Bible Commentaries
Ecclesiastes 11

Verse 1

Giving and Receiving

Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.— Ecclesiastes 11:1

1. There is considerable difference of opinion as to the sense of this verse of Ecclesiastes. The old interpretation which found in it a reference to the practice in Egypt of sowing seed during the inundation of the Nile is not admissible. The verb shalach is not used in the sense of sowing or scattering seed; it means “to cast or send forth.” But there are two other explanations of the passage for which much can be said.

(1) The view which Delitzsch has taken is a modification of that formerly held by Martin Geier, J. D. Michaelis and others—namely, that Koheleth recommends the practice of the prudent merchant, who sends for his merchandise in ships, which go over the face of the waters to distant lands, with the expectation that on their return he will receive his own with an increase. This view is supposed to be confirmed by the statement concerning the good woman in Proverbs 31:14, “She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar,” and the words of Psalms 107:23, “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.” But one sees no reason why Koheleth should suddenly turn to commerce and the trade of a maritime city. Such considerations have no reference to the context or to the general design of the book. Nothing leads to them, nothing comes of them.

(2) The favourite explanation is that the verse inculcates a liberal charity—“Give your bread to any who chance to need it, and you will at some distant time receive a reward.” If we take it so, we have a maxim in due accordance with the spirit of the rest of the work, and one which conduces to the conclusion reached at the end. The bread in the East is made in the form of thin cakes, which would float for a time if thrown into a stream; and, if it be objected that no one would be guilty of such an irrational action as flinging bread into the water, it may be answered that this is just the point aimed at. Do your kindnesses, exert yourself, in the most unlikely quarters, thinking not of gratitude or return, but only of duty. And yet surely a recompense will be made in some form or other.

2. The earliest comment on the passage is that of Ben Sira, who in a maxim of his, extant only in Chaldee, observes, “Strew thy bread upon the surface of the water and on the dry land, and thou shalt find it in the end of days.” It will be observed in this earliest comment upon the verse that the difficulty of considering the verb to refer to sowing of seed was felt even at that time, and an attempt made to obviate it by translating the word in a sense in which it certainly occurs. Bishop Lowth in his work on Hebrew Poetry has explained the phrase as equivalent to the Greek expression “to sow the sea.” But the aphorism of Koheleth was not meant as an exhortation to engage in labour though apparently fruitless. Its signification is better conveyed in the Arabic proverb quoted from Diez by several commentators, “Do good, cast thy bread into the water, at some time a recompense will be made thee.” Delitzsch observes that the same proverb has been naturalized in Turkish, “Do good, throw it into the water; if the fish does not know it, God does.”

A very suitable parallel is quoted by Herzfeld from Goethe’s Westöstlicher Divan,

Was willst du untersuchen,

Wohin die Milde fliesst!

Ins Wasser wirf deine Kuchen:

Wer weiss, wer sie geniesst!

A similar interpretation is found in Voltaire. Dukes gives in his note the following story, quoted from the Kabus by Diez ( Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien, 1 Th. p. 106 ff.), which, whether it be a fact or a fiction, well illustrates the meaning of the Arabic proverb: “The caliph Mutewekkil in Bagdad had an adopted son Fettich, of whom he was very fond. As the latter was bathing one day, he sank under the water and disappeared. The caliph offered a large reward to any one who should recover the boy’s body. A bather was fortunate enough after seven days to discover the boy alive in a cavern in a precipitous mountain by which the river flowed. On investigation, the caliph ascertained that the boy was kept from starving by cakes of bread borne to him over the surface of the water, on which cakes was stamped the name of Mohammed ben Hassan. The caliph, having summoned Mohammed ben Hassan into his presence, asked him what induced him to throw the bread into the water. Mohammed ben Hassan replied that he had done so every day for a whole year in order to test the truth of the Arabic proverb already cited. The caliph, according to the story, was so pleased with his conduct that he made over to him on the spot five villages in the neighbourhood of Bagdad. 1 [Note: C. H. H. Wright.]

3. The whole passage in which the text occurs seems to be a protest against that despondency and over-anxiety which are so apt to lower our generosity, and to relax our faithfulness to duty. Beneficence ought to look forward hopefully into the future; but it ought not to be over-calculating. Beneficence without hope loses one of the springs of its energy. Beneficence without thought may cease to be beneficence in anything but the motive, and may positively injure where it desires to bless. But thoughtfulness in well-doing is one thing; anxious calculation is another thing. Such calculation is apt to rob us of hope, and to depress our energy. It is likely also to defeat its own ends. For there are limits to our powers of thought. We cannot with certainty forecast the future, or foretell the results even of our own actions. The ways of God are, many of them, mysterious. It is ours to sow; the harvest is with Him. No doubt we ought to sow as wisely as we can; but we ought also to remember that, with all our wisdom, the harvest may be different from what we anticipate. If we begin to calculate too much, we shall calculate badly. Let us therefore do good “as we have opportunity,” dealing with present claims rather than with future contingencies, acting with hopeful yet unselfish generosity, and with diligent and thoughtful yet unanxious beneficence. This seems to be the central lesson of the passage before us.

Give not only unto seven, but also unto eight, that is, unto more than many. Though to give unto every one that asketh may seem severe advice, yet give thou also before asking; that is, where want is silently clamorous, and men’s necessities not their tongues do loudly call for thy mercies. For though sometimes necessitousness be dumb, or misery speak not out, yet true charity is sagacious, and will find out hints for beneficence. Acquaint thyself with the physiognomy of want, and let the dead colours and first lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object for thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily be prodigal and fear not to be undone by mercy; for since he who hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty rewarder, who observes no ides [when borrowed money was repaid] but every day for his payments, charity becomes pious usury, Christian liberality the most thriving industry; and what we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack unto us. He who thus casts his bread upon the water shall surely find it again; for though it falleth to the bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the prophet, to rise again unto him. 1 [Note: Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 90.]

I

The Precept

“Cast thy bread upon the waters.”

There can be little doubt that this admonition applies to the deeds of compassion and beneficence which are the proper fruits of true religion. In times of famine, in cases of affliction and sudden calamity, it is a duty to supply the need of the poor and hungry. Almsgiving is the natural, the necessary, expression of a healthy Christian character. The Christian cannot but be communicative of the goods which he has. Almsgiving is not a concession to importunity, by which we free ourselves from unwelcome petitioners; it is not a sacrifice to public opinion, by which we satisfy the claims popularly made upon our place or fortune; it is not an appeal for praise; it is not a self-complacent show of generosity; it is not, in a word, due to any external motive. It is the spontaneous outcome of life.

But there are many other ways in which benevolence may express itself besides almsgiving. The Christian is called upon to care both for the bodies and for the souls of his fellow-men—to give the bread of knowledge as well as the bread that perisheth, and to provide a spiritual portion for the enrichment and consolation of the destitute.

1. The Bread of Kindness.—Cast seed on the soil, and you may reasonably expect a harvest. But to “cast bread upon the waters”—what good can come of that? And yet there are many acts of beneficence which seem quite as unlikely ever to bring any return to the benefactor. We are to be kind to others, even although we can see no ground for hoping that we shall ever be recompensed by them. There are many cases in which simply the need of others ought to be our chief motive in well-doing. It is indeed quite true that mere indiscriminate almsgiving is likely to do harm instead of good. But here, we shall suppose, is a case in which we know a man to be in real need, and we are able really and truly to help him. We are not sure that he will be even grateful to us. We cannot well conceive of our ever coming into circumstances in which we shall need his help. Well, let us “cast our bread upon the waters.” Let us be generous without calculation. Let us do good to the man without any considerations of personal advantage. Let not our benevolence take the form of a mere “investment.” However unprofitable to ourselves our well-doing may appear to be, still let us continue to do well.

It surely cannot matter to you whom the thing helps, so long as you are content that it won’t, or can’t, help you? But are you content so? For that is the essential condition of the whole business—I will not speak of it in terms of money—are you content to give work? Will you build a bit of wall, suppose—to serve your neighbour, expecting no good of the wall yourself? If so, you must be satisfied to build the wall for the man who wants it built; you must not be resolved first to be sure that he is the best man in the village. Help any one, anyhow you can: so, in order, the greatest possible number will be helped; nay, in the end, perhaps you may get some shelter from the wind under your charitable wall yourself; but do not expect it, nor lean on any promise that you shall find your bread again, once cast away; I can only say that of what I have chosen to cast fairly on the waters myself, I have never yet, after any number of days, found a crumb. Keep what you want; cast what you can,—and expect nothing back, once lost, or once given. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letter 19 (Works, xxvii. 323).]

(1) Charity, in the sense of the gospel, is disinterested. The design, in every act which is entitled to this name, is to do real good to those who are its objects. The intention of the author of it will invariably be to promote the happiness or to relieve the distresses of the sufferer; not to advance his own reputation, to promote his own selfish purposes, or even to prevent the reproaches of his own conscience. In a word, selfishness, of whatever kind, and in whatever form it may exist, is not charity.

Lady Blanche Balfour was a person whose thoughts were not like other people’s thoughts, and who could do things which other people could not do. The Cotton Famine in Lancashire during the American Civil War stirred her sympathy greatly. As it happened at the time that her establishment was being reduced,—probably with a view to her going abroad with her children,—she used the opportunity to make a novel proposal to them. They were told that, if they liked to do the work of the house, any money that was saved in this way would go to the help of the distressed people. When they agreed to take this up, the house was divided. The few servants remaining had the use of the still-room at one end of it to prepare their own meals in, and the kitchen was made over to Lady Blanche’s daughters, who, after the two eldest had a few lessons from the cook before she left, did the family cooking, with only the assistance, for the roughest work, of two quite untrained Lancashire girls, who were brought from amid the “idle sorrow” of the time in Manchester to stay in Whittingehame House. Lady Blanche’s sons [of whom the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour is the eldest] had also work of the house which they could do allotted them, such as cleaning of boots and knives. Of course the young ladies were new to cutting up and cooking meat; so the meals at first were very irregularly achieved, and were trying enough even to youthful appetites. They must have been still more trying to Lady Blanche herself, who was really an invalid always. But more than one purpose of hers was served. The help sent to Lancashire was greater by the amount saved in household expenses; her children had the sense of giving this share of help through their own labour and self-denial; and they had besides a discipline of great value, as no doubt their mother intended, in the thorough knowledge acquired of details of housekeeping, and in the check given to dependence on comforts. Others, perhaps, in her circumstances might have imagined and planned such a procedure as this; but few could have carried it through. 1 [Note: J. Robertson, Lady Blanche Balfour, 25.]

(2) Bountifulness should distinguish beneficence. The crumbs which fall from the rich man’s table, the scraps which are doled out at the servant’s door, are not to be here accounted of. “The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.” “Cast thy bread.” Let it not be extorted from you. Let it be given “heartily,” “not by constraint, but willingly.” The “cheerful giver” is the acceptable giver. “Freely ye have received, freely give.” Even when our own “daily bread” is scanty, we are to cast some of it upon the waters whenever there is a Divine call to do this. A poor widow, who had been reduced to penury, acted thus one day at Zarephath, a town in the region of Tyre and Sidon. She shared with the prophet Elijah what she thought might possibly be her last meal, and she took him home with her as a guest “for many days.” The reward of her hospitality, after perhaps nearly two years, was the restoration to life of her dead son in answer to the prophet’s earnest prayer.

Miss Pipe’s whole attitude to beneficence of action and expenditure was characteristic. She believed in practical benefit rather than in charity commonly so called. Her gifts in money were numerous and generous, but she took great pains to learn how the money would be used, and often, when some individual or society was doing what seemed to her valuable work, she would send to either an unexpected cheque in assistance of what she approved. The work was just as often scientific, pedagogic, or artistic, as conventionally charitable, and sometimes took the form of help in publication in order to preserve the author’s aim from interference; of help in establishing schools, when she approved of those who ventured; of money sent for travelling when the need was educational. These and similar gifts did not interfere with a constant liberality to missions, church-schemes and expenses, to hospitals, work amongst the poor, and especially to such work as Miss Octavia Hill was doing, in which she warmly welcomed the high intelligence, the educative processes, the seeds sown for the future. To her own personal friends she was always and continuously generous, delighting to find out what they needed or wished, and to supply it. Some memoranda of her personal expenditure have escaped destruction, and indicate the splendid proportion of her giving to others compared with her purchasing for herself. For instance, in one year she gave away £288, and spent £14 on dress; in another, while dress cost £90, giving reached £363; in a third, dress amounted to £58 and giving to £406; in a fourth, dress had grown more costly, reaching £100, but giving had increased to £485; and by 1880, dress had sunk to £71, while giving had grown to £789. 1 [Note: Life and Letters of Hannah E. Pipe, 194.]

2. The Bread of the Gospel.—Though liberality and kindness are the primary lessons of our text, it may well suggest, as in our ordinary conversation it does suggest, every kind of work for God. There is in the world an ever-increasing amount of work done in the spirit of Christian benevolence, efforts on behalf of the young, the outcast, the victims of drink, the criminal, the poor, the afflicted; efforts that at times seem to be fruitless, and often meet with lack of appreciation, often with ingratitude, and at times even with wrath. Those for whom we may have done our best take a base advantage of kindness, or say to us, like the evil spirit of old, “Let us alone,” and, after all our efforts, are not any the better, but rather the worse. We are inclined to lose heart and hope because we see no fruit of our labours. It is to those in such a condition, who are depressed and think it not worth while to continue, that such words as the text may apply. Our bread is to be cast upon the waters. We are to render service—service that often costs much—to thankless people. We must be content to work when our work is unacknowledged, unrequited—even when it is despised. If we serve men in material things, indifference and ingratitude may be the return; but this is still more likely to be the case when we seek to do them the highest good. People appreciate gold, bread, or raiment sooner than they appreciate efforts to raise their mind and character. Much of the highest, painfullest service wrought for the good of men—work of brain and heart—is least appreciated. So many a sincere worker is sad because of the lack of appreciation, and ready to renounce his self-sacrificing work, seeing it is so disregarded.

But let us remember how God’s work and gifts are unappreciated. The multitude crowds into the music-hall and gazes with rapture on some vulgar stage scenery painted in glaring ochres, whilst God’s bright landscapes full of perfect beauty solicit their eye in vain. There is a great crush in the public gardens to witness an exhibition of fire-works—small tricks in saltpetre; but the eager crowd turns its back on the moon walking in brightness and God’s heaven sown with stars. And men treat God’s government and grace as they do His handiwork, ignoring Him who is wonderful in counsel, excellent in working. Yet for all this He does not suspend His beneficent action; He continues His glorious and generous administration, whatever may be the response of His creatures. He makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, His rain to descend upon the just and the unjust, despite the thanklessness of the far greater portion of those who are so richly and undeservedly blessed. How largely the sublime work of the Lord Jesus is unrecognized! “Where are the nine?” is a mournful question still on our Master’s lips. But He does not fail, neither is He discouraged because of the blindness and heartlessness of those whom He suffered to redeem; He pursues the thankless with offers of grace and blessing. We are far too anxious about acknowledgments and congratulations. It is natural, perhaps, that we should suffer some sense of disappointment, but have we not considerations and motives to lift us far above such discontent? It is rather the gratitude than the apathy of men that should leave us mourning. Let us work in the spirit of a noble faith and consecration, knowing that what we give and suffer will be lightly esteemed among men.

It was a saying of Cromwell’s that “he goes farthest who knows not where he is going.” He did not forecast his actions and see far ahead, did not, indeed, try to do so. To him the important thing was to get what he regarded as a leading from the Lord. When he was sure of that, all hesitation on his part was gone. It is not business-like to know not whither you are going, and he is not likely to go far who should enter upon business in that fashion. But in the spiritual realm it is different. The great thing there is to follow the Divine leading, and to sow even though it be in tears, trusting Him who gives the command that all will be well, and that in His own good time there shall come a reaping time of joy. 1 [Note: J. S. Maver.]

II

The Promise

“Thou shalt find it after many days.”

This comes in most seasonably on the back of such a precept, and its expressiveness is not instructive merely; it is most encouraging; nothing could be better; it is in every way most worthy of the heartiest consideration and acceptation.

1. The most uncalculating generosity is precisely that which is most certain, in one way or other, to meet with its reward. “Thou shalt find it after many days.” This is not to be the motive of our acts, but it will in the course of time be the result.

21st September 1863—Met at the house of the Rev. C. K. Paul, at Stourminster Marshall, Father Strickland, an English Jesuit, who said to me—“I have observed, throughout life, that a man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.” 1 [Note: Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1851–1872, 111.]

If we give because we do not know how soon we may need a gift, and in order that we may by-and-by “find the good of it,” do not even the heathen and the publicans the same? Well, not many of them, I think. I have not observed that it is their habit to cast their bread on thankless waters. If they forebode calamity and loss, they provide against them, not by giving, but by hoarding; and even they themselves would hardly accept as a model of charity a man who buttoned up his pocket against every appeal, lest he should be yielding to a selfish motive, or be suspected of it. The refined selfishness of showing kindness and doing good even to the evil and the unthankful because we hope to find the good of it is by no means too common yet; we need not go in dread of it. Nor is it an altogether unworthy motive. St. Paul urges us to help a fallen brother on the express ground that we may need similar help some day ( Galatians 6:1); and he was not in the habit of appealing to base motives. Nay, the very Golden Rule itself, which all men admire even if they do not walk by it, touches this spring of action; for among other meanings it surely has this, that we are to do to others as we would that they should do to us, in the hope that they will do to us as we have done to them. There are other higher meanings in the Rule of course, as there are other and purer motives for Charity; but I do not know that we are any of us of so lofty a virtue that we need fear to show kindness in order to win kindness, or to give help that we may get help when we need it. Possibly, to act on this motive may be the best and nearest way of rising to such higher motives as we can reach. 2 [Note: Samuel Cox, The Book of Ecclesiastes, 250.]

2. Some may happily find an almost immediate return, like the mother of Moses when she entrusted her babe to the Nile waters, and her faith was rewarded even beyond her expectations. Others may be like Jonathan, whose unselfish love towards David found a return after he was gone, in David’s kindness to his son, Mephibosheth. And to others the fulness of the return may be still more remote, as when Ruth cast in her lot with Naomi, and thereby came to be privileged to have in the line of her descent the Saviour of the world.

There is a certain beauty and power in the life that is lived and the labours that are wrought with a distant aim in view. There is no such thing as labour for remote ends in the brute creation, but in man you find it, and nothing distinguishes man from man more than the capacity to foresee and work toward a far-distant result. As Ruskin says, “It is the far-sight, the quiet and confident patience that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker, and there is no action nor art whose majesty we may not measure by this test.” 1 [Note: J. S. Maver.]

I know a man intimately who has been periodically solicited for loans of money during a long term of years, and who has generally acceded to the request. Of these loans he can recall only one instance of repayment; but the instance is that of a boy whom he relieved in an emergency, and who has lived to be a comfort to his family. The one success has compensated the many failures. The bread which has been cast upon the waters has come back only in fragments; but the fragments have been so precious that they have justified the cost. 2 [Note: G. Matheson, Thoughts for Life’s Journey, 232.]

3. However long in coming, the reward will come. “Thou shalt find it after many days.” Our work shall not be unavailing, our bark shall not be shipwrecked. To do any work with ardour, thoroughness, and perseverance we must have a strong assurance that it will succeed, and in the noblest work we have that assurance. The seed that was sown generations ago is bearing fruit to-day, and it shall be so once more with the seed we sow. The ship that we sent forth with trembling, that is never reported from any foreign port, that is never spoken by a passing sail, that sends no message in sealed bottle on the waves, that is frozen fast in abysses of frost and darkness, shall nevertheless return, bringing treasure beyond all ivory, pearls, or gold. On celestial cliffs we shall hail argosies that we fitted out and sent over stormy seas. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; … they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.”

Dr. Dwight of America tells how, when the country near Albany was newly settled, an Indian came to the inn at Lichfield, and asked for a night’s shelter—at the same time confessing that from failure in hunting he had nothing to pay. The hostess drove him away with reproachful epithets, and as the Indian was retiring sorrowfully—there being no other inn for many a weary mile—a man who was sitting by directed the hostess to supply his wants and promised to pay her. As soon as his supper was ended, the Indian thanked his benefactor, and said he would some day repay him. Several years thereafter the settler was taken a prisoner by a hostile tribe, and carried off to Canada. His life was spared, however, though he himself was detained in slavery. But one day an Indian came to him, and giving him a musket, bade the captive follow him. The Indian never told where they were going, or what was his object; but day after day the captive followed his mysterious guide, till one afternoon they came suddenly on a beautiful expanse of cultivated fields, with many houses rising amongst them. “Do you know that place?” asked the Indian. “Ah, yes—it is Lichfield”; and whilst the astonished exile had not recovered his surprise and amazement, the Indian exclaimed, “And I am the starving Indian on whom at this very place you took pity. And now that I have paid for my supper, I pray you go home.” 1 [Note: J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, 198.]

There is no labour lost

Though it seem tossed

Into the deepest sea.

In dark and dreary nights,

’ Mid stormy flash of lights,

It cometh back to thee.

Cometh not as it went,

So strangely warped and bent,

But straight as an arrow new.

And though thou dost not know

How right from wrong may grow,

From false the true—

Thou must confess ere long

Sorrow hath broke forth in song—

That life comes out of death,

The lily and rose’s breath

From beds where ugly stains

Were washed below by earthly rains.

Fear not to labour, then,

Nor say, “I threw my time away!”

It is for God, not men,

To count the cost and pay.

Literature

Askew (E. A.), The Service of Perfect Freedom, 225.

Bradley (G. G.), Lectures on Ecclesiastes, 190.

Cox (S.), The Book of Ecclesiastes (Expositor’s Bible), 247.

Deane (W. J.), in The Pulpit Commentary, 275.

Finlayson (T. C.), The Meditations and Maxims of Koheleth, 239.

Hamilton (J.), The Royal Preacher, 197 (Works, iii. 190).

Hodgson (A. P.), Thoughts for the King’s Children, 132.

Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of God, 107.

Jerdan (C.), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 152.

Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life’s Journey, 231.

Pattison (T. H.), The South Wind, 197.

Plumptre (E. H.), Ecclesiastes, 204.

Stanford (C.), Central Truths, 194.

Thomson (E. A.), Memorials of a Ministry, 110.

Thomson (J. R.), in The Pulpit Commentary, 284.

Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, ii. 234.

Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 123.

Wright (C. H. H.), Ecclesiastes in Relation to Modern Criticism and Pessimism, 223.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 120 (W. J. Hocking).

Church of England Pulpit, xli. 121 (C. A. Jones).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 465 (C. J. Vaughan).

Twentieth Century Pastor, xxxiii. 13 (J. S. Maver).

Verse 9

After that the Judgment

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement.— Ecclesiastes 11:9

The greater part of the Book of Ecclesiastes is of a sombre character. It records the experiences of one who sought on all sides and with passionate eagerness for that which would satisfy the higher wants of his nature—the hunger and thirst of the soul—but who sought in vain. Ordinary coarse, sensual pleasures soon lost their charm for him; for he deliberately tried—a dangerous experiment—to see if in self-indulgence any real satisfaction could be found. From this failure he turned to a more promising quarter. He sought in “culture,” the pursuit of beauty and magnificence in art, the pathway to the highest good, on the discovery of which his soul was set. He used his great wealth to procure all that could minister to a refined taste. He built palaces, planted vineyards and gardens and orchards; he filled his palaces with all that was beautiful and costly, and cultivated every pleasure that is within the reach of man. “Whatsoever mine eyes desired,” he says, “I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy.… Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on all the labour that I had laboured to do: and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” From this he turned to the joys and employments of an intellectual life—acquired knowledge and wisdom, studied the works of nature, analyzed human character in all its phases, and applied himself to the study of all those great problems connected with the moral government of the world and the destiny of the soul of man. Here he was baffled. The discoveries he made were, he found, useless for curing any of the evils of life, and at every point he met with mysteries which he could not solve, and his sense of failure and defeat convinced him that though “wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness,” it does not satisfy the soul.

What, then, is the result of his inquiries, of his pain and labour in searching after the highest good? Do his speculations leave anything untouched which may reasonably be the object of our pursuit, and which may afford us the satisfaction for which he sought in vain in so many quarters? Does he decide that life is, after all, worth living, or is his conclusion that it is not? In the closing sections of his book some answer is given to these questions; something positive comes as a pleasing relief from all the negations with which he had shut up one after another of the paths by which men had sought and still seek to attain to lasting happiness. Two conclusions might have been drawn from the experience through which he had passed. “Since the employments and enjoyments of life are insufficient to give satisfaction to the soul’s craving, why engage in them, why not turn away from them in contempt, and fix the thoughts solely on a life to come?” an ascetic might ask. “Since life is so transitory, pleasure so fleeting, why not seize upon every pleasure, and banish every care as far as possible?” an epicurean might ask—“Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.” Neither of these courses finds any favour in the mature judgment of the writer who draws his teaching from the experience of the Jewish king. “Rejoice,” he says, rebuking the ascetic; “know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement,” he adds, for the confusion of the epicurean. He speaks with the authority of one who had fully considered the problems of life, and with the solemnity of one whose earthly career was hastening to its close; and he addresses himself to the young, as more likely to profit by his experience than those over whom habits of life and thought have more power. The counsel which the Preacher has to give is bold and startling. “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement.”

The writer appears to have come under the influence of Greek philosophy. An accomplished scholar has been able to point out some remarkable coincidences between the sayings of Heraclitus and the sayings of Ecclesiastes. There are, moreover, passages in the book which furnish striking parallels to the Epicurean philosophy as it is interpreted by Lucretius. It is not surprising that thinkers, pondering the mysteries of the universe and the strangely complicated drama of human life, should have fallen into the same vein, should have been struck by the same problems, and have given utterance to similar thoughts respecting them. The melancholy, the questioning, the scepticism, which are found in Ecclesiastes, have been found in the Eastern mystics, and in poets so far removed from Ecclesiastes and from one another as Shakespeare and Tennyson. Thoughts like these are not the product of one age, or one country, or one philosophical school. They are the common heritage of all deeply moved hearts and minds. Still it must be admitted that the Jewish mind was not naturally reflective, it was averse from speculation, and it is at least not improbable that the thought of this Jewish preacher may have been coloured by Greek philosophy. 1 [Note: J. J. S. Perowne.]

I

The Joy of Youth

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.”

God does not grudge us joy. God’s own life is a life of joy. Although His life is a life of calm, unruffled joy, yet it is a life of joy none the less. It is not the calm of stagnation; it is not the calm of a life in which there is nothing to move it. It is more like the calm of that great tide of which Tennyson speaks, “too full for sound and foam.” It is the calm of an intense joy, so great, so unbroken, that it is always still. And God who has Himself this fulness of joy desires to see that joy shared by His creatures. That was the very reason why He made them, and He made them with that capacity for joy and that desire for joy, and He set all round about them in this wonderful world the things that might help them to be joyful.

Dante and Virgil, as they traverse the gloomy circles of the Inferno, come upon a stagnant and putrid fen, and there, buried in the black mud, they see the souls of the gloomy-sluggish, who in expiation of their sinful gloom in life, are ever forced to mutter—

We were sad

In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,

Now in this miry darkness are we sad.

To be sad in the sunshine was a crime in the great poet’s eyes, and the poets and prophets of Scripture were herein at one with him. For the Psalmist says, “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous”; and Isaiah, “Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness”; and St. Paul, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.” 1 [Note: F. W. Farrar, In the Days of Thy Youth, 92.]

1. To be young is itself a privilege and a joy. The blessing of youth is joy: the blessing of mature life is work: the blessing of old age is peace. The young are all for enjoyment; the middle-aged all for achievement; the aged all for rest. It is the highest wisdom of young people to retain their youthfulness of heart and life as long as possible. It is no reproach to be young; it is one of those priceless privileges which are all the more precious because we can none of us be young for long, and we can never be young more than once. Half the miseries of youth come from the undue haste of those who wish to leave it behind them—so missing the vigour of their manhood, and the peace of their old age.

Pitt, who was Prime Minister of England when twenty-four, was once taunted by an old man with his extreme youth. “The atrocious crime of being a young man,” he said, “I shall not attempt to palliate or deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.” Therefore, let all rejoice in their youth, who have their life before them; let them not rob youth of its chief charm by despising it, and hurrying out of it before their time. 2 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones.]

2. A peculiar joy belongs to youth, because of the novelty and vividness of early sensations, feelings and perceptions. It is indeed one of the features of youth that we are able to find pleasure in so many things, whereas older people are able to find pleasure in fewer things. This is at once our glory, and our peril. Every sensibility and faculty of our nature is richly stored with vital force, and with the power to realize life vividly and fully. The process of growing old usually involves the gradual loss of this freshness. But there are some people who do not seem to grow old in this way; they retain to the end the faculty of realizing the freshness of life; happy are they. And we shall find that those who do retain this power longest are just those who, when they were young, were careful with their pleasures as with their health; feeding their mind on the simplicities of life; taking care not to pall their appetites with too prodigal a feast; entering into the enjoyment of pleasure with a self-contained heart; and, above all, thinking not so much of enjoyment as of something higher and better, which brought enjoyment in its train unsought—as a gift thrown in to those worthy to receive it.

“Live as long as you may,” said Southey, “the first twenty years are the longest half of your life, and they are by far the most pregnant in consequences.” It was Robert Burns who sighed:

O man! while in thy early years,

How prodigal of time!

Mis-spending all the precious hours,

Thy glorious youthful prime!

3. Another source of joy in youth is found in its idealism. Every healthy-minded youth is an idealist. This power of the ideal runs through the whole of life. It is found in the friendships of youth, giving them a warmth and an unselfishness that we do not often see in older people—unless in the case of friendships that date from boyhood and girlhood, which are among the richest possessions of life; for “blessed are they who can boast of old friends.” It is to be seen in the ambitions of youth, surrounding the objects of desire like a halo. And it is the most beautiful element in the religion of young people, that it fills them with innumerable ideals, and makes the unseen, the immaterial, and the Divine glow with a reality of beauty and a pulse of power which are at the root of almost everything worth talking of in the history of mankind. On every side human life sinks to the level of mechanism when it ceases to establish and declare the ideals by which it lives. It is not so much the embodiment of the ideal and the actual attainment of the end as it is the assertion of the ideal, the positing of the goal—“the will to believe,” as Professor James puts it so forcefully; it is this that constitutes the power of idealization.

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me:

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

Isaac D’Israeli said, “Almost everything great has been done by youth.” “The first open look of young eyes on the condition of the world is one of the principal regenerative forces of humanity.” One never knows what may come of a young man’s thoughts and fancies and ideals. This idealizing faculty is also one of the richest sources of joy, whether it comes to play in love, friendship, work, or religion. And it is peculiarly a youthful joy. Therefore, said the Preacher, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.” 1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones.]

4. The sage recommends the young man to rejoice in his youth, because the opportunity will soon pass away. We are not listening to a Christian moralist, nevertheless the sentiment is Christian. “Childhood and youth are vanity”; that is to say, they are transient, fleeting. “Therefore,” say a certain class of religionists, “extinguish their natural instincts as summarily as possible. They are transient, therefore they are of no account. They are ‘vanity,’ therefore to enjoy them is dangerous, if it be not sinful.” But the logic of the Preacher takes a different line. Childhood and youth, or youth and manhood, are fleeting; therefore “Banish sorrow from thy mind, and put away sadness from thy body.” He evidently does not think the brevity and transitoriness of a thing is a reason for despising it.

The rose which you pluck in the morning withers before the next morning, but you delight yourself with its colour and perfume none the less while it lasts. A summer morning, with its dewy freshness, is a thing of only an hour or two; but you do not, for that reason, shut yourself up in your chamber, and refuse to breathe the morning scents, and to look upon the sparkle of the dewdrops. Youth and fresh manhood are things of only a few years; but their brevity is, to the Preacher, the reason why they should be enjoyed. Those have done infinite damage who have set on foot the notion that youth, from the moment it turns to religion, surrenders all pleasure, lightness of heart, and robust enjoyment; and such teachers have been betrayed into this terrible and fatal mistake through their failure to see that God’s training is not to stunt or to crush out human nature, but to develop and elevate it. 1 [Note: M. R. Vincent, God and Bread, 191.]

It seems to me that the Gospel of the Transfiguration should be more widely proclaimed among us. The poets sing of it, the mystics show it, even the scientific men have some foreshadowings; but in the common ways of men it is unheard. “God is Joy itself.” Where is the man who shall preach with power to the multitude of the transfiguring of pleasure into joy, as well as of the like transfiguring of pain? “Joy, then,” says Myers, “I will boldly affirm, is the aim of the Universe; that Joy which is the very bloom of Love and Wisdom; and men’s souls need attuning to that inconceivable delight.” 2 [Note: A Modern Mystic’s Way.]

What in Aurelius was a passing expression, was in [the Christian] Cornelius (Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritable physiognomy. It was, in fact, we may say, nothing less than the joy which Dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect; the outward expression of which, like a physical light upon human faces, from the land which is very far off, we may trace from Giotto, and even earlier, to its consummation in the purer and better work of Raffaelle—the serenity, the durable cheerfulness, the blitheness of those who had been indeed delivered from death, of which the utmost degree of that famed Greek blitheness or Heiterkeit is but a transitory gleam, as in careless and wholly superficial youth. 3 [Note: Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean.]

II

The Sobering Sense of Responsibility

“But know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement.”

The second part of the text is not meant to destroy or neutralize the concession of the first sentence, but only to purify and ennoble a gladness which, without it, would be apt to be stained by many a corruption, and to make permanent a joy which, without it, would be sure to die down into the miserable, peevish, and feeble old age of which the grim picture follows, and to be quenched at last in death.

1. God intends us to live for something better than pleasure. Pleasure as relaxation is right enough, but when we make it our chief business it becomes sin. A butterfly life of vain frivolity and amusement is to prostitute the purpose of our living. God has sent us into the living world to cultivate our spiritual nature by His service. We are created for God, and we answer the end of our being only when we consecrate our lives to His glory. Anything short of making God the supreme object of our reverence and affection is to miss the great end of life. We may indulge in no sinful pleasure, and in no pleasure that is in any degree questionable: but if we make pleasure our god, the thing for which we live, then it is sin. This is to disobey the first command of the law, “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”

There is always the temptation of youth to think that, because things are lawful one cannot have too much of them. Charles Lamb tells us, in one of his delightful essays, of certain people who set a house on fire in order that they might enjoy the rapture of eating roast sucking-pig. That is very much like the action of those who burn up every grave and sober thing in the lire of pleasure and sport. Laughter is a pleasant thing, but a perpetual cackle and grin is the sure mark of an idiot. Enjoyment is a gift of God, but to sacrifice and forget everything else for it is to prostitute God’s gift to the service of the devil. 1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough.]

2. A man’s mature years are a sort of judgment on the enjoyments and work of his earlier days. If his pleasures have been impure, shameful, and wrong; if he has been habitually guilty of excess in the indulgence of appetites, in drink, smoking, or anything akin to that; it all follows him into the real work of life, and unfits him for it. He goes forth into the world with a corrupted and diseased imagination, perhaps with a weakened body, and certainly with a debilitated mind. And if his early life has been of the frivolous, sportive, self-indulgent kind, if he has not hardened himself a little in severer things, by laying up a preparation of knowledge, by getting acquainted with the best thoughts of men, he is handicapped in all the race of life.

Perhaps there is no commoner delusion than that we may give our youth to vanity and rejoice with thoughtlessness and yet catch up the duties of life at some onward point more vigorously than if we had not known youthful madness and folly. All such imaginations are broken against the great retributive law which runs throughout life and pervades every phase of it. If we give the rein to our pleasure-loving tendencies, and walk in the ways of our heart, unmindful of higher things, the “lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” will take hold of us till we not only do not think of higher things, but do not care to think of them, or even despise them as dreams of an impracticable Puritanism. There will grow from self-indulgence, deadness of heart; and from the love of pleasure, atheism of desire, till the very beauty of the natural life is worn away, and we fall into a selfishness which is capable neither of satisfaction nor of hope. 1 [Note: Principal Tulloch, Some Facts of Religion and of Life, 243.]

In his essay on Burns, Carlyle refers to that period in the poet’s life when, as a mere youth, he leaves the paternal roof and “goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting society; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, those vices which,” says Carlyle, “a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active life; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not dispute much,” he continues, “with this class of philosophers; we hope they are mistaken: for Sin and Remorse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a time in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives in this Devil’s service, but only our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly Action.”

3. This judgment may carry approval and reward no less than penalty. Whenever this book may have been written, we find in it numerous allusions to a state of society which give these words about a future judgment a peculiar meaning and force; for the book depicts a society under a capricious despotism, with all its corruptions and miseries. The wealthy revel in palaces, vineyards, and pleasure-grounds; kings are childish, and princes given to revelry and drunkenness; fools are uplifted, and noble men degraded; riches are not for the intelligent, or favour for the learned; to become rich is to multiply extortions; life stands at the caprice of power; sensuality runs riot. In short, the whole political fabric was falling into disrepair and decay, the rain leaking through the rotting roof; while the miserable people were ground down with ruinous exactions, in order that the rulers might revel on undisturbed. And as the book reveals this fearful social condition, so, likewise, it gives expression to the temper which grows up in men’s minds after a long course of such oppressions—a kind of fatalism and hopelessness which tempts one to yield passively to the current of affairs, to believe that God has ceased to rule, and that order and right have vanished from the world, to snatch at every pleasure, to drown care in sensuality rather than try to maintain an integrity which is sure to be rewarded with personal and social ruin. That kind of temper, if it once gains headway, will affect all classes and ages. In the nobler and better-seasoned characters, it becomes a proud despair; in vulgar minds, a bestial greed, and an untramelled selfishness; in youth, a prompter to unbounded sensuality.

We can see, therefore, what a powerful antidote to this temper would be furnished by the truth of a righteous judgment. Once lodge firmly the truth that men are moving on through all the hard and bitter and unjust conditions of their time to a supreme tribunal, and you have made it impossible to believe that the world is lawless. A final judgment implies a law; and a law implies a lawgiver, and an authority to administer and vindicate the law. Thus the truth carries with it both comfort and obligation. There is a Divine order in the world; we are not finally at the mercy of chance or of men’s caprice: the order will vindicate itself in time, and with itself will vindicate those who hold by it. So long as there is judgment, wrong is not eternal, and retribution is a fact. Therefore, it is better to do right, notwithstanding the “oppressor’s wrong and the proud man’s contumely.” One can afford to be cheerful, even amid oppressions and troubles like these, if the time is short and a day is coming in which wrong shall be righted and worth acknowledged and fidelity rewarded.

A great German thinker has it, in reference to the history of nations, that the history of the world is the judgment of the world; and although that is not true if it is a denial of a day of final judgment, it is true in a very profound and solemn sense with regard to the daily life of every man, that, whether there be a judgment-seat beyond the grave or not, and whether this Preacher knew anything about that or not, there is going on through the whole of a man’s life, and evolving itself, this solemn conviction that we are to pass away from this present life. All our days are knit together as one whole. Yesterday is the parent of to-day, and to-day is the parent of all the tomorrows. The meaning and the deepest consequence of man’s life is that no feeling, no thought that flits across the mirror of his life and heart dies utterly, leaving nothing behind it. But rather the metaphor of the Apostle is the true one, “That which thou sowest that shalt thou also reap.” 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

4. The teaching of this Old Testament sage needs to be supplemented by later revelation. He has made us indeed realize the essential soundness of life. He has given us a clear vision of its dignity and worth. He has made us feel that life is to be received with joy, and pursued with enthusiasm and courageous zeal. He has led us to the conviction that God’s approval is upon His own work, and upon the zest and joy with which men undertake that work. But he lacked what the men of the Old World lacked before the keels of Columbus’s caravels grazed the shore of the New—viz., knowledge that the New World is here. He lacked what men lacked whose sky was a firmament and whose stars brightly studded that solid dome; he lacked the sense of the open sky, the myriad vastness of the world of stars, the sense of a universe fulfilling itself in an eternity of years. Had this lack and limitation been absent, it is more than likely that he would not have written his closing chapter with the melancholy description of the breaking-down of life. He might have written instead in the spirit of Rabbi Ben Ezra:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith “A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!”

As Jean Paul says: “We desire virtue, not as the reward of virtue, but as its continuance. Virtue can no more be rewarded than joy can; it is its own reward.” And so sings Tennyson, turning the vision of the great German to music in one of his own deathless lyrics:

Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea—

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong—

Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she:

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust,

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky:

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

Literature

Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 134.

Dawson (G.), Sermons on Daily Life, 105.

Dewhurst (F. E.), The Investment of Truth, 257.

Farrar (F. W.), In the Days of Thy Youth, 88.

Greenhough (J. G.), in Comradeship and Character, 59.

Griffith-Jones (E.), in Comradeship and Character, 133.

James (J. A.), Sermons, i. 348.

Jowett (B.), College Sermons, 127.

Kingsley (C.), True Words for Brave Men, 148.

Lamb (R.), School Sermons, ii. 1.

Morgan (G. E.), Dreams and Realities, 55.

Thomas (J.), Sermons (Myrtle Street Pulpit), iii. 381.

Tulloch (J.), Some Facts of Religion and of Life, 232.

Vincent (M. R.), God and Bread, 189.

Christian World Pulpit, vii. 20 (W. Spensley); xxxiii. 149 (J. J. S. Perowne).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 470 (C. Lowell).