ECCLESIASTES XII: 13.
"Let us bear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man."
The book of Ecclesiastes contains the experience of a man who had tried every phase of life, who had tasted every kind of pleasure, and who, also, had experience in the service of God, with its consolations and its sacrifices; and he had also made a study of the great questions that come up in considering the affairs of the world about him. And after his long and thorough experience, and his deep and life-long study of the facts of human life and history, he at last reaches a conclusion concerning it all, and this conclusion he has recorded in the text I have read, "Fear God and keep His commandments," etc.
1. Fear God.
The fear of God is natural to man until, by false teaching and evil association, it is destroyed. The severe things we see in nature about us lead us to have a dread of Him who is the author of all these things. And, then, death is an awful and a fear-inspiring thing, and the thought of what is to come after death, in that unknown country from which no traveler has ever returned to tell us of it, fills us with awe and sobers us whenever it comes to us. And most men even that are in their lives wicked, and seemingly have no thought of God or fear of Him, are often troubled with the fear of death and what is to come after death. This was my own experience.
2. But merely to have this fear of God is not sufficient, and will do no good if it does not lead a man to obey God and keep His commandments, as the text says. For example, I knew a fireman in an engine-house here who had this fear of God; but he lived a swearing, drinking man, and, of course, he was not at all benefited by his fear of God. No doubt this fear of God was created in the human mind in order to lead men to keep God's commandments. But how are we to know His commandments? Why, my brothers, they are given with great plainness in His Holy Word—so plain that the wayfaring man, though he be a fool, need not miss them if only he is willing to know them and to do them. And, as St. John says, "His commandments are not grievous." They only require of us what is most just and reasonably due to Him who is the giver, the free and bountiful giver, of all the good things of this life, and the gracious promiser of perfect blessedness in the life to come. And, on the human side, His commandments require of us only that we keep from doing to others what they ought not do to us, and that we do for others that which they ought to do for us. In other words, the commandments of God are all embraced in two sentences, "Love God with all your heart, because He first loved you," and "Love your fellowmen, because they are commanded to love you," and when you submit to God's Spirit, and become renewed in mind and heart, born again, made a new creature, you will see the reasonableness of keeping God's commandments, and the desirableness of it, in such a light that you will go on in His ways with delight, desiring to know more and more of Him.
3. And we are told that to do this is the whole purpose of man's existence, and when he does this he has fully answered the end of his existence, met all that is required of him and is secure amid the problems of life and the possibilities of the unknown future.
This, also, brings rest to the human heart, a rest to be found nowhere else. I am in a position to speak with some confidence and positiveness on this point; for, like the man who uttered the text, I have tried life in all its phases. I have had all the kinds of pleasure, and I have tested them to the bottom. I have found out all there is in them. For forty years I gave myself to seeking and enjoying worldly pleasure, and I ought to know what it can do for a human soul. But I have another advantage, too; I have tried the doctrine of my text. I have surrendered myself, my life, my prospects, my all, to God, and live only to keep His commandments and to please Him. My mind has been renewed, transformed, my life entirely turned around. I have passed through the struggle and the sacrifice that were involved in becoming a Christian, and I have been passing through those that belong to the life of a Christian. But you may say I speak thus because it is a novelty to me. No, sir; it is no longer a novelty. I have been trying it now for ten years—surely a long enough time to know pretty well how it compares with the old life; and my testimony, from forty years' experience of the old life and ten years of the new life, is that of the writer of my text, "Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."
HEBREWS XII: 1, 2.