Old Groans and New Songs / Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes

by Frederick Charles Jennings

"No man knoweth love or hatred by all that is before him." We have looked upon a scene where a holy Victim—infinitely holy—bowed His head under the weight of a judgment that could not be measured. It was but a little while, and the very heavens could not contain themselves with delight at His perfect beauty, His perfect obedience; but again, and yet again, were they opened to express the pleasure of the Highest in this lowly Man. Now, not only are they closed in silence, but a horror seems to enwrap all creation. The sun, obscured by no earth-born cloud, gives out no spark nor ray of light; and in that solemn darkness every voice is strangely hushed. From nine till noon the air was filled with revilings and reproaches—all leveled at the one sinless Sufferer; but now, for three hours, these have been absolutely silent, till at last one cry of agony breaks the stillness; and it is from Him who "was oppressed and afflicted, yet opened not His mouth; was brought as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearer is dumb, so opened He not His mouth:"—"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani"—"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!"

There, my beloved readers, look there! Let that cross be before us, and then say, "No man knoweth love or hatred by all that is before them." Are not both revealed there as never before? Hatred! What caused the blessed God thus to change His attitude towards the One who so delighted Him that the heavens burst open, as it were, under the weight of that delight? There is but one answer to that question. Sin. Sin was there on that holiest Sufferer—mine, yours, my reader. And God's great hatred of sin is fully revealed there. I know "hatred" when I see God looking at my sin on His infinitely holy, infinitely precious, infinitely beloved Son. * * * *

Let us meditate upon, without multiplying words over this solemn theme, and turn to the Love that burns, too, so brightly there. Who can measure the infinity of love to us when, in order that that love might have its way unhindered, God forsakes the One who, for all the countless ages of the eternal past, had afforded Him perfect "daily" delight, was ever in His bosom—the only one in that wide creation who could satisfy or respond, in the communion of equality, to His affections—and turns away from Him; nay, "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him"; "He hath put Him to grief." Ponder these words; and in view of who that crucified Victim was, and His relationship with God, measure, if you can, the love displayed there, the love in that one short word "so"—"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son;"—then, whilst viewing the cross, hear, coming down to us from the lips of the wise king, "No man knoweth love or hatred." Hush! Ecclesiastes, hush! Breathe no such word in such a scene as this. Pardonable it were in that day, when you looked only at the disjointed chaos and tangle under the sun; but looking at that cross, it were the most heinous sin, the most unpardonable disloyalty and treason, to say now, "No man knoweth love." Rather, adoringly, will we say, "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And we have known and believed the love that God has to us."

Yea, now let "all things come alike to all:"—that tender Love shall shed its light over this stormy scene, and enable the one that keeps it before him to walk the troubled waters of this life in quiet assurance and safety. Death still may play sad havoc with the most sensitive of affections; but that Love shall, as we have before seen, permit us to weep tears; but not bitter despairing tears. Further, it sheds over the spirit the glorious light of a coming Day, and we look forward, not to an awful impending gloom, but to a pathway of real light, that pierces into eternity. The Day! We are of the Day! The darkness passes, the true light already shines! Then listen, my fellow-pilgrims, to the Spirit's counsel: "But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep, as do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunken, are drunken in the night. But let us who are of the Day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation."

Our poor preacher, in the darkness of the cloud of death, counsels, "merrily drink thy wine." And not amiss, with such an outlook, is such advice. In the perfect Light of Revelation, lighting up present and a future eternity, well may we expect counsel as differing from this as the light in which it is given differs from the darkness. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the Day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." Amen and Amen.

But once again our Preacher turns; and now he sees that it is not assuredly possible for the advice he has given to be followed, and that even in this life neither work, device, knowledge, nor wisdom, are effective in obtaining good or in shielding their possessor from life's vicissitudes. The swift—does he always win the race? Are there no contingencies that more than counterbalance his swiftness? A slip, a fall, a turned muscle, and—the race is not to the swift. The strong—is he necessarily conqueror in the fight? Many an unforeseen and uncontrollable event has turned the tide of battle and surprised the world, till the "fortune of war" has passed into a proverb. The skillful may not be able at all times to secure even the necessaries of life; nor does abundance invariably accompany greater wisdom, whilst no amount of intelligence can secure constant and abiding good.[[2]]

Time and doom hap alike to all, irrespective of man's purposes or proposings, and no man knows what his hap shall be, since no skill of any kind can avail to guide through the voyage of life without encountering its storms. From the unlooked-for quarter, too, do those storms burst on us. As the fishes suspect no danger till in the net they are taken, and as the birds fear nothing till ensnared, so we poor children of Adam, when our "evil time" comes round, are snared without warning.

Absolutely true this is, if life be regarded solely by such light as human wisdom gives: "Time and doom happen alike to all." The whole scene is like one vast, confused machine, amongst whose intricate wheels, that revolve with an irregularity that defies foresight, poor man is cast at his birth; and ever and anon, when he least expects it, he comes between these wheels; and then he is crushed by some "evil," which may make an end of him altogether or leave him for further sorrows. All things seem to work confusedly for evil, and this caps the climax of Ecclesiastes's misery.

Here is the sequence of his reasoning:

Firstly, There is no righteous allotment upon earth; the righteous suffer here, whilst the unjust escape. Nay,