^ There is always the temptation of youth to think that, because things are lawful one cannot have too much of them. Charles Lamb tells us, in one of his delightful essays, of certain people who set a house on fire in order that they might enjoy the rapture of eating roast sucking-pig. That is very much like the action of those who burn up every grave and sober thing in the tire of pleasure and sport. Laughter is a pleasant thing, but a perpetual cackle and grin is the sure mark of an idiot. Enjoy- ment is a gift of God, but to sacrifice and forget everything else for it is to prostitute God's gift to the service of the devil.^
2. A man's mature years are a sort of judgment on the en- joyments and work of his earlier days. If his pleasures have been impure, shameful, and wrong ; if he has been habitually guilty of excess in the indulgence of appetites, in drink, smoking, or anything akin to that ; it all follows him into the real work of life, and unfits him for it. He goes forth into the world with a corrupted and diseased imagination, perhaps with a weakened body, and certainly with a debilitated mind. And if his early life has been of the frivolous, sportive, self-indulgent kind, if he has not hardened himself a little in severer things, by laying up a preparation of knowledge, by getting acquainted with the best thoughts of men, he is handicapped in all the race of life.
^ Perhaps there is no commoner delusion than that we may give our youth to vanity and rejoice with thoughtlessness and yet catch up the duties of life at some onward point more vigorously
^ J. G. Greenhough.
ECCLESIASTES xi. 9 415
than if we had not known youthful madness and folly. All such imaginations are broken against the great retributive law which runs throughout life and pervades every phase of it. If we give the rein to our pleasure-loving tendencies, and walk in the ways of our heart, unmindful of higher things, the " lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," will take hold of us till we not only do not think of higher things, but do not care to think of them, or even despise them as dreams of an impracticable Puritanism. There will grow from self-indulgence, deadness of heart ; and from the love of pleasure, atheism of desire, till the very beauty of the natural life is worn away, and we fall into a selfishness which is capable neither of satisfaction nor of hope.^
^ In his essay on Burns, Carlyle refers to that period in the poet's life when, as a mere youth, he leaves the paternal roof and " goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting society; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, those vices which," says Carlyle, "a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active Hfe; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not dispute much," he continues, " with this class of philosophers ; we hope they are mistaken : for Sin and Eemorse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a time in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives in this Devil's service, but only our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly Action."
3. This judgment may carry approval and reward no less than penalty. Whenever this book may have been written, we find in it numerous allusions to a state of society which give these words about a future judgment a peculiar meaning and force ; for the book depicts a society under a capricious despotism, with all its corruptions and miseries. The wealthy revel in palaces, vineyards, and pleasure-grounds; kings are childish, and princes given to revelry and drunkenness ; fools are uplifted, and noble men de- graded ; riches are not for the intelligent, or favour for the learned ; to become rich is to multiply extortions ; life stands at the caprice of power ; sensuality runs riot. In short, the whole * Principal Tulloeh, ^ome Facts of Beligion and of Life, 243.
4i6 AFTER THAT THE JUDGMENT
political fabric was falling into disrepair and decay, the rain leaking through the rotting roof ; while the miserable people were ground down with ruinous exactions, in order that the rulers might revel on undisturbed. And as the book reveals this fear- ful social condition, so, likewise, it gives expression to the temper which grows up in men's minds after a long course of such oppressions — a kind of fatalism and hopelessness which tempts one to yield passively to the current of affairs, to believe that God has ceased to rule, and that order and right have vanished from the world, to snatch at every pleasure, to drown care in sensuality rather than try to maintain an integrity which is sure to be rewarded with personal and social ruin. That kind of temper, if it once gains headway, will affect all classes and ages. In the nobler and better-seasoned characters, it becomes a proud despair; in vulgar minds, a bestial greed, and an untramelled selfishness ; in youth, a prompter to unbounded sensuality.