Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

The Quest obstructed by Divine Ordinances.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

The time of birth, for instance, and the time of death, are ordained by a Power over which men have no control; they begin to be, and they cease to be, at hours whose stroke they can neither hasten nor retard. The season for sowing and the season for reaping are fixed with any reference to their wish; they must plant and gather in when the unchangeable laws of nature will permit (Ecclesiastes 3:2). Even those violent deaths, and those narrow escapes from death, which seem most purely fortuitous, are predetermined; as are also the accidents which befall our abodes (Ecclesiastes 3:3). So, again, if only because determined by these accidents, are the feelings with which we regard them, our weeping and our laughter, our mourning and our rejoicing (Ecclesiastes 3:4). If we only clear a plot of ground from stones in order that we may cultivate it, or that we may fence it in with a wall; or if an enemy cast stones over our arable land to unfit it for uses of husbandry-a malignant act frequent in the East-and we have painfully to gather them out again: even this, which seems so purely within the scope of human free will, is also within the scope of the Divine decrees-as are the very embraces we bestow on those dear to us, or withhold from them (Ecclesiastes 3:5). The varying and unstable desires which prompt us to seek this object or that as earnestly as we afterwards carelessly cast it away, and the passions which impel us to rend our garments over our losses, and by and by to sew up the rents not without some little wonder that we should ever have been so deeply moved by that which now sits so lightly on us; these passions and desires, which at one time strike us dumb with grief and so soon after make us voluble with joy, with all our fleeting and easily-moved hates and loves, strifes and reconciliations, move within the circle of law, although they wear so lawless a look, and are obsequious to the fixed canons of Heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:6). They travel their cycles; they return in their appointed order. The uniformity of nature is reproduced in the uniform recurrence of the chances and changes of human life; for in this, as in that, God repeats Himself, recalling the past (Ecclesiastes 3:15). The thing that is is that which hath been, and that which will be. Social laws are as constant and as inflexible as natural laws. The social generalisations of modern science-as given, for instance, in Buckle's "History"-are but a methodical elaboration of the conclusion at which the Preacher here arrives.

Of what use, then, was it for men to "kick against the goads," to attempt to modify immutable ordinances? "Whatever God hath ordained continueth forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it" (Ecclesiastes 3:14). Nay, why should we care to alter or modify the social order? Everything is beautiful and appropriate in its season, from birth to death, from war to peace (Ecclesiastes 3:11). If we cannot find the satisfying Good in the events and affairs of life, that is not because we could devise a happier order for them, but because "God hath put eternity into our hearts" as well as time, and did not intend that we should be satisfied till we attain an eternal good. If only we "understood" that, if only we recognised God's design for us "from beginning to end," and suffered eternity no less than time to have its due of us, we should not fret ourselves in vain endeavours to change the unchangeable, or to find an enduring good in that which is fugitive and perishable. We should rejoice and do ourselves good all our brief life (Ecclesiastes 3:12); we should eat and drink and take pleasure in our labours (Ecclesiastes 3:13); we should feel that this faculty for innocently enjoying simple pleasures and wholesome toils is "a gift of God": we should conclude that God had ordained that regular cycle and order of events which so often forestalls the wish and endeavour of the moment, in order that we should fear Him in place of relying on ourselves (Ecclesiastes 3:14), and trust our future to Him who so wisely and graciously recalls the past.