* * * * *
[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.