Ecc 1:1-2
The book of Ecclesiastes is a dramatic biography, in which Solomon not only records, but re-enacts, the successive scenes of his search after happiness, a descriptive memoir, in which he not only recites his past experience, but, in his improvising fervour, becomes his former self once more.
I. It need not then surprise us if we find in these chapters many strange questionings and startling opinions before we arrive at the final conclusion. Intermingled with much that is noble and holy, these "doubtful disquisitions" are not the dialogue of a believer and an infidel, but the soliloquy of a "divided heart," the debate of a truant will with an upbraiding conscience.
II. In the search after happiness, his first resource was knowledge, then merry-making, then the solace of absolute power. But no sooner did he find his power supreme and unchallenged than he began to be visited with misgivings as to his successor. "Yea, I hated all the labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me."
III. Who is there that apart from God's favour has ever tasted solid joy and satisfaction of spirit? All will be vanity to the heart which is vile, and all will be vexation to the spirit which the peace of God is not possessing.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture II.
Ecc 1:2-11
I. This passage is the preamble to the book; it ushers us at once into its realms of dreariness. It is as if he said, "It is all a weary go-round. There are no novelties, no wonders, no discoveries. The present only repeats the past; the future will repeat them both." From such vexing thoughts may we not escape by taking refuge in one permanence and one variety to which the royal Preacher does not here advert? I mean the soul's immortality and the renewed soul's perpetual rejuvenescence, that attribute of mind which makes it the survivor of all changes, and that faculty of regenerate humanity which renders old things new and suffuses with perpetual freshness things the most familiar.
II. If the immortality of material forms is only that which they achieve through the immortality of the human soul, and if the true glorification of matter is its sanctifying influence on regenerate mind, we may learn two lessons from our argument. (1) There is no harm in a vivid susceptibility to those material appearances and influences with which God has replenished the universe. (2) But that susceptibility is good for nothing if it be not sanctifying. There is an idolatry of nature. There are some whose god is the visible creation, and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture IV.
References: Ecc 1:2-11 . R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 22; T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 27; G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 29.
Ecc 1:4
It is the manifest intention of the Divine Spirit, as shown in the sacred writings, that we should be taught to find emblems in the world we are placed in to enforce solemn instruction upon us.
I. The character of permanence in objects we behold may admonish us of the brevity of our mortal life. In a solitary or contemplative state of the mind the permanent objects give the impression as if they rejected and scorned all connection with our transitory existence; as if we were accounted but as shadows passing over them; as if they stood there but to tell us what a short day is allotted to us on earth. They strike the thoughtful beholder with a character of gloomy and sublime dissociation and estrangement from him.
II. The great general instruction from this is, How little hold, how little absolute occupancy, we have of this world! When all the scene is evidently fixed to remain, we are under the compulsion to go. We have nothing to do with it but as passing from it. Men may strive to cling, to seize a firm possession, to make good their establishment, resolve and vow that the world shall be theirs; but it disowns them, stands aloof: it will stay, but they must go.
III. But should not the final lesson be that the only essential good that can be gained from the world is that which can be carried away from it? Alas that mere sojourners should be mainly intent on obtaining that which they must leave, when their inquisitive glance over the scene should be after any good that may go with them something that is infixed in the soil, the rocks, or the walls!
J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 117.
Reference: Ecc 1:4 . J. Hamilton, Works, vol. vi., p. 484.
Ecc 1:12-14
I. Solomon found no rest in pleasure, riches, power, glory, wisdom itself. He had learnt nothing more, after all, than he might have known, and doubtless did know, when he was a child of seven years old; and that was simply to fear God and keep His commandments, for that was the whole duty of man. But though he did know it, he had lost the power of doing it; and he ended darkly and shamefully a dotard worshipping idols of wood and stone among his heathen queens. And thus as in David the height of chivalry fell to the deepest baseness, so in Solomon the height of wisdom fell to the deepest folly.
II. Exceeding gifts from God, like Solomon's, are not blessings; they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties. They do not increase a man's happiness; they only increase his responsibility the awful account which he must give at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger. They increase the chance of his having his head turned to pride and pleasure, and falling shamefully, and coming to a miserable end. As with David, so with Solomon. Man is nothing, and God is all in all. Let us pray for that great, that crowning, grace and virtue of moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us long violently after nothing, or wish too eagerly to rise in life, and be sure that what the Apostle says of those who long to be rich is equally true of those who long to be famous or powerful, or in any way to rise over the heads of their fellow-men. They all fall, as the Apostle says, into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition, and so pierce themselves through with many sorrows.
C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, p. 175.
Ecc 1:17
There are two ways of arriving at the knowledge of the truth respecting the importance and benefit of holiness and goodness. These two ways are one the experience of what is good, the other the experience of what is bad. These are the two kinds of moral experience we see in the world. I shall compare the two together, first, as to their own character, and, secondly, with respect to their weight in the way of example to others.
I. As to their own character. It is to be admitted that the moral impression which is gained by a course of sin is often a very acute and deep one. There is nothing in the whole circle of human feeling and conviction deeper and more intense than the insight into the emptiness and vanity of the world which men of the world have sometimes at the close of their career. But what, after all, does this wisdom, which is gained by the experience of an evil life, do for them? The great use of wisdom is to make men act aright. If it come after all action is over, it is useless; it is mere seeing for seeing's sake, and knowing for knowing's sake. Here, then, lies the difference between that knowledge which is got by an evil life and that knowledge which is got by a good one. In both cases there is a strong moral conviction gained; but in the case of moral conviction gained by an evil life the harm has been done: and the conviction comes not to prevent the evil, but only to acquaint you with it. To state briefly the difference between the convictions which the experience of good and the experience of worldly men produce, we may say in a word that it consists in faith. In the conviction which is gained by an evil life there is no faith. The possessor would not trust anything but his own experience, and accordingly his conviction is mere matter of experience when he gets it.
II. As regards the comparison of these two kinds of experience in the way of example to others, I cannot but think that the value of that experience at which men of pleasure and men of the world arrive at the close of their careers, and which they communicate to others, is very much overrated. However strong and acute it may be in itself, as regards its effect upon others it is feeble, and for this very good reason: that the man's advice is one way, and his acts have been in another. There is one, and only one, appointed way of doing good; and that is by being good.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 170.
Reference: Ecc 1:17 . J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 85.
Ecc 1:18
The declaration of the text may be considered as the expression of a soul that seeks satisfaction in mere earthly knowledge.
I. Mere earthly knowledge is unsatisfactory in its nature. Take as an illustration of this the field of creation. The knowledge of facts and laws can employ man's reason, but it cannot ultimately satisfy it, and still less can it soothe his soul or meet the longings of his spirit.
II. Mere earthly knowledge is painful in its contents. How melancholy is the history of man when written down! Take away our hope in God, and we could bear to study history only as we forget all the higher ends it might serve as a school of training for immortal souls, and as the steps of a Divine Architect through the broken scaffolding and scattered stonework upwards to a finished structure. The very glimpse of this is reviving; but to give up at once Architect and end, and see human lives scattered and strewn across weary ages, and human hearts torn and bleeding with no abiding result this surely would fill a thoughtful mind with pain. The more of such history, the more of sorrow.
III. Mere earthly knowledge is hopeless in its issue. For an illustration of this we may take the field of abstract thought. Let a man seek the origin and end of things without God, and doubt grows as search deepens, for doubt is on the face of all things if it be in the heart of the inquirer. As he enlarges the circumference of knowledge he enlarges the encircling darkness, and even the knowledge yields no ray of true satisfaction.
IV. Mere earthly knowledge is discouraging in its personal results. We may consider here the moral nature of man. Earthly science can do very much to improve man's external circumstances. It can occupy his reason; it can refine and gratify his taste. But there are greater wants that remain. If the man seek something to fill and warm his heart, all the wisdom of this world is only a cold phosphorescence. The tree of knowledge never becomes the tree of life.
V. Mere earthly knowledge has so brief a duration. Here we may contemplate life as a whole. If the thought of God be admitted, all real knowledge has the stamp of immortality; but if there be nothing of this, "in one day all man's thoughts perish." "The wise man dieth, and the fool also." The sweeter truth is to the taste, the more bitter must be the thought of leaving the pursuit of it for ever.
J. Ker, Sermons, p. 44.
Melancholy arises:
I. From the thought that life is too short even for the most ardent labour to wrest from the bosom of nature or the ocean of the soul a thousandth part of their secrets. "Death comes," we think. "Is all I have done for others and learnt for myself lost? Why may I not live to finish my work, to complete and round my knowledge? If death be all, then the increase of my knowledge is the increase of my sorrow." The remedy and the answer lie in the teaching of Christ. He has brought, it is true, upon the world an increased dread of death, for He has deepened the sense of moral responsibility; but in deepening responsibility He has also brought upon the world an increased delight in life, because He has made life more earnest, active, and progressive. The remedy then, when the thought of death comes to shroud our little term of being with melancholy, is to take up with eagerness again the duties and responsibilities of life. We look to Christ, and the two sources of the melancholy of which we speak the idea of our work perishing, the idea of a cessation of the growth of knowledge vanish away. (1) He died, it is true, when half the natural sands of life were run; but we see that His labour has not died with Him. It has passed as a power and life into the world. (2) In Him we are ourselves immortal, and the work which we have started and left to others here we carry on ourselves in the larger world beyond. But if so, it will require added knowledge, and indeed in its progress it will necessarily store up knowledge. In Christ we know that we shall never cease to learn.
II. The second source of melancholy is retrospective thought. Christ calls us to a higher thought of life. "Let dead idols bury themselves," He says; "come away from them, and follow Me; there are other ideals in front, better and larger than the past." It is the one inspiring element of Christianity that it throws us in boundless hope upon the future, and forbids us to dwell in the poisonous shadows of the past. We are to wake up satisfied in the likeness of Christ, the ever-young humanity. Therefore, forgetting those things which are behind, let us press forward unto the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.
III. A third cause of melancholy is the sadness of the world. What is its remedy? The true remedy is to penetrate steadily into the depths of the dreadful mystery; to comprehend what destiny, and evil, and death mean; to go down into hell, and know it, and conquer it. This is what Christ did in resolute action upon earth; and out of this meeting of sorrow and evil face to face, not by passing them by and ignoring them, sprang His conquest. Evil was overthrown, sorrow was changed into joy, death was swallowed up in victory, because He went down into hell.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 243.
We may contradict this text as we please, but we do not in reality contradict it by asserting its opposite; we only complete it by asserting its other half. Both statements are half-truths. The whole truth of the thing is only found in the assertion of both. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth pleasure, and increaseth sorrow. This is what Albert Dürer saw and engraved in his subtle print of "Melencolia." It would be especially true in the artist's time of those who were attempting to penetrate into the secrets of the physical world. For the true methods of scientific investigation had not been found. We are freed from that grief, for we are consciously advancing, having found true methods; but the same profound pain besets us in the science of metaphysics and of theology, and for the same reason: the want of true methods.
I. The melancholy which arises from the vague answers which we can only suggest to many of our deepest questions is made greater by the clear answers which our questions receive in science. Distinctness in one sphere seems to suggest that distinctness might be reached in all if we had power. We have wings, then; but we have the misery of knowing that they are not strong enough.
II. What is the remedy for the sadness of increased uncertainty which growing knowledge has added to spiritual problems? The remedy is plainly stated in the New Testament. But let us see if we cannot approach the New Testament statement from the side of scientific practice, and so strengthen its force. The certainties of science are mixed up also with uncertainties. Towards these uncertainties what are the practice and attitude of men of science? It is that of men who possess a "faith which worketh by love." They believe in truth, and their faith works through love of truth. The result has been the swiftest and the safest success. In other spheres then, and in a different meaning, this text is true: "This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." In every way this is a lesson which we would do well to learn. The root of our cowardice, of our hesitation, of our inactive melancholy, is our faithlessness. We are not asked at first to believe in certain doctrines or in the opinions of men. We are asked to believe in eternal right, in a Father of spirits whose will is good. This is not a faith in the commandments and doctrines of men. It is a faith in eternal love. It is not a blind credulity; it is a faith which the man has proved in adversity, and by which he has conquered.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 250.
References: Ecc 1:18 . H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2661; J. Fordyce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 303. 1 C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 1. Ecc 2:1 . J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 2:1-3 . J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 165.