The Pulpit Commentary — Ecclesiastes — Section 110

nddition, to have been born into a sphere and condition of existence in which God's grace has been before one, and is waiting to lift one up, completely and for ever, out of that sin and misery if one will. No one accepting that grace will ever afterwards deem it a misfortune that he was born. Thomas Halyburton, the Scottisli theologian (A.D. 1674--1712), did not so regard his introduction to this lower world, with all its vicissitudes and woes. "Oh, blessed be God that I was born ! " were his dying words. "I have a father and a mother, and ten brothers and sisters, in heaven, and I shall be the eleventh. Oh, blessed be the day that ever I was born!" Learn: 1. The existence of sin and suffering no proof that life is an evil thing. 2. The wickedness of undervaluing existence under the sun. 3. The folly of over- praising the dead and underrating the living. 4. A worse thing than seeing "evil work" beneath the sun is doing it. Vers. 4--8.-Three sketches from life. I. THE INDUSTRIOUS WORKER. 1. The success that attends his toil. Every enterprise to which he puts his hand prospers, and in this sense is a "right" work. Never an undertaking started by him fails. ·whatever he touches turns into gold. He is one of those children of fortune upon whom the sun always shines-a man of large capacity and untiring energy, who keeps plodding on, doing the right thing to pay, and doing it at the right time, and so building up for himRelf a vast store of wealth. 2. The drawbacks that wait on his success. The Preacher does not hint that his work has been wrong; only that success such as his has its drawbacks. (1) It can only be attained by hard work. By Heaven's decree it is the fruit of toil; and sometimes he who finds it must sweat and labour for it, tugging away at the oar of industry like a very galley-slave, depriving his soul of good, and condemning his body to the meanest drudgery. (2) It often sprinl?S from unworthy motives in the worker, as e.g. from ambition, or a desire to outstrip his competitors in the race for wealth; from covetousness, or a hungry longing for other people's gold; or from avarice, which means a sordid thirst for possession. (3) It commonly leads to envy in beholders, especially in those to whom success has been denied. That it ought not to do so may be conceded; that it will not do so in those who consider that succes~, like every other thing, comes from God (Ps. lxxv. 6, 7), and that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from above (John iii. 27) is certain; that it does so, nevertheless, is apparent. In every department of life success incites some who witness it to depreciation, censoriousness, and even to back biting and slander. "Envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by defeat," and when she cannot find, seldom wants the wit to invent them. Detraction is the shadow that waits npon the sun of prosperity. (4) It is usually attended by anxiety. The man to whom success is given is often one to whom success can be of small account, being "one that is alone and hath not a second," without wife or child, brother or friend, to whom to leave his wealth, so that as this increases his perplexity augments as to what he shall do with it. II. TnE HABITUAL IDLER. 1. The folly he exhibits. Not indispose,! to partake of the succesHful man's wealth, he is yet disinclined to the labour by which alone wealth can be secured. He is one on whom the spirit of indolence has seized. Averse to exertion, like the sluggard, he is slumberous and slothful (ProT. vi. 10; xxiv. 33); and when he does awake, finds that other men's day is half through. If one must not depreciate the value of sleep, which God gives to his beloved (Ps. c:uvii. 2), or pronounce all fools who have evinced a capacity for the same, since according to Thomson (' Castle of Indolence')- " Great men have ever loved repose,• one may recognize the folly of expecting to succeed in life while devoting one's day to indolence or slumber. 2. The wretchednua that springs from his folly, That the habitual idler should "eat his own flesh "-not have a pleasant time of it, in spite of his indolence, attain to the fruition of his desires without work (Ginsburg, Plumptre), but reduce himself to poverty and starvation, and consume himself with envy and vexation (Delitzsch, Hengstenberg, Wright)-is according to the fitness of things, as well as the teacbinus of Scripture (Prov. xiii. 4; xxiii. 21; eh. x. 18; 2 Thess. iii. 10), "Idleness is the bane of body a~d mind, the nur~e of naughtiness, the chief  ECCLESIASTES; OR, 'l'HE PHEACHER. fen. 1v. 1-lG.