The Clock of Destiny

“To everything there is a season.”. ...” In the heart of everything God hath set its era.”*

ACCORDING to the mood of the spectator the same phenomena will exert a depressing or a reviving influence; and according to the bias of the reasoner the same facts will be adduced for purposes the most opposite. If we were sure that in this passage Solomon was giving the matured opinion of his latest and penitent life, the text would be a lesson of resignation derived from the absolute sovereignty and all-controlling providence of God; but if, as we have all along held, Solomon writes these verses somewhat in sympathy with his former self; if he be recalling for wise purposes the reasonings and surmisings of the days of his vanity, we would be prepared to find intermingled with the sublime theology of this section a tincture of fatalism. Accordingly, in the ninth and tenth verses we read, “What profit Vs. 11, oVij? eternity, duration, &c. LXX. H hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men, to be exercised in it.” ‘This universe is moving in a groove of adamant. Man’s activity is a make-believe, — an imposition on himself; for the wheel spins round equally fast whether the blue bottle push it forward or backward. What profit is there in human industry? It is the unproductive travail to which the offended Creator has doomed his sinful creature; — the ploughing of the sand, the weaving of the air, the manufacture of elaborate nonentities, And yet, so true are the facts which this section notes, and so solemn the inferences from them which forced themselves on the mind of the royal reasoner, that few texts contain the germs of a grander theology. Passing over the impotence and helplessness of the creature, he saw how glorious was that Omnipotence which held in hand the guiding reins of ponderous orbs and mighty incidents, and at the predestined moment would bring the chariot of his sovereignty to its triumphal goal in the far-off eternity. He saw how vast is that Wisdom which from the beginning had planned the great year of existence, and planned it so complete that nothing needed to be supplemented nor superseded, but through its cycle inconceivable the universe moved on from the moment of its starting, ever waxing, ever waning, and through its summer and winter of uncounted ages circling round to its successive springs. “He hath made everything beautiful in his time, and in the heart of everything He hath set an eternity: so that no man can find out from beginning to end any work that God maketh — any process that God conducteth. I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever. Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been: and God brings back the past.”

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” As if he had said, Mortality is a huge time-piece wound up by the almighty Maker; and after He has set it a-going nothing can stop it till the angel swears that time shall be no longer. But here it ever vibrates and ever advances, — ticking one child of Adam into existence, and ticking another out. Now it gives the whirr of warning, and the world may look out for some great event; and presently it fulfils its warning, and rings in a noisy revolution. But there! as its index travels on so resolute and tranquil, what tears and raptures attend its progress! It was only another wag of the sleep less pendulum; but it was fraught with destiny, and a fortune was made, — a heart was broken, — an empire fell. We cannot read the writing on the mystic cogs as they are coming slowly up; but each of them is coming on God’s errand, and carries in its graven brass a Divine decree. Now, however, — now that the moment is past, we know; and in the fulfilment we can read the fiat. This instant was to say to H 2

Solomon, “Be born!” this other was to say to Solomon in all his glory, “Die!” That instant was to “plant” Israel in Palestine; that other was to “pluck him up.” And thus inevitable, inexorable, the great clock of human destiny moves on, till a mighty hand shall grasp its heart and hush for ever its pulse of iron.

See how fixed, how fated is each vicissitude! how independent of human control! There is “a time to be born,” and however much a man may dislike the era on which his existence is cast, he cannot help himself: that time is his, and he must make the most of it. Milton need not complain that his lot is fallen on evil days; for these are his days, and he can have no other. Roger Bacon and Galileo need not grudge their precocious being, that they have been prematurely launched into the age of inquisitors and knowledge-quenching monks, — for this age was made to make them. And so with the time to die. Voltaire need not offer half his fortune to buy six weeks’ reprieve; for if the appointed moment has arrived it cannot pass into eternity without taking the sceptic with it. And even good Hezekiah — his tears and prayers would not have turned the shadow backward had that moment of threatened death been the moment of God’s intention. Yes, there is a time to die; and though we speak of an untimely end, no one ever died a moment sooner than God designed, nor lived a moment longer. And so there is a time to plant.

The impulse comes on the man of fortune, and he lays out his spacious lawn, and studs it with massive trees; and he plans his garden, and in the sod im beds the rarest and richest flowers, or he piles up little mounts of blossomed shrubbery, till the place is dazzled with bright tints and dizzy with perfume. And that impulse fades away, and in the fickleness of sated opulence the whole is rooted up, and converted into wilderness again. Or by his own or a successor’s fall, the region is doomed to de struction; and when strangling nettles have choked the geraniums and the lilies, and, crowded into atrophy, the lean plantations grow tall and branch less, the axe of an enterprising purchaser clears the dank thickets away, and his ploughshare turns up the weedy parterre. There is a time when to interfere with disease is to destroy; when to touch the patient is to take his life: and there is a time when the simplest medicine will effect a marvellous cure. There is a time when the invader is too happy to dismantle the fortress which so long kept him at bay; but by and by, when he needs it as a bulwark to his own frontiers, with might and main he seeks to build it up again. Nor can any one fix a date and say, I shall spend that day merrily, or I must spend it mournfully. The day fixed for the wedding may prove the day for the funeral; and the ship which was to bring back the absent brother, may only bring his coffin. On the other hand, the day we had destined for mourning, God may turn to dancing, and may gird it with irresistible gladness. Nor are earth’s monuments perpetual. The statue reared one day will be thrown into the river another, and the trophy commenced by one conqueror shall owe its completion to his rival and supplanter. “There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” “There is a time when the fondness of friendship bestows its caresses, and receives them in return with reciprocal sincerity and delight; and a time when the ardour cools; when professions fail; when the friend of our bosom’s love proves false and hollow-hearted, and the sight of him produces only the sigh and tear of bitter recollection. We refrain from embracing, because our embrace is not returned.” * “There is a time to get, and a time to lose.” There is a time when every enterprise succeeds; when, as if he were a Midas, whatsoever the prosperous merchant touches, is instantly gold; then comes a time when all is adverse, — when flotillas sink, when ports are closed, and each fine opening only proves another and a tantalizing failure. And so there is “a time to keep, and a time to cast away.” There is a time when in the cutting blast the traveller is fain to wrap his cloak more closely round him; a time when in the torrid beam he is thankful to be rid of it. There is a time when we cannot keep too carefully the scrip or satchel which contains the provision for our journey; a time when to outstrip the pursuing * Wardlaw in loco.

assassin, or to bribe the red-armed robber, we fling it down without a scruple. It was a time to keep when the sea was smooth, and Rome’s ready market was waiting for the corn of Egypt; but it was a time to cast the wheat into the sea, when the angry ocean clamoured for the lives of thrice a hundred passengers.* There is “a time to rend, and a time to sew:” a time when calamity threatens or grief has come, and we feel constrained to rend our apparel and betoken our inward woe; a time when the peril has withdrawn, or the fast is succeeded by a festival, when it is equally congruous to remove the symbols of sorrow. There is a time to keep silence — a time when we see that our neighbour’s grief is great, and we will not sing songs to a heavy heart; — a time when, in the abatement of anguish, a word of sympathy may prove a word in season; — a time when to remonstrate with the transgressor, would be to reprove a madman, or, like the pouring of vinegar on nitre, would be to excite a fiery explosion against ourselves; but a time will come when, in the dawn of repentance or the sobering down of passion, he will feel that faithful are the wounds of a friend. “There is a time to love and a time to hate.” There is a period when, from identity of pursuit, or from the spell of some peculiar attraction, a friend is our all in all, and our idolatrous spirits live and move and have their being in him; but with riper years or changing character, the spell dissolves, and we * Acts xxvii. 38.

marvel at ourselves that we could ever find zest in insipidity or fascination in vulgarity. And just as individuals cannot control their hatred and their love; as the soul must go forth to what is amiable, and revolt from what is odious, — so nations cannot regulate their pacifications and their conflicts. But just at the moment when they are pledging a perpetual alliance, an apple of discord is thrown in, and to avenge an insulted flag, or settle a disputed boundary, or maintain the tottering balance of power, wager of battle is forthwith joined; and where early summer saw the mingled tribes tilting in the tournay, or masquerading on the fields of cloth of gold, autumn sets on unreaped harvests, and blackened forests, and silent villages. And conversely: when the clouds of battle frown on one another, and there is no prospect but long and sanguinary campaigns, a magazine explodes, an heir-apparent dies, or two daring spirits of the opposing hosts transfer the issue to the point of their single swords; and with the awful incubus so suddenly thrown off, the knit brows of either nation relax into an expansive smile, and the year destined for mutual extermination is spent in blended jubilee.

Such is the fact. Such are the unquestionable alternations in human affairs; and thus accurately do occasions and events fit into one another. So much of mechanism does there appear to be in the on-goings of mortality, and thus helpless seems man as the maker of his own destiny. But lifting our eyes from the mundane side of it, what shall we say concerning Him who is the Contriver and Controller of it all?

And should it not be enough to say that God has so arranged it? To Him are owing all this variety and vicissitude, and yet all this order and uniformity. And is not it enough that He so wills it? Shall the thing formed say to Him who made it, Why hast thou made me thus?

But not only has God made everything, but there is a beauty in this arrangement where all is fortuitous to us, but all is fixed by Him. “He hath made everything beautiful in its time;” and that season must be beautiful which to infinite Love and Wisdom seems the best.

Amongst modern processes one of the most beautiful is the art of taking sun-pictures. Instead of the artist copying the object, he lets the object copy itself; and if the light were profuse enough and properly adjusted, the picture would be as true as noon, and as minute as the original. Now, would not it be a curious thing if, from a station high enough, one could take a vast sun-picture of this city, — this island, — this hemisphere? — showing precisely how at the selfsame instant all its inhabitants are occupied? — where every one of them is this moment posted, and what each one of them is doing? And would it not be veiy curious if along writh this there were preserved a similar picture of the selfsame people and their employments, at a given instant ten or twenty years ago? But most curious of all would it not be, if some one could show a photographic panorama of how it will appear ten or twenty years hereafter? — projecting eveiy person in his proper place? — exhibiting the groups which have meanwhile gathered round him or melted from his side? — the changes which have passed over himself, or which he has been the means of inducing over others? But, my friends, there is one repository where such pictures are preserved, — far more exact and vivid than the finest sun-painting ever drawn; there is not a day in our world’s past history but its minutest image lives in the memory of God, and more than that, there is not a day in all the coming history of our world but its portrait precise and clear is already present to the Divine foreknowledge. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the creation;” and so to speak, each day that dawns, though its dawning include an earthquake, a battle, or a deluge, — each day that dawns, however many it surprises, is no surprise to Him who sees the end from the beginning, and who, in each evolving incident but sees the fulfilment of “his determined counsel,” — the translation into fact of one other omniscient picture of the future.

And which is best?” A mighty maze and all without a plan?” — a world whose progress takes even Providence by surprise, and whose future stands before even the Infinite Mind in no clearer outline than those dim guesses and dusky foreshadowings to which even shrewd .mortals attain? — or a world of which the successive epochs shall only be the outworking of a purpose so wise and good from the first that it cannot be changed for the better? — the realization in persons and actions and results of that series of prescient maps or plans whose aggregate will constitute the optimism of the universe? — as we read in verse 11, “God hath set its destined duration in the heart of every thing.” To every incident or event He has not only given its immediate effect, but also its remoter errand afar in the future. Each such incident or event may be regarded as a mechanism wound up to travel so far or accomplish so much, so that, till its course is finished, till the beginning comes round to the end, no man can say positively what was God’s first pur pose in it. When the young German grew earnest, you would have said there was some hope that he might next be enlightened; but when the earnest youth became a monk, you would have said, Farewell, light! farewell, all hope of the Gospel! And yet Luther’s entombment in the Erfurth convent was to be the resurrection of apostolical religion. In the heart of that little incident God had set the Reformation. When a king arose in Egypt who knew not Joseph, and who hated and tormented the Hebrews, you would have said, There’s an end of the old promise. This order to exterminate the Hebrew chil dren will soon annihilate Abraham’s family. And any Jew who had been gathered to his fathers at the time they were slaying all the male-children, would have been apt to die despairing of his nation’ s prospects. And yet that murderous edict was to be the deliverance of Israel. In the heart of that despot’s decree God had set the exodus. And to the sublime theology of Solomon, the only addition wre wrould make is that Evangelic supplement: “All things wrork together for good to them that love God; to them which are the called according to his purpose.” Their path is thickly strewn with incidents. Of these, some are for the present not joyous but grievous: nevertheless in their heart God hath set the peaceful fruits of righteousness. They are seeds with a thorny husk, and they hurt the pilgrim’s naked feet; but when next he passes that way, or when Christiana with her children follows him, they have germinated into bright flowers or cool, overshadowing trees. And they will not perish. The incidents along the believer’s path are seeds of influence, scattered by the hand of God. And sanctification of some sort is the germ which He has set in the heart of every one of them. Nor can they die till they have thus developed. They cannot perish and pass away till the Christian has set in his heart the lesson which God has set in theirs.

The works of God are distinguished by opportuneness of development and precision of purpose. There is a season for each of them, and each comes in its season. All of them have a function to fulfil, and they fulfil it. To which, verse 14, he adds that they are all of their kind consummate, — so perfect that no improvement can be made, and, left to themselves, they will be perpetual, “I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it.” How true is this regarding God’s greatest work, redemption! What more could He have done to make it a great salvation than what He had already done? or what feature of the glorious plan could we afford to want? And now that He has Himself pronounced it a “finished” work, what is there that man can put to it? — what is there he dare take from it? And in doing it He has done it “for ever.” The merits of Immanuel are as mighty this evening as they were on the day of Pentecost. Jesus is as able to save us if we come unto God by Him now, as He was to save Zaccheus and Legion, and Mary Magdalene. It is into the same bright heaven that these merits and that mercy will take us as that into which the white-robed company have already gone, and by a process as swift as that which translated the dying thief, these merits could transport any sinner amongst us, from the verge of perdition to Paradise.

Of these theological conclusions the 15th verse is the last. “That which hath been, is now, and that which is to be hath already been, and God requireth, — God resuscitates and repeats the past.” There is an uniformity in the Divine procedure. True to itself, amidst all the diversity of incidents which chequer an individual’s history, there are certain great principles from which Infinite Wisdom never deviates. In the natural world there is always a summer and a winter, a seed time and a harvest, a day succeeded by the night. And in the moral world sin will always be SOITOW; principle will, in the long-run, always prove the highest expediency; the sinner will always sooner or later be filled with the fruit of his own devices; and sooner or later there will always be a reward to the righteous. And amidst all the diversities of national character, and all the vicissitudes of civil history, there is an essential identity, — variety enough to spread romantic fascination over the page of Thucydides or Robertson, but such identity that the fifteenth Psalm, or a single section of this book, is the abridgment of all history. Nor will there be any material change till the story is ended. Hundreds of millions may yet be born, but they will all repeat the past. A few may be more clever, and a few may be more virtuous than any that have heretofore been; and alas! a few may be more abandoned, more desperately wicked. But whether for good or evil they will all be human, — human in their goodness, human in their guilt. There will not be a Gabriel among them all, nor will there be a Lucifer; and in dealing with that humanity the principles of the Divine procedure will be as uniform as the material itself. With the reprobate it will be calls and refusals, warnings and resistings, startling providences and sullen stupor, momentary alarms, followed by deeper slumber; and then,” he who being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy -,” and, on the othe side, the converse process. “Whom He did fore know He also did predestinate. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified, and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” * And thus, through all the operations of nature, providence, and grace, “that which hath been, is now, and that which is to be hath already been, and God repeateth that which is past.”

One final reflection from the whole passage. Some of you, my hearers, may read the description of mortality here recorded; and you may give a vehement assent to its truth.” Yes, it is all a masquerade of the same everlasting events wearing new vizors; it is all mutation without novelty and change without real variety. The world itself is a gourd whose root the worm is already gnawing, — a palace whose quicksand basis the flood is already sapping.

“What is this passing scene?

A peevish April day!
A little sun, a little rain,
And then night sweeps along the plain,
And all things fade away.” f

So be it. But if so, how should it endear that

state where all is perfection, and all is permanence i

* Rom. viii. 29, 30. f Kirke White.

To everything “under heaven” there is a fixed but a fleeting season; but to those who are in heaven the moments are not thus precarious, nor the seasons thus short. And still better, there are many of the things for which there is a “time” on earth for which there is no time there. To those who are born into that better country there is no time to “die.” Those that are “planted” in God’s house on high, shall never be “plucked up,” but shall flourish there for ever. There, there is nothing to hurt nor to destroy, but perpetual “health,” and lasting as eternity. There, the walls of strong salvation shall never be broken down. There, there is no time to weep; for sorrow and sighing are for ever fled away: — no “time to mourn;” for, when they left this vale of tears the days of their mourning ended. There, it is all a time of “peace,” and all a time to love. There, monuments are never defaced nor overthrown; for those who are pillars in the temple above, with the new name written on them, shall go out no more. There, in the sanctity of the all-superseding relationship, there will be no severance; but those friends of earth, who have been joined again in the bonds of angelhood, will never need to give the parting embrace; for they shall be ever with one another, and ever with the Lord.

September 29, 1850.