The Pulpit Commentary — Ecclesiastes — Section 35

I. THE FACTS UPON WHICH '.l'HE CONVlCTION OF THE VAlIITY OF LIFE 1B FOUNDED, 1. The unsatisfying character of human toil. Labour is the destiny of man, and ie in most cases the indispensable condition of not only life itself, but of those things for t.he sake of which many men value life-wealth, comfort, pleasure, and fame. Yet in how many cases does toil fail to secure the objects for the sake of which it is undertaken I Men labour, but reap no harvest of their painful, wearying efforts. And when the result is obtained, how commonly docs it yield little or nothini of the satisfaction desired! Men toil for years, and when they attain that upon which their hearts were l'et, disappointment and dissatisfaction take possession of their nature. 2. The brevity of human life, and the rapid succession of the generations. The reflection of the wise man is a reflection which must have been current among men from the earliest ages. No sooner has a laborious and successful man reached the summit of his ambi- tion, grasped the object of his desire, than he is taken away from the enjoyment of that for the sake of which he was content to "scorn delights, and live laborious days." Tile next generation renews the quest, only to repeat the experience of disappointment. Changes and improvements take place in many details of our life; but life itself remains throughout the ages, subject to the same limitations and the same calamities, to the same uncertainties and the same close. 3. The contrast between the transitori- ness of human life and the stability of the unconscious earth. It appears strange and inexplicable that man, with the great possibilities of bis nature, should be so sbort- lived, and that the earth should outlast generation after generation of mankind. The writer of Ecclesiastes felt, as every reflecting observer must feel, the sadness of this contrast between the perpetuity of the dwelling-place and the brief sojourn of its successive inhabitants. 4. The impossibility of any generation reaping the harvest for which it has sown. The toil, the genius, the enterprise of a generation may indeed bear fruit, but it is the generation which follows that enjoys that fruit, All men labour more for posterity than for themselves. "This also is vanity." I!. THE CHARACTER OF THE INFERENCE FROM THESE FACTS1 VIZ. THAT LIFE IS PROFITLESS AND VAIN. 1. It is attributable to the reflecting and aspiring nature of man. A being less endowed with susceptibilities and imagination, with moral capacities and far-reaching aims and hopes, would be incapable of such emotions and such con- clusions as this book expresses. The brute is content to eat and drink, to sleep, and to follow its several instincts and impulses. But of man we may say that nothing that he can be and do can give him perfect rest and satisfaction. It is owing to an innate and noble dissatisfaction that he is ever aiming at something better and higher, and that the narrow range and brief scope of human life ca.nnot content him, cannot furnish him with a.ll the opportunity he desires in order to acquire and to achieve. 2. It is attributable t-0 the very nature of earthly things, which, because they are finite, a.re incapable of satisfying such a nature as that described. They may and do answer a high purpose when their true import is discerned-when they are recognized as symbolical and significant of what is greater than themselves. But no material good, no terrestrial distinctions, can serve as "profit" of labour. If so regarded, their vanity must sooner or later be apparent. There is a divinely ordained disproportion between the spirit of man and the scenes and occupations and emoluments of earth . .APPLICATION. 1. There is in human life a continuity only discerned by the reflecting and the pious. The obvious and striking fact is the disconnection of the generations. nut as evulution reveals a physical continuity, philosophy finds an intellectual and moral continuity in our race. 2. The purpose of God is unfolded to successive genera- tions of men. The modem study of the philosophy of history bas brought this fact prominently and effectively before the attention of the scholarly and thoughtful. We see this continuity and progrese in the order of revelation; but all history is, in a sacred sense, a revelation of the Eternal and Unchanging. 3. It is well that what we do we should do deliberately and seriously, not for our own good merely, but for mankind, and in the truest sense for God. Thie will lend" profit" to the unprofitable. 4. This state is not all. Life explains school; summer explains spring; and so eternity shall explain the disappointments, perplexities, and anomalies of time.-T. Vere. 5-7.-The cyc"les of '11,(J,ture. This is not to be taken as the language of one who makes complaints of nature, wishing that the great forces of the world were OH, I. 1-18.] ECCLESIASTES; OR, THE PREACHER. 17