long, but bee no true enjoyment of bis good fortune, and when he dies is denied the glory of a funeral such ee Dives doubtless had (Luke xvi. 22), and the shelter of a gta.ve such BB we.a not withheld even from Lazarus, How he should come at last to heve -no buriel, though not explained, may be supposed to happen either through the meanness of his relatives or their hatred of him, or through his perishing m such a way (e.g. in war, at sea, through accident, by violence) as to render burial by his children impossible; Commentators cite· as. an illustration of the case supposed tbe murder by Bagoas of Artaxerxee Ochus (B.c. 362-339), whose body was thrown to the cats. Another may be that of Jehoiakim, of whom it was predicted (Jer. xxii. 19), "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." 2. The judgment pronown.ced. That such a case is not to be compared in respect of felicity with that of" an untimely birth," which "cometh in vanity, and departeth in darkness, and the name thereof is covered with darkness; " i.e, which enters on a lifeless exi_stence when born, and" is carried away in all quietness, without noise or ceremony," having received no name, and becoming forgotten as if it had never been (Delitzsch). The grounds on which tbe Preacher rests his judgment are three: (1) that an untimely birth never sees the sun, and so P.scapes all sight of an:d contact with the sufferings and miseries of earth ; (2) that it never wakes to the e:ierbise of intelligence, and so is never conscious of either the wickedness or the woe that-is surging around it; and (3) that it rests better in the grave to which it goes than does the corpse of the Joyless rich man. 3. The correction needed. This pessimistic view of .]ifs may be thus admirably qualified. The allegation here ma.de "contains a thought to which it is not easy to reconcile one's self. For supposing that life were not in itself, as over against non-existence, e. goocl, there lll yet scarcely any life that is absoluteiy joyless; and a mail who has become the father of a hundred children has, as it appears, sought the enjoyment of life principally in sexual love, and then also has found it richly. But also, if we consider his life less as relating to sense, his children, though not all, yet partly, will have been a joy to him; and has a family life so lengthened and _rich in blessings only thorns, and no. roses at all? And, moreover, how can anything be said of the rest of an untimely birth, w.hich. has been without motion and •without life, as of a rest excelling the termination of the life of him who has .Jived long, since rest without a subjective reflection, a rest not folt, certainly does not fall under the point of view of more or less good or evil? The saying of the author on no side bears the probe of exact thinking" (Delitzsch). IV. A RIOH MAN WITHOUT A BETTER LOT THAN HIS NEIGHBOURS. "Do not all go to op.e place?" In the grave rich and poor differ not. 'l'he dusts of the patrician and of the plebeian, freely intermingled, no human chemistry can distinguish. A tremeudous humiliation, no doubt, to human pride, that Solomon and the harlot's child, Cresar and his slave,•Dives and Lazarus, must ultimately lie together in the same narrow house- that rich and poor, wis·e and unwise, powerful and powerless, honoured and abject, kings and subjects, princes and peasants, masters and servants, must ultimately sleep side by side on the same couch; but so it is. And this, also, in the eyes of worldlings, but not of good men, is a vanity, and a sore evil beneath the sun. • LESSONS. 1. Riches are not the chief good. 2. Temporal evils may be sources of spiritu~l good. • ·Vere. _7L9.-The insatiableness of desire. I. IT co~suMEB THE LABOUR OF ALL. "All the ·le.b6ur of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled" (ver. 7). The appetite, e.s an imperious master, urges on the soul to labour with all its powers and energies to furnish food for its delectation; e.nd yet the utmost man can provido is insufficient to fill its capacious. maw. However varied man's works may be, they have all this end in commoD; to appease the hunger of the sensuous nature; and all alike foil in reaching it, 'l'he appetite grows by what it feeds on, and hence never cries, "E □ ouah !" II. I; AFFECTS THE CHARAOTI!:BB OF. ALL. "What advantage bath the wise moro than the fool? or what [11dvantage] bath the poor man, who knows to walk before Lhe ]jvin<T0 over the fool?" (ver. 8). 1. Intellectual gifts do not argue tlie absence of desire. 'l'he philosopher, no less than the peasant, is under its don(inion, 'rhe former m_ay attempt to control, and may even to some extent succeed 10 controllmg, bis bod!IJ 144 ECCLESIASTES ; OR, THE PREACHER. [oH. VI. 1-12.
appetites; but the appetite is there, impelling him to labour equally with the fool. 2. Material poverty does not guarantee the absence of desire. The poor mo.n who knows how to walk before the living, i.e. who understands the a.rt of living, is no more exempt from its sway than is the rich man, though a fool. The poor man may have learned how to put restraints upon himself, because of inability to gratify his desire, but the aprctite is as much felt by him as by bis rich neighbour. III. IT DISAPPOINTS THE HOPES OF ALL. "Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire" (ver. 9). Just because desire is never satisfied, it wanders on in pursuit of other objects which are often visionary, and almost always illusory; as a consequence, like the dog which snapped at his shadow and lost the meat he carried in his mouth, desire frequently misses such enjoyments as a.re within its reach through striving after those that a.re beyond its power. LESSONS. 1. The danger of self-indulgence. 2. '.!.'he difficulty of keeping the lower nature in subjection. 3. The propriety of preferring present and possible to future and perhaps impossible enjoyments.