Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made every thing beautiful in his time: also he has set the world in their heart… What meaning, what dignity, what surpassing hope and fear should lie in this — that God hath set eternity in your heart! I. IT OUGHT TO CALM YOU. Recall the days of the past week — its toils, anxieties and cares, vexations and disappointments — how did you bear yourself with them? Were you despondent, did you lose self-control, did your blood boil to fever-heat, and were you rebellious? Do you think that such would have been the manner of your lille if you had turned your eyes inwardly, and quietly faced that Guest with the unfathomable eyes and awe-inspiring grace — Eternity? Get more intercourse with that awful yet august Guest in your soul — Eternity — it will keep you calm in hours when you would be otherwise grasping at the bolts of Jove. II. IT OUGHT TO INSPIRE YOU. What an impression it should make on mind and heart, when we express in words the destiny which belongs to us all, "I am to live for ever!" The realization of this tremendous thought should give amplitude, probity, strength, and gentleness to our lives — liberate them from ascendancy of petty aims and the discomposedness of trifling worries — expose the immeasurable folly of letting ourselves drift under impulses of irresponsible opinion and unregulated passion; relax the destructive pressure of materialistic thought and secularistic care, and fasten us indissolubly to Him, whose fortress shall survive the crash of worlds, and whose glory shall be the inconceivable felicity of the faithful and triumphant. III. IT OUGHT TO ENNOBLE YOU. Man is, let us say, made up of body and spirit. But there are persons who live in the body only; they do not live in the spirit, and, according to the Bible, that is not living, it is death. Man cannot live with any nobleness unless those high energies are at work whose impetus is originated by the presence in his heart of eternity. (D. B. Williams.) 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. |
    |