CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 2:1. I said in mine heart.] The pronoun is emphatic and denotes the importance of the person who is speaking. There are instances of such addresses to the soul in the Psalms. Enjoy pleasure, literally “behold good”—linger with it so as to enjoy it. Here is the germ of the parable of the Rich Fool—Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 2:1-2
A WISE MAN’S TRIAL OF SENSUAL ENJOYMENTS
We may look upon the troubles and painful mystery of life and be sad; or we may strive to laugh them away. There is a serious, and also a merry mood of treating the dark enigma of our present state. Here we have a wise man making a trial of worldly pleasure, if haply he might find therein relief and satisfaction for his jaded mind. “Therefore enjoy pleasure,” look upon and feed thy desire with every sensual enjoyment. Such a course is not true wisdom.
I. It is a dangerous Moral Experiment. Solomon’s trial of the resources of human wisdom ended in the grief of failure. Now he plunges into pleasure to determine if that will fill his soul, and drown the anxiety of painful thought. But such an experiment is dangerous.
1. Because there is a secret misgiving as to the success of the result. “Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth.” A word of entreaty is used, as if he said to his heart, “O let me try thee again!” All his real convictions were against the hope of success in this trial. He had to rouse himself up to this endeavour—to press his heart to it, as if it had been too slow in the pursuit. Worldly men feel in their heart of hearts that sensual pleasures do not satisfy—that they leave a sting behind, and fret and wear the mind with long regrets. It is dangerous to submit ourselves to what we must confess, in moments of calm reflection, is a delusion.
2. The pursuit of pleasure as an end is a forgetfulness of the great work appointed us here. All pleasure and amusement are not forbidden. But if we make these the end of life, and abandon ourselves to their treacherous illusions, we forget the claims of duty. Whatever lies in the path of the Commandments is ours to enjoy, but we must not stray from that path in search of tempting pleasures. Duty and service claim our first regard. We were not sent into this world by our Maker, like the Leviathan into the sea, merely that we might “play therein.” It is dangerous to run the risk of forgetting the claims of duty, and the high destiny of the spiritual part of our nature.
3. The undue pursuit of pleasure injures every faculty of the soul. The health of the soul is impaired, and the symmetry of it destroyed, by draining off it vital force in one direction, just as the body is deformed and its strength consumed by malignant tumours.
(1.) The understanding is impaired. He who is devoted to pleasure has need only of those mental efforts necessary to devise new modes of enjoyment. The higher powers of the mind remain unemployed. He who would reach intellectual eminence must learn to “scorn delights, and live laborious days.”
(2.) The affections are blunted. The indulgence in worldly pleasures, both coarse and refined, tends to make the life artificial. Beneath apparent gentleness and goodwill, the heart is often hard and cold. The children of soft indulgence can weep over the elegant distress of fiction, but are often unmoved by the real sorrows of life.
(3.) The will is enfeebled. The seductions of pleasure bring it into captivity. The elastic power of it is injured, as steel springs by long compression. The syrens of pleasure paralyze the will.
(4.) The sensibility of the conscience is injured. When we are given up to pleasure and forsake duty, the delicacy and tenderness of our conscience are impaired.
II. It is Moral Insanity. “I said of laughter, it is mad.” In the wild excitement of pleasure, a man loses his claim to rationality—it is but the infatuation of madness. To forsake duty, and allow the senses to run riot, is to dethrone reason. The symptoms of the mental and moral diseases are similar.
1. There is delusion. The insane mind lives in a false and unreal world. The true proportion of things are disturbed. The man of pleasure is not governed by truth and reality: he lives in a delusion.
2. The supremacy of wild passions. The insane man is the subject of uncontrollable impulses. Reason being no longer his guide, he is driven about by the storms of passion; and, like a ship without a rudder, has no power of self-direction. He who lives for this world’s pleasure alone, give up the high command of himself, and becomes the sport of untamed and destructive passions. The world’s loud laughter—which has no reality of deep and abiding joy in it—is but the wild merriment of the maniac.
3. There is an entire perversion of the faculties. The will, instinct, and emotions are all perverted in mental disease. The man who forsakes God, and lives for pleasure, uses none of his powers aright. Such a condition is:—
(1.) Pitiable. We have sympathy with the sick and suffering, but the madman deserves our pity. The votaries of pleasure awake the pity of every righteous soul.
(2.) Beneath the true dignity of man. When reason deserts her throne, the man falls below his true dignity. His sovereign power is gone, the sceptre is wrested from his hand. The image of God becomes fearfully disguised. So the man of worldly pleasure is a slave in the “far country” of evil, when he might be a ruler at home with his God.
(3.) Remediable. By judicious treatment, mental disease may be cured. The sobriety of reason may come again to the distracted man. The disorder of the faculties may give place to perfect soundness of mind. So the prodigal, who has rioted in ungodly pleasures, may “come to himself” by coming to his father. The spirit of a “sound mind” is the gift of God.
III. It ends with Disgust of its own Device. “Of mirth, what doeth it?” The pleasures of the world promise much, but they deceive at last. He who seeks in this way to drown the sense of the sad facts of life becomes at last disgusted with his own device. He first suspects, and then discovers himself befooled.
1. He is deceived as to their depth and intensity. They promise to entrance the soul, and to shut out all painful thought and anxiety. But they cannot accomplish this,—“Even in laughter, the heart is sad.”
2. He is deceived as to their constancy. They promise to entertain the soul all life’s journey through. But they soon clog the senses, and wear out the energy. Even the power of enjoying the world often passes away before the world itself. Pleasure casts her votaries off when they have toyed with her for a season, and the brief delight is turned into loathing and disgust. The soul sorrowfully asks the question which needs and expects no answer.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 2:1. The joy of the world is so constituted that it entails repentance, mortification, and grief; but the pleasure that the faithful find in God is spiritual, constant, satisfying, and inexpressible [Starke].
It is in vain that reason and conscience point out to us one path when the affections urge us in another. If the heart inclines to worldly pleasures, the mind soon becomes a willing captive.
A man’s moral position is determined by what he says in his heart.
The heart must have some object to fasten on; the pleasures of the world, or the joy which God gives.
Language bears witness to the vanity of earthly pleasures. We call them diversions, for they divert the attention from our real miseries. They only serve to make us forget that we are unhappy.
It is dangerous to entice our hearts to such courses as are forbidden by reason and duty. The Children of Israel were warned by the voice of God not to “seek after their own heart and eyes,” that is, they must not make any moral experiments.
If we trust to the pleasures of the world, they will serve us like Absalom’s mule, and slip from under us when we need them most [Morning Exercises].
The Lord hath given this pre-eminence to man above all other creatures in the world, that he can reflect upon his past temper and actions, and commune with his own heart for the future. He should make use of this for restraining himself from sin; for reclaiming himself therefrom when he is fallen into it; for encouraging his heart in duty, especially to trusting in God, and to praise Him. In which, and the like places, are the holy soliloquies of a Christian with himself. When the Lord is provoked to withdraw His gracious presence, man can do nothing but abuse this privilege, to the blowing up of his own corruptions, and encouraging his heart to courses destructive of his own peace and comfort, and which will prove a bitterness to him in the latter end [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 2:2. The laughter of the votaries of pleasure, like that of distracted men, arises from the want of knowing and feeling their true situation—from the want of thought. Calm reflection upon the dark foundations upon which this mysterious life of ours reposes, and the awful truths lying around it, would fill the soul with emotion, and turn the loud rejoicing into the silence of a great sorrow.
In the midst of sinful pleasures, it is well if men have sufficient moral strength remaining to question them, and to suspect their delusive charms.
Worldly mirth ends in vexation, remorse, and disgust; but spiritual joy yields a profit of infinite satisfaction.
In the world, feasting comes first and fasting afterwards; men first glut themselves, and then loathe their excesses; they take their fill of good, and then suffer; they are rich that they may be poor; they laugh that they may weep; they rise that they may fall. But in the Church of God it is reversed; the poor shall be rich, the lowly shall be exalted, those that sow in tears shall reap in joy, those that mourn shall be comforted, those that suffer with Christ shall reign with Him [J. H. Newman].
Even as Christ went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ [Liturgy, Visitation of the sick].
Mirth effeminateth the virtue of nature, it enfeebleth the strength of the mind, it weakeneth the forces of the soul, it bringeth destruction to reason, it casteth the mist of darkness upon the purity of serene thoughts [Jermin].