The Preacher in the context presses home a formidable array of the
limitations and insufficiencies of wealth. Possessed, it cannot
satisfy, for the appetite grows with indulgence. Its increase barely
keeps pace with the increase of its consumers. It contributes nothing
to the advantage of its so-called owner except 'the beholding of it
with his eyes,' and the need of watching it keeps them open when he
would fain sleep. It is often kept to the owner's hurt, it often
disappears in unfortunate speculation, and the possessor's heirs are
paupers. But, even if all these possibilities are safely weathered,
the man has to die and leave it all behind. 'He shall take nothing of
his labour which he can carry away in his hand'; that is to say, death
separates from all with whom the life of the body brings us into
connection. The things which are no parts of our true selves are ours
in a very modified sense even whilst we seem to possess them, and the
term of possession has a definite close. 'Shrouds have no pockets,' as
the stern old proverb says. How many men have lived in the houses
which we call ours, sat on our seats, walked over our lands, carried
in their purses the money that is in ours! Is 'the game worth the
candle' when we give our labour for so imperfect and brief a
possession as at the fullest and the longest we enjoy of all earthly
good? Surely a wise man will set little store by possessions of all
which a cold, irresistible hand will come to strip him. Surely the
life is wasted which spends its energy in robing itself in garments
which will all be stripped from it when the naked self 'returns to go
as he came.'
But there are other things than these earthly possessions from which
death separates us. It carries us far away from the sound of human
voices and isolates us from living men. Honour and reputation cease to
be audible. When a prominent man dies, what a clatter of conflicting
judgments contends over his grave! and how utterly he is beyond them
all! Praise or blame, blessing or banning are equally powerless to
reach the unhearing ear or to agitate the unbeating heart. And when
one of our small selves passes out of life, we hear no more the voice
of censure or of praise, of love or of hate. Is it worth while to toil
for the 'hollow wraith of dying fame,' or even for the clasp of loving
hands which have to be loosened so surely and so soon?
Then again, there are other things which must be left behind as
belonging only to the present order, and connected with bodily life.
There will be no scope for material work, and much of all our
knowledge will be antiquated when the light beyond shines in. As we
shall have occasion to see presently, there is a permanent element in
the most material work, and if in handling the transient we have been
living for the eternal, such work will abide; but if we think of the
spirit in which a sad majority do their daily tasks, whether of a more
material or of a more intellectual sort, we must recognise that a very
large proportion of all the business of life must come to an end here.
There is nothing in it that will stand the voyage across the great
deep, or that can survive in the order of things to which we go. What
is a man to do in another world, supposing there is another world,
where ledgers and mills are out of date? Or what has a scholar or
scientist to do in a state of things where there is no place for
dictionaries and grammars, for acute criticism, or for a careful
scientific research?
Physical science, linguistic knowledge, political wisdom, will be
antiquated. The poetry which glorifies afresh and interprets the
present will have lost its meaning. Half the problems that torture us
here will cease to have existence, and most of the other half will
have been solved by simple change of position. 'Whether there be
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish
away'; and it becomes us all to bethink ourselves whether there is
anything in our lives that we can carry away when all that is 'of the
earth earthy' has sunk into nothingness.