There are few passages in the word of God which are more constantly misapplied than this. It is systematically wrested to the establishment of doctrines with which it has nothing whatever to do. The popular interpretation of the text treats it as equivalent to the assertion, that the condition of the human soul through its long eternity is settled absolutely and irrevocably by death. We believe that nine out of ten, of those who hold this doctrine would quote this passage if they were suddenly asked to sustain their belief out of the word of God. With the truth of the doctrine in question we are not dealing in the present discourse; there are passages in the word of God which bear on it with most unquestionable cogency. But this is not one of them. Our present purpose is to show what it does mean, and that its reference is to a subject which is well-nigh as far removed from that on which it is supposed to bear as the poles.

We approach a dread, an awful subject, when we contemplate the condition of those who pass into the unseen world impenitent and faithless; who despise finally, as far as we can trace, the riches of the mercy and the love of God. It is a subject which is occupying the most earnest and solemn thoughts of some of the wisest of our Christian thinkers, and on which a large freedom of judgment will have to be conceded within the visible pale of the Christian Church. It is easy to state the doctrine of universalism, and to offer it as a solution of the dark difficulties with which the subject is surrounded. But it is not easy to get the doctrine of universalism out of the Bible; nay, it is not possible, without grievous violence to some of its plainest and most awful statements: nor, on the other hand, is it easy to harmonize it with any intelligent conceptions of the moral freedom and responsibility of every child of the human race. Others seek refuge, for it is as a refuge that they appear to cling to it, in the theory of annihilation—that is, the annihilation on a vast scale of that which God made to be His masterpiece, which He constituted in His own image, and into which He infused by inspiration the breath of His own life. More grievous violence must be done to the plain language of Scripture by the advocates of this theory than by those of the former; and it seems to us still harder to find for it a place in any intelligent and harmonious conception of the scheme on which God made the worlds.

Were it possible for us to hold it, it would seem to unfold a terrible vision of the issue of the great experiment of creation. The free beings whom God made to be the glory of His universe, drooping down in throngs, after a life struggle full of anguish and despair, into the darkness of the everlasting night! One would be tempted to ask passionately in that case, Why was not the dire experiment of liberty ended in the hour of the first transgression? why was not the free universe, parent of such wrongs and miseries, strangled in its birth?

Nor may we dare to hide from ourselves and others, in these days, the dread considerations involved in the doctrine which the Church has drawn from explicit statements in the word of God. Eternal punishment; eternal suffering in the universe; moans rising up ever in the ear of heaven; the cries of souls in anguish piercing the serenity of the heavenly rest. Eternal evil too. Evil never more to die out of the worlds on which the dew of the primal benediction lay, and which flashed back the smile of Him who looked upon them and saw that "they were very good." The curse rioting, sin reigning unto death, in some region of the universe sustained and ruled by the Divine hand; never to be expelled from the creation, never to be drawn under the merciful reign of God. We are too prone to hide the awful reality which is behind this language, by vague notions of the judgment as the final banishing of evil from the sight of God and of the blessed. Nothing that is can be banished from the sight of God; nothing that exists—we will not say lives, life is a sacred word—can exist from moment to moment without the interposition of the Divine hand. Ever present before the great Father must be the anguish and the moans of the souls in torment; ever to His eye there must be this dark counterfoil to the joy and glory of the redeemed. And yet the question forces itself upon us: What else can the plain statements of the Scriptures mean; nay, what else can in the essential nature of things befall a free spirit that chooses to exercise its freedom in sin? We may well feel with a wise one of old, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for us: it is as high as heaven, what can we do? it is as deep as hell, what can we know?"

Sore difficulties beset us in working out a clear and harmonious theory of the judgment and its issues. But blessed be God that we can rest in the belief that all will be, in ways that we see not, so wisely and righteously ordered by the Judge of all the earth, as to satisfy the yearning heart, not of the great Father only, but of the Redeemer of humanity, and to fill the universe with praise. Here as elsewhere, when we are bewildered and perplexed by thoughts too high for us and which reach too far, we find a sure refuge and rest in faith. We believe God in Christ, and we can leave our future and the future of humanity in His hand. Meanwhile, our work, our duty is clear: "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

But this is beside the scope of the present discourse. I have to consider what these words, so strangely misapplied, do mean, and to draw from them those most pregnant lessons concerning the conduct of life which they are intended to afford. "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. If the clouds be full of ram, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

I. The key to the passage, the broad idea which underlies the whole, is in the first verse. In the sixth verse the writer repeats the thought under a varied form, and it is evident that it rules the whole. Let us ask ourselves what it means. It is a fair question whether we have here a reference to a popular proverb descriptive of the most useless and apparently hopeless work, "casting bread upon the waters;" or whether there is a reference to Egyptian husbandry, which might seem just as futile a method, did not experience prove that a harvest of splendid abundance is the well-nigh certain result. I do not think that it is needful to settle the rival claims of the two interpretations,[B] inasmuch as the essential point of the author's meaning is involved in both. In either case you have a husbandry of faith; and in either case you have a grand image of all noble spiritual work. All husbandry is of faith to an extent which we little realize, but most especially this husbandry. The seed-corn scattered from the hand vanishes from sight, the very bed in which it is hidden lies buried, and an uncongenial, impenetrable element spreads its barrier between the sower and the seed, which he must leave in the hands of God. The farmer who has ploughed his field and settled his seed in the furrows feels less shut out from it; he sees at least where it lies, he can test its condition, he can trace the first green bloom on the brown surface of his fields, which is the prophecy and the pledge of harvest. But seed cast into the waters! where is it? who can trace it? what can withhold the waters from rotting it, and burying the promise of the seed and the hope of the husbandman in their depths? And the seed dropped into the furrows of the human seed-field, the heart that has been broken up by the deep ploughshare of God's discipline, and over which a fertilizing flood of quickening influences has passed,—where lies it? What glance can follow it? What hand can touch it? What eye can foresee, what brain can forecast, its destiny? There is a dread likeness here, to the eye of the understanding, between this perilous husbandry and spiritual labour; man's knowledge is so limited, man's hand is so powerless, the seed passes so far out of his ken, and lies buried in such deep depths within.

There is a mystery in all husbandry which it is manifestly the purpose of God to keep clearly before the eye of the soul. He will not suffer us to forget it. "And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come" (Mark iv. 26-29). This is the daily miracle of nature, the "sign" which is done daily before our eyes. There are those, and they constitute a large and powerful school of thinkers in our day, who refuse coldly to listen to any evidence as to the miracles of Scripture, and who see this sign of an unseen energy at work around them and within them each moment, but feel powerless even to inquire from what fountain it springs. It is deeply unjust to brand the Positivist school of philosophy as explicitly either materialistic or atheistic. They are by no means blind to the fact that there is a hidden mystery in nature; they see quite as clearly as we do its marvellous depths. There is something quite as wonderful in their sight in the daily growth of the corn and the assimilation of our daily bread, as in the feeding of five thousand in the lonely wilderness by the word which came forth from the mouth of the Saviour. But they say, this region is simply impenetrable by the human intellect; in all its efforts at discovery it simply meets with shadows projected under various conditions and at various angles by itself. Our fair charge against them is, not that they are blind to the fact of a mystery in nature, but that they dishonour the royal faculty of the reason with which God has gifted them, by distrusting its ability to deal with a vast class of phenomena—the manifestations of the working of unseen powers with which God has surrounded them—which are as definite and substantial as the physical facts out of which they educe their laws. The world of spiritual experience and activity with which mainly the Bible deals, claims from us, at any rate, observation, thought, and deduction, as reverent as that which we joyfully devote to the phenomena of nature; and we accept as eagerly the thoughts and suggestions of seers who have insight into this world of mystery, as we accept the teachings of science concerning things which are beyond our sight. And if words come to us from this higher sphere, which harmonize discordant elements and make the chaos of our spiritual consciousness and experience a cosmos ruled by intelligence and love, we joyfully accept the truth which sustains and explains the phenomena, and feel that in proclaiming it we are "holding forth a word of life" to our fellow-men. And the Scripture miracle is to us a flash of sunlight, which illumines the darkness of the unknown: we see unveiled the Hand which is working each moment these signs and wonders within and around us; and, studying the nature, the mind, the heart, by which that Hand is guided, we find rest in the assurance that the power whose awful manifestation in nature might well appal and overwhelm us, is under the absolute rule of One whose declaration of Himself is that He is Love. We receive an emancipation from both the terrors and the idols of the imagination, when we learn that the daily bread of our lives comes to us from the hand of the Father, and is crowned with His benediction. The poor believe it quite simply: they have a beautiful sense of dependence on the Hand which feeds the birds and clothes the lilies. As a child hangs on the mother's breast, they hang daily as trustfully on the bounty of the Lord. And they are more free from vain fancies herein than the philosophers. It is the wise and the scribe who are in bondage to idols: simple hearts, which have received the revelation of the relations of the two worlds which the Bible offers, walk free in the sunlight, and dwell quiet from the fear of evil.

"Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."

The main point here then is, that in all husbandry there are two elements—the intelligence and energy of the man, and the co-operation of a secret force, the springs of which and the methods of which escape him, but on which absolutely depend all his fruits. Neither without the other can produce the harvest. Paul plants, Apollos waters; but God giveth the increase: but neither without Paul's planting does the harvest spring. "Behold, a sower went forth to sow." The human sower is, as far as we see, the indispensable fellow-worker with the Most High God. But God, and not the human sower, has the absolute control of the result.

Let us look at this more closely. To impress this upon us is the main object of the writer in the text.

II. The writer of this book asks us to consider how much that has the most important bearing on the results of our activity is hopelessly beyond the control of our hand.

No doubt this is a truism: but it is the meaning and force of these truisms which most easily escape us; custom is the blind of truth. No matter what it may be to which we put our hands, we are dealing with elements which only partially subject themselves to our control, or rather reveal to us the secret by which they may be bent to our use. Always there is a large variable element in the problem of our activities; and on this variable element, which we have no means of calculating, depends all that is most precious and vital in our results. Husbandry here is the great witness for, and key to, higher things. Certain bases are fixed and unalterable; else our work would be a pure lottery. Much on which its fruits depend is variable; else our work would be purely mechanical. God gives us a large measure of assurance, that we may work bravely and put our hearts into our labour, as those who have a right to hope that they will carry the sheaves of their harvest home; but He crosses our toil with a zone of uncertainties, that we may be faithful workmen, trusting and praying as well as working, and may be kept in holy and blessed dependence on Him who can lift us above all servile care for immediate results. Consider—

1. The awful force and inevitable certainty of the processes of Nature, the unfailing "order of Nature" which furnishes forth the field of our toils. That order God guarantees. The assurance is thus expressed: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" (Gen. viii. 22). That word of promise which has nursed the trembling hope of man into strong certainty—for he is as sure that the sun will rise on the morrow as he is of his own existence—lies at the foundation of all his steady activity as a workman in this lower world. The joyful outgoings of the morning and evening, and the succession of the seasons, are given to him as the constant elements in his husbandry. These are assured to him by the voice that called them into being and the hand which sustains their motions. God tells him that he may count absolutely on this order. And what guarantee, when we come to think of it, have we of that order, but such as a firm belief in an intelligent Ruler of the universe, who sympathises with the hopes and blesses the toils of His children, affords? Then further,—

2. There is the absolutely certain sequence of physical causes and effects, or antecedents and consequents, which we call laws of nature, which vary not one hair's breadth from their ordained order in obedience to the mandates of our will, but which, by observing and mastering the principle of that order, we can use for the accomplishment of our ends. These are our tools to work with. A thousand subtle laws are concerned in every process of the husbandman's toils. On a large scale and in the long run the question of his success depends absolutely on his comprehension and observance of those laws. The progress of man's knowledge of nature is really a progress in the mastery of the variable element in the problem of his labour. A thousand accidents, which baffle the ignorant and careless husbandman, obey the control of the intelligent and strenuous. The order is rigid. There is an awful sternness in its certainty; but it grows benign to him who has mastered its secret. It obeys him as a servant, it helps him as a friend; and the certainty with which he can calculate its action is one essential element of its friendliness. If he could not weigh the materials and measure the forces which are constantly around him, if he could not count on their known relations and actions with the same calm certainty with which he expects the sunrise to light him to his daily toils, his life would be one of miserable dependence; he would live the serf of nature, and not her king. It is the unalterable fixity of relations and forces which God has given him the power to discover and to employ, which constitutes the royalty of his rule over nature; if that be destroyed or shaken, his crown rolls in the dust. The constancy of the relations and forces of the universe, their impassibility to the force which man's will can bring to bear upon them, of which his husbandry gives him full experience, is an essential element, perhaps we might say the essential element, in that higher culture which they offer to his spirit; it is this which makes the life of even the workman something higher than a lottery, and the toils of earth an education for the works and the joys of heaven.

3. The writer of this book, while he sees this grand, calm, and constant order very clearly, and appreciates its ministry to man, has a dark, sad vision of the uncertainties which cross it—the strength and magnitude of the variable element in nature and in life, which perplexes and baffles the strenuous workman, keeps him constantly on the tenter-hooks of anxiety, and not seldom rends his heart with anguish, and lays his fairest and proudest achievements in ruins in the dust. A certain order is there, all men can see it. Yes, men say,—and especially orientals, in whose climate the destructive agencies often run riot; but there is a dire disorder, and the disorder triumphs. Who knows the pathway of the storms, the earthquakes, the lava floods, the drought, and the deluge? who knows and rules their times? The fairest homesteads are made desolate in a moment; verdant beauty as of Eden vanishes, and blasting and burning as of Sodom reigns in its room. There are malign powers in the universe which seem to watch all beauty and increase, that they may make it their prey. Do not men in all ages tremble as they rejoice in prosperity? Do not the proverbs of all nations warn us that trouble in such moments is near? There is a hand unseen which deals destruction to our harvests and homesteads, in the moment when they smile on us most gaily; and we are powerless to resist it; we can but sit like Job on the dunghill of our ruined fortunes and bemoan ourselves, and it may be curse the day which sent us forth to till such a treacherous seed-field as this. The dearest things, the things which we love most tenderly, the possession of which is our life, may be struck down in a moment, the delight of our eyes laid low at a stroke; we may plead and pray, we may wrestle with God in a frenzy of supplication: the hand which grasps our treasure is pitiless; pass a few days, we shall be standing tearless and defiant by the grave of our beloved. Pagans exclaim against their gods as treacherous, and refuse them service. Catholics revenge themselves by cashiering their saint. Nay, the same brutal instinct may be found in Protestant England: I have heard of a farmer, whose harvest was all ruined, sticking a rotten sheaf in the hedge and leaving it there, to make, as he said, God Almighty ashamed. We shudder at the blasphemy; but it is only a coarse expression of the anguish of the helpless in the hand of a power which seems inexorable and merciless, which crosses their most settled purposes, destroys ruthlessly their most precious harvests, and murders all their brightest joys. "If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good" (ver. 3-6). There is a power at work behind the veil which may at any moment cross our purpose by some unexpected stroke, which gives to us no account of its methods, and which allows no court of appeal from its decrees. The tree falls, and who can foresee when it may fall? And when it falls, it cares not what it crushes, and the wrecks of it strew our fairest fields, and bury our golden harvests in the dust.

III. What then? There being this law of calamity at work, defying all calculation and all defence, what is the true policy of life?

There are mainly two policies of life; the stoic and the Christian. The Stoic says,—Everything is beyond my control, but myself. There is a kingdom whose sceptre can never be wrested from my hand. Things are certain enemies of my peace. I will make myself independent of things. I will reduce my relations with things outside me to a minimum. I am surer of a crust than of a banquet; so I will train myself to care only for a crust; a crust of food, a crust of wealth, a crust of friendship will be enough for me. I will fold the cloak of my manhood around me, and shake myself free of all dependence on fickle fortune and mortal friends.

The Christian says,—Everything is beyond my control, but myself. So far, he and the Stoic are at one. But he reflects that what is beyond HIS control is not beyond all control. This law of calamity obeys the rule of One who has given the most solemn and awful pledge that He loves me as a friend and treats me as a child. He would not have me adopt the demeanour and policy of an outcast in a storm, but of a child at home. I will throw my nature open to the sunlight. I will make myself as rich as possible in all good and beautiful possessions, and in troops of friends. It is the will of Him who rules my life that I should be so; He made me with all these affections and sympathies; He made me to feel life a blessing. I will work and be glad, and live and love according to His will; and trust, not my own hardness, but my Father's mercy, to spare me over-much pain, and to make life in some due measure a joy. Here are the two policies. How does the text decide? "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days." "If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good." The argument is, God who made you to toil, to till the ground, and to till the more difficult and perilous seed-field of domestic, social, and political life, made the world thus. Both your vocation as a workman, and the field of your labour, with the conditions of that labour, are ordained by Him. There must then be an essential harmony. One wise and intelligent Being as the author of the whole system; and this law of calamity is not at war with your vocation, but is also its minister, and in deep and far-reaching ways is working with you to your ends. It is not, according to the dark pagan theory, the work of a malign spirit, strong enough to break in and make the homesteads and the lives which God has made His charge, a wreck. "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things." It is all the work of one hand, and that a wise and loving one. Work on, work bravely, work gaily; storms may sweep your fields and shadows may darken your homes; but no calamity, inward or outward, is unto death. The storm and blight of this year will swell the bulk of next year's harvests; and the deeper cares and sorrows of our spiritual husbandry but load us with an increase which the years lay up in the garners of eternity. Practically, the husbandman finds it to be so. Making the fullest allowance for all the crosses, the storms, the blights, the violence of Nature and of man, the balance is still amply on the side of the faithful workman. Year by year man's tillage advances; the wilderness and the solitary place is made glad by his toil, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. This means that a wise and loving Hand holds all the disturbing forces under control, and fixes their bounds where they instruct and stimulate, but never on a grand scale scare and paralyse mankind. The losses and the crosses of the croupier of the gaming table are borne with profound patience, for there is a certain chance in his favour which must inevitably in the long run fill his coffers with gain. How calmly, now joyously, should we work on through our storms and sorrows, who have, not a margin of security guaranteed by the theory of probabilities, but the certainty of an abundant and glorious harvest, if we are faithful and patient, guaranteed by the living God.

And do not pervert the teaching of the Scripture by narrowing its scope. It does not say,—Work, for the work is good for you; results are nothing. It says rather,—Work, for God is working with you, and results are His care. The Lord does not say,—Take no thought for the morrow, for these cares of food and clothes and health are sordid; despise them, and think exclusively of higher things. Quite other, and infinitely more wise and tender, is His teaching,—Do not be distracted by cares, "for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things," and how He furnishes those who trust Him let the birds and the lilies declare. "Cast thy bread upon the waters," for there is One watching it who will bring it back after many days. "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless"—doubtless because the Lord of the harvest assures it—"come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

Three practical principles, which indicate the Christian policy of life, I gather from the text:—

1. Do not be afraid of giving with bountiful hand lest your charity should be wasted. Scatter your gifts freely: "freely ye have received, freely give." "He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed," blessed with the blessedness of Christ, and like Christ he shall gather in rich harvests. Sow your gifts as the husbandman scatters the seed in his furrows, leaving it with God to watch it, to bless its springing, to ripen its fruit. Much of our charity, our effort to bless mankind, must seem to be futile. The waters close on it, it vanishes from sight and touch, it is rotting, we think, in the depths. No; I think that the discovery of the unknown fruit of the patient efforts and the loving sacrifices for men which on earth seemed to us to be wasted, will be one of the purest and intensest joys of eternity.

2. Do not be afraid of working lest your toil should be fruitless. There is no fruitless labour. Every hammer-stroke on the forge of duty welds something which will outlast eternity. Work with a will then, with a courage, an energy, a hope, to which Heaven lends its inspiration; and believe that nothing is so sure in the universe as your harvest. This seed of your toil may be stolen, that may be crushed, that may be blighted when it is set for fruit; but the grand sum of your labour is beyond the reach of the Harpies. God guards it, God quickens it, and God and angels will rejoice with you when one day you bring your golden harvest home.

3. Do not be afraid of loving because every love is a sure germ of pain. Throw wide the doors of your heart to all comers in the name of the Lord. The sorrows will spring, but the joys will overflow them. Count yourself rich, as you are rich in love. Keen sorrow it must bring, but with it superabounding joy. Ask God to hallow your loves, and to consecrate your crosses, and the pain is purged of all its bitterness; it is but the first throb of a great unspeakable joy, which will play like sunlight around your life in the homes where the weary are for ever at rest.

[B] Those who wish to settle the critical question will find ample help in Dr. Ginsburg's learned and exhaustive "Commentary on Ecclesiastes." (Longmans, 1861.)