II.
The Capacity for the Infinite.
" He hath set eternity in their heart."
The doctrine of immortality does not seem to be stated in the Book of Ecclesiastes, except in one or two very doubtful expres- sions. And it is more in accordance with its whole tone to suppose the Preacher here to be asserting, not that the heart or spirit is immortal, but that, whether it is or not, in the heart is planted the thought, the consciousness of eternity — and the longing after it.
We differ from all around us in this perishable world in that God hath set eternity in our hearts. All creation around us is satisfied with its sustenance, we alone have a thirst and a hunger for which the circumstances of our life have no meat and drink. In the burning noonday of life's labour man sits — as the Son of Man once sat — by well-sides weary, and while other creatures can slake their thirst with that, he needs a living water ; while other creatures go into cities to buy meat, he has need of and finds a sustenance that they know not of.
^ D. Swing. * Brooke Herford, Anchors of (he Soul, 261.
368 ETERNITY IN THE HEART
^ It is said that Napoleon was asked to suggest the subject for a historical picture that would perpetuate his name, and he asked how long the picture would last. He was told that under favourable conditions it might last five hundred years. But that would not satisfy him ; he craved for a more enduring memorial. It was suggested that the sculptor might take the place of the painter, and genius might come nearer to conferring immortality. Now what was the meaning of that ambitious craving ? It was a perverted instinct ; it was a solemn and impressive testimony to the fact that God has set eternity in man's heart. That demand for earthly immortality was but the echo — the hollow, mocking echo — of the voice of eternity in the great conqueror's soul.^
1. God has set the eternal in the mind of man. — It is the essential nature of thought to move out into the boundless, and to overleap all limitations of time and space. This seems to be precisely the meaning of the Preacher in the text. "Also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end." The eternal in the mind of man is a movement, not a fulfilment. He cannot comprehend the boundless, and yet he must for ever feel the dynamic of it. He is bound on an endless quest because he is, on the one hand, a finite creature, and because, on the other hand, God has set eternity in his heart.
^ I had been attracted by Whewell's essay on " The Plurality of Worlds," where it is argued that our planet is probably the only world in existence that is occupied by intelligent and morally responsible persons ; the stars of heaven being a material panorama existing only for the sake of the human inhabitants of one small globe. This paradox, we are to-day told, is fully fortified by " scientific proof " that the earth is mathematically placed in the centre of the limited portion of space which, according to the theorist, contains the whole material world. And all this is taken as an apology for the faith that a Divine incarnation has been realized upon this apparently insignificant planet, for the sake of persons otherwise unfit occasions of the stupendous transaction. But I do not see how science can put a limit to the space occupied by suns and their planetary systems, or how the universe can be proved to have any boundary, within a space whose circumference must be nowhere and its centre everywhere ; or even a limit within time, in its unbeginning and unending
* A. Jenkinsoii, A Modem Disciple, 40,
ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 369
duration. It seems a poor theistic conception to suppose God incapable of incarnation in man, unless this planet were thus unique in space and time. With the infinite fund of Omnipotent and Omniscient Goodness, what need to exaggerate the place of man, in order to justify his recognition, even according to the full economy of the Christian revelation ? ^
2. God has set eternity in the moral nature of man. — This was what the philosopher Kant felt when he affirmed that the con- templation of the moral imperative filled him with awe, and with a sense of the sublime like that with which he looked upon the starry heavens. The moral law of which man is conscious, and by which he knows himself bound, belongs to the eternal order of things. In bestowing upon man the stupendous obligation of the moral consciousness, God has set eternity in his heart. Ill- success has attended the foolish attempt to deduce the majesties of the moral law from an accumulation of temporal experiences. A poor, little, broken code can be made out of the ingenious manipulation of man's interests and pleasures, and some lingering sentiments may be tortured out of forced theories of evolution. But the simple majesty of the moral imperative and the incom- parable sublimity of moral truth bear a stamp which is known only in the heavenly places. The simple explanation is all- sufficing and manifestly true ; the Lord proclaimed His law from heaven.