[Sidenote: _And the Conviction that it is opposed to the Will of God as expressed in the Ordinances of his Providence_, Ch. iii., vv. 1-8.]
This is one help to a wise content with our lot; but he has many more at our service, and notably this,--that an undue devotion to the toils of business is contrary to the will, the design, the providence of God. God, he argues, has fixed a time for every undertaking under heaven, and has made each of them beautiful in its season, but only then. By his wise kindly ordinances He has sought to divert us from an injurious excess in toil. Our sowing and our reaping, our time of rest and our time for work, the time to save and the time to spend, the time to gain and the time to lose,--all these, with all the fluctuating feelings they excite in us: in short, our whole life, from the cradle to the grave, is under, or should be under, law to Him. It is only when we violate his gracious ordinances,--working when we should be at rest, waking when we should sleep, saving when we should spend, weeping over losses which are real gains, or laughing over gains which will prove to be losses--that we run into excess, and break up the peaceful order and tranquil flow of the life which He designed for us.
[Sidenote: _In the Wrongs which He permits Men to inflict upon us_; Ch. iii., v. 16-Ch. iv., v. 3.]
Because we will not be obsequious to the ordinances of his wisdom, He permits us to meet a new check in the caprice and injustice of man--making even these to praise Him by subserving our good. If we do not suffer the violent oppressions which drew tears from the Preacher's fellow-captives, we nevertheless stand very much at the mercy of our neighbours in so far as our outward haps are concerned. Unwise human laws or an unjust administration of them, or the selfish rapacity of individual men--brokers who rig the market; bankers whose long prayers are a pretence under cloak of which they rob widows and orphans, and sometimes _make_ them; bankrupts for whose wounds the Gazette has a singular power of healing, since they come out of it "sounder" men than they went in: these are only some of the instruments by which the labours of the diligent are shorn of their due reward. And we are to take these checks as correctives, to find in the losses which men inflict the gifts of a gracious God. He permits us to suffer these and the like disasters lest our hearts should be overmuch set on getting gain. He graciously permits us to suffer them that, seeing how often the wicked thrive (in a way and for a time) on the decay of the upright, we may learn that there is something better than wealth, more enduring, more satisfying, and may seek that higher good.
[Sidenote: _But above all, in the immortal Cravings which He has quickened in the Soul._ Ch. iii., v. 11.]
Nay, going to the very root of the matter and expounding its whole philosophy, the Preacher teaches us that wealth, however great and greatly used, _cannot_ satisfy men, since God has "_put eternity into their hearts_" as well as time: and how should all the kingdoms of a world that must soon pass content those who are to live for ever?[39] This saying, "God has put _eternity_ into their hearts," is one of the most profound in the whole Book, and one of the most beautiful and suggestive. What it means is that, even if a man would confine his aims and desires within "the bounds and coasts of Time," he cannot do it. The very structure of his nature forbids it. For time, with all that it inherits, sweeps by him like a torrent, so that, if he would secure any lasting good, he _must_ lay hold of that which is eternal. We may well call this world, for all so solid as it looks, "a perishing world;" for, like our own bodies, it is in a perpetual flux, perishing every moment that it may live a little longer, and must soon come to an end. But we, in our true selves, we who dwell inside the body and use its members as the workman uses his tools, how can we find a satisfying good whether in the body or in the world which is akin to it? _We_ want a good as lasting as ourselves. Nothing short of that can be our chief good, or inspire us with a true content.