....also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Eccl.3:11
"Two facts meet him antagonistic to one another:
---the place that man
occupies,
---and the nature that man bears.
This creature with eternity in
his heart,.......A crowd of
things, each well enough, but each having a time-and though they be beautiful in their time, yet fading.
....also he hath set the world in their heart.
The Hebrew for “world” (primarily, “the hidden”)
is that which, in its adverbial or adjectival use, constantly appears
in the English Version as “for ever,” “perpetual,” “everlasting,”
“always,” “eternal,” and the like.
No other meaning but that of a
duration, the end or beginning of which is hidden from us, and which
therefore is infinite, or, at least, indefinite, is ever connected with
it in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and this is its uniform sense in
this book.
We must however translate, as the nearest equivalent, He hath set eternity (or, the everlasting) in their heart.
---The thought expressed is not that of the hope of an immortality, but
rather the sense of the Infinite which precedes it, and out of which at
last it grows.
Man has the sense of an order perfect in its beauty.
He
has also the sense of a purpose working through the ages from
everlasting to everlasting, but “beginning” and “end” are alike hidden
from him and he fails to grasp it.
In modern language he sees not “the
beginning and the end,” the whence and the whither, of his own being, or
of that of the Cosmos."