Ecclesiastes 12:7

Ecclesiastes 12:7

I. Nothing is more difficult than to realise that every man has a distinct soul, that every one of all the millions who live or have lived is as whole and independent a being in himself as if there were no one else in the whole world but he. We class men in masses, as we might connect the stones of a building. Survey some populous town; crowds are pouring through the streets; every part of it is full of life. Hence we gain a general idea of splendour, magnificence, opulence, and energy. But what is the truth? Why, that every being in that great concourse is his own centre, and all things about him are but shades, but a "vain shadow," in which he walketh and disquieteth himself in vain. He has his own hopes and fears, desires, judgments, and aim; he is everything to himself, and no one else is really anything. He has a depth within him unfathomable, an infinite abyss of existence; and the scene in which he bears part for the moment is but like a gleam of sunshine upon its surface.

II. All those millions upon millions of human beings who ever trod the earth and saw the sun successively are at this very moment in existence all together. If we have once seen any child of Adam, we have seen an immortal soul. It has not passed away as a breeze or sunshine, but it lives; it lives at this moment in one of those many places, whether of bliss or misery, in which all souls are reserved unto the end.

III. Everyone of all the souls which have ever been on earth is in one of two spiritual states, so distinct from one another that the one is the subject of God's favour and the other under His wrath, the one on the way to eternal happiness, the other to eternal misery. This is true of the dead, and it is true of the living also. Endeavour then to realise that you have souls, and pray God to enable you to do so. Endeavour to disengage your thoughts and opinions from the things that are seen; look at things as God looks at them, and judge of them as He judges. There will be no need of shutting your eyes to this world when this world has vanished from you, and you have nothing before you but the throne of God and the slow but continual movements about it in preparation of the judgment. In that interval, when you are in that vast receptacle of disembodied souls, what will be your thoughts about the world which you have left? How poor will then seem to you its highest aims, how faint its keenest pleasures, compared with the eternal aims, the infinite pleasures, of which you will at length feel your souls to be capable.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons;vol. iv., p. 80.

I. These words teach that the spirit of man is from God. The body was of His will; the life was of Himself, life of life. All things that were were of God; man only in his living spirit was from God.

II. What follows from this sonship to the Almighty? What does it mean as to man's true being? (1) That God's great gift to man is reason in its highest power of exercise; that is to say, the capacity of comprehending truth. (2) This spiritualised reason is gathered up by the girdle of individuality into the union of each separate soul in which it is impersonated. And thus again is it in God's image.

III. The words of the text speak of no absorption, of no ceasing to be. They say nothing of the separate consciousness being swallowed up into universal being, as the raindrop is swallowed up in the ocean depths. No, the girdle of individuality is the likeness of God's eternity; the unity of the soul is the transcript of His own everlasting unity.

S. Wilberforce, The Pulpit,No. 2172.

References: Ecclesiastes 12:7. C. J. Vaughan, Old Testament Outlines,p. 165.Ecclesiastes 12:8. H. V. Macdona, Penny Pulpit,No. 418.