Ecclesiastes 7:14

Ecclesiastes 7:14

The wise Preacher is speaking here of the right use of the changeful phenomena and conditions of man's life on earth. God sets prosperity over against adversity, and He does this that man should find nothing after Him; that is, that the future should remain hid from man, so that he can at no time count upon it, but must ever wait upon God, the supreme Disposer of all things, and trust in Him alone. The principle here involved pervades the Divine administration, and receives numerous exemplifications even within the sphere of our observation.

I. Notice, first, the analogies which subsist between the natural and the spiritual world as a setting on a large scale of one thing over against another. How much the natural world may be employed to illustrate the world within, how much nature may be made in this way the handmaid of religion, and how much the facts of secular life may be transformed into lessons of high moral and spiritual truth, every attentive reader of the Bible must have seen.

II. As a second illustration of the Divine operation suggested in the text may be mentioned the antagonisms by means of which the administration of sublunary affairs is carried on. Experience amply shows us that it is only by the balance of conflicting interests and powers that the social machine can be made to work easily and beneficially to all. It is under the same great law that God has placed the moral discipline of our race, for it is through the antagonism of joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, life and death, that the perfection of the individual and of the race is to be reached.

III. A third illustration is furnished by the compensations which we find in the world around us, and in God's dealings with us.

IV. Another set of illustrations is supplied by the relations which God has made us sustain to each other in family and social life. Of these relations the great principle is reciprocity. In all the relations of life God has set one thing over against another; and it is only as this is recognised, and the reciprocal duties thence arising are faithfully discharged, that the arrangement becomes a source of benefit to men.

W. Lindsay Alexander, Sermons,p. 215.

References: Ecclesiastes 7:14. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 20; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,8th series, pp. 68, 74, and 7th series, p. 96; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 302; S. Cox, An Expositor's Notebook,p. 171.Ecclesiastes 7:15. T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes,p. 165.