Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth.
The threefold view of human life
Three views of human life are given in this remarkable chapter.
I. The theatrical view of life (Ecclesiastes 2:1-11). The writer seeks to prove his heart with mirth and laughter; he treats his flesh with wine; he gathers peculiar treasure; he is enamoured of greatness, magnificence, and abundance; he delights in architecture, scenery, literature, music, song. Everything is spectacular, dazzling, wonderful. This is a very misleading idea of the world in which we find ourselves.
1. It is partial. Nothing whatever is said here of the problems which challenge us--of duty, enterprise, discipline, work, sacrifice, suffering; nothing about character or conduct. It really leaves out two-thirds of life, and the noblest two-thirds.
2. It is exaggerated. It contemplates great works, great possessions, and great fame. Life is largely made up of commonplace tasks, homely faces, uneventful days, monotonous experiences.
3. It is selfish. You see throughout how prominent the individual is. It is all “I.” The writer never thinks of other people except as they may enhance his pleasure, or be spectators of his glory.
4. It is superficial. There is not a word about conscience, righteousness, responsibility. Now beware of the theatrical view of life--of the great, the gaudy, the glistering. True life, as a rule, is simple, sober, and severe. Beware of companions who would represent life to you in a gay and voluptuous light. Beware also of your reading, and see that it does not give a false and delusive idea of the life that awaits you. The world is not a theatre, not a magician’s cave, not a carnival; it is a temple where all things are serious and sacred.
II. The sepulchral view of life (Ecclesiastes 2:12-23). Men usually start with the rosy ideal of life, and then finding its falsity--that there are tears as well as laughter--they sink into vexation and despair, and paint all things black as night. But the world is not emptiness; it is a cup deep and large, delightful and overflowing. Fulness, not emptiness, is the sign of the world. There is the fulness of nature--of intellectual life--of society--of practical life--the manifold and enduring unfolding of the interests and movements and fortunes of humanity. There is the fulness of religious life. A true man never feels the world to be limited, meagre, shallow. God is no mockery, and He will not mock us.
III. The religious view of life (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26).
1. The purification and strengthening of the soul will secure to us all the brightness and sweetness of life.
2. And as the Spirit of Christ leads to the realization of the bright side of the world, so shall it fortify you against the dark side. Carry the Spirit of Christ into this dark side, and you shall rejoice in tribulation also. In one of the illustrated magazines I noticed a picture of the flower-market of Madrid in a snowstorm. The golden and purple glories were mixed with the winter’s snow. And in a true Christian life sorrow is strangely mingled with joy. Winter in Siberia is one thing, winter in the flower-market of the South is another thing; and so the power of sorrow is broken and softened in the Christian life by great convictions, consolations, and hopes. Do not accept the theatrical view of life; life is not all beer and ski[ties, operas, banquets, galas, and burlesques. Do not accept the sepulchral theory of life; it is absolutely false. Toequeville said to Sumner, “Life is neither a pain nor a pleasure, but serious business, which it is our duty to carry through and conclude with honour.” This is a true and noble conception of life, and it can be fulfilled only as Christ renews and strengthens us. (W. L. Watkinson.)
The pleasures of sin and the pleasures of Christ’s service contrasted
I. What are the pleasures of sin?
1. They are present pleasures; now and here; not in the dim distance; not in the next world, but in this.
2. They are varied and many: adapted to every taste, capacity, age, condition.
3. They fall in with the desires and cravings of our carnal nature.
4. They possess the power to excite in a wonderful degree,--the fancy, the mind, the passions,--ambition, lust, pride, etc.
II. What are the pleasures or rewards of Christ’s service?
1. They are real and substantial, not fictitious and imaginary or deceptive.
(1) A good conscience.
(2) A contented mind.
(3) Rational enjoyment and satisfaction.
(4) Elevation of being.
(5) A quiet, growing consciousness of God’s approval.
(6) A sweet sense of living and breathing in a sphere of sanctified thought and life, illumined by the sunlight of Heaven, and vocal with the joys and harmonies which proceed from Calvary.
2. They are not all in the future. No small part of them are here, and enjoyed day by day. Heaven is the ultimate state of blessedness, the final reward in Christ’s service. But heaven is begun in every reconciled, sanctified soul at once and progresses to the consummation.
3. Christ’s service is soul-satisfying. It touches, elevates, expands, gives dignity to, and harmonizes and gladdens man’s highest nature.
4. The pleasure, the reward of Christ’s service is enduring. It fears no death, knows no end. It is perpetual, everlasting, ever augmenting. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
A strange experiment
He now resolves to abandon the “studious cloisters.” For their quiet he will substitute the excitement of feverish pleasure. But this tremendous reaction from the joys of the philosopher to coarser animal pleasure is not easy. He has to goad his mind before it is ready for this new and low direction. He has to say to his heart, “Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth.” What a fall is here, from the contemplation of high themes of truth, the works of God and man, to merely sensual pleasure! But the experiment is brief. It would be. For a man of wisdom could not be long in discovering the utter worthlessness of sensual gratification; sharp and swift comes the conclusion: “I said of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it?” It has sometimes been the question of thoughtful people how the wise man could bring himself to try this second experiment, the effort to find happiness in “the lust of the flesh” and “the lust of the eye.” This, it is usually thought, is the delight of fools. But that a man who could say he “had seen the works that are done under the sun,” whose philosophy had ranged over new things until they were seen to be the old things recurrent, who could truly say that he had “gotten more wisdom than all they that had been before him in Jerusalem,”--for such an one to fly from philosophy to pleasure, from meditation to mirth, is accounted phenomenally strange. But it is not. Across just such extremes does the restless spirit fly that has not yet learned that happiness is not the creature of circumstance, but the outgrowth of the life. And how it magnifies this inner character of happiness to reflect that even wisdom pursued for its own sake may be seen to be so hollow that the soul will fly to the farthest distance from it, inferring that even sensual folly may be a relief from the emptiness of knowledge! (C. L. Thompson, D. D.)