Eternity in the Heart
J. H. Jowett, M. A. Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made every thing beautiful in his time: also he has set the world in their heart… "He hath set eternity in their heart." Then perhaps if we look carefully we may find it. I look into the primitive heart of man, into the childlike and unsophisticated heart. What do I find? Do I find any traces of eternity? I find an instinct, which, being interpreted, seems to say: "I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my home." "Here we have no continuing city; we seek one to come." "I nightly pitch my moving tent a day's march nearer home." In the heart of man, in Christendom and in savagedom, there is an instinct that time is not our home, that here we are only in tents, that here we sojourn, but do not abide, and the instinct is not born of fear nor of selfishness: the explanation is in my text, "God hath set eternity" in our hearts. Have we any further evidences of this implanting of eternity within us? When I go into my heart and listen, I hear a voice saying to me: "This thou must do; this thou must not do." The voice does not speak in mere suggestion, offering friendly counsel. It speaks like a monarch in tones of command. It tells me that all things are not of one moral colour. Some things are morally black and some morally white, and I have to observe the distinction. Of the black, the voice says: "Thou must not." Of the white, which it calls the right, the voice says: "Thou must!" I ask my fellow-man if he hears the same voice, and he answers: "Yes, it speaks to me." I find that the voice speaks in every life. What is the voice? We call it conscience. But conscience has no birth in time. All the temporal explanations which have been attempted are painfully inadequate and futile. "The voice of the Great Eternal speaks in that mighty tone." That secret voice which speaks to us of the eternal distinction between right and wrong finds its explanation in my text: "God hath set eternity in their hearts." Can we find any further evidence? Look again into the heart of man. May we not say that in every heart there is a strange feeling after God? I know it may be numbed and blunted, but I don't think it can be altogether destroyed. Let me try to illustrate this. You know that hydrogen gas is considerably lighter than the atmosphere that is round about us. When you fill a substance with the gas, say the silk that forms a balloon, it seeks to rise above the heavier atmosphere around, just as a cork rises through water and rests upon its surface. The lighter element tugs and tugs, and seeks to get away into the finer and rarer regions above. Well, it seems as though our God had put into the make-up of a human being ethereal elements, spiritual longings and hungers, which seek to rise above the grossness of flesh and Lime, to find their home in purer regions beyond. A light gas must reach an atmosphere of its own rarity before it can be at rest. And these ethereal, spiritual elements within us, these implanted feelings, must rise into their own appropriate atmosphere, into communion with the great Spirit, before they can be at rest. Meanwhile, they tug at us, and we have all felt their tuggings! We have felt some good impulse tugging at us, tugging in the direction of God. When we have been walking with open eyes into gross and deliberate sin, we have felt the tugging of the lighter element within us, the spiritual feeling, seeking to lift us out of our grossness nearer to God. Call it by what name you will, there is something in every heart which makes for God, and will never be satisfied until it gets there. God has put a mouth in our hearts, a spiritual hunger, that He may draw us to seek satisfaction and rest where alone it can be found, in the presence and communion of the Eternal Spirit. "He has put eternity in their heart." Now what are the consequences of this implanting? If eternity has been set within us as part of our very being, what must surely follow? The Eternal within us seeks the Eternal, and nothing but the Eternal will feed it. That mouth in the heart, that hunger of the spirit, can only be fed with one kind of bread, and that the Bread of Life. Now, what kind of efforts are men making to satisfy the eternity in their heart? Along what particular lines are they searching for bread? There was a book published some three or four years ago of extraordinary literary brilliancy and power. It speedily passed into many editions, it was "most favourably reviewed, and appeared to make a great impression upon all who read it. I want to read you two or three lines from the preface, in which the author sums up the whole burden of the counsel which he desires to give to his countrymen: "Stick to your work, and when your day is done, amuse and refresh yourselves." And he adds in the next sentence that "this is wholesome doctrine." Wholesome doctrine! What are its ingredients? Two things — labour and pleasure. Follow those two and you are all right. But what about the eternity in my heart? I am not unmindful that labour is a glorious means of grace. A man can get rid of many a vicious humour by applying himself to work. But work may be altogether atheistic or temporal, and work that is atheistic or altogether temporal will leave a man full of hunger; it will not feed the eternity that God has set in his heart. If our work is to feed the eternity within us, the thought of the Eternal must be in our work. As it is with work so it is with pleasure. Pleasure of itself cannot feed the soul, but gaiety often goes hand in hand with spiritual leanness. If you take a low thought with you, then the pleasure which gratifies your body will starve your soul. But if you take into your pleasure the thought of the Eternal, then your pleasure is transformed into a soul-feeding joy. The thought of the Eternal in your pleasure feeds the eternity in your heart, but without that thought a life of gaiety is a life of emptiness, and will leave you at last with "leanness for your soul," and with the mouth in your heart still hungering for the bread which has been so long denied. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. WEB: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can't find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.