Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes 3:11

The word rendered "world" is a very frequent one in the Old Testament, and never has but one meaning; and that meaning is eternity. "He hath set eternity in their heart." Here are two antagonistic facts. There are transient things, a vicissitude which moves within natural limits, temporary events which are beautiful in their season; but there is also the contrasted fact that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some great battledore, wielded by giant powers in mockery, from one changing thing to another, has relations to something more lasting than the transient. He lives in a world of fleeting change, but he has "eternity" in his heart.

I. Consider eternity set in every human heart. This may be either a declaration of the immortality of the soul, or it may mean, as I rather suppose it to do, the consciousness of eternity which is part of human nature. We are the only beings on this earth who can think the thought, or speak the word, eternity. Other creatures are happy while immersed in time; we have another nature, and are undisturbed by a thought which shines high above the roaring sea of circumstance in which we float. The thought is in us all, a presentiment and a consciousness; and that universal presentiment itself goes far to establish the reality of the unseen order of things to which it is directed. By the make of our spirits, by the possibilities that dawn dim before us, by the thoughts "whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality " by all these and a thousand other signs and facts in every human life, we say, "God has set eternity in their hearts."

II. The disproportion between this our nature and the world in which we dwell. Man, with eternity in his heart, with the hunger in his spirit after an unchanging whole, an absolute good, an ideal perfectness, an immortal being, is condemned to the treadmill of transitory revolution. "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof." It is limited; it is changeful; it slips from under us as we stand upon it: and therefore mystery and perplexity stoop down upon the providence of God, and misery and loneliness enter into the heart of man. These changeful things they do not meet our ideal; they do not satisfy our wants; they do not last even our duration.

III. These thoughts lead us to consider the possible satisfying of our souls. The Preacher in his day learned that it was possible to satisfy the hunger for eternity, which had once seemed to him a questionable blessing. He learned that it was a loving Providence which had made man's home so little fit for him, that he might seek "the city which hath foundations." And we, who have a further word from God, may have a fuller and yet more blessed conviction, built upon our own happy experience, if we choose, that it is possible for us to have that deep thirst slaked, that longing appeased. Love Christ, and then the eternity in the heart will not be a great aching void, but will be filled with the everlasting life which Christ gives and is.

A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, 3rd series, p. 209.

References: Ecclesiastes 3:11 . Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 426; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, 1st series, p. 38; W. Park, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 259; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 184.