The Sermon

“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, King- of Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” — ECCLES. I. 1, 2.

THERE arc some books of the Bible which can only be read with thorough profit, when once you have found the key. Luther somewhere tells us, that he used to be greatly damped by an expression in the outset of the Epistle to the Romans. The apostle says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed.” By “righteousness” Luther understood the justice of God — his attributes of moral rectitude; and so understanding it, he could scarcely see the superiority of the Gospel over the Law, and at all events, his troubled conscience could find no comfort in it. But when at last it was revealed to him that the term here alludes not to an attribute of God, but to the atonement of Immanuel — that it means not justice, but God’s justifying righteousness — the righteousness which God incarnate wrought out, and which is imputed to the sinner believing — the whole epistle was lit up with a joyful illumination; and the context, and many other passages which used to look so dark and hostile, at once “leaped up and fondled” him with friendly recognition: and to Luther ever after the Gospel was glorious as the revelation and the vehicle to the sinner of a righteousness Divine. To take another instance: many read the Book of Job as if every verse were equally the utterance of Jehovah; and they quote the sayings of Bildad and Zophar as the mind of the Most High; entirely forgetting the avowed structure of the book — forgetting that through five-and-thirty chapters the several collocu tors are permitted to reason and wrangle, and “darken counsel by words without knowledge,” in order to make the contrast more striking, when at last Jehovah breaks silence and vindicates his own procedure. But when you advert to its real structure — when you group the different elements of its poetic painting — when, under the canopy of a dark cloud, you see the patriarch cowering, and his three friends assailing him with calumnious explanations of his sore affliction; but above that cloud you see Jehovah listening to his loyal servant, and to his pious, but narrow-minded neighbours — listening with a look of fatherly fondness, and from heaven’s cornucopia ready to shower on his servant’s head the most overwhelming of vindications — the blessings twice repeated, which Satan snatched away: when you see Job xlii. 14, Keren-happuch; L e., Horn of Plenty.

this, and when you know that Jehovah is to be the last speaker, instead of nervously striving to torture into truths the mistakes of Bildad and Zophar, and of Job himself, you feel that their mistakes are as natural and as needful to the plan of the book, as are all the cross-purposes and contradictory colloquies of a well-constructed drama. And when so understood, you feel that all the rather because of the misconceptions of the human speakers, the book is eloquent with Divine vindication, and teaches what Cowper sings so touchingly: —

“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take!

The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.
” Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain,”

Perhaps no portion of Holy Writ more needs a key than the subject of our lecture. On the one hand, Ecclesiastes has always been a favourite book with Infidels. It was a manual with that coarse scoffer, Frederick the Great of Prussia; and both Yolney and Voltaire appeal to it in support of their sceptical philosophy. Nor can it be denied that it contains many sentiments at seeming variance with the general purport of the Word of God. “Be not righteous overmuch; why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacriiiceth not.” “There is a time .for everything. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?” “As the beast dieth, so dieth man. Do not both go to one place?” “A man hath no better thing than to eat and drink and be merry.” These texts, and many like them, are quoted by the moralists of expediency; by the fatalist, the .materialist, the Pyrrhonist, the epicure.

On the other hand, many able commentators have laboured hard to harmonise such passages with the sayings of Scripture; I may add, they have laboured hard to harmonise them with other sayings of Solomon, and other passages of this selfsame book. But I cannot help thinking they have laboured in vain. For the moment, and when reading or listening to some eloquent exposition, you may persuade yourself that such texts are, after all, only peculiar and paradoxical ways of putting important truths; but when Procrustes has withdrawn his pressure, and the reluctant sentence has escaped from the screw and lever, it bounds up elastic, and looks as strange and ungainly as ever. Therefore, others have met the difficulty by suggesting that, like Canticles, Ecclesiastes is a dialogue; and into the mouth of an imaginary objector, they put eveiy sentiment which they deem unsuitable to an inspired penman. For such interpellations, however, there is no foundation in the context, where nothing is more obvious than the continuous identity of the speaker; and, like another exegetical stratagem which would invert the meaning of such passages by turning them into interrogatories, you feel that it is a clever evasion rather than a conclusive solution.* You would prefer a straightforward exposition which would maintain the unity of the book and the analogy of Scripture, whilst it took the words as they stand. This is the sentence with which Ecclesiastes closes: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” This is the conclusion of the matter, and a wise and wholesome conclusion, worthy of Him who said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” But what is the “matter”

* As specimens of the interrogatory subterfuge, the reader may compare with the original or with the authorized version the following: — “Shall there then be no remembrance of past or future events? Shall there be no memorial of them among those who shall come after us?” — i. 11. “For can not that which is crooked be made straight? Cannot that which is wanting be supplied?” — i. 16. “Shall I therefore hate life, because anything wrought under the sun becomes a grievance unto me? Shall I hate all my labour which I take under the sun, because I must some time leave it to the man who shall succeed me?” — ii. 17, 18. (BarJuim’s Corrected Translation.y Surely the sense is too feeble to justify such a forced construction.

of which this is the “conclusion?” To ascertain this we must go back to the beginning. There you read, “I the preacher was king in Jerusalem,, and I gave my heart to search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven. Then I said in’ my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth: therefore enjoy pleasure,” &c. In other words, you find that this “matter” was a long experiment, which the narrator made in search of the Supreme Felicity, and of which Ecclesiastes records the successive stages. But how does it record them? By virtually repeating them. In the exercise of his poetic power the historian conveys himself and his reader back into those days of vanity, and feels anew all that he felt then; so that, in the course of his rapid monologue, he stands before us, by turns the man of science and the man of pleasure, the fatalist, the materialist, the sceptic, the epicurean, and the stoic, with a few earnest and enlightened inter ludes; till, in the conclusion of the whole matter, he sloughs the last of all these “lying vanities,” and emerges to our view, the noblest style of man, the believer and the penitent.

This we believe to be the true idea of the book. We would describe it as 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 fervor be comes the various phases of his former self once more. He is a restored backslider, and for the benefit of his son and his subjects, and, under the guidance of God’s Spirit, for the benefit of the Church, he writes this prodigal’s progress. He is a returned pilgrim from the land of Nod, and as he opens the portfolio of sketches which he took before his eyes were turned away from viewing vanity, he accompanies them with lively and realizing repetitions of what he felt and thought during those wild and joyless days. Our great Edmund Burke once said that his own life might be best divided into “fyttes” or “manias:” that his life began with a fit poetical, followed by a fit metaphysical, and that again by a fit rhetorical; that he once had a mania for statesmanship, and that this again had subsided into the mania of philosophical seclusion. And so in his days of apostasy, the soul intense of Solomon launched out into a fit of study, succeeded by a fit of luxury. He had fits of grossness and refinement, a mania of conviviality, a mania of misanthropy. He had a fit of building, a fit of science, a fit of book-making; and they all passed off in collapses of disappointment and paroxysms of downright misery. And here, as he exhibits these successive tableaux, these facsimiles of his former self, like a modern lyrist on St. Cecilia’s day, he runs the diapason of departed passion, and, in the successive strophes and anti strophes, he feels his former frenzies over again, in order that, by the very vividness of the representation, we may be all the better” admonished.” *

“The preacher was king over Israel, and, because he was wise, he taught the people knowledge. He sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written was upright,” f a true story, a real statement of the case. “And by these, my son, be admonished.” ‘Do you, my son, accept this father’s legacy; and do you, my people, receive at your monarch’s hand this “Basilicon Doron,” this autobiography of your penitent prince. These chapters are “words of truth:” revivals of my former selfreproductions of my reasonings and regrets — my fantastic hopes and blank failures, during that sad voyage round the coasts of vanity. “By these be admonished.” Without repeating the guilty experiment, learn the painful result — listen to the moans of a melancholy worldling; for I shall sing again some of those doleful ditties for which I exchanged the songs of Zion. Look at these portraits — they are not fancy sketches — they are my former self, or, rather, my former selves: that lay figure in the royal robes, surmounted first by the lantern -jaws of the book-worm, now exchanged for the jolly visage of the gay gourmand, and presently refining into the glossy locks and languid smile of the Hebrew exquisite: now chuckling with the merriment of the laughing philosopher, curling anon into the bitter * Chap. xii. 12. f Uhap. i- 12 5 xii. 9, 10.

sneer of the Cynic, and each in succession exploding in smoke; not a masque, not a mummery, not a series of make-believers, but each a genuine evolution of the various Solomon — look at these pictures, ye worldlings, and as in water face answers to face, so in one or other of these recognise your present likeness and foresee your destiny/

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” and it is not the less “profitable “because some of it is the inspired record of human infirmity. The seventy-third Psalm is a lesser Ecclesiastes. There Asaph tells us the workings of his mind when he saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world. Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocericy.” And he was so full of resentment and envy that his “feet were almost gone.” He had “well nigh slipped “into utter apostasy: when a timely visit to the sanctuary intercepted his fall. There two forgotten verities flashed upon his mind: — the coming retribution, and the all-sufficiency of the believer’s portion.” Nevertheless, I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. For lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works,” And just as Asaph’s heart for a time was “grieved,” — “So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee,” — so Solomon’s feet actually slipped, and in this book he gives us his various reasonings whilst still a backslider. And just as Asaph’s “conclusion of the whole matter “was the blessedness of piety and the certainty of righteous retribution, —” It is good for me to draw near to God: they that are far from thee shall perish,” — so Solomon’s conclusion is identical;” Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” It need, therefore, in no wise 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 disputations” 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. As we listen to the inward colloquy we could sometimes fancy that we hear a worldling and a sceptic contending with an Abdiel. But, after all, it is only the fitful meditation of one who once knew better, and who, by bitter discipline, is learning anew the lesson of his youth. We know not to what better to compare it than a labyrinthine journey underground. Impatient of the daylight — quitting those pastures green and paths of righteousness in which he had walked with his saintly sire — tired of religion and its simple pleasures, he dives into a subterranean avenue which is to end in a Goshen of central light — a poet’s paradise with emerald turf and flaming flowers. And the first portion of his fantastic path is lighted by radiance from the entrance — the re-collected knowledge of his wiser days. But that dim twilight fades, and the explorer quickly finds that even Solomon is not phosphorescent, and, stumbling on, he souses into a fetid quag. Struggling through the slough of sensuality, he reaches a brilliant cave, where sta lactites of crystal glorify the beams transmitted through the fissured roof, and where the very stones are musical; and, for a season, the royal pilgrim expatiates in a temple sacred to architecture and each fine art. But, wearied with its splendour, shivering at its frosty elegance, he presses on again; and, except when now and then a shaft overhead lets down some light into

the dreary tunnel, all benighted, — as on the rugged roof he strikes his brow, or on the flinty splinters wounds his feet, — we can overhear the muffled voice which execrates the vexation and the vanity. And when, at last, with sullied robes and grisled locks he emerges to the spot from which he started, he grudges so long a journey, and a route so painful, back to his better self; and, resuming his old position, though scarcely regaining his original cheerfulness, he advises us to be content with his experiment and to begin with his “conclusion.” If, therefore, we remember the real structure of the book, and as a lamp to its dim passages take the light from its final landing-place, much of its obscurity will flee away; and we may listen without disquiet to the darkest queries and most desperate declarations of Solomon benighted, when in Solomon recovered we expect the answer and the antidote.

There is little difference in men’s bodily stature. A fathom, or thereabouts — a little more or a little

less is the ordinary elevation of the human family.

Should a man add a cubit to this stature, he is followed along the streets as a prodigy; should he fall very far short of it, people pay money for a sight of him, as a great curiosity. But, were there any exact measurement of mental statures, we should be struck by an amazing diversity. We should find pigmy intellects too frequent to be curiosities. We should find fragile understandings to which the grasshopper is a burden, and dwarfish capacities unable to grapple with the easiest problems: whilst, on the other hand, we should encounter a few colossal minds, of which the altitude must be taken not in feet, but in furlongs — tall, culminating minds, which command the entire tract of existing know ledge — minds whose horizon is their coeval hemisphere; or, loftier still, prophetic minds, on which is already shining the unrisen sun of some future century

Such a mind was Solomon’s. His information was vast. He was the encyclopaedia of that early age. He was an adept in the natural sciences : — “He spake of trees, from the cedar to the hyssop; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes,” as the sacred historian simply words it; or, in modern terminology, he was a botanist, and acquainted with all departments of zoology, from the annelida up to the higher vertebrata. His wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East country, and all the children of Egypt. And then his originality was equal to his information. He was a poet: his “Songs” were upwards of a thousand. And a moralist: his proverbs were three thousand. He was a sagacious politician; and as the chief magistrate of his own empire, he was famous for the equity and acuteness of his decisions. He had a splendid taste in architecture and landscape-gardening; and his enormous wealth enabled him to conjure into palpable realities the visions of his gorgeous imagination; whilst, to crown the whole — unlike Moses and many others, men of stately intellect, but stammering speech — the wisdom of Solomon found utterance in language like itself; and whilst the eloquence still lived of which the Bible has preserved some examples, crowned students and royal disciples came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

Now, this man, so mightily endowed; if you add to his intellectual elevation the pedestal of his rare good fortune, mounting the genius of the sage on the throne of the sovereign — this peerless man, this prime specimen of humanity — it would appear that Providence raised up, for this, among other purposes. From the day when Adam fell it had been the great inquiry among men, Where and how to find the true felicity? And though the Most High assured them that they could only find it where they had formerly enjoyed it — in unison with Himself, and in his conscious friendship: of this they were quite incredulous. It was still the problem, Apart from infinite excellence, how shall we be happy? Though blessedness was not far from any one of them, in delirious search of it, men burrowed in gold mines, and rummaged in the rubbish-heaps, drilled deep into the rock, and dived deep into the sea. And though none succeeded, few despaired. There was always an apology for failure. They had sought in the right direction, but with inadequate appliances. They were not rich enough; they were not strong enough; they were not clever enough. Had they been only a little wealthier; had they been better educated; had they possessed more leisure, talent, power — they were just about to touch the talisman: they would have brought to light the philosopher’s stone. And as it is part of man’s ungodliness to believe his fellow-sinner more than his Creator, the Most High provided an unimpeachable testimony. He raised up Solomon. He made him healthy and handsome — wise and brilliant.

He poured wealth into his lap, till it ran over; he made him absolute monarch of the finest kingdom which the world at that time offered; and, instead of savages and pagans, gave him for his subjects a civilised and a religious people. And that he might not be distracted by wars and rumours of wars, he put into his hand a peaceful sceptre, and saved him from the hardships of the field and the perils of the fight. And thus endowed and thus favoured, Solomon commenced the search after happiness. Every thing except godly, he devoted himself to the art of enjoyment. And in carrying on his own experiment he unwittingly, but effectually, became God’s demonstration. Into the crucible he cast rank and beauty, wealth and learning; and, as a flux, he added youth and genius; and then, with all the ardour of his vehement nature, he urged the furnace to its whitest glow. But when the grand projection took place, from all the costly ingredients the entire residuum was, Vanity of vanities! And ere he left the laboratory, he made ink of the ashes; arid in the confessions of a converted worldling, he was constrained to write one of the saddest books in all the Bible.

His first recourse was knowledge. Communing with his own heart, he said, “Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and know ledge. And I gave my heart to know (more) wisdom, and to know madness and folly (that is, mirth and satire): I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,” And, as he adds elsewhere, “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness to the flesh.”

No, no. Carpe horam. Life is short, and learning slow. Quit that dingy study, and out into the laughing wrorld. Make a bonfire of these books, and fill your reed-quiver with bird-bolts. Exchange the man of letters for the man of pleasure. And so he did. “I gave myself to wine, I made me great works, I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards.” But here, too, he was destined to disappointment. For the coarse pleasures of the carouse and the wine-cup his cultivated mind had little affinity; and when next morning revealed the faded chaplets, the goblets capsized, and the red wine-pools on the floor of the banquet-hall; when the merry-making of yester night only lived in the misery of the morning, he exclaimed, “Such laughter is mad; and such mirth, what doeth it?” And so of the more elegant pastimes — the palace, the fish-pond, the flower-garden, the menagerie, — the enjoyment ended when the plan wras executed; and as soon as the collection was completed, the pleasure of the collector ceased. “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on 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.”

But there still remained one solace. There must be something very sweet in absolute power. Though the battle has been going on for six thousand years, and the odds are overwhelming — a million resisting one — yet still the love of power is so tremendous, — to say to one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Do this, and he doeth it — the right to say this is so delicious, that sooner or later, the million lose the battle, and find the one their master. Now, this ascendancy over others Solomon possessed to a rare degree. “The Preacher was king in Jerusalem.” He was absolute monarch there. And to flatter his instinct of government still more, surrounding states and sovereigns all did homage at Jerusalem. But no sooner did he find his power thus supreme and unchallenged, than he began to be visited with misgivings as to his successor — misgivings for which the sequel showed that there was too good reason. “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. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.”

And I need not say how the experience of most worldlings has been Solomon’s sorrow repeated, with the variations incident to altered circumstances, and the diminished intensity to be expected in feebler men — vanity and vexation of spirit all over again. And as we are sometimes more impressed by modern instances than by Bible examples, we could call into court nearly as many witnesses as there have been hunters of happiness — mighty Nimrods in the chase of Pleasure, and Fame, and Power. We might ask the statesman, and, as we wished him a happy new year, Lord Dundas would answer, “It had need to be happier than the last, for I never knew one happy day in it.” We might ask the successful lawyer, and the wariest, luckiest, most self-complacent of them all would answer, as Lord Eldon was privately recording when the whole Bar envied the Chancellor, — “A few weeks will send me to dear Encombe, as a short resting-place between vexation and the grave.” We might ask the golden millionaire, “You must be a happy man, Mr. Rothschild.” “Happy! — me happy! What! happy, when just as you are going to dine you have a letter placed in your hand, saying, flf you do not send me £500, 1 will blow your brains out’?” Happy! when you have to sleep with pistols at your pillow? We might ask the clever artist, and our gifted countryman would answer of whose latter days a brother writes, “In the studio, all the pictures seemed to stand up like enemies to receive me. This joy in labour, this desire for fame, what have they done for him? The walls of this gaunt soundingplace, the frames, even some of the canvases, are furred with damp. In the little library wrhere he painted last, was the word ‘Nepenthe?’ written in terrogatingly with white chalk on the wall.”* We * Memoir of David Scott, R.S.A.

might ask the world-famed warrior, and get for an swer the “Miserere” of the Emperor-monk,* or the sigh of a broken heart from St. Helena. We might ask the brilliant courtier, and Lord Chesterfield would tell us, “I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and I do not regret their loss. I have been behind the scenes. I have seen all the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which move the gaudy machines; and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decorations, to the astonishment of an ignorant audience.” We might ask the dazzling wit, and, faint with a glut of glory, yet disgusted with the creatures who adored him, Voltaire would condense the essence of his existence into one word, “Ennui.” And we might ask the world’s poet, and we would be answered with an imprecation by that splendid genius, f who

“Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump Of fame; drank early, deeply drank; drank draughts That common millions might have quenched — then died Of thirst, because there was no more to drink.”

But without going so far as these historic instances, I make my appeal to all the candour and self-knowledge here present, and I ask, Who is there that, apart from God’s favour, has ever tasted solid joy and satisfaction of spirit? You have perhaps tried learning. You have wearied your flesh acquiring some branch of knowledge, or mastering the arcana of some science; and you promised yourself that, when once you were an adept, it would * Charles V. t Byron.

introduce you to a circle of transcendental friends, or would drown you in a flood of golden fame. You won the friends, and, apart from this special accomplishment, you found them so full of petty feuds and jealousies, so cold-hearted or so coarse-minded, that you inwardly abjured them, and vowed that you must follow learning for its own rewards; or you won the fame — you secured the prize — you caught the coveted distinction, and like the senior wrangler,* you found that you had “grasped a shadow.” Or you tried some course of gaiety. You said, “Go to now — I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure.” You dressed — you took pains with your appearance; you studied the art of pleasing. But even self-love could not disguise that some rival was more dazzling, more graceful and self-possessed, and had made a more brilliant impression: and you came home mortified at your own sheepishness and rustic blundering; or, if content to mingle passively in others’ merriment,, tattling with the talkers, and drifting along the tide of drollery, was there no pensive reflection as, late at night, you sought your dwelling? — did you not say of laughter, “It is mad? and of mirth, What doeth it?” Or, perhaps, at some pleasant time of year, you made up a famous ploy. And the excursion went off, but the promised enjoyment never came up. Mountain breezes did not blow away your vexing memories, nor did the soft sea-wind heal your wounded spirit. In the rapid train you darted swiftly, but at the * Henry Marty n.

journey’s end you were mortified to find that your evil temper had travelled by the same conveyance. And though it was a classic or a sacred stream into which you looked; not even Arethusa nor Siloah could polish from off your countenance the furrows of carking anxiety, or the frown of crossness which wrinkled there. The truth is, 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. When you remember how vast is the soul of man, and also what a mighty virus of depravity pervades it, you might as well ask, How many showers will it need to make the salt ocean fresh? as ask, How many mercies will it need to make a murmuring spirit thankful and happy? You might as soon ask, How many buckets of water must you pour down the crater of Etna before you convert the volcano into a cool and crystal jet-d’eau? as ask, How many bounties must Providence pour into a worldling’s spirit before that spirit will cease to evaporate them into vanity, or send them fuming back in complaint and vexation? —

“Attempt how vain —

With things of earthly sort, with aught but God,

With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love —

To satisfy and fill the immortal soul!

To satisfy the ocean with a drop;

To marry immortality to death;

And with the unsubstantial shade of time,

To fill the embrace of all eternity!” *

* Pollok’s “Course of Time,” book iv.