The Pulpit Commentary — Ecclesiastes — Section 44

\ranity, n. not.hing.'" But thie nothing is, however, the symbol of universal being, and this pnssing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world." It seemed to him that life yielded no permanent resulta, tha.t it was insujferahly monotonous, and that it was destined to end in utttr oblivion. The futility of effort, the monotony of life, and the oblivion that engulfs it at last a.re the topics of this opening passage of the book. Let us take th!'m up one after the other. I. 'l'IIAT LIFE YIELDS NO PEllMANENT RESULTS. (Vers.1-3.) We have before us, then, the deliberate judgment of one who had full experience of all tha.t men busy themselves with-" the labour wherein they labour under the sun"-the pursuit ofriches, the enjoy- ment of power, the satisfaction of appetites and desires, and so on, and his conclusion is that there is no profit in it all. And his sentence is confirmed by the words of Christ, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" In the case of Solomon, therefore, we have a record of permanent significance and value. We cannot deprive his sombre utterances of their weight by saying that he spoke simply as a sated voluptuary, and that others might with more skill or discretion extract from life what he failed to find in it. For, as we shall see, he did not confine himself to mere pursuit of pleasure, but sought satisfaction in intellectual employments and in the accomplishment of great tasks, for which the power and wealth at his disposal were drawn upon to the utmost. His melancholy is not a form of mental disease, but the result of the exhaustion of his energies and powers in the attempt to find satisfaction for the soul's cravings. And in melancholy of this kind philosophers have found a proof of the dignity of human nature. "Man's unhappiness," says one of them, "comes of his greatness: it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite. • . . He requires, if you con- sider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more and ilo less: God's infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rises. . . . Try him with half of a universe, of an omnipo- tence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine; it is even the shadow of ourselves" (Carlyle). The very consciousness of the unprofitableness of life, of failure to attain to perfect satisfaction in the possession of earthly benefits, painful as it is, should convince us of the value of the higher and better inheritance, which may be ours, and in which alone we can find rest; and we should take it as a Divine warning to seek after those things that are eternal and unchangeable. Our dis- satisfaction and our sorrows are like those of the exile who pines for the pleasant land from which by a hard fate he is for a time dissevered; like the grief of a king who has been deposed. And it is to those whose hunger and thirst cannot be satisfied by things of earth, who find, like Solomon, tha.t there is "no profit in a man's labour wherein he laboureth under the suu," that God issues the gracious invitation, "Ho, every one tha.t thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread 1 and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and ea.t ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." The idea of the unprofitableness of human labour expressed by Solomon is calculated, if carried too far, to put an end to all healthy a.nd strenuous effort to use the powers and gifts God has bestowed upon us, and to lead to indiffer- ence and despair. If no adequate result can be secured, if all that remains after prolonged exertion is only a sense of weariness and disappointment, why should we labour at all? But such thoughts are dishonouring to God and degrading to ourselves. He has not sent us into the world to spend our labour in vain, to be overcome with the consciousness of our poverty and weakness. There are wa.ys in which we can glorify him and serve our generation; and he has promised to bless our endeavours, and supply that wherein we come short. Every sincere and unselfish effort we make to help the weak, to relieve the suffering, to tench the ignorant, to diminish the misery that meets us on every ha.nd, and to advance the happiness of our fellows, is ma.de fruitful by his blessing. Something positive and of enduring value may be secured in this way, even "treasure laid up in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." We may so use the goods, the talents, now committed to our charge, as to create for our~clYcs friends, who will  2G ECCLESIASTES j . on. THE PREACI-rnn. [on. r. 1-18.