Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

Ecclesiastes 1:2

I. This passage is the preamble to the book; it ushers us at once into its realms of dreariness. It is as if he said, "It is all a weary go-round. There are no novelties, no wonders, no discoveries. The present only repeats the past; the future will repeat them both." From such vexing thoughts may we not escape by taking refuge in one permanence and one variety to which the royal Preacher does not here advert? I mean the soul's immortality and the renewed soul's perpetual rejuvenescence, that attribute of mind which makes it the survivor of all changes, and that faculty of regenerate humanity which renders old things new and suffuses with perpetual freshness things the most familiar.

II. If the immortality of material forms is only that which they achieve through the immortality of the human soul, and if the true glorification of matter is its sanctifying influence on regenerate mind, we may learn two lessons from our argument. (1) There is no harm in a vivid susceptibility to those material appearances and influences with which God has replenished the universe. (2) But that susceptibility is good for nothing if it be not sanctifying. There is an idolatry of nature. There are some whose god is the visible creation, and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher,Lecture IV.

References: Ecclesiastes 1:2. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons,p. 22; T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes,p. 27; G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes,p. 29.