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These passages come as a revelation from heaven upon the true nature of this present
life. We are now here practicing our scales, the public performance is future. We are
now perfecting our powers of drawing, the academy picture is future. We do not call our
friends around us to hear our scales, neither do we hang in the public gallery our many
attempts with chalk and crayon. So with this life. Solomon realized that his portion was
in the doing, and not in the result.
"If what shone afar so grand
Turns to nothing in thine hand,
On again: the virtue lies
In the getting, not the prize."
This is perhaps pessimistic. Life's lessons need not "turn to nothing". The "exercise"
may yield peaceable fruits of righteousness, the sorrows may accomplish our perfecting.
A professor of economics once said to his students, "Live all the time". His meaning
was--Do not set out in life with the idea that you will work hard till you are, say,
50 years of age, and then retire to some nice country house, with well-kept lawns, etc.,
etc., etc., and enjoy life, for you will do no such thing. "Live all the time." Think, that
little one of yours, for whose "future" you anxiously and wearily toil, whose budding life
you hardly know so much are you engrossed with the imaginary youth of the future. If
you would learn the lesson of Ecclesiastes, you will put aside that opportunity of extra
business, which would add so many more pounds to your reserve of your child's "future",
and you will go and live with the little one for an hour or so; you will then enter into your
portion, all the rest is simply vanity and vexation of spirit. Too late the parent wakes up
to the fact that in thus slaving and saving he has really robbed his child and himself of
their true inheritance. "Live all the time."
It is quite untrue to think that the conclusion of Ecclesiastes is wicked or sad. Having
faced facts and realized what life is, we conjure up no illusions, and chase no mirages.
"Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest" says Koheleth, not live morbidly,
morosely, grudgingly. Entertain no false ideas of life, and then life can be a blessed
thing. Life is a pilgrimage, a series of halts and moving on again. When we make up our
minds to achieve anything for its own sake then we find that all is vanity and vexation of
spirit. When we realize that nothing is a goal in itself, but merely a means to an end, we
shall not call the time wasted that helped us on another stage of our pilgrimage, even
though the moment we achieved some object, it ceases to attract or be of service. So
immediately following upon the rejoicing with which Koheleth had engaged in the
labours he had planned, we find dissatisfaction and vexation when viewed in themselves
and for their own sakes.
"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" (Eccles. 2: 11).
The labour that ye may be "exercised" therewith is good. The resulting "work" which
you produce may be very emptiness. If your heart is in the discipline, all is well, but if
your heart is set on the result here in this life, then all is vanity. Even Alexander wept
because there were no more worlds to conquer. Let us thank God for the portion He