Gold Nugget 158 - Utter Oblivion?

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      In the first eleven verses of this chapter we have revealed to us the despair and weariness which fell upon the soul of him whose splendour and wisdom raised him above all the men of his time, and made him wonder of all succeeding ages.  Life seemed to him the emptiest and poorest thing possible “a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanished away.”

      He might have used the words of the modern philosopher Amiel, “To appear and to vanish, - there is the biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they describe; and the drama of the universe is nothing more.  All life is the shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyphic traced for an instant in the sand and effaced a moment afterwards by a breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of the great river of being – an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this nothing is, however, the symbol of universal being, and this passing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world.”          It seemed to him that life yielded no permanent results, that it was insufferably monotonous, and that it was destined to end in utter oblivion.

      His melancholy is not a form of mental disease, but the result of the exhaustion of his energies and powers in the attempt to find satisfaction for the soul’s cravings.  And in melancholy of this kind philosophers have found a proof of the dignity of human nature.  “Man’s unhappiness,” says one of them “comes of his greatness:  it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite …

      The idea of the unprofitableness of human labor expressed by Solomon is calculated, if carried to far, to put an end to all healthy and strenuous effort to use the powers and gifts God has bestowed upon us, and lead to indifference and despair.  If no adequate result can be secured, if all that remains after prolonged exertion is only a sense of weariness and disappointment, why should we labour at all?

      But such thoughts are dishonoring to God and degrading to ourselves.  He has not sent us into the world to spend our labour in vain, to be overcome with the consciousness of our poverty and weakness.  There are ways in which we can glorify him and serve our generation; and he has promised to bless our endeavours, and supply that wherein we come short.  Every sincere and unselfish effort we make to help the weak, to relieve the suffering, to teach the ignorant, to diminish the misery that meets us on every hand, and to advance the happiness of our fellows, is made fruitful by his blessing.  Something positive and of enduring value may be secured in this way … We may so use the goods, the talents, now committed to our charge, as to create for ourselves friends, who will receive us into everlasting habitations when the days of our stewardship are over, and this visible, tangible world fades away from us. …

      In contrast with the Preacher’s desponding, despairing words about the fruitlessness of life, its monotony and its brevity, we may set the hopeful, triumphant utterance of Christ’s apostle:  “The time of my departure is at hand.  I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;  henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day;  and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Ecclesiastes p. 24-28, Ecclesiastes 1:1-11, (J. Willcock)

 

Gold Nugget 158

Utter Oblivion?