CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 9:13. This wisdom.] The special instance of the power of wisdom related in the next verse.
Ecclesiastes 9:14. Few men within it.] Not a city with a scanty population, but one possessing only a few fitting men capable of defending it.
Ecclesiastes 9:18. One sinner destroyeth much good.] One who is gifted with great physical energy, but destitute of wisdom. The coarsest qualities—the fierce attributes of the wild beast—are sufficient for the work of destruction.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 9:13-18
THE WORLD’S BENEFACTORS
The Royal Preacher turns to consider a strange anomaly that too often happens in a thoughtless and ungrateful generation. Men who have been the true workers and deliverers of their time have often been despised and forgotten. The world is ignorant, or guilty of neglect, of its true benefactors. How they work, and with what success, is considered here.
I. Their Instrument. Wisdom is the instrument by which they worked. It was a “wise man” who “delivered the city.” (Ecclesiastes 9:15.) Their words heard in quiet among the contemplative few have proved stronger than the edicts of the most potent rulers, yea even stronger than the power of warlike arms. (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18.) They have conferred real and permanent benefits upon their fellow men. For such a purpose, we observe,
1. That wisdom is the most fitting instrument. Man, with many natural disadvantages when compared with the lower forms of life beneath him, still holds his place in nature as the crown and head of all things by his superior knowledge. By means of wisdom, that knowledge is made to act in the direction of the greatest advantage. We may say that this instrument has a natural fitness for performing the truest and most lasting work. The highest natures use it, for “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens.” (Proverbs 3:19.) All work produced by other means, however loud and long the triumph, must end in confusion and overthrow. However big and imposing the work of fools, they shall at length be buried in the heaps they raise. Wisdom as an instrument may also be said to have a moral fitness. It tends to injure no one; its pure and just conquests are not stained by crime, and ravage, and slaughter. The tears of the widow and the orphan do not trouble its quiet enjoyment of victory. All true wisdom—whether strictly in the sphere of religion or outside of it—is from above; and coming down to earth pure from its native heaven, bears on the front of it the gifts of peace.
2. That it is the most potent instrument. “Wisdom is better than strength—better than weapons of war.” (Ecclesiastes 9:16; Ecclesiastes 9:18.) All work that is truly great and abiding commences in wise thought. The scheme of it is laid in silence in the utmost recesses of the mind until it assumes shape and substance in the palpable and accomplished fact. The material creation which is the standing illustration of the Divine power is but the Divine thought manifested. Brute force has narrow limits, moving with a constrained motion; but the power of wisdom is large, plentiful in resources, and free. Wisdom is the true director of all forces, without which they are wild, irregular, and destructive. It is the force which has urged humanity on in the upward path of high civilization, refinement, and goodness.
II. The Manner of their Working. In her method and manner of working, there is a style and habit appropriate to wisdom. She wields a quiet power, shunning all noise and loud display. “The words of wise men are heard in quiet.” This quality for quietness and sobriety is one of the chief characteristics of the deliverances and of the works of wisdom. All who would learn from her and receive her gifts must possess this quality.
1. Quietness promotes those conditions of mind most favourable to the reception of wisdom. All who enter her school must leave behind them the noise and tumult of petty ambition, boisterous self-assertion, and pride. Fools must either put away these things, or quit her courts. The still small voice of wisdom is only heard amidst the quietness of contemplation. We must enter this kingdom as a little child, with the qualities of teachableness and humility, putting away all positiveness and pride, which are ever noisy and demonstrative.
2. All the conquests of wisdom have been quietly won. Other victories have been prompted by ambition and attained by violence. The victories of wisdom, on the other hand, have been accomplished in those clear and lofty heights of contemplation far above the tumult and strife of human passion. Wisdom, with truth for her possession and substance, has been content to wait till the temporary advantages of error have passed away, and then she has quietly gathered in her spoils.
3. Quietness is the attribute of the greatest natures. The great thinkers of the world who have opened up for us new regions of truth, how quietly and silently they worked! We feel their power still across the ages of time. They seem to “rule our spirits from their urns.” The victories of religion over superstition and unbelief have been won by the steady witnessing to the truth, and the patience of suffering. He who came to conquer all hearts, and to lay the foundations of an everlasting kingdom, was distinguished by his quiet manner of working and freedom from desire of display. He did not “strive nor cry,” nor was “His voice heard in the streets.” This quiet demeanour of wisdom is, in Ecclesiastes 9:17, shown in contrast with the boisterous manner in which folly is wont to display itself. “The ruler among fools” soon becomes the victim of the virulent contagion of folly, and utters injudicious commands with fierce and noisy circumstance.
III. Their Fate. (Ecclesiastes 9:15-16.) There are some exceptions, but the example hero related is a description of the fate of many wise and good men.
1. They are sometimes noticed and obeyed under the pressure of circumstances. In some dangerous crisis or great calamity, the wise man may rise to importance and regard. There are junctures of events in which the most careless and unreflecting men must turn to such for deliverance. When the enemy is at the gates, and the valour of mighty heroes is unavailing, he who can devise some wise project which saves the city, gains that approbation and fame so readily yielded to evident success. There are times when the wise man’s wisdom must be valued, even by the most thoughtless, as a precious commodity.
2. They are sometimes the victims of contumely and neglect. When the calamity is overpast, society soon learns to forget those who have served it in the crisis of danger. This fault of ingratitude appears in almost every little social circle, and has a constant illustration in the history of every nation and age. The world too willingly lets the names die of those who have blest it most. Those are not always the best and truest workers whose names stand in the front of history. It will be found that the world’s most real benefactors are those who took the most subordinate and retired part. Their work is undying in its effects, but their names have perished from all remembrance but that of God. Many a truly wise and great man has lived to be forgotten and despised. This is a base ingratitude, for it deprives such of their earthly reward. The barriers of wealth and social standing have often served to keep wise men from rising into just regard and fame. This wise man delivered the city; but he was poor, and that was quite sufficient to ensure his being despised.
3. Their work is often ruined. The essential good of their work cannot be destroyed, for it is an imperishable seed, which once having taken hold upon the world, leaves it not. But some of the immediate results of their work—fruits of patient toil and endurance—may be destroyed, which exploit only needs the natural endowments of the most thoughtless and wicked fool. (Ecclesiastes 9:18.) Physical strength—the power of social station—the boisterous impudence of ignorant and foolish men—may prevail over the wise and ruin his work. It requires but little talent to destroy, for it is within the province of any lusty fool to lay in ruins the labour and skill of years, or to obstruct the progress of some good and great work. From this subject, we learn both the power and the vanity of wisdom. The power, in that it is superior to strength, to numbers, to the voice of mere authority, or to the influence of social rank. It is the prime element in the world’s progress—the means of its regeneration. The vanity, in that it often fails, or at best has but a partial victory, through the stubborn and ignorant opposition of men.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 9:13. It had made a strong impression on his mind. The testimony which it bore to the value and efficacy of wisdom appeared to him to be most remarkable. On one side there was a king, backed by a powerful army, and having at his command, for the capture and destruction of the feebly-garrisoned city he had come to assail, all the arts and appliances of war. On the other side was a solitary individual, of no note or name, without wealth or station, or social influence, having no other strength than that which was derived from his own personal worth, and no other resources than those of a God-fearing, sagacious, and thoughtful spirit [Buchanan].
Wisdom without the advantages of wealth or station, yet securing regard and attention to itself, is so rare a spectacle, that the wise themselves, at the sight of it, may well stand amazed. In a perfect state of society, such a triumph would be too common to be wonderful.
Ecclesiastes 9:14. There is a baseness in oppression which allows no rights to the defenceless and the weak.
The oppressed have often on their side an unknown and unsuspected power which avails for deliverance, and by which the most confident ambition is defeated.
The “little city” of the Church of God has often been besieged, and the enemy has prepared to celebrate the victory over an extinguished Faith. But the tower of God has ever had brave defenders, strong in wisdom and in the might of goodness.
Ecclesiastes 9:15. A sudden calamity may serve to redeem the wise from neglect.
When the strong fail to deliver, and rank and authority are of no avail, wise men must be sought for. Such alone are the true defence of states.
That is a foolish and ignoble pride which refuses to acknowledge worth because it is not encrusted by wealth. Yet such is the way of the world,—“Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.”
What was it that rescued the nations of the ancient world from the universal heathenism in which they were sunk; from the gross superstitions and multiplied abominations of an all-prevailing idolatry? Not the poetry and literature, not the arts and philosophy, of Greece and Rome, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those humble peasants and fishermen, who issued from the upper chamber of some obscure street of Jerusalem, were the poor wise men who delivered the cities of the ancient world [Buchanan].
The pressure of necessity, or the claims of selfishness, may force admiration for the poor man’s wisdom, but such admiration expires before it has time to ripen into gratitude, or attain to the sturdy strength of a principle.
How hard is the condition of poverty, when social prejudice can overwhelm a man whose wisdom it has been compelled to own!
Ecclesiastes 9:16. The triumphs of wisdom over brute force and the terrible powers of nature, all of which it subdues under the sovereignty of man, are among its first fruits. It has also a surpassing excellence in that it imparts the power to discover and appreciate the order and fitness of things in the universe.
Wisdom is the living and intelligent director of all other forces, without which they can serve no useful end. In our investigation of the powers of nature, we cannot rest in the contemplation of forces and effects. We are bound to go on to mind—the greatest of all. Mind is the producer of all other powers, and therefore superior to them. That which is true, in this regard, of the Highest, is true also of man, under the necessary limitations of his position as a creature.
The more that wisdom spreads, the more human strength is saved, and the more is comfort enhanced. The bird who is about to build her nest next month, will toil as long and work as hard as the sparrows and swallows who frequented the temple in the time of Solomon, and the building will be no improvement on the nest of three thousand years ago. But if Solomon’s own palace were to be builded anew, modern skill could rear it much faster than Hiram’s masonry, and there are few houses in London which do not contain luxuries and accommodations which were lacking in the “house of the forest of Lebanon.” Already a pound of coals and a pint of water will do the work of a sturdy man; and with a week’s wages, a mechanic may now procure a library more comprehensive and more edifying than that which adorned the Tusculan villa,—nay, such a store of books as the wealth of Solomon could not command [Dr. J. Hamilton].
It requires but little intellectual sagacity to admire that wisdom which leads to some evident practical result. When self-interest is at stake, the meanest souls can assume a virtue. The steady recognition of wisdom, for her own sake, is only found in answering minds.
The poverty of Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom of God, was sufficient to bring upon Him one of the sharpest trials of His humiliation, which was that of being despised and overlooked.
Ecclesiastes 9:17. Quiet men—men of calm and dispassionate minds—give heed to the words of wisdom, though noisy fools may disregard them. Also, in quiet times, in the hours of retirement and reflection, when the distractions of the world are shut out, the words of wisdom come back into the mind and sink into the heart. How unlike in this respect to the cry of him that ruleth among fools! Even at the moment it is uttered, his cry may fall powerless upon the thoughtless, ignorant, or impatient crowd to whom it is addressed; and this it may do for no other and better reason, than because it does not suit the fancy or the frenzy of the hour. At any rate, and in any case, its influence is but transitory, its power short-lived [Buchanan].
Folly requires the aid of boisterous acclamation to give it the semblance of greatness. Wisdom is content with quiet and retired ways, there to meet her disciples and unfold her treasures. Disdaining the Pharisees device, she sounds no trumpet, but calm as the depths of heaven, speaks to contemplation the everlasting language of truth.
How soon the fame of those who have made the greatest noise and display passes away! It is easily blown up to the bubble reputation, but soon to burst most unprofitably. Time clears away all illusions and lays bare the solidities of truth.
The wise man may speak to an audience fit, though few; but his audience will increase through the ages, and his words receive obedience and recognition.
The mariner who guides his ship upon the trackless ocean with safety and expedition accomplishes this by the aid of principles which were discovered by Grecian geometers ages ago. The words of these quiet thinkers were heard and understood by few, but without them the greatest development of commerce and civilisation would be impossible.
The true rulers of the world, of lasting sovereignty, are those who guide the intellects and souls of men. They have been faithful over a few things, and have thus been made rulers over many cities.
Ecclesiastes 9:18. War wounds, but wisdom heals. War overturns, but it is wisdom that builds up and restores. War is the hurricane that sinks the ship; wisdom is the favouring breeze that wafts it to the desired haven. War is the torrent that furrows the earth, and sweeps its soil into the sea; wisdom droppeth softly, like the rain or the gentle dew from heaven, to refresh the thirsty ground and to bless the springing thereof. In a word, war and all its weapons belong to the bloody brood of him who was a murderer from the beginning; wisdom is the attribute and gift of Him who came to bring peace on earth, goodwill to men, and glory to God in the highest [Buchanan].
The continued existence of war in the midst of material and intellectual progress is a proof that the world is yet far from wisdom. The reign of force can never knit humanity into a true brotherhood. The Christian religion, which is the highest style of wisdom, is the only strong power, against which all else contends in vain.
The ambition of one man may plunge nations into deadly warfare. The heresies of one man may divide the Church, weaken her influence, and provoke the rage of an irritating controversy. One slanderous tongue can slay many reputations, and work mischiefs which are but ill-repaired by time.
The ways in which one sinner may destroy much good are as numerous as the forms of evil itself. But there is a bad and even a worse eminence in sin. The greater the power abused, the more terrible and far-reaching the consequences. Hence he who writes a book that unsettles the foundations of faith in the soul of man, or robs him of his immortal hope, propagates a mischief far beyond his own working-day in life, and verily keeps his sad account and reckoning with eternity still open.