enduring Good? What to him are the shocks of Change, the blows of
Circumstance, the mutations of Time, the fluctuations of Fortune?
These cannot touch the Good which he holds to be Chief. If they bring
trouble, he can bear trouble and profit by it: if they bring
prosperity, success, mirth, he can bear even these, and neither value
them beyond their worth nor abuse them to his hurt; for his Good, and
therefore his peace and blessedness, are founded on a Rock over which
the changeful waves may wash, but against which they cannot prevail.
Let the sun shine never so hotly, let the storm beat never so
furiously, the Rock stands firm, and the house which he has built for
himself upon the Rock. Whatever may befall, he can be doing his main
work, enjoying his supreme satisfaction, since he can meet all changes
with a dutiful and loving heart; since, through all, he may be forming
a noble character and helping his neighbours to form a character as
noble as his own. Because he has a gracious God always with him, and
because a bright future stretches before him in endless and widening
vistas of hope, he can carry to all the wrongs and afflictions of time
a cheerful spirit which shines through them with transfiguring
rays,--a spirit before which even the thick darkness of death will
grow light, and the solemnities of the Judgment be turned into
holiday festivity and a triumph. Ah, foolish and miserable that we are
who, with so noble a life, and so bright a prospect, and a Good so
enduring open to us--and with such helps to them in the Gospel of
Christ as Coheleth could not know--nevertheless creep about the earth
the slaves of every accident, the very fools of Time!
THE EPILOGUE.
_IN WHICH THE PROBLEM OF THE BOOK IS CONCLUSIVELY SOLVED._
CHAP. XII., VERS. 8-14.
"Students," says the Talmud, "are of four kinds; they are like a
sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sieve: like a sponge that sucketh
all up; like a funnel which receiveth at one end and dischargeth at
the other; like a strainer which letteth the wine pass but retaineth
the lees; and like a sieve which dischargeth the bran but retaineth
the corn." Coheleth is like the sieve. He is the good student who has
sifted all the schemes and ways and aims of men, separating the wheat
from the bran, teaching us to know the bran as bran, the wheat as
wheat. It is a true "corn of heaven" which he offers us, and not any
of the husks to obtain which reckless and prodigal man has often
wasted his whole living--husks which, though they have the form and
hue of wheat, have not its nutriment, and cannot therefore satisfy the
keen hunger of the soul.
We have now followed the sifting process to its close; much bran lies
about our feet, but a little corn is in our hands, and from this
little there may grow "a harvest unto life." Starting in quest of that
Chief Good in which, when once it is attained, we can rest with an
unbroken and measureless content, we have learned that it is not to be
found in Wisdom, in Pleasure, in Devotion to Business or Public
Affairs, in a modest Competence or in boundless Wealth. We have
learned that only he achieves this supreme Quest who is "charitable,
dutiful, cheerful;" only he who "by a wise use and a wise enjoyment of
the present life prepares himself for the life which is to come." We
have learned that the best incentive to this life of virtue, and its
best safeguards, are a constant remembrance of our Creator and of his
perpetual presence with us, and a constant hope of that future
judgment in which all the wrongs of time are to be redressed. And here
we might think our task was ended. We might suppose that the Preacher
would dismiss us from the School in which he has so long held us by
his sage maxims, his vivid illustrations, his gracious warnings and
encouragements. But even yet he will not suffer us to depart. He has
still "words to utter for God," words which it will be well for us to
ponder. As in the Prologue he had stated the problem he was about to
take in hand, so now he subjoins an Epilogue in which he re-states
the solution of it at which he has arrived. His last words are, as we
should expect them to be, heavily weighted with thought. So closely
packed are his thoughts and allusions, indeed, as to give a
disconnected and illogical tone to his words. Every saying seems to
stand alone, complete in itself; and hence our main difficulty in
dealing with this Epilogue is to trace the links of sequence which
bind saying to saying and thought to thought, and so to get "the best
part" of his work. Every verse supplies a text for patient meditation,
or a theme which needs to be illustrated by historic facts that lie
beyond the general reach; and the danger is lest, while dwelling on
these separate themes and texts, we should fail to collect their
connected meaning, and to grasp the large conclusion to which they all
conduct.[55]
[55] As the main ethical, literary, and historical interest of the
whole Book is gathered up into this brief Epilogue, I offer no apology
for the comparative length of my treatment of it.
Coheleth commences (ver. 8) by once more striking the keynote to which
all his work is set: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is
vanity!" We are not, however, to take these words as announcing his
deliberate verdict on the sum of human endeavours and affairs; for he
has now discovered the true abiding Good which underlies all the
vanities of earth and time. His repetition of this familiar phrase is
simply a touch of art by which the Poet reminds us of what the main
theme of his Poem has been, of the pain and weariness and
disappointment which have attended his long Quest. As it falls once
more, and for the last time, on our ear, we cannot but remember how
often, and in what connections, we have heard it before. Memory and
imagination are set to work. The whole course of the sacred drama
passes swiftly before us, with its mournful pauses of defeated hope,
as we listen to this echo of the despair with which the baffled
Preacher has so often returned from seeking the true Good in this or
that province of human life in which it was not to be found.
Having thus reminded us of the several stages of his Quest, and of the
verdict which he had been compelled to pronounce at the close of each
but the last, Coheleth proceeds (ver. 9) to set forth his
qualifications for undertaking this sore task: "Not only was the
Preacher a wise man, he also taught the people wisdom, and composed,
collected, and arranged many proverbs" or parables, the proverb being
a condensed parable and the parable an expanded proverb. His claims
are that he is a sage, and a public teacher, who has both made many
proverbs of his own, collected the wise sayings of other sages, and
has so arranged them as to convey a connected and definite teaching to
his disciples; and his motive in setting forth these claims is, no
doubt, that he may the more deeply impress upon us the conclusion to
which he has come, and which it has cost him so much to reach.
Now during the Captivity there was a singular outbreak of literary
activity in the Hebrew race. Even yet this crisis in their history is
little studied and understood; but we shall only follow the Preacher's
meaning through vv. 9-12 as we read them in the light of this striking
event. That a change of the most radical and extraordinary kind passed
upon the Hebrews of this period, that they were by some means drawn to
a study of their Sacred Writings much more thorough and intense than
any which went before it, we know; but of the causes of this change we
are not so well informed.[56] A great, and perhaps the greatest,
authority[57] on this subject writes: "One of the most mysterious and
momentous periods in the history of humanity is that brief space of
the Exile. What were the influences brought to bear on the captives
during that time, we know not. But this we know, that from a reckless,
lawless, godless populace, they returned transformed into a band of
Puritans. The religion of Zerdusht (Zoroaster), though it has left its
traces in Judaism, fails to account for that change.... Yet the change
is there, palpable, unmistakable--a change which we may regard as
almost miraculous. Scarcely aware before of their glorious national
literature, the people now began to press round these brands plucked
from the fire--the scanty records of their faith and history--with a
fierce and passionate love, a love stronger even than that of wife and
child. These same documents, as they were gradually formed into a
canon, became the immediate centre of their lives, their actions,
their thoughts, their very dreams. From that time forth, with scarcely
any intermission, the keenest as well as the most poetical minds of
the nation remained fixed upon them."
[56] In the Introduction, however, I have tried to give what _is_
known of the history of this period. Roughly speaking, I believe the
Jews owed their literary advance mainly to contact with the
inquisitive and learned Babylonians, and their religious advance
mainly to the sorrows of the Captivity and their contact with the pure
faith of the primitive Persians.
[57] Emmanuel Deutsch, whose premature death is still lamented by many
as an irreparable loss. The passage will be found in his celebrated
article on _The Talmud_ in _The Quarterly_ of October 1867. "The Quest
of the Chief Good" was published at the close of that year. And at
this point in it, while Deutsch was still alive, but before I knew him
personally, I gently complained of the loss he had unwittingly
inflicted on me. I had for ten years been collecting the gnomic
sayings of the Talmud from any quarter open to one to whom the Talmud
itself was a sealed book, and had indeed printed some two score of
them in the _Christian Spectator_ for 1866. And here came one who "out
of his profuse wealth carelessly flung down most of _my_ special
treasures." Only half-a-dozen of the sayings I had collected now had
any stamp of novelty on them to the thousands who had revelled in the
wit and learning of that famous article in _The Quarterly_. And of
these I ventured to call special attention to four which seemed to me
of special value and beauty; viz., those on the four kinds of
students, on new and old flasks, on not serving God for the sake of
reward, and on doing God's will as if it were our will: they will all
be found in this Section. But if I lost something, I also gained much
by the appearance of that article, as those who read what follows will
discover, although it only came into my hands as I was correcting the
proofs of the final pages in my Book.
The more we think of this change, the more the wonder grows. Good
kings and inspired prophets had desired to see the nation devoted to
the Word of the Lord, had spent their lives in vain endeavours to
recall the thought and affection of their race to the Sacred Records
in which the will of God was revealed. But what they failed to do was
done when the inspiration of the Almighty was withdrawn and the voice
of Prophecy had grown mute. In their Captivity, under the strange
wrongs and miseries of their exile, the Jews remembered God their
Maker, Giver of songs in the night. They betook themselves to the
study of the Sacred Oracles. They began to acquaint themselves with
all wisdom that they might define and illustrate whatever was obscure
in the Scriptures of their fathers. They commenced that elaborate
systematic commentary of which many noble fragments are still extant.
They drew new truths from the old letter, or from the collocation of
scattered passages,--as, for instance, the truths of the immortality
of the soul and of the resurrection of the body. They laid the hidden
foundations of the Synagogues and Schools which afterwards covered the
land. Ezra and Nehemiah, who, by grace of the Persian conquerors, led
them back from Babylonia to Jerusalem, are still claimed as the
founders of the Great Synagogue, _i.e._ as the leaders of that great
race of jurists, sages, authors, whose utterances are still a law in
Israel, and of whom the lawyers and the scribes of the New Testament
were the modern successors. Before the Captivity there was not a term
for "school" in their language; there were at least a dozen in common
use within two or three centuries after the accession of Cyrus.
Education had become compulsory. Its immense value in the popular
estimation is marked in innumerable sayings such as these: "Jerusalem
was destroyed because the education of the young was neglected;" "Even
for the rebuilding of the Temple the schools must not be interrupted;"
"Study is more meritorious than sacrifice;" "A scholar is greater than
a prophet;" "You should revere the teacher even more than your father;
the latter only brought you into this world, the former shews you the
way into the next." To meet the national craving indicated in these
and similar proverbs, innumerable copies of the Sacred Books, of
commentaries, traditions, and the gnomic utterances of the Wise, were
written and circulated, of which, in the Canon, in some of the
Apocryphal Scriptures, in the works of Philo, and in the legal and
legendary sections of the Talmud, many specimens have come down to us.
In fine, whatever was the cause of this marvellous outburst, there can
be no doubt that the whole Rabbinical period was characterised by
devotion to learning, a mental and literary activity, much more
general and vital than it is easy for us to conceive.
In such an age the words of a professed and acknowledged Sage would
carry great weight. If, besides being "a wise man," he was a
recognised "teacher," a man whose wisdom was stamped by public and
official approval, whatever fell from his lips would command public
attention: for these teachers, or rabbis, were the real rulers of the
time, and not the pharisees or the priests, or even the politicians.
They might be, they often were, "tent-makers, sandal-makers, weavers,
carpenters, tanners, bakers, cooks"; for it is among their highest
claims to our respect that these learned rabbis reverenced labour,
however menial or toilsome, that they held mere scholarship and piety
of little worth unless conjoined with regular and healthy physical
exertion. But, however toilsome their lives or humble their
circumstances, these wise men were "masters of the law." It was their
special function to interpret the Law of Moses--which, remember, was
the law of the land--to explain its bearing on this case or that, if
not, as many modern critics maintain, to add to its precepts and
codes; and, as members of the local courts or the metropolitan
Sanhedrin, to administer the law they expounded. An immense power,
therefore, was in their hands. To obey the Law was to be at once loyal
and religious, happy here and hereafter. Hence the rabbis, whose
business it was to apply the law to all the details of life, and whose
decisions were authoritative and final, could not fail to command
universal deference and respect. They were lawyers, judges,
schoolmasters, heads of colleges, public orators and lecturers,
statesmen and preachers, all in one or all in turn, and therefore
concentrated in themselves the esteem which we distribute on many
offices and many men.
Such a rabbi was Coheleth. He was of "the Wise"; he was a "master of
the law." And, in addition to these claims, he was also a teacher and
an author who, besides "composing," had "collected and arranged many
proverbs." Than this latter he could hardly have any higher claim to
the regard, and even to the affection, of the Hebrew public. The
passionate fondness of Oriental races for proverbs, fables, stories of
any kind, is well known. And the Jews for whom Coheleth wrote took, as
was natural at such a time, an extraordinary delight, extraordinary
even for the East, in listening to and repeating the wise or witty
sayings, the parables and poems, of their national authors. Some of
these are still in our hands: as we read them, we cease to wonder at
the intense enjoyment with which they were welcomed by a generation
not cloyed, as we are, with books. They are not only charming as works
of art: they have also this charm, that they convey lofty ethical
instruction. Take a few of these pictorial proverbs, not included in
the Canonical Scriptures. "The house that does not open to the poor
will open to the physician." "Commit a sin twice, and you will begin
to think it quite allowable." "The reward of good works is like
dates--sweet, but ripening late." "Even when the gates of prayer are
shut in heaven, the gate of tears is open." "When the righteous dies,
it is the earth that loses; the lost jewel is still a jewel, but he
who has lost it--well may he weep." "Who is wise? He who is willing to
learn from all men. Who is strong? He who subdues his passions. Who is
rich? He that is satisfied with his lot." These are surely happy
expressions of profound moral truths. But the rabbis are capable of
putting a keener edge on their words; they can utter witty epigrams as
incisive as those of any of our modern satirists, and yet use their
wit in the service of good sense and morality. It would not be easy to
match, it would be very hard to beat, such sayings as these:--"The sun
will go down without _your_ help." "When the ox is _down_, many are
the butchers." "The soldiers fight, and kings are the heroes." "The
camel wanted horns, and they took away his ears." "The cock and the
owl both wait for morning: the light brings joy to me, says the cock,
but what are _you_ waiting for?" "When the pitcher falls on the stone,
woe to the pitcher; when the stone falls on the pitcher, woe to the
pitcher: whatever happens, woe to the pitcher." "Look not at the
flask, but at that which is in it: for there are new flasks full of
old wine, and old flasks which have not even new wine in them:" ah, of
how many of those "old flasks" have some of us had to drink, or seem
to drink! When the rabbis draw out their moral at greater length, when
they tell a story, their skill does not desert them. Here is one of
the briefest, which can hardly fail to remind us of more than one of
the parables uttered by the Great Teacher Himself. "There was once a
king who bade all his servants to a great repast, but did not name the
hour. Some went home, and put on their best garments, and came and
stood at the door of the palace. Others said, 'There is time enough,
the king will let us know beforehand.' But the king summoned them of a
sudden; and those that came in their best garments were well received,
but the foolish ones, who came in their slovenliness, were turned away
in disgrace. _Repent ye to-day, lest ye be summoned to-morrow._"
Is it any wonder that the Jews, even in the sorrows of their
Captivity, liked to hear such proverbs and parables as these? that
they had an immense and grateful admiration for the men who spent much
thought and care on the composition and arrangement of these wise,
beautiful sayings? Should not we ourselves be thankful to hear them
when the day's work was done, or even while it was doing? If, then,
such an one as Coheleth--a sage, a rabbi, a composer and collector of
proverbs and parables--came to them and said, "My children, I have
sought what you are all seeking; I have been in quest of that Chief
Good which you still pursue; and I will tell you the story of the
Quest in the parables and proverbs which you are so fond of
hearing:"--we can surely understand that they would be charmed to
listen, that they would hang upon his words, that they would be
predisposed to accept his conclusions. As they listened, and found
that he was telling them their own story no less than his, that he was
trying to lead them away from the vanities which they themselves felt
to be vanities, toward an abiding Good in which he had found rest; as
they heard him enforce the duties of charity, industry,
hilarity--duties which all their rabbis urged upon them, and invite
them to that wise use and wise enjoyment of the present life which
their own consciences approved: above all, as he unfolded before them
the bright hope of a future judgment in which all wrongs would be
redressed and all acts of duty receive a great recompense of
reward,--would they not hail him as the wisest of their teachers, as
the great rabbi who had achieved the supreme Quest? Assuredly few
books were, or are, more popular than the book Ecclesiastes. Its
presence and influence may be traced on every subsequent age and
department of Hebrew literature; it has entered into our English
literature hardly less deeply. Many of its verses are familiar to us
as household words, _are_ household words. Brief as the Book is, I am
disposed to think it is better known among us than any other of the
Old Testament Books except Genesis, the Psalter, and the prophecies of
Isaiah. Job is an incomparably finer, as it is a much longer poem; but
I doubt whether most of us could not quote at least two verses from
the shorter for every one that we could repeat from the longer
Scripture. We can very easily understand, therefore, that the Wise
Preacher, as he himself assures us (ver. 10), bestowed on this work
much care and thought; that he had made diligent search for "words of
comfort" by which he might solace and strengthen the hearts of his
oppressed brethren; and that, having found words of comfort and of
truth, he wrote them down with a frank sincerity and uprightness.
From this description of the motives which had impelled him to
publish the results of his thought and experience, and of the spirit
in which he had composed his work, Coheleth passes, in ver. 11, to a
description of the twofold function of the Teacher which is really a
marvellous little poem in itself, a pastoral cut on a gem. That
function is, on the one hand, _progressive_, and, on the other hand,
_conservative_. At times the Teacher's words are like "goads" with
which the herdsmen prick on their cattle to new pastures, correcting
them when they loiter or stray; at other times they are like the
"spikes" which the shepherds drive into the ground when they pitch
their tents on pastures where they intend to linger: "The words of
_the Wise_ are like goads," he says; and "the Wise" was a technical
term for the sages who interpreted and administered the law; while
"those of _the Masters of the Assemblies_ are like spikes driven
home," "Masters of Assemblies" being a technical name for the heads of
the colleges and schools which, during the Rabbinical period, were to
be found in every town, and almost in every hamlet, of Judea. The same
man might, and commonly did, wear both titles; and, probably, Coheleth
was himself both a Wise Man and a Master. So much as this, indeed,
seems implied in the very name by which he introduces himself in the
Prologue. For Coheleth means, as we have seen, "one who calls an
assembly together and addresses them," _i.e._ precisely such a wise
man as was reckoned the "master of an assembly" among the Jews.