Written as this book was at the darkest hour of Hebrew history, at a time of oppression and unrest, it is a sad book. The writer, a serious and earnest-minded man, strives nobly to discover light for himself and his race, but the world looks dark. Yet he is a brave and devout soul, and his book, so full of stimulus to high endeavor, ought to be read more widely than it is.
The words I have quoted may well start several different trains of thought. One of these I will suggest. There is nothing new under the sun, it is true; but we do not need anything new. The same old things we have always had are just what we need and shall always need; as springtime and harvest, day and night, work and rest. In the regular recurrence of these great and necessary things is found the rhythm of life in accordance with which we live and must live. May we learn something from nature's ways that will help us to make our lives strong? I think so.
Have you ever thought of rhythm in nature? Here there is no monotony, but constant and beneficent change. Nothing, perhaps, is quite so blessed as the sunshine, yet eternal day would be almost as bad as eternal night. How our tired eyes would long for the calm and restful darkness! We love the springtime and the warm days and the green growing things; but how much more we love them because they follow cold and snow, leafless trees and bare earth!
Nowhere do we find the rhythm of nature better illustrated than in our bodies, these wonderful machines only partially under our control. Sleeping and waking, the contraction and extension of the muscles, the inhalation and exhalation of the breath are a few of the many examples. The most important of all the activities of the body, the systole and diastole of the heart, Nature keeps within her own control, and gives alternate work and rest to that vital organ, as if to say that when it comes to a matter of life and death, man cannot be trusted to his own keeping. Fortunate it is that this is so, for if it rested with us to decide when they should work and when rest, some eager, ambitious hearts would beat themselves to death ere life had well begun.
This polarity in nature is nowhere better stated than in Emerson's essay on "Compensation":--