Such a tide as moving seems asleep.
Too full for sound and foam. When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.^
Call him not old, whose visionary brain
Holds o'er the past its undivided reign.
For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay.
Spring with her birds, or children with their play,
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art.
Stir the warm life-drops creeping round his heart —
Turn to the record where his years are told —
Covmt his grey hairs — they cannot make him old!"
* J. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography, 458. ' Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The Whole Duty of Man.
43*
Literature.
Brown (A. G.), Ood^s Full-Orbed Gospel, 96.
Bruce (W. S.), Our Heritage, 161.
Gamble (H. R.), The Ten Virgins, 189.
Hadden (R. H.), Sermons and Memoir, 191.
Hamilton (J.), ITie Royal Preacher, 230, 242 (Works, iii. 220, 231).
Jowett (B.), College Sermons, 183.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 402.
Parker (J.), The City Temple, iii. 10.
Plumptre (E. H.), Theology and Life, 309.
Salmon (G.), Sermons Preached in Trinity College, Dublin^ 130, 148.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xvi. (1878), No.
1064; xvii. (1879), No. 1102. Christian World Pulpit, xxx. 75 (J. M. Buckley) ; Ixxviii. 162 (W. H.
Harwood).
4S«
The Whole Duty of Man.
This is the end of the matter ; all hath been heard : fear God, and keep his commandments ; for this is the whole duty of man. — Eccles. xii. 13.
1. Of what " matter " is this the conclusion ? Ecclesiastes, in the writing of this little book, had a practical object in view. He had not indulged in any elaborate speculation ; he had not attempted to solve the riddle of the world. He had simply recorded the results of his own experience and observation ; and he had confessed himself unable to fathom the mysteries of Divine Providence. But he felt that he had a practical message for his countrymen. He had laid before them certain maxims for the guidance of their conduct. He had endeavoured to put them in the way of securing the " chief good " of life — of making the best of this present existence, with all its unsatisfying elements, and all its insoluble problems. And now, at the very end of his book, he seeks to drive the nail home, and to clinch all his exhortations by one pithy, pregnant counsel in which he sums up his practical philosophy of life.
And what is the conclusion of the Wise Man's wisdom ? " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ! " So the boy had been taught : and now the old man wonders whether it may not be, not only the heginniiig, but the end. When so much is dark, is not one path clear ? one thing plain ? Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : " Fear God, and keep his com- mandments ; for this is the whole duty of man." A life of godli- ness and virtue — this is the chief good for man. There is no better or deeper satisfaction to be found on earth than that which springs from reverencing God and keeping His commandments. This was the grand " conclusion " at which Ecclesiastes had arrived.
2. This may seem to us a very inadequate result, unworthy of a devout Israelite. It falls short of the faith of David. It is
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 28
434 THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN
still further distant from that of a believer in the gospel. We should be tempted to look on one who declared solemnly that the experience of a long life had taught him to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and the eternal law of duty as speaking the language of a heathen. For such an one we should have little hope, or even, it may be, harsh condemnation. But the blessed- ness of thus apprehending any one article of faith is, that it must needs lead on to others. The words, " Fear God, and keep his commandments," were the simplest of all precepts, and yet one who fixed his heart on them, and strove to live in them, would find himself led perpetually into new regions of truth, new convictions of sin, new forms of holiness.
^ The central peace of all is not allied with indolent quietude : the nearer to God the deeper the peace, and also the greater the necessity of eager activity. The realm is one of progress. The idea of continued progress in the Faradiso receives illustration as we note how the stages of mediaeval learning are incorporated in the imagery. The virtues are not to be learned by practice or discipline, as in the Purgatorio ; they must be effluent from graces already stored in the soul ; they must come as from a centre of spiritual force, not as an acquired habit, but as in harmony wiffh the governing impulses of the soul. But when these graces and virtues are thus possessed, more lies beyond. Then the powers of perception and apprehension are enlarged : the spirit can discern God in Nature, God in moral order, God in the very soul itself. The highest capacity reached is the theological, the final know- ledge of God, not through any medium, like that of natural or moral order, but in direct spiritual vision.^