Gold Nugget 151 - Vanity?

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      The student of physical science looks at facts; it is his duty to observe and to classify facts; their arrangement under certain relations, as of likeness and of sequence, is his business, in the discharge of which he renders a great service to mankind.  But thought is as necessary as observation.

      A higher explanation than physical science can give is imperatively required by human nature.  We are constrained, not only to observe that a thing is, but also to ask why it is.  Here metaphysics and theology come in to complete the work which science has begun.

      Human life is composed not only of movements, which can be scientifically accounted for, but of actions, of which the explanation is hyperphysical, is spiritual.  Similarly with the world at large, and with human life and history.  The facts are open to observation; knowledge accumulates from age to age; as experience widens, grander classifications are made.  Still there is a craving for explanation.

      Why, we ask are things as they are?  It is the answer to this question which distinguishes the pessimist from the theist.  The wise, the enlightened, the religious, seek a spiritual and moral significance in the universe – material and psychical.  In their view, if things, as they are and have been, be regarded by themselves, apart from a Divine reason working in and through them, they are emptiness and vanity.  On the other hand, if they be regarded in the light of that Divine reason, which is order, righteousness, and love, they are suggestive of what is very different indeed from vanity.  To the thoughtful and reverent mind, apart from God, all is vanity; seen in the light of God, nothing is vanity.

      Both these seeming contradictions are true, and they are reconciled in a higher affirmation and unity.  Look at the world in the light of sentience and the logical understanding, and it is vanity.  Look at it in the light of reason, and it is the expression of Divine wisdom and Divine goodness.

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Ecclesiastes p. 15, Ecclesiastes 1:2, (J. R. Thomson)

 

Gold Nugget 151

Vanity?

 

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