The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: Leisure Thoughts for Busy Lives

by John Richard Vernon

But a pause comes over all the glad onset; a stagnant time, a period of neither advance nor retreat: the tide is at the full. You mark no change for awhile either way: then at last a space of wet sand begins to border the line of dying spray. Broadening and broadening; but it was quite enough that it had once begun. The tide has turned. Here is “the check, the change, the fall.” An eager strife, a wild race, an impetuous advance, a profuse and uncalculating spending all youth’s energies, and purposes, and powers, and aspirations; an excited resistless march. And with what result? An unprofitable and transitory conquest of a narrow track of barren sand.

Oh draw off, draw off your broken forces, defeated in that they were victorious; disappointed by the very fact of attainment; steal back with that heart-sigh of “Vanity, vanity, vanity: all is vanity,”—back into the deep sea again! Leaving, it is true, the colour, and the light, and the gladness, and the purity; the crested spray, the diamond drops, the rainbow gleam; all lying wrecked and sucked in by the hungry shore. Leaving the spoils of youth, yet glad anyhow to get away; for what can equal the bitterness of that moment when the tide, long sluggish, begins at last to turn?

“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”

No,—and the bitter thought is, that not the missing, but the attaining the prize, has disappointed; not failure, but success, has embittered: and that it might have been known from the very first that thus it must be—that the coveted possession was but lifeless rock or bare sand. There was a warning voice to this effect, but, oh, who heard or heeded it in that glorious advance of the long battalions of battling gleaming waters? And, to add bitterness to the cup, this was all an old story; we were not, as we dreamed, invading new worlds; no, those ancient sands have borne the furrows of myriads upon myriads of just such excited, eager, leaping tides. The anguish has not even the pathos of novelty; it is actually commonplace. That which seemed so new to us, at what more than millionth hand we received it!

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

“Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.”

And so hark to the moan of the waves as they draw off, when the tide has turned, and the disenchantment has come, sigh after sigh, moan upon moan, in the weary and desolate retreat. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” Yes; and farther on, a more bitter wail, as it passes back over some spot where some of the gayest morning hopes were spilt: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Lower and lower yet, with yet duller and heavier moan: “What hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.” And now an almost fierce and angry cry: “Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

And what then? Is this the end of all? Is there no hope for the wailing tide; no redemption for the scattered spray?

I have seen what has seemed to me a sweet and touching answer to this question. Over the desolate sands a quiet Mist has been drawn, while the Sea moaned far away down at low tide. And I seemed thus taught how even earth’s wrecks may be repaired, and earth’s ruin turned into gain. Better to give to God the fresh sparkle and the first eager and joyous onset of life. But if not, and if the waves must set towards some earth shore, until they are broken, sullied, and wrecked there, see what the rising mist teaches. Let them remember themselves, and at last come homeward, leaving the stain and the defilement behind. So merciful is God, that even these ruins and disappointments are all messages of His patient love to us. If we will not turn at first to Him, He will let us break our hearts upon the shore of earth, content if but at last our hopes and aspirations will rise in a pure repentant mist from their overthrow and ruin, and wait beside the gate of heaven, touched now with the clear moonlight of peace, and expecting the rich sunburst of glory hereafter. The very overthrows and dissatisfactions of earth may thus rise, spiritualised and purified, to God at last.

This, no doubt, is the intention of the disappointments and inadequacies of this earth, upon which the heart, at the time of the coming in of the tide, spends so much of its powers, and against which it bursts and dies down into wild cries and weary sighings. This is the intention—an intention, alas! too often unfulfilled. For if God is saying, “Turn, my children, from that careless dwelling upon earth’s pursuits, excitements, and enterprises, to heavenly aspirations, letting your heart and mind, like rising mist from broken waves, ascend, instead of dwelling in tears on the bare sands that were never worth the winning—ascend thither, whither He who loved you is gone before, and continually dwell with Him, in the place called Fair Havens, where the waves of this troublesome world have ceased their restless eager quest, and are lulled into a peace beyond all understanding”—if God thus invites us, even by that sigh of our broken retiring waves, there is another voice, commonly heard, and too often heeded—a voice counselling hardness, repining, rebellion: a moan of sullenness, of despair, of defiance—a voice that whispers, “Curse God and die,” rather than, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” The voice, oh let us be assured, of folly, not of wisdom; of our Enemy, and not of a friend.