We can see, therefore, what a powerful antidote to this temper would be furnished by the truth of a righteous judgment. Once lodge firmly the truth that men are moving on through all the hard and bitter and unjust conditions of their time to a supreme tribunal, and you have made it impossible to believe that the world is lawless. A final judgment implies a law; and a law implies a lawgiver, and an authority to administer and vindicate the law. Thus the truth carries with it both comfort and obliga- tion. There is a Divine order in the world ; we are not finally at the mercy of chance or of men's caprice : the order will vindi- cate itself in time, and with itself will vindicate those who hold by it. So long as there is judgment, wrong is not eternal, and retribution is a fact. Therefore, it is better to do right, notwith- standing the "oppressor's wrong and the proud man's con- tumely." One can afford to be cheerful, even amid oppressions and troubles like these, if the time is short and a day is coming in which wrong shall be righted and worth acknowledged and fidelity rewarded.
^ A great German thinker has it, in reference to the history of nations, that the history of the world is the judgment of the world ; and although that is not true if it is a denial of a day of final judgment, it is true in a very profound and solemn sense with regard to the daily life of every man, that, whether there
ECCLESIASTES xi. 9 417
be a judgment-seat beyond the grave or not, and whether this Preacher knew anything about that or not, there is going on through the whole of a man's life, and evolving itself, this solemn conviction that we are to pass away from this present life. All our days are knit together as one whole. Yesterday is the parent of to-day, and to-day is the parent of all the to- morrows. The meaning and the deepest consequence of man's life is that no feeling, no thought that flits across the mirror of his life and heart dies utterly, leaving nothing behind it. But rather the metaphor of the Apostle is the true one, " That which thou sowest that shalt thou also reap." ^
4. The teaching of this Old Testament sage needs to be supplemented by later revelation. He has made us indeed realize the essential soundness of life. He has given us a clear vision of its dignity and worth. He has made us feel that life is to be received with joy, and pursued with enthusiasm and courageous zeal. He has led us to the conviction that God's approval is upon His own work, and upon the zest and joy with which men undertake that work. But he lacked what the men of the Old World lacked before the keels of Columbus's caravels grazed the shore of the New — viz., knowledge that the New World is here. He lacked what men lacked whose sky was a firmament and whose stars brightly studded that solid dome ; he lacked the sense of the open sky, the myriad vastness of the world of stars, the sense of a universe fulfilling itself in an eternity of years. Had this lack and limitation been absent, it is more than likely that he would not have written his closing chapter with the melancholy description of the breaking-down of life. He might have written instead in the spirit of Eabbi Ben Ezra :
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned. Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all nor be afraid ! "
^ As Jean Paul says : " We desire virtue, not as the reward of virtue, but as its continuance. Virtue can no more be rewarded than joy can ; it is its own reward." And so sings Tennyson,
^ A. Maclaren. PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 27
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4i8 AFTER THAT THE JUDGMENT
turning the vision of the great German to music in one of his own deathless lyrics :
Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea- Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong — Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.
The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly ?
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
Timely Remembrance.
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Literature.
Bevan (S. P.), Talks to Girls and Boys, 153. Blunt (J. J.), Plain Sermons, i. 424. Brown (J. B.), Our Morals and Manners, 49. Cooper (A. A.), God^s Forget- Me-Not, 1. Gar\'ie (A. E.), A Course of Bible Study for Adolescents, 115. Hamilton (J.), The Royal Preacher, 215 (Works, iii. 207). Jowett (B.), College Sermons, 1. Macaskill (M.), A Highland Pulpit, 146. Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 391. Macmillan (H.), The Daisies of Nazareth, 68. Reid (J.), The Uplifting of Life, 214. Shrewsbury (H. W.), Little Lumps of Clay, 67. Simcoi (W. H.), The Cessation of Prophecy, 201. Whitefield (G.), Sermons, 143. Woodward (H.), Sermons, 399, Cambridge Review, iv. Supplement No. 81.