even in outward behaviour, may be lifted to high place, and has ere
now sat on an imperial throne.[44] The Preacher had seen many of them
suddenly raised to power, while nobles were depraved, and high
functionaries of State reduced to an abject servitude. Now if the poor
wise man have to attend the durbar, or sit in the divan, of a foolish
capricious despot, how should he bear himself? The Preacher counsels
meekness and submission. He is to sit unruffled even though the ruler
should rate him, lest by resentment he should provoke some graver
outrage (vv. 4-7: comp. chap. viii., ver. 3). To strengthen him in
his submission, the Preacher hints at cautions and consolations which,
because free and open speech was very dangerous under the Persian
despotism, he wraps up in obscure maxims capable of a double
sense--nay, as the commentators have shown, capable of a good many
more senses than two--to the true sense of which "a foolish ruler" was
by no means likely to penetrate, even if they fell into his hands.
[44] To cite only one instance out of many--other instances may be
found in the Introduction--let the reader recall the Emperor Caligula,
and refer, for example, to his reception of the Alexandrian Jews, as
recorded by Philo, _Legat ad Caium_, cc. 44, 45; or by Merivale, in
his _History of the Romans_, chap. xlvii., pp. 47-50; or by Milman, in
his _History of the Jews_, Book xii., pp. 141-45. He will then know,
to quote the phrase of Apollonius of Tyana, what "the kind of beast
called a tyrant" is or may be.
The first of these maxims is, "He who diggeth a pit shall fall into
it" (ver. 8). And the allusion is, of course, to an Eastern mode of
trapping wild beasts and game. The huntsman dug a pit, covered it with
twigs and sods, and strewed the surface with bait; but as he dug many
such pits, and some of them were long without a tenant, he might at
any inadvertent moment fall into one of them himself. The proverb is
capable of at least two interpretations. It may mean that the foolish
despot, plotting the ruin of his wise servant, might in his anger go
too far; and, betraying his intention, provoke a retaliative anger
before which he himself would fall. Or it may mean that, should the
wise servant seek to undermine the throne of the despot, he might be
taken in his treachery and bring on himself the whole weight of the
tyrant's wrath.
The second maxim is, "Whoso breaketh down a wall, a serpent shall bite
him" (ver. 8); and here, of course, the allusion is to the fact that
snakes infect the crannies of old walls (comp. Amos v. 19). To set
about dethroning a tyrant was like pulling down such a wall; you would
break up the nest of many a reptile, many a venomous hanger-on, and
might only get bit or stung for your pains. Or, again, in pulling out
the stones of an old wall, you might let one of them fall on your
foot; and in hacking out its timbers, you might cut yourself: that is
to say, even if your conspiracy did not involve you in absolute ruin,
it would be only too likely to do you serious and lasting injury (ver.
9).
The next adage runs (ver. 10), "If the axe be blunt, and he do not
whet the edge, he must put on more strength, but wisdom should teach
him to sharpen it," and is, perhaps, the most difficult passage in the
Book. The Hebrew is read in a different way by almost every
translator. As I read it, it means, in general, that it is not well to
work with blunt tools when by a little labour and delay you may whet
them to a keener edge. Read thus, the political rule implied in it is,
"Do not attempt any great enterprise, any revolution or reform, till
you have a well-considered scheme to go upon, and suitable instruments
to carry it out with." But the special political import of it may be,
"Your strength is nothing to that of the tyrant; do not therefore lift
a blunt axe against the trunk of despotism: wait till you have put a
sharp edge upon it." Or, the tyrant himself may be the blunt axe, and
then the warning is, "Sharpen _him_ up, repair him, use him and his
caprices to serve your end; get your way by giving way to him, and by
skilfully availing yourself of his varying moods." Which of these may
be the true meaning of this obscure disputed passage, I do not
undertake to say; but the latter of the two seems to be sustained by
the adage which follows: "If the serpent bite because it is not
charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer." For here, I think,
there can be little doubt that the foolish angry ruler is the serpent,
and the wise functionary the charmer who is to extract the venom of
his anger. Let the foolish ruler be never so furious, the poor wise
man, who is able "to cull the plots of best advantages," and to save a
city, can surely devise a charm of soft submissive words which will
turn away his wrath; just as the serpent-charmer of the East, by song
and incantation, is at least reputed to draw serpents from their lurk,
that he may pluck the venom from their teeth (ver. 11). For, as we are
told in the very next verse, "the words of the wise man's mouth win
him grace, while the lips of the fool destroy him."
And on this hint, on this casual mention of his name, the
Preacher--who all this while, remember, is personating the sagacious
man of the world, bent on rising to wealth, power, distinction--once
more "comes down" on the fool. He speaks of him with a burning heat
and contempt, as men versed in public affairs are wont to do, since
they best know how much harm a voluble, impudent, self-conceited fool
may do, how much good he may prevent. Here, then, is the fool of
public life. He is a man always prating and predicting, although his
words, only foolish at the first, swell and fret into a malignant
madness before he has done, and although he of all men is least able
to give good counsel, to seize occasions as they rise, or to foresee
what is about to come to pass. Puffed up by the conceit of wisdom or
of his own importance, he is for ever intermeddling with great
affairs, though he has no notion how to handle them, and is incapable
of even finding his way along the beaten road which leads to the
capital city, of taking and keeping the plain and obvious path which
the exigencies of the time require; while (ver. 3) he is forward to
cry, "There goes a fool," of every man who is wiser than himself (vv.
12-15). If he would only hold his tongue, he might pass muster;
beguiled by his gravity and silence, men might give him credit for
sagacity, and fit his foolish deeds with profound motives; but he
_will_ speak, and his words betray and "swallow him up." Of course
_we_ have no such fools, "full of words," to rise in their high place
and wag their tongues to their own hurt; they are peculiar to
Antiquity or to the East.
But _then_ there were so many of them, and their influence in the
State was so disastrous that, as the Preacher thinks of them, he
breaks into an almost dithyrambic fervour, and cries, "Woe to thee, O
land, when thy king is a child,[45] and thy princes feast in the
morning! Happy art thou, O land, when thy king is noble, and thy
princes eat at due hours, for strength and not for revelry!" Through
the sloth and riot of these foolish rulers, the whole fabric of the
State was fast fading into decay--the roof rotting and the rain
leaking in. To support their inopportune and profligate revelry, they
imposed crushing taxes on the people, which inspired in some a
revolutionary discontent, and in some the apathy of despair. The Wise
Exile foresaw that the end of a despotism so unjust and luxurious
could not be far off; that when the storm rose and the wind blew, the
ancient House, unrepaired in its decay, would topple on the heads of
those who sat in its halls, revelling in a wicked mirth (vv. 16-19).
Meantime, the sagacious servant of the State, perchance too of foreign
extraction, unable to arrest the progress of decay, or not caring how
soon it was consummated, would make his "market of the time;" he would
carry himself warily: and, because the whole land was infested with
the spies bred by despotism, he would give them no hold on him, nor so
much as speak the simple truth of his foolish debauched rulers in the
privacy of his own bed-chamber, or mutter his thoughts on the roof,
lest some "bird of the air should carry the report" (ver. 20).
[45] What Coheleth means by the king being "a child" is best explained
by Isa. iii. 12: "As for my people, their ruler is a wilful child, and
women rule over him."
But if this were the condition of the time, if to rise in public life
involved so many mean crafts and submissions, so many deadly imminent
risks from spies and from fools clad in a little brief authority, how
could any man hope to find the Chief Good in it? Wisdom did not always
win promotion; virtue was inimical to success. The anger of an
incapable idiot, or the whisper of an envious rival, or the caprice of
a merciless despot, might at any moment undo the work of years, and
expose the most upright and sagacious of men to the worst extremities
of misfortune. There was no tranquillity, no freedom, no security, no
dignity in such a life as this. Till this were resigned and some
nobler, loftier aim found, there was no chance of reaching that great
satisfying Good which lifts man above all accidents, and fixes him in
a happy security from which no blow of Circumstance can dislodge him.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _But in a wise Use and a wise Enjoyment of the Present
Life_, Ch. xi., vv. 1-8.]
What that Good is, and where it may be found, the Preacher now
proceeds to show. But, as his manner is, he does not say in so many
words, "This is the Chief Good of man," or "You will find it yonder;"
but he places before us the man who is walking in the right path and
drawing closer and closer to it. Even of him the preacher does not
give us any formal description; but, following what we have seen to be
his favourite method, he gives us a string of maxims and counsels from
which we are to infer what manner of man he is who happily achieves
this great Quest.
And, at the very outset, we learn that this happy person is of a
noble, unselfish, generous temper. Unlike the man who simply wants to
get on and make a fortune, he grudges no man his gains; he looks on
his neighbours' interests as well as his own, and does good even to
the evil and the unthankful.[46] He is one who "casts his bread upon
the waters" (ch. xi., ver. 1), and who "gives a portion thereof to
seven, and even to eight" (ver. 2). The familiar proverb of the first
verse has long been read as an allusion to the sowing of rice and
other grain from a boat, during the periodical inundation of certain
Eastern rivers, especially the Nile. We have been taught to regard the
husbandman pushing from the embanked village in his frail bark, to
cast the grain he would gladly eat on the surface of the flood, as a
type of Christian labour and charity. He denies himself; so also must
we if we would do good. He has faith in the Divine laws, and trusts to
receive his own again with usury, to reap a larger crop the longer he
waits for it; and, in like manner, we are to trust in the Divine laws
which bring us a hundredfold for every act of self-denying service,
and bless our "long patience" with the ampler harvest. But it is
doubtful whether the Hebrew _usus loquendi_ admits of this
interpretation. It probably suggests another which, if unfamiliar to
us, has a beauty of its own. In the East bread is commonly made in
thin flat cakes, something like Passover cakes; and one of these
cakes flung on the stream, though it would float with the current for
a time, would soon sink; and once sunk would, unlike the grain cast
from the boat, yield no return. And our charity should be like that.
We should do good, "hoping for nothing again." We should show
kindnesses which will soon be forgotten, never be returned, and be
undismayed by the thanklessness of the task. It is not so thankless as
it seems. For, first, we shall "find the good of it" in the loftier,
more generous temper which the habit of doing good breeds and
confirms. If no one else be the better for our kindness, we shall be
the better, because the more kindly, for it. The quality of charity,
like that of mercy, is twice blessed;
"It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
[46] One of the most elaborate proverbs in the Talmud is on
Charity:--"Iron breaks the stone, fire melts iron, water extinguishes
fire, the clouds drink up the water, a storm drives away the clouds,
man withstands the storm, fear unmans man, wine dispels fear, sleep
drives away wine, and death sweeps all away--even sleep. But Solomon
the Wise says, Charity saves from death." And there is hardly a finer
passage in Shakespeare's Sonnets than that (CXVI.) in which he sings
the disinterestedness of Love, and its superiority to all change:
"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
* * * * * *
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom."
And, again, the task is not so thankless as it sometimes seems; for
though many of our kind deeds may quicken no kindness in "him that
takes," yet some of them will; and the more we help and succour the
more likely are we to light upon at least a few who, when our need
comes, will succour and console us. Even the most hardened have a
certain tenderness for those who help them, if only the help meet a
real need, and be given with grace. And, therefore, we may be very
sure that if we give a portion of our bread to seven and even to
eight, especially if they know that we ourselves have stomach for it
all, at least one or two of them will share with us when we need
bread.
But is not this, after all, only a refined selfishness? If we give
because we do not know how soon we may need a gift, and in order that
we may by-and-bye "find the good of it," do not even the heathen and
the publicans the same? Well, not many of them, I think. I have not
observed that it is their habit to cast their bread on thankless
waters. If they forbode calamity and loss, they provide against them,
not by giving, but by hoarding; and even they themselves would hardly
accept as a model of charity a man who buttoned up his pocket against
every appeal, lest he should be yielding to a selfish motive, or be
suspected of it. The refined selfishness of showing kindness and doing
good even to the evil and the unthankful because we hope to find the
good of it is by no means too common yet; we need not go in dread of
it. Nor is it an altogether unworthy motive. St. Paul urges us to help
a fallen brother on the express ground that we may need similar help
some day (Gal. vi. 1); and _he_ was not in the habit of appealing to
base motives. Nay, the very Golden Rule itself, which all men admire
even if they do not walk by it, touches this spring of action; for
among other meanings it surely has this, that we are to do to others
as we would that they should do to us, in the hope that they will do
to us as we have done to them. There are other higher meanings in the
Rule of course, as there are other and purer motives for Charity; but
I do not know that we are any of us of so lofty a virtue that we need
fear to show kindness in order to win kindness, or to give help that
we may get help when we need it. Possibly, to act on this motive may
be the best and nearest way of rising to such higher motives as we can
reach.
The first characteristic, then, of the man who is likely to achieve
the Quest of the Chief Good is the Charity which prompts him to be
gracious, and to show kindness, and to do good, even to the thankless
and ungracious. And his second characteristic is the stedfast Industry
which turns all seasons to account. The man of affairs, who wants to
rise, waits on occasion; he is on the watch to avail himself of the
moods and caprices of men and bend them to his interest. But he who
has learned to value things at their true worth, and whose heart is
fixed on the acquisition of the highest good, does not want to get on
so much as to do his duty under all the variable conditions of life.
Just as he will not withhold his hand from giving, lest some of the
recipients of his charity should prove unworthy, so also he will not
withdraw his hand from the labour appointed him, because this or that
endeavour may be unproductive, or lest it should be thwarted by the
ordinances of Heaven. He knows that the laws of Nature will hold on
their way, often causing individual loss to promote the general good.
He knows, for instance, that when the clouds are full of rain they
_will_ empty themselves upon the earth, even though they put his
harvest in peril; and that when the wind is fierce it will blow down
trees, even though it should also scatter the seed which he is sowing.
But he does not therefore wait upon the wind till it is too late to
sow, nor upon the clouds till his ungathered crops rot in the fields.
He is conscious that, though he knows much, he knows little of these
as of other works of God: he cannot tell whether this or that tree
will be blown down; almost all he can be certain of is that, when the
tree is down, it will lie where it has fallen, lifting its bleeding
roots in dumb protest against the wind which has brought it low. But
_this_ too he knows, that it is "God who worketh all;" that _he_ is
not responsible for events beyond his control: that what he is
responsible for is that he do the duty of the moment whatever wind may
blow, and calmly leave the issue in the hand of God. And so he is not
"over exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils;" diligent and
undismayed, he goes on his way, giving himself heartily to the present
duty, "sowing his seed morning and evening, although he cannot tell
which shall prosper, this or that, or whether both shall prove good"
(vv. 3-6). Windy March cannot blow him from his constant purpose,
though it may blow the seed out of his hand; nor a rainy August melt
him to despairing tears, though it may damage his harvest. He has done
his duty, discharged his responsibility: let God see to the rest;
whatever pleases God will content him.
This man, then, has learned one or two of the profoundest secrets of
Wisdom, plain as they look. He has learned that, giving, we gain; and,
spending, thrive. He has also learned that a man's true care is
himself; that all that pertains to the body, to the issues of labour,
to the chances of fortune, is external to himself; that whatever form
these may take, he may learn from them, and profit by them, and be
content in them: that his true business in the world is to cultivate a
strong and dutiful character which shall prepare him for any world or
any fate; and that so long as he can do this, his main duty will be
done, his ruling object attained. _Totum in co est, ut tibi
imperes._[47]
[47] Cicero, _Tusc._, lib. II., cap. 22.
Is not this true wisdom? is it not an abiding good? Pleasures may
bloom and fade. Speculations may shift and change. Riches may come and
go--what else have they wings for? The body may sicken or strengthen.
The favour of men may be conferred and withdrawn. There is no
stability in these; and if we are dependent on them, we shall be
variable and inconstant as they are. But if we make it our chief aim
to do our duty whatever it may be, and to love and serve our neighbour
whatever the attitude he may assume to us, we have an aim always
within our reach, a duty we may always be doing, a good as enduring as
ourselves, and therefore a good we may enjoy for ever. Standing on
this rock, from which no wave of change can sweep us, "the light will
be sweet to us, and it shall be pleasant to our eyes to behold the
sun," whatever the day, or the world, on which he may rise (ver. 7).
But is all our life to be taken up in meeting the claims of Duty and
of Charity? Are we never to relax into mirth, never to look forward to
a time in which reward will be more exactly adjusted to service? Yes,
we are to do both this and that. It is very true that he who makes it
his ruling aim to do the present duty, and to leave the future with
God, will have a happy because a useful life. He that walks this path
of duty
"only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden roses."
The path may often be steep and difficult; it may be overhung with
threatening rocks and strewn with "stones of offence;" but he who
pursues it, still pressing on "through the long gorge" and winning
his way upward,
"Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled,
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is sun and moon."
Nevertheless, if his life is to be full and complete, he must be able
to pluck whatever bright flowers of joy spring beside his path, to
find "laughing waters" in the crags he climbs, and to rejoice not only
in "the glossy purples" of the armed and stubborn thistle, but in the
delicate beauty of the ferns, the pure grace of the cyclamens, and the
sweet breath of the fragrant grasses and flowers which haunt those
severe heights. If he is to be a Man, rather than a Stoic or an
Anchorite, he must add to his sense of duty a keen delight in all
beauty, all grace, all innocent and noble pleasure. For the sake of
others, too, as well as for his own sake, he must carry with him "the
merry heart which doeth good like a medicine," since, lacking that, he
will neither do all the good he might, nor himself become perfect and
complete. And it is proof, I think, of the good divinity, no less than
of the broad humanity, of the Preacher that he lays much stress on
this point. He not only bids us enjoy life, but gives us cogent
reasons for enjoying it. "Even," he says, "if a man should live many
years, he ought to enjoy them all." But why? "Because there will be
many dark days," days of old age and growing infirmity in which
pleasures will lose their charm; days of death through which he will
sleep quietly in the dark stillness of the grave, beyond the touch of
any happy excitement (ver. 8). Therefore the man who attains the Chief
Good will not only do the duty of the moment; he will also enjoy the
pleasure of the moment. _He_ will not toil through the long day of
life till, spent and weary, he has no power to enjoy his "much goods,"
or no time for his soul to "make merry the glad." While he is "a young
man," he will "rejoice in his youth, and let his heart cheer him," and
go after the pleasures which attract youth (ver. 9). While his heart
is still fresh, when pleasures are most innocent and healthful,
easiest of attainment and unalloyed by anxiety and care, he will
cultivate that cheerful temper which is a prime safeguard against
vice, discontent, and the morose fretfulness of a selfish old age.
[Sidenote: _Combined with a stedfast Faith in the Life to come._ Ch.
x., v. 9-Ch. xii, v. 7.]