Homilist Ecclesiastes 3:15 That which has been is now; and that which is to be has already been; and God requires that which is past. We say in popular language of a departed year, that it is gone. But in truth it is not gone. Nothing in it is lost — lost to itself, to the universe, or to any who have lived through it. "God requireth that which is past." I. The law of MEMORY shows that God requires the past. All that ever hath been, so far as humanity is concerned, is now living in the memory of all the individual men that ever lived. Memory has now its resurrections. Scarcely an hour departs, in which some grave does not open, and the ghost of some long-buried event does not start up to life. As ocean prints her undulations on the shore, memory prints our actions and events on the soul — a tablet, this, not, however, like sand; but like eternal adamant. II. The law of moral CAUSATION shows that God requires the past. There is nothing living on which you can fix your eyes that is not to-day the effect of all the causes and influences that have been operating on it from the beginning of its existence. This is true of the globe itself. Its condition to-day is the result of all the forces that have been acting upon it through the most distant periods of geological calculation. This is true of the intellect. The state of my intellect at this hour is the result of all the thoughts that have over coursed their way through my soul. This law holds true in relation to character, Nothing that man does ever dies: no act terminates in itself, it makes an everlasting impression, it becomes an element in the moral existence of its author, it sends its vibrations along the lines of the endless future. III. The law of CONSCIENCE shows that God requires the past. Conscience, both in the savage and the sage, foreshadows the scene of coming retribution. It had heard the trumpet blast; it has seen the Judge enthroned, the prisoner arraigned, the books opened, the witnesses examined; has heard the sentence pronounced. and marked the final delivery of the culprit into the everlasting custody of justice. The structure of the human eye does not more clearly imply the existence of light, than the forebodings of a guilty conscience the existence of future retribution. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. |
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