Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong.
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
^ If you came across a piece of gold reef in the midst of a peat bog you could do no other than infer that it had been iDrought there by some ancient flood from some great system to which it truly belonged, or else that down beneath the blackness and ooze of the peat bog there lay a solid stratum wholly different in quality and worth. Or again, if, as is the case in some parts of the world, you saw a valley watered and made fertile by a stream that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth, you would want to know where the reservoir was from which that stream got its volume. It is not otherwise with the heart of man. Eight in the midst of the sombre ugliness of our common life lies the gold-
1 A. Campbell Eraser, Biographia Philosojihica, 259. PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 24
370 ETERNITY IN THE HEART
bearing rock which tells of a nobler origin for the soul, and of a stratum of being in which there is nothing of the blackness and the slime of evil. And in the valley of our cumulative ex- perience, wherein so much that is gracious and beautiful springs and grows, watered by the flowing crystal river of spiritual ideals and aspirations that rises unceasingly from the mysterious deeps of our being, surely there is that which tells of our eternal home. It is in our heart because God has put it there, and because it is the fundamental fact, the most essential fact, of our strangely complex nature.^
^ Tennyson has drawn a wonderful picture of a man of noble nature who has been led captive by lust. He knows the right and admires it. His soul has been filled with aspirations after it. But this one sin has crept slily in and made its home in his heart ; it has fascinated and mastered him, so that he cannot shake it off. Sometimes his better nature rises up ; he tries to break his chains — he fancies himself free ; but the next time the temptation faces him he lays down his arms, and is willingly made captive. Though his passion is gratified he has no peace. The very nobility of that nature which is now degraded only makes his misery the greater. The fact that he knows the right so well, and yet, somehow, cannot be man enough to do it, makes his life at times intolerable.
Another sinning on such heights with one, The flower of all the west and all the world, Had been the sleeker for it; but in him His mood was often like a fiend, and rose And drove him into wastes and solitudes For agony, who was yet a living soul.
Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made Full many a holy vow and pure resolve. These, as but born of sickness, could not live.
"I needs must break These bonds that so defame me; not without She wills it. Would I, if she willed it ? nay Who knows? but if I would not, then may God I pray Him, send a sudden Angel down To seize me by the hair and bear me far, And fling me deep in that forgotten mere. Among the tumbled fragments of the hills."
» E. J. Campbell.
ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 371
Such is man as we fiud him. He sits down in this poor, sinful world and, gathering everything he can reach around him, he tries to be content. But there is enough of God and eternity within him to confound him and make him miserable.^
3. God has set eternity in the spiritual outreaching of man. — Man is by nature a worshipping creature. He cannot help stretching forth his hands towards the heavens, and seeking communion with the everlasting invisible Power which is felt to dwell there. He cannot rest in temporal companionship and in the interests of time and place. His spirit summons him to unknown heights and bids him wistfully wait at the gates of eternal glory.
^ When Shelley sought to dethrone and deny God, he was fain to set up in His stead an eternal Power which he called the Spirit of Nature. To this his spirit went pathetically out in earnest longing, and to this he rendered a homage indistinguish- able from worship. God had set eternity in Shelley's heart, and he could not escape from the impulses of worship in his own spirit. The spirit of man, even when encompassed with much darkness of ignorance, must still stand
Upon the world's great altar stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God.^
III.
The Tyranny of Circumstances.
" 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."
1. 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. So between him and his dwelling- 1 W. Park. * J. Thomas, Th« Mysteries of Grace, 251.