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THE CREATOR REMEMBERED

II. QUAR., LESSON XI., JUNE 11, ECCL. 12:1-7,13,14

Golden Text—”Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.”—Eccl. 12:1

VERSES 1-5 present a vivid pen picture of old age—”the evil days” of physical decline and infirmity, “when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” The world offers its pleasures to the young, who snatch at the delusions; but age has proved them all empty bubbles. The world has nothing substantial to offer, and therefore, unless the mind has found its satisfaction in God, there is indeed no pleasure in old age.

VERSE 2 refers to the dimness of vision, both mental and physical, and to the fact that clouds of trouble of one kind or another quickly succeed each other after every refreshing rain which brings hope of succeeding sunshine of prosperity.

VERSE 3. “The keepers of the house [the arms and hands] tremble; and the strong men [the lower limbs] bow themselves [unable to support the weight of the body], and the grinders [the teeth] cease [to perform their office], because they are few; and those [various mental faculties] that look out of the windows [the eyes] be darkened [or dimmed].”

VERSE 4. “And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low.”—When the work of life is done there is little in common with the rising generation, and therefore less and less communication. “He shall rise up at the voice of the bird [—early, being unable to sleep well], and all the daughters of music shall be brought low [the failing powers cease to catch the strains of earthly enchantments].” But if he have the ear of faith, he catches the sweeter strains of heaven’s melodies, of which Solomon in all his glory never knew.

VERSE 5 represents the great burden, labor and sorrow of extreme old age with all its infirmities, until all earthly desires fail and he goes to his long home—the grave—there to await the morning of the resurrection. “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.”—Psa. 30:5.

VERSES 6,7 represent death—the silver cord of life being loosed, the golden bowl (the body which contained the precious life-blood), broken; the pitcher (the lungs which drew in life from the fountain, the surrounding atmosphere), broken at the fountain; or the wheel (the heart), broken at the cistern. Then, when the body can no longer perform its offices, the dust of which it is composed returns “to the earth as it was [mere inanimate dust] and the spirit [Ruach, breath, wind] shall return unto God who gave it,” going back into his great reservoir of wind, breath—the surrounding atmosphere; and the being, the soul, is no more, save as it is engraven indelibly upon the tablet of God’s memory to be reproduced again in the resurrection at the last day—now so near.

VERSES 13,14. This conclusion of the whole matter of a life’s experience is that to which all men come sooner or later. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” is, after a wasted life, the poor world’s dying refrain, when they see it would have been better to have feared God and kept his commandments. And that they may effectually prove this conclusion is God’s object in letting them have the present experience under the dominion of Sin, which even Solomon in all his glory called “sore travail:” that they may be ready for the duty of submission to God, which will be enforced in the coming Millennial age of the world’s probation. This object is distinctly stated by Solomon in Chapter 1:13 and 3:10.—”I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised [by experience] in it.”

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— May 15, 1893 —