ordered steadfastness of nature and the disorder and brevity of human
life. The Preacher gazes on the universe above and around him. The
ancient earth is firm and strong beneath his feet. The sun runs his
race with joy, sinks exhausted into its ocean bed, but rises on the
morrow, like a giant refreshed with old wine, to renew its course. The
variable and inconstant wind, which bloweth where it listeth, blows
from the same quarters, runs through the very circuit which was its
haunt in the time of the world's grey fathers. The streams which ebb
and flow, which go and come, run along time-worn beds and are fed from
their ancient source. But man, "to one point constant never," shifts
from change to change. As compared with the calm uniformity of nature,
his life is a mere phantasy, passing for ever through a tedious and
limited range of forms, each of which is as unsubstantial as the
fabric of a vision, many of which are as base and sordid as they are
unreal, and all of which, for ever in a flux, elude the grasp of those
who pursue them, or disappoint those who hold them in their hands.
"All is vanity; for man has no profit," no adequate and enduring
reward, "for all his labour;" literally, "no balance, no surplus, on
the balance-sheet of life:" less happy, because less stable, than the
earth on which he dwells, he comes and goes, while the earth goes on
for ever (vv. 2-4).
This painful contrast between the ordered stability of nature and the
changeful and profitless disorder of human life is emphasized by a
detailed reference to the large natural forces which rule the world,
and which abide unchanged, although to us they seem the very types of
change. The figure of ver. 5 is, of course, that of the racer. The sun
rises every morning to run its course, pursues it through the day,
"pants," as one well-nigh breathless, toward its goal, and sinks at
night into its subterraneous bed in the sea; but, though exhausted and
breathless at night, it rises on the morrow refreshed, and eager, like
a strong, swift man, to renew its daily race. In ver. 6 the wind is
represented as having a regular law and circuit, though it now blows
South, and now veers round to the North. The East and West are not
mentioned, probably because they are tacitly referred to in the rising
and setting sun of the previous verse: all the four quarters are
included between the two. In ver. 7 the streams are described as
returning on their sources; but there is no allusion here, as we might
suppose, to the tides,--and indeed tidal rivers are comparatively
rare,--or to the rain which brings back the water evaporated from the
surface of the streams and of the sea. The reference is, rather, to an
ancient conception of the physical order of nature held by the Hebrew
as by other races, according to which the ocean, fed by the streams,
sent back a constant supply through subterraneous passages and
channels, in which the salt was filtered out of it; through these they
supposed the rivers to return to the place whence they came. The
ruling sentiment of these verses is that, while all the natural
elements and forces, even the most variable and inconstant, renew
their strength and return upon their course, for frail man there is no
return; permanence and uniformity characterise _them_, while
transitoriness and instability mark _him_ for their own. They seem to
vanish and disappear; the sun sinks, the winds lull, the streams run
dry; but they all come back again: for him there is no coming back;
once gone, he is gone for ever.
But it is vain to talk of these or other instances of the weary yet
restless activity of the universe; "man cannot utter it." For, besides
these elemental illustrations, the world is crowded with illustrations
of incessant change, which yet move within narrow bounds and do
nothing to relieve its sameliness. So numerous are they, so
innumerable, that the curious eye and inquisitive ear of man would be
worn out before they had completed the tale of them: and if eye and
ear could never be satisfied with hearing and seeing, how much less
the slower tongue with speaking (ver. 8)? All through the universe
what hath been still is and will be; what was done is done still and
always will be done; the sun still running the same race, the winds
still blowing from the same points, the streams still flowing between
the same banks and returning by the same channels. If any man suppose
that he has discovered new phenomena, any natural fact which has not
been repeating itself from the beginning, it is only because he is
ignorant of that which has been from of old (vv. 9, 10).[26] Yet,
while in nature all things return on their course and abide for ever,
man's day is soon spent, his force soon exhausted. _He_ does not
return; nay, he is not so much as remembered by those who come after
him. Just as we have forgotten those who were before us, so those who
live after us will forget us (ver. 11). The burden of all this
unintelligible world lies heavily on the Preacher's soul. He is weary
of the world's "everlasting sameness." The miseries and confusions of
the human lot baffle and oppress his thoughts. Above all, the contrast
between Nature and Man, between its massive and stately permanence and
the frailty and brevity of our existence, breeds in him the despairing
mood of which we have the keynote in his cry, "Vanity of vanities,
vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"
[26] So Marcus Aurelius (_Meditt._, xi. 1): "They that come after us
will see nothing new; and they who went before saw nothing more than
we have seen."
Yet this is not the only, not the inevitable, mood of the mind as it
ponders that great contrast. _We_ have learned to look upon it with
other, perhaps with wider, eyes. We say, How grand, how soothing, how
hopeful is the spectacle of nature's uniformity! How it lifts us above
the fluctuations of inward thought, and gladdens us with a sense of
stability and repose! As we see the ancient inviolable laws working
out into the same gracious and beautiful results day after day and
year by year, and reflect that "what has been will be," we are
redeemed from our bondage to vanity and corruption; we look up with
composed and reverent trust to Him who is our God and Father, and
onward to the stable and glorious immortality we are to spend with
Him; we argue with Habakkuk (chap. i. ver. 12), "Art not _Thou_ from
everlasting, O Lord our God, our Holy One? _We_ shall not die," but
live.
But if we did not know the Ruler of the universe to be our God and
Father; if our thoughts had still to "jump the life to come" or to
leap at it with a mere guess; if we had to cross the gulf of death on
no more solid bridge than a Peradventure; if, in short, our life were
infinitely more troubled and uncertain than it is, and the true good
of life and its bright sustaining hope were still to seek, how would
it be with us then? Then, like the Preacher, we might feel the
steadfastness and uniformity of nature as an affront to our vanity and
weakness. In place of drinking in hope and composure from the fair
visage and unbroken order of the universe, we might deem its face to
be darkened with a frown or its eye to be glancing on us with bitter
irony. Instead of finding in its inevitable order and permanence a
hopeful prophecy of _our_ recovery into an unbroken order and an
enduring peace, we might passionately demand why, on an abiding earth
and under an unchanging heaven, we should die and be forgotten; why,
more inconstant than the variable wind, more evanescent than the
parching stream, one generation should go never to return, and another
generation come to enjoy the gains of those who were before them, and
to blot their memory from the earth.
This, indeed, _has_ been the impassioned protest and outcry of every
age. Literature is full of it. The contrast between the tranquil
unchanging sky, with its myriads of pure lustrous stars, which are
always there and always in a happy concert, and the frailty of man
rushing blindly through his brief and perturbed course has lent its
ground-tones to the poetry of every race. We meet it everywhere. It is
the oldest of old songs. In all the many languages of the divided
earth we hear how the generations of men pass swifty and stormfully
across its bosom, "searching the serene heavens with the inquest of
their beseeching looks," but winning no response; asking always, and
always in vain, "Why are we thus? why are we thus? frail as the moth,
and of few days like the flower?" It is this contrast between the
serenity and the stability of nature and the frailty and turbulence of
man which afflicts Coheleth and drives him to conclusions of despair.
Here is man, "so noble in reason, so infinite in faculty, in
apprehension so like a god," longing with an ardent intensity for the
peace which results from the equipoise and happy occupation of his
various powers; and yet his whole life is wasted in labours and
tumults, in perplexity and strife; he goes to his grave with his
cravings unsatisfied, his powers untrained, unharmonised, knowing no
rest till he lies in the narrow bed from which is no uprising! What
wonder if to such an one as he "this goodly frame, the earth, seems
but a sterile promontory" stretching out a little space into the dark,
infinite void; "this most excellent canopy, the air ... this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,"
nothing but "a foul, pestilential congregation of vapours"? What
wonder if, for him, the very beauty of nature should turn into a
repulsive hideousness, and its steadfast, unchanging order be held a
satire on the disorder and vanity of his life?
Solomon, moreover,--and Solomon in his premature old age, sated and
weary, is the mask under which the Preacher conceals his natural
face,--had had a large experience of life, had tried its ambitions,
its lusts, its pursuits and pleasures; he had tested every promise of
good which it held forth, and found them all illusory; he had drunk of
every stream, and found no pure living water with which he could slake
his thirst. And men such as he, sated but not satisfied, jaded with
voluptuous delights and without the peace of faith, commonly look out
on the world with haggard eyes. They feed their despair on the
natural order and purity which they feel to be a rebuke to the
impurity of their own restless and perturbed hearts. Many of us have,
no doubt, stood on Richmond Hill, and looked with softening eyes on
the rich pastures dotted with cattle, and broken with clumps of trees
through which shoot up village spires, while the full, placid Thames
winds in many a curve through pasture and wood. It is not a grand or
romantic scene; but on a quiet evening, in the long level rays of the
setting sun, it is a scene to inspire content and thankful, peaceful
thoughts. Wilberforce tells us that he once stood in the balcony of a
villa looking down on this scene. Beside him stood the owner of the
villa, a duke notorious for his profligacy in a profligate age; and as
they looked across the stream, the duke cried out, "O that river!
there it runs, on and on, and I so weary of it!" And _there_ you have
the very mood of this Prologue; the mood for which the fair, smiling
heavens and the gracious, bountiful earth carry no benediction of
peace, because they are reflected from a heart all tossed into
crossing and impure waves.
All things depend on the heart we bring to them. This very contrast
between Nature and Man has no despair in it, breeds no dispeace or
anger in the heart at leisure from itself and at peace with God.
Tennyson, for instance, makes a merry musical brook sing to us on this
very theme.
"I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
"I chatter over stony ways
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
"I chatter, chatter as I flow
To join the brimming river;
_For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever_.
"I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
"I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sanded shallows.
"I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses.
"And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
_For men may come and men may go
But I go on for ever_."
It is the very plaint of the Preacher set to sweet music. He murmurs,
"One generation passeth, and another generation cometh, but the earth
abideth for ever;" while the refrain of the Brook is,--
"For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."
Yet we do not feel that the Song of the Brook should feed any mood of
grief and despair. The tune that it sings to the sleeping woods all
night is "a cheerful tune." By some subtle process we are made to
share us bright, tender hilarity, though we too are of the men that
come and go. Into what a fume would the Hebrew Preacher have been
thrown had any little "babbling brook" dared to sing this saucy song
_to him_. He would have felt it as an insult, and have assumed that
the merry, innocent creature was "crowing" over the swiftly passing
generations of men. But, for the Christian Poet, the Brook sings a
song whose blithe dulcet strain attunes the heart to the quiet
harmonies of peace and good-will.
Again I say all depends on the heart we turn to nature. It was because
his heart was heavy with the memory of many sins and many failures,
because too the lofty Christian hopes were beyond his reach, that this
"son of David" grew mournful and bitter in her presence.
This, then, is the mood in which the Preacher commences his quest of
the Chief Good. He is driven to it by the need of finding that in
which he can rest. As a rule, it is only on the most stringent
compulsions that we any of us undertake this high Quest. Of their
profound need of a Chief Good most men are but seldom and faintly
conscious; but to the favoured few, who are to lead and mould the
public thought, it comes with a force they cannot resist. It was thus
with Coheleth. He could not endure to think that those who have "all
things put under their feet" should lie at the mercy of accidents from
which their realm is exempt; that _they_ should be the mere fools of
change, while _that_ abides unchanged for ever. And, therefore, he set
out to discover the conditions on which they might become partakers of
the order and stability and peace of nature; the conditions on which,
raised above all the tides and storms of change, they might sit calm
and serene even though the heavens should be folded as a scroll and
the earth be shaken from its foundations. This, and only this, will he
recognise as the Chief Good, the Good appropriate to the nature of
man, because capable of satisfying all his cravings and supplying all
his wants.
FIRST SECTION.
_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN WISDOM AND IN PLEASURE._
CHAP. I., VER. 12, TO CHAP. II., VER. 26.
Oppressed by his profound sense of the vanity of the life which man
lives amid the play of permanent natural forces, Coheleth sets out on
the search for that true and supreme Good which it will be well for
the sons of men to pursue through their brief day; the good which will
sustain them under all their toils, and be "a portion" so large and
enduring as to satisfy even their vast desires.
[Sidenote: _The Quest in Wisdom._ Ch. i., vv. 12-18.]
1. And, as was natural in so wise a man, he turns first to _Wisdom_.
He gives himself diligently to inquire into all the actions and toils
of men. He will ascertain whether a larger acquaintance with their
conditions, a deeper insight into the facts, a more just and complete
estimate of their lot, will remove the depression which weighs upon
his heart. He devotes himself earnestly to this Quest, and acquires a
"greater wisdom than all who were before him."
This wisdom, however, is not a scientific knowledge of facts or of
social and political laws, nor is it the result of philosophical
speculations on "the first good or the first fair," or on the nature
and constitution of man. It is the wisdom that is born of wide and
varied experience, not of abstract study. He acquaints himself with
the facts of human life, with the circumstances, thoughts, feelings,
hopes, and aims of all sorts and conditions of men. He is fain to know
"all that men do under the sun," "all that is done under heaven." Like
the Arabian Caliph, "the good Haroun Alraschid," we may suppose that
Coheleth goes forth in disguise to visit all quarters of the city; to
talk with barbers, druggists, calenders, porters, with merchants and
mariners, husbandmen and tradesmen, mechanics and artizans; to try
conclusions with travellers and with the blunt wits of home-keeping
men. He will look with his own eyes and learn for himself what their
lives are like, how they conceive of the human lot, and what, if any,
are the mysteries which sadden and perplex them. He will ascertain
whether _they_ have any key that will unlock his perplexities, any
wisdom that will solve his problems or help him to bear his burden
with a more cheerful heart. Because his depression was fed by every
fresh contemplation of the order of the universe, he turns from nature
to "the proper study of mankind."
But this also he finds a heavy and disappointing task. After a wide
and dispassionate scrutiny, when he has "seen _much_ wisdom and
knowledge," he concludes that man has no fair reward "for all his
labour that he laboureth under the sun," that no wisdom avails to set
straight that which is crooked in human affairs, or to supply that
which is lacking in them. The sense of vanity bred by his
contemplation of the stedfast round of nature only grows more profound
and more painful as he reflects on the numberless and manifold
disorders which afflict humanity. And hence, before he ventures on a
new experiment, he makes a pathetic appeal to the heart which he had
so earnestly applied to the search, and in which he had stored up so
large and various a knowledge, and confesses that "even this is
vexation of spirit," that "in much wisdom is much sadness," and that
"to multiply knowledge is to multiply sorrow."
And whether we consider the nature of the case or the conditions of
the time in which this Book was written, we shall not be surprised at
the mournful conclusion to which he comes. For the time was full of
cruel oppressions and wrongs. Life was insecure. To acquire property
was to court extortion. The Hebrews, and even the conquering race
which ruled them, were slaves to the caprice of satraps and
magistrates whose days were wasted in revelry and in the unbridled
indulgence of their lusts. And to go among the various conditions of
men groaning under a despotism like that of the Turk, whose foot
strikes with barrenness every spot on which it treads; to see all the
fair rewards of honest toil withheld, the noble degraded and the
foolish exalted, the righteous trodden down by the feet of the wicked;
all this was not likely to quicken cheerful thoughts in a wise man's
heart: instead of solving, it could but complicate and darken the
problems over which he was already brooding in despair.
And, apart from the special wrongs and oppressions of the time, it is
inevitable that the thoughtful student of men and manners should
become a sadder as he becomes a wiser man. To multiply knowledge, at
least of this kind, _is_ to multiply sorrow. We need not be cynics and
leave our tub only to reflect on the dishonesty of our neighbours, we
need only go through the world with open and observant eyes in order
to learn that "in much wisdom is much sadness." Recall the wisest of
modern times, those who have had the most intimate acquaintance with
man and men, Goethe and Carlyle for example; are they not all touched
with a profound sadness?[27] Do they not look with some scorn on the
common life of the mass of men, with its base passions and pleasures,
struggles and rewards? and, in proportion as they have the spirit of
Christ, is not their very scorn kindly, springing from a pity which
lies deeper than itself? Did not even the Master Himself, though full
of ruth and grace, share their feeling as He saw publicans growing
rich by extortion, hypocrites mounting to Moses' chair, subtle, cruel
foxes couched on thrones, scribes hiding the key of knowledge, and the
blind multitude following their blind leaders into the ditch?
[27] Pere Lacordaire has a fine passage on this theme. "Weak and
little minds find here below a nourishment which suffices for their
intellect and satisfies their love. They do not discover the emptiness
of visible things because they are incapable of sounding them to the
bottom. But a soul which God has drawn nearer to the Infinite very
soon feels the narrow limits within which it is pent; it experiences
moments of inexpressible sadness, the cause of which for a long time
remains a mystery; it even seems as though some strange concurrence of
events must have chanced in order thus to disturb its life; and all
the while the trouble comes from a higher source. In reading the lives
of the Saints, we find that nearly all of them have felt that sweet
melancholy of which the ancients said _that there was no genius
without it_. In fact, melancholy is inseparable from every mind that
looks below the surface and every heart that feels profoundly. Not
that we should take complacency in it, for it is a malady that
enervates when we do not shake it off; and it has but two
remedies--_Death or God_." Elsewhere, still quite in the spirit of the
Preacher, he says: "Every day I feel more and more that all is vanity.
_I cannot leave my heart in this heap of mud._"
Nay, if we look out on the world of to-day, can we say that even the
majority of men are wise and pure? Is it always the swift who win the
race, and the strong who carry off the honours of the battle? Do none
of our "intelligent lack bread," nor any of the learned favour? Are
there no fools lifted to high places to show with how little wisdom
the world is governed, and no brave and noble breasts dinted by the
blows of hostile circumstances or wounded by "the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune"? Are all our workmen diligent and all our masters
fair? Are no false measures and balances known in our markets, and no
frauds on our exchanges? Are none of our homes dungeons, with fathers
and husbands for jailors? Do we never hear, as we stand without, the
sound of cruel blows and the shrieks of tortured captives? Are there
no hypocrites in our Churches "that with devotion's visage sugar o'er"
a corrupt heart? And do the best men always gain the highest place and
honour? Are there none in our midst who have to bear--
"The whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the laws delay.
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes"?
Alas, if we think to find the true Good in a wide and varied knowledge
of the conditions of men, their hopes and fears, their struggles and
successes, their loves and hates, their rights and wrongs, their
pleasures and their pains, we shall but share the defeat of the
Preacher, and repeat his bitter cry, "Vanity of vanities, vanity of
vanities, all is vanity!" For, as he himself implies at the very
outset (ver. 13), "this sore task," this eternal quest of a wisdom
which will solve the problems and remove the inequalities of human
life, is God's _gift_ to the children of men,--this search for a
solution they never reach. Age after age, unwarned by the failure of
those who took this road before them, they renew the hopeless quest.
[Sidenote: _The Quest in Pleasure._ Ch. ii., vv. 1-11.]
2. But if we cannot reach the object of our Quest in Wisdom, we may,
perchance, find it in Pleasure. This experiment also the Preacher has
tried, tried on the largest scale and under the most auspicious
conditions. Wisdom failing to satisfy the large desires of his soul,
or even to lift it from its depression, he turns to mirth.[28] Once
more, as he forthwith announces, he is disappointed in the result. He
pronounces mirth a brief madness; in itself, like wisdom, a good, it
is not the Chief Good; to make it supreme is to rob it of its natural
charm.
[28] So Goethe's _Faust_, after having failed to solve the insoluble
problems of life by study and research, "plunges deep in pleasure,"
that he "may thus still the burning thirst of passionate desire."