Ecclesiastes 2:11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had worked, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold… Consider the vanity of the present state of being, considered as our only state. Suppose, first, that a decree were to go forth perpetuating your present condition — pronouncing that you should remain eternally just as you are now. How would you receive such a decree? Is there one of you who would be willing to stop the wheel of fortune now and for ever? If you will look into your own hearts you will find that you are living more in the future than in the present, more in your plans than in your possessions,. — that you depend more on what you think that you are laying up for time to come than on any means of enjoyment actually in hand. But what will this future on which you are building bring to you? Incompleteness, vexation, disappointment, bereavement, sorrow. Few of your blossoms will ripen into fruit; few of your plans will be realized; very little of what you now clearly see in the future will shape itself as you see it. The farther you go on in life, the more blighted hopes will lie behind you, the more vacant places will there be in the circle of your kindred and friendship, the more will there be in your outward condition to make you feel that there is no rest or home for you on this side of the grave. Again, if you would look into your hearts, in the gayest and most gladsome moments of earthly enjoyment, you will perceive much of this same emptiness and vanity. Who has not at such times been conscious, as it were, of a double self, of an uneasiness in the midst of gratification, of a restless feeling in the very fulness of seeming joy, of a voice that whispers, "Up and be doing," while many voices bid us stay, and drown all other thoughts in the scene before ha? But though at these seasons such thoughts will come over us, we crowd them out. There are, however, times when they are forced upon us, and we cannot expel them. There are times of sudden and overwhelming grief, when calamity breaks in upon us like a swift flood, and seems to wash away the very ground on which we stand — that earth's fairest mansions are but whited sepulchres, her choicest fruit but dust and ashes. We are then conscious of the frailty of what remains to us, no less than of what has been taken from us, and can say from the heart that there is nothing here below on which we can place the least dependence, — nothing which we dare to love as we have loved, or to trust as we have trusted. Then, were it not for the words of eternal life, we could say in intense anguish, — "All is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no profit under the sun." But after all, though we walk in a vain show, there is enjoyment in life, — in our mere earthly life. Yet from what does it flow? Not from the ever-changing scene, not from the winter-frozen and summer-dried fountains around us, but from the unchanging love of God, the bow of whose promise remains fixed over the stream of time and the waves of unceasing vicissitude. He who gives the ravens their food feeds also His human children, and by filling all things with His love makes us happy. And, blessed be God, there is that in life which is not vanity or vexation. The outer man may perish, the desire of eyes and the pride of life may fail; but the signature of God's spirit on the inner man time cannot efface, or the waves of death wash away. The soul, character, virtue, piety, remain, amidst the reverses of fortune, the desolation of our households, the wasting of disease, and the thunder-blast of death. (A. P. Peabody.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. |
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