up as seed comes up in harvest. They are to come up as elements of character. Men have been and are now everywhere putting into the furrows of their being the germs of what they are to be, to do, or to suffer hereafter. They are germs of indestructible activity and power. They are habits and elements whose roots strike here, but whose life and fruits are to fill eternity. Men write their future in their present, not only because God keeps the record of their past and will judge it, but because God hath made their present time their spring-time; and present character, character between the cradle and the grave, determines the eternal character. So all things are to come up, as elements of joy or grief, comfort or disappointment. Thoughts, things, words, feelings, experiences, knowledges, forms of discipline, losses, adversities, trials, blessings, enjoyments, opportunities, privileges, neglects, omissions, prayers, efforts, struggles, failures, successes— all things are to come up; in themselves for judgment, in their consequences for existence, for experience, for the life of life, or the life of death, for life in life, or life in death, forever! For God requireth it. Cheever.

I feel assured that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind. A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. De Quincey.—There is both proof and instance that relics of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state in the very same order in which they were originally impressed; it is even probable that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable, and if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive it would require only a different and apportioned organization—the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial, to bring before the human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And this—this, perchance, is the dread Book of Judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded. Coleridge.

16,17. The sixteenth and seventeenth verses bring out the great doctrine of a future judgment in all its force and clearness. He saw “under the sun,” in this world, “the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.” He saw earthly judges partial and unrighteous—wronging the innocent, and clearing the guilty. And God seems to be like them, if we look no further than this world. But this leads Solomon to the great utterance of his heart in the seventeenth verse: “I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked.” The great idea is here fully brought out, for which he had been preparing the minds of his hearers—viz.: Since there is incompleteness, and crookedness, and sorrow, and apparent injustice under the sun, and man labors in vain if his prospects terminate with this life, there must be a future judgment of the righteous and the wicked; there is a future judgment. Y.

We are told often and confidently that the ancient Hebrews had no idea of a future state and a future judgment, and therefore Coheleth could have no reference to either. What then did the Hebrews think had become of Enoch and Elijah, after their translation? What is the meaning of being gathered to one’s fathers? (Gen. 49:29; Jud. 2:10) Then what means, “In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures forevermore”? (Psalm 16:11.) What shall we say of Psalm 17:13, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake in Thy likeness”? And Daniel, what means he when he tells us that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”? Here is not only futurity, but a resurrection of the body itself. Isaiah, too, has added his testimony: “Thy dead men shall live; with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust [i.e., ye dead]; for Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out [bring forth, in the Hebrew] the dead” (26:19). Beautiful imagery this, in which the grave is represented, like the grass on which dew falls, as fructiferous, and bringing forth its dead as the fruit. This is now generally admitted to refer to the resurrection. And when the Saviour says respecting the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” does not He suppose the Jews, with whom He was reasoning, to believe in a future state? How can any man reasonably suppose that the Hebrews, with Moses and Samuel and David, Solomon and Isaiah, and other highly distinguished men to teach them, and above all if we believe them to have been inspired—that the Jewish nation knew less than the Egyptian and other heathen nations around them about a future state of existence? Still, I would not claim for Coheleth more than his book will justify. Those who find Gospel-clearness in the Old Testament on such subjects seem to forget that Paul has assigned to the Gospel of Christ the high prerogative of “bringing life and immortality to light.” It has brought out into noonday splendor what before was seen only in the twilight. M. S.

18-20. One common law of physical mortality reigns over both man and beast. Each alike receive their bodies from the dust of the earth, and give them back to their mother earth. Considered closely with reference to this part of our being, man has no pre-eminence above a beast. This close construction is obviously demanded by the course of thought—“all go to one place”—the earth; all are made of dust, and all return to it again. This must refer to the body only. H. C.—The thought implied is that without a higher faith of some kind, man stands as having only an animal life, on the same level as other animals.

20. All go to one place.** The “place” thus spoken of is simply the earth, as at once the mother, the nourisher, and the sepulchre of every form of life. E. H. P.

A worldly, earthly-minded man has no pre-eminence above the beast, for all that which he sets his heart upon, places his confidence and expects a happiness in, is vanity. Most men live as if they were to be here always, or as if, when they die, there were an end of them; and it is not strange that those live like beasts who think they shall die like beasts; but on such the noble faculties of reason are perfectly lost and thrown away. H.—There are those who lead the life of the ephemeron, in whom there is nothing immortal, spending their days like the beasts that perish—nay, less fitted for eternity than they. No deep thoughts, no acts fought out on deep abiding principles, have been theirs. They live mere accidental beings, light mortals who dance their giddy round above the abysses, looking at the things seen, with transient tears for sorrow and transient smiles for joy. This life is their all, and at last they have fluttered out their time and go forth into endless night. F. W. R.

21. This passage does not deny but, on the contrary, affirms that the spirit of man goes upward to God, who gave it, while the spirit of beasts goes downward to the earth, becoming (as the passage seems to imply) extinct with the dissolution of the body. But in the words “Who knoweth?” the writer assumes that many things respecting the spirit of man and the spirit of beasts were yet unknown. It seems plain that the ancient people of God had from the first this general idea, that the souls of the good at death return to God to dwell in His presence with all who have gone before in purity and blessedness. See Psalms 17:15; 16:11; 73:24, 25; Gen. 15:15; 25:8; 49:29, 33, and 37:35, which last passage shows that this being gathered to one’s people was not merely the burial of the body in a common grave. Inasmuch as this is the obvious and usual sense of Solomon’s words in this passage, and inasmuch as he certainly avows this sentiment in his last chapter, it must be reasonable to assume that this is his meaning here. H. C.

22. The same sentiment above, in chaps. 3:12, 13; 2:24—his doings, all his actions and efforts. Let each one take all the enjoyment which his efforts can secure. Rational and moderate enjoyment, not epicureanism, is doubtless to be understood here. Confining our view merely to the world of sense, this advice is beyond all doubt correct and proper. Every being instinctively desires enjoyment, and Coheleth would have him secure what he can derive from his efforts, but to enjoy it with moderation and caution. To satisfy our innocent natural appetites and supply our wants is all to which we can attain in the present world. This he urges all to do in order, as it plainly seems, that they may be more contented, happy, and cheerful. M. S.

The conclusions to which the author arrives at the various stages of his argument show clearly that a secondary theme—subordinate to the vanity of earthly pleasure—was the real good which God does give man to enjoy in this mortal state. Remarkably he carries along these two great themes—how to abuse the world and make it a worthless vanity, and how to use it so as to get its real good most effectively. H. C.

All highest values resolve themselves into personal relations and personal considerations. Instead of the question, “For what do you mean to live?” let me ask you the supreme, all-inclusive question, “For whom do you mean to live?” To this question the tenor of every man’s life gives no uncertain answer. Whether he knows it himself or not, his life sends out an answer, clear enough to his fellow-men. The answer, consciously or unconsciously given by every man’s life, vibrates full and strong to the keynote of one of these three brief replies: “I mean to live for myself,” “I mean to live for my fellow-men,” “I mean to live for God.” And the last answer is the right answer. He who once sees its force knows well that it includes the second, which may be the mistaken effort of a noble soul striving to rise to the correct answer. This reply cuts the very central nerve of purpose of the first reply. He who lives for God will find himself irresistibly impelled to the best and widest service of his fellow-men. He who lives for self, however carefully he may strive to strengthen his position by maxims of worldly prudence or of a utilitarian philosophy, fails ignominiously of all the highest ends of living.

Reckon from self as a centre, and your fellow-men become your obnoxious rivals in a stern struggle for existence and advancement. Ambition’s law of life becomes the blood-stained survival of the fittest, and the highest glories which life can give you in their hollow and transitory splendor will be yours but for a tremulous moment, until the younger, the more vigorous, the more fortunate shall thrust you aside, and for his brief moment wear the bubble you strove for until your selfish life went out in nothingness. Reckon from God as a centre, and your fellow-men become your brothers. They are infinitely worthy of your loving interest, since one Father has made all our spirits after His image, and one Saviour has died to redeem from sin and restore to godlikeness all who will turn to Him, even the most debased. Thus reckoning God as the centre, the law of loving service and self-abnegation becomes the law of your life. And you will do the best for yourself intellectually and morally when you give yourself to the service of God, in the service of your fellow-men. Thus living, the feverish strain will be taken out of the hot, panting rivalries of life. The success of all good and true men will be your success. And if the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, possess your souls, failure for you will be impossible. The very effort for others’ welfare and for the defence of righteousness, which may exhaust your vital powers, will assure your deathless victory, your true success. M. E. Gates.

Verse 11. He hath made everything beautiful.

Mr. Darwin asks us to believe that the beautiful adaptations in nature are not in the least due to design, but to the slow operations and decisions of natural selection, if indeed there can be decision without design. The very colors which man most admires are, according to this school of theorists, in no way representative of purpose. That the sky is blue and not scarlet, that the leaves of the landscape are not yellow and the soil not crimson, are the chance evolutions of this mysterious something, which has neither intelligence nor beginning of days. The mere suggestion that all this wealth of beauty in varied colors, and proportion in form, and gracefulness of movement, and the tint of the atmosphere, are in any respect an end and not accidental, Mr. Darwin resentfully rejects. They are with him no part of a plan, nor are they intended to please. It is really difficult to believe in the possibility of such convictions as are seriously asserted. “Some naturalists,” he says, “believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of men, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory.” It comes to this, that the theory which we are asked to accept instead of that record in the first chapter of Genesis is one which gives beauty without an end, laws without an author, works without a maker, and co-ordination without design. He excludes from creation the idea of intended beauty. Man’s history began, he knows not how, millions of millions of years ago, in that first germ of life out of which have been developed all plants and animals, by those processes, complicated and undefinable, which transpired, until, at last, he rose on the theatre of life, its crown and glory, “fearfully made” in body and still more mysteriously framed in spirit. With what majestic comprehensiveness and precision must natural selection have guided all processes and struggles, when the lowest lichen or simplest spore has risen to be the apple-tree, the peach, the plum, the nectarine, the wheat, the thyme, and the other grains and herbs necessary for man just before he came; with what precision have the lowest worms risen to be the fishes, the birds, and the quadrupeds he most needed; and with what astonishing parallel exactness have the chemical processes kept pace with all other movements in earth, and sea, and sky, when, in the use of the soil, in the structure of plants, in their form, in their foliage, in their flowers, there issued at last the distribution of those very forms and colors which not only most conduce to man’s comfort, but most gratify his taste! In separate spheres and without connection; in the inorganic masses of the globe; in plant and animal life; in the atmosphere and in the heavens; through long, fulfil, imperfect, and frequently unfinished processes, natural selection has thus been at work, and without a purpose, or design, or end in any shape, has given to the world its present wondrous structure, and to all life its present subtle characters! Does not this whole theory draw excessively on our imagination, and raise difficulties incomparably greater than all those which rationalism has conjured up against the miracles of the Bible? W. Fraser.

Order is heaven’s first law, and the second is like unto it, that everything serves an end. This is the sum of all science. These are the two mites, even all that she hath, which she throws into the treasury of the Lord; and as she does so in faith, Eternal Wisdom looks on and commends the deed. M’Cosh.

Verse 11. Eternity in their heart. V. 21. The spirit goeth upward.

The conception of our own immortality, the thought that the present is to us but a part and the beginning of the endless, is incomparably the most stupendous and quickening thought that pertains to our conscious experience. Immortality in us, eternity to be experienced by us, immortality already begun, only to be fully taken on in the world to come, eternity already entered upon, only to be fully realized when time’s brief term is finished—this is the grand fact that broods over us, vast as the firmament above, as we, unmindful, unlooking, work on beneath. Realized ever so imperfectly, the fact of immortality clothes all truth with sublimity, and invests it with power. It compels the conviction of God Himself as a reality, and gives to His revealed character and sovereignty their sublime force over our souls. It is the imbedded sense of immortality that imparts vividness and energy to every Divine motive and influence, that makes the Word of God convincing to the understanding, constraining to the conscience and the heart, and directive to the will. It is the knowledge of immortality that suggests the only solution to the apparent incompleteness of present events and issues—that explains existing mysteries, that fills out and makes coherent man’s earthly life as a plan of God, symmetric, harmonious, and perfect. It is the fact of immortality that reveals the true uses and worth of time, and that gives it intense meaning and solemnity. From this consciously underlying fact probation derives its immeasurable significance, death borrows its dread or hope, and the coming of the Son of man to judgment impresses its tremendous power of motive. Probation ends, and death stands in the gateway of eternity, and there the judgment establishes a forever unchangeable character and state of the soul. Thus everything connected with our life bears upon eternity. Every event, every experience, every act of our mortal being, every influence we receive, every motive we feel, from the providence, the Word, and the Spirit of God, takes its meaning, derives its worth and force from the fact of our immortality. And to the observant, thoughtful, reverent mind all presage and affirm in distinct, solemn tone, “This mortal must put on immortality!” B.