Ecclesiastes 9:4

Ecclesiastes 9:4

The lesson of the Preacher is an old one. While there is life there is hope, and only while there is life. Let us be up and doing, for the night cometh, in which no man can work. Our actual opportunities, small and trifling though they may seem, are, simply because they are still in our power, infinitely more valuable than even the greatest and noblest when once these have slipped from our grasp for ever. Consider the truth that in all things admitting of the distinction, things that can be said to be living and to be dead, it is life which gives the value, it is the earnestness and truth which underlie all real vital power that alone give significance and redeem from worthlessness; and that unless the angel be there to stir the waters, even the pool of Bethesda is but a stagnant pool, powerless and disappointing. It is thus both in nature and also in man, in the outer world which attracts and engages the senses and in the inner world of soul and spirit. It is the fresh life in both that we value, and justly.

I. The acquisition of knowledge who that has not learnt it by experience can conceive its seductive charm for the student? Those misers of knowledge who have so devoted themselves to acquire that they have never learnt how to impart, nor even to arrange their own treasures for use, are but as children in comparison with those who in the cultivation of their intellect have never forgotten that, as living men, they must cultivate also the power of communicating their living thought to others. The fresh life is there, and men acknowledge its value.

II. Even so is it with preaching. If a man will speak to my heart, he must not content himself with old forms of thought, however sacred, and the repetition of familiar, uncontested truths, however solemn. Let the preacher bring forth from his treasure-house things new as well as old.

III. So, too, is it, remarkably, with prayer. What the stricken heart requires is not merely the general prayer, however noble and solemn in itself, but that the soul of him that prays shall come forth to meet its own, shall throw itself into its feelings, and with fresh prayer prayer fresh from the living fountain of the heart shall ascend in few but earnest words to the throne of all grace.

IV. Is it not thus also in the world of thought and of opinion? If the tree of knowledge is to live, must we not expect that in time what is dead must be pushed off by living growth? Let us cling to that which is living and true, though only so long as its life and truth continue.

T. H. Steel, Sermons in Harrow Chapel,p. 144.

References: Ecclesiastes 9:4. A. J. Bray, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 17; F. Hastings, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 107. Ecclesiastes 9:7. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 312.