details of his experiment, that he may deter us from repeating it.
Speaking in the person of Solomon and utilising the facts of _his_
experience, Coheleth claims to have started in the quest with the
greatest advantages; for "what can he do who cometh after the king
whom they made king long ago?" He surrounded himself with all the
luxuries of an Oriental prince, not out of any vulgar love of show and
ostentation, nor out of any strong sensual addictions, but that he
might discover wherein the secret and fascination of pleasure lay, and
what it could do for a man who pursued it wisely. He built himself
new, costly palaces, as the Sultan of Turkey used to do almost every
year. He laid out paradises, planted them with vines and fruit-trees
of every sort, and large shady groves to screen off and attemper the
heat of the sun.[29] He dug great tanks and reservoirs of water, and
cut channels which carried the cool vital stream through the gardens
and to the roots of the trees. He bought men and maids, and surrounded
himself with the retinue of servants and slaves requisite to keep his
palaces and paradises in order, to serve his sumptuous tables, to
swell his pomp: _i.e._ he gathered together such a train of ministers,
attendants, domestics, indoor and outdoor slaves, as is still thought
necessary to the dignity of an Oriental "lord." His herds of flocks, a
main source of Oriental wealth, were of finer strain and larger in
number than had been known before. He amassed enormous treasures of
silver and gold, the common Oriental hoard. He collected the peculiar
treasures "of kings and of the kingdoms;" whatever special commodity
was yielded by any foreign land was caught up for his use by his
officers or presented to him by his allies.[30] He hired famous
musicians and singers, and gave himself to those delights of harmony
which have had a peculiar charm for the Hebrews of all ages. He
crowded his harem with the beauties both of his own and of foreign
lands. He withheld nothing from them that his eyes desired, and kept
not his heart from any pleasure. He set himself seriously and
intelligently to make happiness his portion; and, while cherishing or
cheering his body with pleasures, he did not rush into them with the
blind eagerness "whose violent property foredoes itself" and defeats
its own ends. His "mind guided him wisely" amid his delights; his
"wisdom helped him" to select, and combine, and vary them, to enhance
and prolong their sweetness by a certain art and temperance in me
enjoyment of them.
[29] "One such pleasaunce as this there was at Etam, Solomon's
Belvedere, as Josephus informs us (_Antiq._, VIII. 7, 3). Thither it
was the custom of the king, he says, to resort when he made his
morning excursions from the city, clad in a white garment, and driving
his chariot, surrounded by his body-guard of young men in the flower
of their age, clad in Tyrian purple, and with gold dust strewed upon
their hair, so that their whole head sparkled when the sun shone upon
it, and mounted upon horses from the royal stables, famed for their
beauty and fleetness."--Dr. Perowne, _The Expositor_, First Series,
vol. x.
[30] In speaking of the Persian revenue, Rawlinson says that besides a
definite money payment, "a payment, the nature and amount of which
were also fixed, had to be made in kind, each province being required
to furnish that commodity, or those commodities, for which it was most
celebrated,"--as, for example, grain, sheep, cattle, mules, fine
breeds of horses, beautiful slaves. _The Five Great Monarchies_, vol.
iv., chap. vii., p. 421.
"He built his soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;
He said, 'Oh Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear Soul, for all is well!'"
Alas, all was _not_ well, though he took much pains to make and think
it well. Even his choice delights soon palled upon his taste, and
brought on conclusions of disgust. Even in his lordly pleasure-house
he was haunted by the grim, menacing spectres which troubled him
before it was built. In the harem, in the paradise he had planted,
under the groves, beside the fountains, at the sumptuous banquet,--a
bursting bubble, a falling leaf, an empty wine cup, a passing blush,
sufficed to bring back the thought of the brevity and the emptiness of
life. When he had run the full career of pleasure, and turned to
contemplate his delights and the labour they had cost him, he found
that these also were vanity and vexation of spirit, that there was no
"profit" in them, that they could not satisfy the deep, incessant
craving of the soul for a true and lasting Good.
Is not his sad verdict as true as it is sad? We have not his wealth of
resources. Nevertheless there may have been a time when our hearts
were as intent on pleasure as was his. We may have pursued whatever
sensuous, intellectual, or aesthetic excitements were open to us with
a growing eagerness till we have lived in a whirl of craving and
stimulating desire and indulgence, in which the claims of duty have
been neglected and the rebukes of conscience unheeded. And if we
_have_ passed through this experience, if we have been carried for a
time into this giddying round, have we not come out of it jaded,
exhausted, despising ourselves for our folly, disgusted with what once
seemed the very top and crown of delight? Do we not mourn, our after
life through, over energies wasted and opportunities lost? Are we not
sadder, if wiser, men for our brief frenzy? As we return to the sober
duties and simple joys of life, do not _we_ say to Mirth, "Thou art
mad!" and to Pleasure, "What canst thou do for us?" Yes, our verdict
is that of the Preacher, "Lo, this too is vanity!" _Non enim
hilaritate, nec lascivia, nec visu, aut joco, comite levitatis, sed
saepe etiam tristes firmitate, et constantia sunt beati._[31]
[31] Cicero, _De Fin._, Lib. II., Cap. 20.
[Sidenote: _Wisdom and Mirth compared._ Ch. ii., vv. 12-23.]
It is characteristic of the philosophic temper of our Author, I think,
that, after pronouncing Wisdom and Mirth vanities in which the true
Good is not to be found, he does not at once proceed to try a new
experiment, but pauses to compare these two "vanities," and to reason
out his preference of one over the other. _His_ vanity is wisdom. For
it is only in one respect that he puts mirth and wisdom on an
equality, viz. that they neither of them are, or lead up to, the
supreme Good. In all other respects he affirms wisdom to be as much
better than pleasure as light is better than darkness, as much better
as it is to have eyes that see the light than to be blind and walk in
a constant gloom (VV. 12-14). It is because wisdom is a light and
enables men to see that he accords it his preference. It is by the
light of wisdom that he has learned the vanity of mirth, nay, the
insufficiency of wisdom itself. But for that light he might still be
pursuing pleasures which could not satisfy, or laboriously acquiring a
knowledge which would only deepen his sadness. Wisdom had opened his
eyes to see that he must seek the Good which gives rest and peace in
other regions. He no longer goes on his Quest in utter blindness, with
all the world before him where to choose, but with no indication of
the course he should, or should not, take. He has already learned that
two large provinces of human life will not yield him what he seeks,
that he must expend no more of his brief day and failing energies on
these.
Therefore wisdom is better than mirth. Nevertheless it is not best,
nor can it remove the dejections of a thoughtful heart. Somewhere
there is, there must be, that which is better still. For wisdom cannot
explain to him why the same fate should befall both the sage and the
fool (ver. 15), nor can it abate the anger that burns within him
against an injustice so obvious and flagrant. Wisdom cannot even
explain why, even if the sage must die no less than the fool, both
must be forgotten wellnigh as soon as they are gone (vv. 16, 17); nor
can it soften the hatred of life and its labours which this lesser yet
patent injustice has kindled in his heart. Nay, wisdom, for all so
brightly as it shines, throws no light on an injustice which, if of
lower degree, frets and perplexes his mind,--why a man who has
laboured prudently and dexterously and has acquired great gains
should, when he dies, leave all to one who has not laboured therein,
without even the poor consolation of knowing whether he will be a wise
man or an idiot (vv. 19-21). In short, the whole skein of life is in a
dismal tangle which wisdom itself, dearly as he loves it, cannot
unravel; and the tangle is that man has no fair "profit" from his
labours, "since his task grieveth and vexeth him all his days, and
even at night his heart hath no rest;" and when he dies he loses all
his gains, such as they are, for ever, and cannot so much as be sure
that his heir will be any the better for them. "This also is vanity"
(vv. 22, 23).
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _The Conclusion._ Ch. ii. vv. 24-26.]
And yet, good things are surely good, and there is a wise and gracious
enjoyment of earthly delights. It is right that a man should eat and
drink, and take a natural pleasure in his toils and gains. Who,
indeed, has a stronger claim than the labourer himself to eat and
enjoy the fruit of his labours? Still, even this natural enjoyment is
the gift of God; apart from his blessing the heaviest toils will
produce but a scanty harvest, and the faculty of enjoying that harvest
may be lacking. It _is_ lacking to the sinner; _his_ task is to heap
up gains which the good will inherit. But he that is good before God
will have the gains of the sinner added to his own, with wisdom to
enjoy both.[32] This, whatever appearances may sometimes suggest, is
the law of God's giving: that the good shall have abundance, while
the bad lack; that more shall be given to him who has wisdom to use
what he has aright, while from him who is destitute of this wisdom,
even that which he hath shall be taken away. Nevertheless even this
wise use and enjoyment of temporal good does not and cannot satisfy
the craving heart of man; even this, when it is made the ruling aim
and chief good of life, is vexation of spirit.
[32] This affirmation, so surprising at first sight, is also made by
Job (chap. xxvii., vv. 15, 16), "This is the doom of the wicked man
from God.... Though he heap up silver like dust, and gather robes as
mire, that which he hath gathered shall the righteous wear, and the
innocent shall divide his silver."
* * * * *
Thus the First Act of the Drama closes with a negative. The moral
problem is as far from being solved as at the outset. All we have
learned is that one or two avenues along which we urge the Quest will
not lead us to the end we seek. As yet the Preacher has only the _ad
interim_ conclusion to offer us, that both Wisdom and Mirth are good,
though neither, nor both combined, is the supreme Good; that we are
therefore to acquire wisdom and knowledge, and to blend pleasure with
our toils; that we are to believe pleasure and wisdom to be the gifts
of God, to believe also that they are bestowed, not in caprice, but
according to a law which deals out good to the good and evil to the
evil. We shall have other opportunities of weighing and appraising his
counsel--it is often repeated--and of seeing how it works into and
forms part of Coheleth's final solution of the painful riddle of the
earth, the baffling mystery of life.
SECOND SECTION.
_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN DEVOTION TO THE AFFAIRS OF BUSINESS._
CHAP. III., VER. 1, TO CHAP. V., VER. 20.
I. If the true Good is not to be found in the School where Wisdom
utters her voice, nor in the Garden in which Pleasure spreads her
lures: may it not be found in the Market, in devotion to Business and
Public Affairs? The Preacher will try this experiment also. He gives
himself to study and consider it. But at the very outset he discovers
that he is in the iron grip of immutable Divine ordinances, by which
"seasons" are appointed for every undertaking under heaven (ver. 1),
ordinances which derange man's best-laid schemes, and "shape his ends,
rough-hew them how he will," that no one can do anything to purpose
"apart from God," except by conforming to the ordinances, or laws, in
which He has expressed His will (comp. chap, ii., vv. 24-26).
[Sidenote: _The Quest obstructed by Divine Ordinances_; Ch. iii., vv.
1-15.]
The time of birth, for instance, and the time of death, are ordained
by a Power over which men have no control; they begin to be, and they
cease to be, at hours whose stroke they can neither hasten nor
retard. The season for sowing and the season for reaping are fixed
without any reference to their wish; they must plant and gather in
when the unchangeable laws of nature will permit (ver. 2). Even those
violent deaths, and those narrow escapes from death, which seem most
purely fortuitous, are predetermined; as are also the accidents which
befall our abodes (ver. 3). So, again, if only because determined by
these accidents, are the feelings with which we regard them, our
weeping and our laughter, our mourning and our rejoicing (ver. 4). If
we only clear a plot of ground from stones in order that we may
cultivate it, or that we may fence it in with a wall; or if an enemy
cast stones over our arable land to unfit it for uses of husbandry--a
malignant act frequent in the East--and we have painfully to gather
them out again: even this, which seems so purely within the scope of
human free-will, is also within the scope of the Divine decrees--as
are the very embraces we bestow on those dear to us, or withhold from
them (ver. 5). The varying and unstable desires which prompt us to
seek this object or that as earnestly as we afterwards carelessly cast
it away, and the passions which impel us to rend our garments over our
losses, and by-and-bye to sew up the rents not without some little
wonder that we should ever have been so deeply moved by that which
now sits so lightly on us; these passions and desires, which at one
time strike us dumb with grief and so soon after make us voluble with
joy, with all our fleeting and easily-moved hates and loves, strifes
and reconciliations, move within the circle of law, although they wear
so lawless a look, and are obsequious to the fixed canons of Heaven
(vv. 6-8). They travel their cycles; they return in their appointed
order. The uniformity of nature is reproduced in the uniform
recurrence of the chances and changes of human life; for in this, as
in that, God repeats Himself, recalling the past (ver. 15). The thing
that is is that which hath been, and that which will be. Social laws
are as constant and as inflexible as natural laws. The social
generalisations of modern science--as given, for instance, in Buckle's
_History_--are but a methodical elaboration of the conclusion at which
the Preacher here arrives.
Of what use, then, was it for men to "kick against the goads," to
attempt to modify immutable ordinances? "Whatever God hath ordained
continueth for ever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be
taken from it" (ver. 14). Nay, why should we care to alter or modify
the social order? Everything is beautiful and appropriate in its
season, from birth to death, from war to peace (ver. 11). If we cannot
find the satisfying Good in the events and affairs of life, that is
not because we could devise a happier order for them, but because "God
hath put _eternity_ into our hearts" as well as time, and did not
intend that we should be satisfied till we attain an eternal good. If
only we "understood" that, if only we recognised Gods design for us
"from beginning to end," and suffered eternity no less than time to
have its due of us, we should not fret ourselves in vain endeavours to
change the unchangeable, or to find an enduring good in that which is
fugitive and perishable. We should rejoice and do ourselves good all
our brief life (Ver. 12); we should eat and drink and take pleasure in
our labours (ver. 13); we should feel that this faculty for innocently
enjoying simple pleasures and wholesome toils is "a gift of God:" we
should conclude that God had ordained that regular cycle and order of
events which so often forestalls the wish and endeavour of the moment,
in order that we should fear Him in place of relying on ourselves
(ver. 14), and trust our future to Him who so wisely and graciously
recalls the past.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _And by Human Injustice and Perversity._ Ch. iii., v.
16.-Ch. iv., v. 3.]
But not only are our endeavours to find the "good" of our labours
thwarted by the gracious, inflexible laws of the just God; they are
often baffled by the injustice of ungracious men. In the days of
Coheleth, Iniquity sat in the seat of justice, wresting all rules of
equity to its base private ends (ver. 16). Unjust judges and
rapacious satraps put the fair rewards of labour and skill and
integrity in jeopardy, insomuch that if a man by industry and thrift,
by a wise observance of Divine laws and by taking occasions as they
rose, had acquired affluence, he was too often, in the expressive
Eastern phrase, but as a sponge which any petty despot might squeeze.
The frightful oppressions of the time were a heavy burden to the
Hebrew Preacher. He brooded over them, seeking for aids to faith and
comfortable words wherewith to solace the oppressed. For a moment he
thought he had lit on the true comfort, "Well, well," he said within
himself, "_God_ will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is
a time for everything and for every deed with Him" (ver. 17). Could he
have rested in this thought, it would have been "a sovereign balm" to
him, or indeed to any other Hebrew; although to us, who have learned
to desire the redemption rather than the punishment of the wicked,
their redemption _through_ their inevitable punishments, the true
comfort would still have been wanting. But he could not rest in it,
could not hold it fast, and confesses that he could not. He lays his
heart bare before us. We are permitted to trace the fluctuating
thoughts and emotions which swept across it. No sooner has he
whispered to his heart that God, who is at leisure from Himself and
has endless time at his command, will visit the oppressors and avenge
the oppressed, than his thoughts take a new turn, and he adds: "And
yet God _may_ have sifted the children of men only to shew them that
they are no better than the beasts" (ver. 18): _this_ may be his aim
in all the wrongs by which they are tried. Repugnant as the thought
is, it nevertheless fascinates him for the instant, and he yields to
its wasting and degrading magic. He not only fears, suspects, thinks
that man is no better than a beast; he is quite sure of it, and
proceeds to argue it out. His argument is very sweeping, very sombre.
"A mere chance is man, and the beast a mere chance." Both spring from
a mere accident, no one can tell how, and have a blind hazard for a
creator; and "both are subject to the same chance," or mischance,
throughout their lives, all the decisions of their intelligence and
will being overruled by the decrees of an inscrutable fate. Both
perish under the same power of death, suffer the same pangs of
dissolution, are taken at unawares by the same invisible yet
resistless force. The bodies of both spring from the same dust, and
moulder back into dust. Nay, "both have the same spirit;" and though
vain man sometimes boasts that at death his spirit goeth upward, while
that of the beast goeth downward, yet who can prove it? For himself,
and in his present mood, Coheleth doubts, and even denies it. He is
absolutely convinced that in origin and life and death, in body and
spirit and final fate, man is as the beast is, and hath no advantage
over the beast (vv. 19-21). And therefore he falls back on his old
conclusion, though now with a sadder heart than ever, that man will do
wisely, that, being so blind and having so dark a prospect, he cannot
do more wisely than to take what pleasure and enjoy what good he can
amid his labours. _If_ he is a beast, _as_ he is a beast, let him at
least learn of the beasts that simple, tranquil enjoyment of the good
of the passing moment, untroubled by any vexing presage of what is to
come, in which it must be allowed that they are greater proficients
than he (ver. 22).
Thus, after rising in the first fifteen verses of this Third Chapter,
to an almost Christian height of patience, and resignation, and holy
trust in the providence of God, Coheleth is smitten by the injustice
and oppressions of man into the depths of a pessimistic materialism.
* * * * *
But now a new question arises. The Preacher's survey of human life has
shaken his faith even in the conclusion which he has announced from
the first, viz., that there is nothing better for a man than a quiet
content, a busy cheerfulness, a tranquil enjoyment of the fruit of his
toils. _This_ at least he has supposed to be possible: but is it? All
the activities, industries, tranquillities of life are jeopardised,
now by the inflexible ordinances of Heaven, and again by the
capricious tyranny of man. To this tyranny his fellow-countrymen are
now exposed. They groan under its heaviest oppressions. As he turns
and once more reflects (chap. iv., ver. 1) on their unalleviated and
unfriended misery, he doubts whether content, or even resignation, can
be expected of them. With a tender sympathy that lingers on the
details of their unhappy lot, and deepens into a passionate and
despairing melancholy, he witnesses their sufferings and "counts the
tears" of the oppressed. With the emphasis of a Hebrew and an
Oriental, he marks and emphasises the fact that "they had no
comforter," that though "their oppressors were violent, yet they had
no comforter." For throughout the East, and among the Jews to this
day, the manifestation of sympathy with those who suffer is far more
common and ceremonious than it is with us. Neighbours and
acquaintances are expected to pay long visits of condolence; friends
and kinsfolk will travel long distances to pay them. Their respective
places and duties in the house of mourning, their dress, words,
bearing, precedence, are regulated by an ancient and elaborate
etiquette. And, strange as it may seem to us, these visits are
regarded not only as gratifying tokens of respect to the dead, but as
a singular relief and comfort to the living. To the Preacher and his
fellow-captives, therefore, it would be a bitter aggravation of their
grief that, while suffering under the most cruel oppressions of
misfortune, they were compelled to forego the solace of these
customary tokens of respect and sympathy. As he pondered their sad and
unfriended condition, Coheleth--like Job, when his comforters failed
him--is moved to curse his day. The dead, he affirms, are happier than
the living,[33]--even the dead who died so long ago that the fate most
dreaded in the East had befallen them, and the very memory of them
had perished from the earth: while happier than either the dead, who
have had to suffer in their time, or than the living, whose doom had
still to be borne, were those who had never seen the light, never been
born into a world all disordered and out of course (vv. 2, 3).[34]
[33] Xerxes, in his invasion of Greece, conceived the wish "to look
upon all his host." A throne was erected for him on a hill near
Abydos, sitting on which he looked down and saw the Hellespont covered
with his ships, and the vast plain swarming with his troops. As he
looked, he wept; and when his uncle Artabanus asked him the cause of
his tears, he replied: "There came upon me a sudden pity when I
thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all
this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred
years are gone by." This is one of the most striking and best known
incidents in the life of the Persian despot; but the rejoinder of
Artabanus, though in a far higher strain, is less generally known. I
quote it here as an illustration of the Preacher's mood. Said
Artabanus: "And yet there are sadder things in life than that. Short
as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this
multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have felt the
wish--I will not say once, but full many a time--that he were dead
rather than alive. Calamities fall on us, sicknesses vex and harass
us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. _So death,
through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our
race._"--_Herodotus_, Book VII., c. 46.
[34] So in Sophocles (_Oed. Col._, 1225) we read--I quote from Dean
Plumptre's translation: