Ecclesiastes 1:14

All is vanity and vexation of spirit.

The vanity of a worldly life

The tone of these words is intensely sad, and perhaps some of us are inclined to think that they embody a morbid conception of human life, for they seem to lack the healthy inspiration of hope. However, we shall understand this declaration by considering it, not as a Divine assertion, but as the expression of a particular human experience. God does not condemn all earthly good as vanity, but man in one of his moods utters this bitter cry,--it is the wail of disappointment. Life is a very different thing to different persons in different positions, just as our view of the landscape changes with our standpoint and the varying state of the elements. The hills and valleys, how different is their appearance when veiled in dim twilight or mantled in thick darkness to what it is when flooded with the glorious sunlight. So is our view of life affected by our fluctuating feelings and changeful circumstances. To the boy life is a promise, a beautiful flower in the bud; to the old man it is a closing day, a solemn sunset; to the man in prosperity it is a quiet lake, with only the gentlest zephyrs rippling its surface; to the man in adverse circumstances it is a stormy sea kept in perpetual disquiet by the rude and boisterous breezes; to the satiated pleasure-seeker, the worn-out sensualist, the disappointed voluptuary, “all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” But while human life has many phases corresponding to the many moods of the soul, each life is developing into something real, and what that something shall be depends upon how the life is lived. In changing circumstances we are forming a permanent character, transitory experiences are creating in us settled dispositions; and we must decide whether our life shall culminate in the joy of satisfaction or the agony of despair.

I. A life spending itself in search of pleasure is a vexatious experience. Here we have the representation of a man seeking everywhere for pleasure; yet, completely baffled in his search, the phantom constantly eludes his grasp. This man was not limited to a very narrow sphere in his endeavours after happiness; he had a kingdom at his command; he made its vast resources subservient to his amusement. He ransacked the treasures of earth to find some new source of delight, and was determined, if possible, to discover pleasurable excitements. He seems almost to have exhausted the science of pleasure, and he sums up the result of his experiments in these words, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” From this we learn that pleasure sought for itself has no reality; it is a vain imagination, a deceitful fancy. Selfishness defeats and torments itself until it becomes the victim of a perpetual discontent. Or, in other words, to seek happiness for its own sake is not the way to find it; it comes constantly to pure and healthful activity; it dwells ever in the hearts of the good; but it does not reveal itself to the mere devotee of pleasure. This is true of every kind of pleasure of which our nature is capable.

1. The natural and moderate gratification of our appetites yields satisfaction, and so God has ordained that a healthy human life shall be sweet and enjoyable. But when a man makes this sensuous gratification his god, and hopes to find in it an unfailing source of joy, he deceives himself. Even natural indulgence exalted so as to become the chief end of life soon loses its power to please. The sensibilities are dulled, the palate fails to relish luxuries which once ravished it with delight, the eye tires of splendid artificial sights, and the ear grows weary of sound in its most pleasing combinations. The system is thrown out of tune, and that which should produce sweet harmony makes only annoying discord.

2. We are susceptible of still purer and deeper delights through the medium of the intellect. The arts and sciences may contribute largely to our enjoyment if we possess the power to appreciate them. The man who seeks pleasure in philosophy will find more problems to perplex than ideas to amuse; whereas the man who strives after truth will always discern some heavenly thoughts capable of stimulating him amid the uncertainties of his investigation. The man who ransacks the treasures of literature with no higher aim than entertainment will have no continuity of joy, for he will be the victim of inclination, the sport of passion; he will not see the beauties which have charmed men of nobler motive. When we learn that life is not a selfish search, but an unselfish service; not the sacrifice of everything to self, but the subordination of self to God; then we receive a spiritual joy. The man who has spent his life like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower in search of sweets at last whines out the melancholy cry, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” But the noble soul who has used himself in the service of God and humanity goes to his heaven exclaiming, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand,” etc.

II. An earthly life separated from the future is a perplexing mystery. To the mind of the disappointed pleasure-seeker all is vanity, because the future is left completely out of sight. This view of life is secularistic. It regards only one world, and in this world seeks the highest good, but does not find it. This worldly view of human existence transforms our life into a dark mystery, and shuts out every ray of Divine light. This world is incomplete, it needs another to explain it; this life requires another for its interpretation. The first paradox that meets us is--

1. If this be the only world, earthly enjoyment is the highest good, but the struggle for it brings vexation. Banish the belief in an eternal future, and the first reflection is, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Let us regulate our life so as to secure the largest share of earthly good, even though we thus destroy our finer feelings. Being convinced that there is no future life, we must value things by their power to fill up our measure of present gratification. Why should thoughts of morality or retribution be allowed to bridle our inclinations if morality is a delusion, and judgment simply a dream? But this conception of human life is a glaring contradiction. The life which it sets before us leads to sorrow, and ends in pain. Indulgence induces weariness, selfishness creates disquietude, and passionate pleasures bring forth death.

2. When the future is left out of sight the godly life loses one of its most powerful motives. The culture of manhood is at a discount in a world where men are estimated by what they have, and not by what they are. The devout and thoughtful man finds himself in possession of truths which the world is not prepared to receive, the utterance of which will call forth the opposition of prejudice and pride. The honest man must suitor if he will carry his convictions into the realm of daily business life. True, some modern teachers say that we should be strong enough to live a Christly life without the hope of personal immortality, consoling ourselves with the sublime idea that we shall live on in the influences which we transmit to posterity. This doctrine may possess charms for the select few, it is scarcely suited to the multitude of disciples.

III. A life which does not acknowledge God is a hopeless disappointment. This is the root of the matter: man is restless and dissatisfied so long as he puts selfish pleasure in the place of God. It is taught in the Bible, engraven on our constitution, and attested by experience that every attempt to find a substitute for God is vain. We owe our supreme love to Him, and can only be really happy when we render it cheerfully.

1. Faith in God reveals an inexhaustible source of bliss. Of every other fountain Christ has said, “He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of water springing up into eternal life.” Here we have an unfailing spring of joy, a sun always shining.

2. Faith in God exerts its highest influence when earthly joys are fading. In sorrow, when worldly joys are distasteful, faith illumines the darkness and gently dissipates our fear. In pain, when pleasures have fled and human consolations are feeble, God is manifest as the God of all comfort. Oppressed by the thought of having grieved our God, Christ appears as the Pardoner of our sins and the Healer of broken hearts. And at last, when this world is passing from our gaze and we enter the thick gloom of death, we shall hear the Divine Voice saying, “Fear not, for I am with thee.” Then, when we tremble before the portals of the mysterious future, and pass through the last trying storm, inspired by heavenly love, we may cry, not “All is vanity and vexation of spirit!” but “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (W. G. Jordan, B. A.)

Pessimism

(with Genesis 1:31):--What could be more different than the tempers of mind which uttered sayings like these? Creation and life very good. Creation and life, vanity, delusion, hollowness, and vexation of spirit. Both cannot be right. But statements so diverse are easily enough explained if we remember that in the Bible we are dealing, not with a book, but with a library; not with a literary work, but with a nation’s literature. It is not a pure revelation we have, but the strange eventful history of one. We may expect, therefore, to find in it great variety, and almost hopeless difference of view. The present form of that chapter of Genesis may be regarded roughly as bearing the impress of the eighth or ninth century me., the sanguine stamp of a great prophetic time. The Book of Ecclesiastes, on the other hand, is not earlier than the third century, when the disruption of the two kingdoms, the insecurity of an absolute and semipagan monarchy, the captivity of the nation, the setting up of the hierarchy, and the conquest by both Greek thought and Greek arms had deeply changed and saddened the spirit of Hebrew dream. Our own generation find a special attraction in this Book of Ecclesiastes. We too have fallen on an age when the first free fearless vigour of our Elizabethan time has gone by, when even the John Bull view of England is collapsing, when the condition and prospers of our crowded society are raising questions which only the stupid can face with a light heart, or treat with the old answers. The old pharmacopoeia of politics has no medicine for the new disease. We in England doubt and fear. Abroad they deny and destroy. In this country we are not as yet seriously troubled with the more thoroughgoing forms of pessimism; but I do not think we have escaped it, for the reason that we have not yet come to it. We are as yet only in the Agnostic stage, but we are fairly well through that, and are beginning to get dissatisfied with it. From that stage we must go either up or down. We may go up. A truer philosophy (not even now without a witness) may restore the vigour of a nobler faith. Or we may go down. We may descend to the next level of unbelief, to the lower cycle in the mind’s inferno. The next level is pessimism. To deal with pessimism and to prevent pessimism we must have an ideal which is something more than an idea of ours, something more than an ambition of ours. We must have an ideal which is the fountain head of our ideas and ambitions, one which is working incessantly to bring us to its own image; one in whose presence we feel inspiration and attainment; one last and surely blended; one that is gradually filling up the abyss of pessimism by drawing together its edges and reconciling what we are with what we long to be. We must have a God, in brief, who is at once our Mighty One and our Redeemer. The solution of life is not to be found in grappling with pain, but in the conflict with sin. The strongest soul that ever lived was crushed by sins rather than pains, by sins not His own, not by the pains which were. Here lies the centre and secret of Christianity, not in the miracles of healing, but in the miracles of forgiveness, and in the Cross, the greatest of them all. And here lies the key and reason why Christianity, with all its melancholy, with all its Divine sadness, can never be pessimist. It is not simply and generally that, being a religion of faith and hope, it cannot give way to despair. But it is here, in this principle, viz. that in Christianity we never become aware of the worst till we are in possession of the best. The deepest sense of evil is possible only to a believer in redemption--not a redemption that shall be one day, but that is now going on. How could we bear to see the worst and utmost evil and sorrow, but for the sense and certainty that it has in it the sentence of its own death? How could we, as a race, face death successfully--death, the great ravager of love--except in the loving faith that death itself is wounded unto death? The best, in revealing to us the worst, abolishes it, and the light of God, which maketh all things manifest, brings sin out only that it may die in the great and terrible daylight of the Lord. (P. T. Forsyth, M. A.)

Insatisfaction

Various explanations have been offered of this strange restlessness and insatisfaction.

1. One set of observers see in this the mainspring of activity, progress, and improvement. If man, say they, found happiness at any point of his life, he would cease to aim at a higher state. The most contented people are ever the most barbarous, and the beast of the field is more contented than the lowest classes of men. With animals and men of the lowest grade there is stagnation. Not until you produce insatisfaction, not, rather, till you give the mind ability to conceive the higher state, and aim at elevation from the lower, will the world be improved. Without insatisfaction the arts would be impossible, and all higher enjoyments unknown.

2. A second and higher view is that which, while admitting that insatisfaction is the mainspring of activity and progress, still further affirms that it is indicative of a nature in man to be satisfied, not with the terrestrial, but with the heavenly,--not with the things of sense, but with the things of faith,--not with the creature, but with God. This is surely the true explanation of that unrest of the soul which still, after each new conquest, whether of truth or means of enioyment, feels unsatisfied. It is the higher nature in us that is still ungratified. We want to know truth and beauty--all truth and beauty; not merely their outward shadows, but themselves.

3. But, further, we have to take into account the fact of depravity and sinfulness. I rather think that this fact, however, is not to be considered as explanatory of our insatisfaction so much as of dissatisfaction. Insatisfaction is right; dissatisfaction is wrong. God intended that the soul should not be satisfied; but He wants that we shall not be dissatisfied. Much light is yours, which Solomon, wise as he was, had not. He probably had glimpses of the depravity of his own heart, and generally of the human heart, yet hardly with the demonstrative clearness with which it comes home to our convictions; and he seems to have been greatly in the dark relative to that future life which hath been brought to light through Christ, to which is reserved the full enjoyment of the soul. He said, All is vanity, because he did not know the all. His eye ranged only over time. Eternity was all darkness.

4. And this summons before us another view explanatory of the insatisfaction of man. We are here preparing, conning our lesson, forming our character--a character which is to last with us for ever. We were not sent here that we might enjoy, but that we might learn, that we might grow up strong men fit to live through the everlasting ages. The Christian life is a race, a battle, a work, a crucifixion. Through the portals of death alone we gain the Elysian fields. (J. Bennet.)