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The Life and Literature of the Ancient

T

Hebrews

XIII. The Book of Ecclesiastes

By Lyman Abbott

HE Book of Ecclesiastes is like the Book of Proverbs in that it is an interpretation of life from the point of view of experience; it differs from the Book of Proverbs in that it is by a single author, who interprets life chiefly from the point of view of a single experience that of King Solomon.

All modern or literary students of the Bible are agreed that Solomon is not the author of the book. The fact that in the opening verse of the first chapter the authorship is attributed to "the Preacher, the Son of David, King in Jerusalem," is not conclusive. That certainly means Solomon but in all ages it has been customary for an author to write in the name of some other character, real or fictitious. Such writing is not fraudulent, unless the object of the writer is to palm off a false name upon his readers in order to secure for his writing a false authority. In this case there is certainly no such endeavor by the author to secure divine authority for this book, for the experience portrayed is anything but a divine experience. No one charges Robert Browning with fraud because in the "Death in the Desert " he puts his own sentiments into the mouth of the dying Apostle John. In some such manner a poet, probably of the fourth century before Christ, took Solomon as a vehicle for the expression of a certain interpretation of life. But though Solomon did not write this prose-poem, in interpreting it we may make use of our knowledge of Solomon, as our understanding of the character of King John will help us to understand Shakespeare's play of that name. What sort of character, then, was Solomon, and what sort of experience of life would a poet attribute to him?

Solomon, more than any other man in Old Testament history, represents that complexity of character which Paul has so graphically described in the seventeenth chapter of Romans. He was

brought up by religious parents; had a religious training; was familiar with the law of God and the ritual of the Temple; his conscience was educated by the law, his reverence by the ritual. But when he came to full age and the possession of power and wealth, he departed from his religious training and became the great sensualist of Israelitish history. The description of his splendor given in the Books of Kings and Chronicles is paralleled only by the historical accounts of the analogously corrupt splendor of the reign of Louis XIV. in France. He built a magnificent palace; his throne was of ivory; his dishes were gold; silver, it is said, was nothing accounted of; he had all the sensual pleasures of an Oriental courtmen singers and women singers and dancers; he had a great retinue of servants; at his table, it is said, there were daily consumed thirty oxen, one hundred sheep, and quantities of game. The accuracy of the figures does not concern us; there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the picture which they convey. With this incursion of sensuality came ambition not only to ape but to rival the splendor of other empires. He introduced the harem, and the sensual worship of pagan gods; and this latter carried with it, in both social and religious life, the imitation of pagan ideals. And yet with this sensual and pagan splendor there was maintained a certain intellectual glory. This man, trained in religion, possessing an educated conscience, and surrounding himself with a barbaric and sensual splendor, maintained his fame for wisdom. He was the coiner of proverbs. From his reign apparently dates the beginning of what is known as the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted by the fame of his splendor, came to see him, she came, it is said, to try him with hard questions. What they were we are not told,

but she was satisfied with the shrewdness of his answers. It is such a man as this, with these contradictory and conflicting elements—a religious training, an educated conscience, a sensual and self-indulgent nature, and a philosophic mind dealing with the actualities of life and trying to understand the riddle of existence that the poet who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes chose for his mouthpiece. He imagines Solomon musing over the problem of life; reflecting upon wealth, sensual pleasure, gratified ambition, philosophic wisdom, and what these bring; and while this meditative musing on the varied experiences of life is going on, there breaks in upon him from time to time the memory of his childhood's instruction, the sanctions of God's law, the protest of his own conscience, and reflections suggested by his faith in the righteousness of God and a future judgment.

Thus the Book of Ecclesiastes is a dramatic monologue portraying the complicated experiences of life; these voices are conflicting, but they portray the conflict of a single soul at war with itself. In this monologue the man is represented as arguing with himself—weighing the contrasted experiences of life over against one another. A philosopher would take these problems in order; he would consider first the value of pleasure, then that of ambition, then that of wisdom, etc., and, finally; he would draw from this orderly and consecutive consideration a logical conclusion as to life's teaching. But the writer of Ecclesiastes is not a philosopher; he is a poet interpreting human experience. And it is not in such well-ordered thinking that our experiences are fashioned within us. On the contrary, thoughts come tumultuously into our mind; they fight their battle out within our consciousness; they contend for the mastery-ambition, sensuality, wisdom, conscience. There are no parliamentary laws in the human soul, and no one to keep order: first one voice speaks, and then another; they shout against one another; they drown one another. the Book of Ecclesiastes is deliberately and of intention confused, because it is the portrayal of the confused experiences of a soul divided against itself. This confusion is enhanced by one literary characteristic. The writer has told us, in the last chapter, that he has sought out prov

Thus

erbs; that is, ranged over literature to get apothegins that will throw light upon the problem which he is considering. These proverbs, familiar in his time, are inserted in the dramatic monologue; in our time they would be put in quotation-marks, with a foot-note to say where they had come from; but there were no quotation-marks at this time, and the proverbs are incorporated in the body of the text. How much of the book is gathered from a wide range of literature and how much is original with the writer we do not know; but at times there are literary breaks in the order which may fairly be attributed to quotations more or less apt.

We are, then, to imagine a man with religious training, an educated conscience, an apostate life, who has tried the various phases of self-seeking-sensuality, philosophy, ambition-and has undertaken to transcribe the results of his experiences. The product is a journal of fragments, in this respect analogous to Amiel's Journal. After an introduction giving general expression to his spirit of pessimistic fatalism, the poet records the experiences which wealth and self-indulgence bring. He pictures the king as throwing himself with a certain abandon into a life of selfindulgent luxury, and yet remaining, as it were, outside of himself, a spectator of himself, a self-student, his wisdom remaining with him, as he expresses it, that he may thus investigate and see what is the value of wealth and self-indulgence. thus reports the result of this spiritual vivisection:

He

I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure; and, behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I searched in mine heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, mine heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit: I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared: I bought menseryants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in Jerusalem: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, concubines very many. So I was

great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them: I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor; and this was my portion from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.'

The king is next portrayed as giving himself in a similar spirit to ambition, with a like reflection on the experiment while he is trying it; the result is the same: "What hath a man of all his labor, and of the striving of his heart, wherein he laboreth under the sun? For all his days are but sorrows, and his travail is grief; yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest. This also is vanity."2

The preacher's experience of wealth, pleasure, ambition, is much that which Lord Byron has expressed, imputing his interpretation to Childe Harold:

Years steal

Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found

The days were wormwood; but he filled again,
And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain!
Still round him clung invisibly a chain
Which gall'd for ever, fettering though unseen,
And heavy though it clanked not; worn with
pain,

Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,

Entering with every step he took through

many a scene.

Next the king tries philosophy; the result is no better: the wise man is none the better off for all his thinking:

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no pre-eminence above the beasts: for all is vanity.

Wisdom, ambition, wealth, pleasure, all are vanity. It is useless to build houses and plant gardens and get men singers and women singers; useless to allow one's self to be inspired by a great ambition to attempt great things in the world, or to be incited by a great curiosity to understand life's mysteries.

Nothing can be changed and nothing

Ecclesiastes ii., 1-11.

Ecclesiastes ii., 22, 23.

Childe Harold: Canto III., stanzas 8 and 9. Ecclesiastes iii.. 19,

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can be discovered; all is vanity of vanities. The poet's conclusion as to wisdom, "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh," recalls that of the Persian poet, as interpreted by Edward Fitzgerald: Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door where in I went.

Next the king tries the golden mean : he proposes to take life as he finds it; to live day by day, without ambition, without philosophy; to choose the middle path, the path of safety. He will try the plan of taking care of his own interests, but so as to have some regard for his neighbor's property:

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe hath not another to lift him up. Again, if two to him that is alone when he falleth, and lie together, then they have warmth: but how can one be warm alone? And if a man prevail against him that is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.'

Combination is better than unregulated competition; not because love and service are higher than self-seeking, but because combination is a wiser kind of self-seeking. All excess fails; feasting is to be moderated by sympathy for the mourner, for "it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the

king will lay it to his heart." It is well to be righteous, but not too righteous; there is a golden mean between abandoning one's self unreservedly to self-indulically to virtue : gence and devoting one's self too hero

Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldst thou die before thy time?

The satirical conclusion of the king may be stated thus: Be as virtuous as the public opinion of your time requires; more than that is perilous; less than that is fatal. In the same spirit of keen satire Cardinal Newman has graphically described" the safe man:"

"In the present day mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man who can set

Ecclesiastes iv., 9-16.

2 Ecclesiastes vii., 16, 17.

down half a dozen general propositions which from destroying one another escape only by being diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance between opposites so skillfully as to do without fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth with out guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the contradictory-who holds that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to; that faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without works; that grace does not depend on the sacraments, yet is not given without them; that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same religious condition as those who have-this is your safe man and the hope of the Church; this is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No." 1

To be as good as the public opinion of your time requires is the golden mean. And what comes of that? How does it

seem when old age comes on and death draws near? The author of Ecclesiastes endeavors in imagination to forecast the end of life, and with beautiful poetic figures describes the breaking down into decay. and ruin of the habitation of the old man :

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 judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh for youth and the prime of life are vanity. Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; or ever the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, be darkened, and the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the street; when the sound of the grinding is low, and one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high, and terrors shall be in the way; and the almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and the caperberry shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets or ever the silver cord be loosed, or

"Apologia Pro Vita Sua," by John Henry Cardinal Newman, pp. 102, 103.

the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern; and the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it....

This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.2

Perhaps in this chapter I have laid too much stress on the cynical and satirical view of life which pervades this poem. It is truly a poem of two voices; in it the two spirits speak. Through it are scattered nuggets of practical wisdom which are not cynical nor satirical; such

are those which commend the cultivation of the cheerful spirit, the joyous life, the real and right use of the world and what it brings to man-"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart;" "Live joyfully with thy wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity;" "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth;" such are those which counsel to moderation and self-restraint, to self-respect and the cultivation of a sound mind-"A good name is better than precious ointment;" "The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit;" "Wisdom is as good as an inheritance;" such are some of the proverbs which seem not to belong to the poem but to be attached to it, much as, in a journal, the writer incorporates apothegms which have impressed him as specially worthy of preservation-" He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it;" "If the serpent bite before it is charmed, there is no advantage in the charmer;" "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." But these are incidental rather than essential to the poem. Its theme is indicated by its opening and its closing lines: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;" what then? let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die? No! "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man."

I do not know and cannot easily imagine what he makes out of the Book of Ecclesiastes who believes that every sen

Ecclesiastes xi., 9-xii., 1-7; 13, 14.

* Some critics think that this conclusion of the whole matter was written by another pen. I cannot understand their point of view. It seems clear to me that from the beginning to the end that was the result constantly kept in mind by the writer of this gnomic monodrama.

tence in the Bible is equally authoritative with every other sentence. "Be not righteous over much;" is that a divinely inspired counsel? "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;" is that a divine revelation of the truth? If so, how shall we reconcile it with the declaration of Paul," All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come," or that other declaration that "God giveth us all things richly to enjoy"? The truth of Ecclesiastes is the truth of human experience, larger and deeper than the truth of any text. Let the self-seeker try how he may to get satisfaction out of life, he is sure to fail that is the lesson of Ecclesiastes, and a lesson the more eloquent because wrought out of a living experience. Try to get satisfaction out of things-warehouses ten, twelve, fourteen stories high; railroads binding together the borders of a continent; great palaces, hundred-thousand-dollar balls; what is the end? "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." We are as children who build their houses on the sand, and the tide comes and sweeps them all away. Try to get satisfaction out of philosophy-say, We do not need God, nor conscience, nor churches, nor religion; these are for women and children; we will have a public-school system, great universities, knowledge, culture. What comes of that experiment? The end is the same. Cultivate the brain and leave the heart to be atrophied; cultivate the intellect and leave the conscience to die; teach men how to be shrewd, but not how to be honest, just, true, pure; and the end of that Mr. Huxley thus describes: "Undoubtedly your gutter child may be converted by mere intellectual drill into the subtlest of all the beasts of the field;' but we know what has become of the original of that description, and there is no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully without being aided by the rates." 1 This also is vanity of vanities." Try, then, to accomplish great achievements; but still for ourselves, not for others; not great service of love, but great service of self; not great houses, not great wisdom, but great ambitions, shall be our aim; in this shall we find our soul

1 Science and Education Essays: The School Boards,

p. 396.

satisfied? The end of this, too, is "Vanity of vanities." Self-indulgent pleasure ends in pessimism; self-indulgent ambition is fatalism: "That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." There is nothing in Ecclesiastes more mournful than is to be found in the fatalism of John Cotter Morison's "Science of Man." Even self-sacrificing service of man is of but little value: "A man with a criminal nature and education, under given circumstances of temptation, can no more help committing crime than he can help having a headache under certain conditions of brain and stomach." "No merit or demerit attaches to the saint or the sinner in the metaphysical and mystic sense of the word. Their good or evil qualities are none of their making." "The sooner the idea of moral responsibility is got rid of, the better it will be for society and moral education." "Bad men will be bad, do what we will;" the most we can do is to make them less bad. This, the necessarianism of its latest apostle, is as dismal and depressing as that of Ecclesiastes. Let us, then, try opportunism; take life as it comes; have a good time, but not with abandon; co-operate with others, but to serve ourselves; keep the golden mean; be a trimmer in politics and vote with the winning party; be a "safe man" in the church, and teach, not what we believe, but what others think we ought to believe. And though the party may give political rewards and the church ecclesiastical rewards, when old age comes and death impends and the disgrace of a prosperous but useless life is about to be bequeathed to our sons and our sons' sons, posterity will write our biography in this single phrase, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

What then? If there be no satisfaction in pleasure, in wisdom, in ambition, in the golden mean, where can it be found? In duty. In doing right because it is right. Not for reward here, nor for reward hereafter; not for happiness on earth, not for crowns in heaven, not for immortality of fame, not for immortality of personal existence; but because duty is duty, and right is right, and God is God. This seems to me the meaning of the confessedly enigmatical Book of Ecclesiastes.

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