Ecclesiastes 1:4

Ecclesiastes 1:4

It is the manifest intention of the Divine Spirit, as shown in the sacred writings, that we should be taught to find emblems in the world we are placed in to enforce solemn instruction upon us.

I. The character of permanence in objects we behold may admonish us of the brevity of our mortal life. In a solitary or contemplative state of the mind the permanent objects give the impression as if they rejected and scorned all connection with our transitory existence; as if we were accounted but as shadows passing over them; as if they stood there but to tell us what a short day is allotted to us on earth. They strike the thoughtful beholder with a character of gloomy and sublime dissociation and estrangement from him.

II. The great general instruction from this is, How little hold, how little absolute occupancy, we have of this world! When all the scene is evidently fixed to remain, we are under the compulsion to go. We have nothing to do with it but as passing from it. Men may strive to cling, to seize a firm possession, to make good their establishment, resolve and vow that the world shall be theirs; but it disowns them, stands aloof: it will stay, but they must go.

III. But should not the final lesson be that the only essential good that can be gained from the world is that which can be carried away from it? Alas that mere sojourners should be mainly intent on obtaining that which they must leave, when their inquisitive glance over the scene should be after any good that may go with them something that is infixed in the soil, the rocks, or the walls!

J. Foster, Lectures,2nd series, p. 117.

Reference: Ecclesiastes 1:4. J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 484.