Thomas Pelham Dale

“ Present gratification is the lot of humanity, because the past is not much remembered. The chief remembrance――for this is the meaning of הרבה――is not in the past. The deepest sorrows fade away quickly into forgetfulness; and so also the brightest joys. They have, no doubt, some influence by recollection, but not much. And thus the Deity, or God regarded as the supreme providential ruler, exercises us. He responds to our anxieties, afflicts us, or chastens us, or causes us pleasure by means of joys given or taken away, as the case may be. ”

“ A book which contains the record of a life as sweet, pure, and noble as any man by divine help, granted to devout sincerity of soul, has been permitted to live upon earth. The example of this gentle but resolute and energetic spirit, wholly dedicated to the highest conceivable good, offering itself, with all the temporal uses of mental existence, to the service of infinite and eternal beneficence, is extremely touching.... ”

“ Enjoy life with that woman whom thou lovest, all the days of thy evanescent life, which He grants thee in this hot work-day world,――all these evanescent days, I say, for that is all thou canst possess in thy life, and from that toil thyself art toiling ever in this same work-day world. ”

“ The Targum has the gloss that the rivers flow into the ocean which surrounds the world like a ring, and that they return again through the subterranean channels, but Koheleth knows nothing of such false philosophy.
8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. ”

“ In the day then of good, accept the good; in the day of distress, discern: for the one indeed hath the Almighty appointed as the counterpart of the other, for the very purpose that Humanity should by no means be able to discover anything of what is to result. ”

“ And it is in itself a true work of art, a whole finely conceived, and carried out with sustained power,—one of those reproductions and adumbrations of great works, in which mere servile copying disappears, and which are only possible to a mind which, however inferior to its original, is yet of the same order and temperament, with an unusual faculty for taking the impressions of that original and reflecting them undimmed. ”

“ With respect to all this I have observed, with regard to all the works which are done in this work-day world――and greatly am I impressed by it――a time when humanity has a power over itself to injure itself. ”

“ This evil is in all which is performed in this work-day world: that there is but one event to all, and so the heart of the human race overflows with wrong, and foolish anticipations are in their inmost hearts while they live, and what succeeds――it belongs to the dead. ”

“ Manifest, then, is that real good which I have observed, viz., that it is proper to eat, and to drink, and so to see good in all one’s toil which one may toil in this hot work-day world, as the tale of one’s daily life. ”

“ Thus even wisdom itself is no cure for the ills of humanity. The catalogue of human ills and the instances of human evanescence would form too large a volume for humanity to master, so that in this case also the world itself would not contain the books which should be written. ”

“ With regard to the Book of Ecclesiastes itself, the writer must confess himself homo unius libri; for some years past all his Hebrew and Greek studies have been devoted to the investigation of the meaning of this one book in the Sacred Canon, and all his conclusions must be taken with the reservation that they apply, directly, to this one book alone. Such a concentration of effort may be expected to produce results which might not be arrived at by a far wider and more extensive research, just as a few rays of sunlight concentrated by a small lens will burn where the sun himself will only warm. ”

“ Now, I have made a discovery, and that more bitter than death; it is with respect to woman, when she is in the nature of an ensnarer, her affection seductions, and her hands bondage. A real good in the sight of the Almighty is it to be delivered from her, but the erring sinner is taken by such as she. ”

“ But to return, I perceived how in this work-day world that not to the swift ones is the race, nor to the strong ones the battle, nor even to wise ones bread, nor yet to prudent ones wealth, nor yet to the instructed ones favour. For time and chance happens with regard to them all. ”

“ Hence then the sense of the whole passage is plain: ‘I know that there can be no real good thing belonging to them, except it be that they should rejoice and do good each one in their lives,’ and this is exactly true, as death so completely bounds the vision and terminates the earthly existence of every human soul that what is not obtained in this life is clearly not obtained at all. ”

“ The anxiety is for enjoyment, but satisfaction is impossible. What, then, is the advantage or profit of wisdom, in the sense of knowing what is best to do under a given set of circumstances? and what advantage gives it over the man who is dissatisfied equally, but does not know this? ”

“ No doubt St. Jerome has completely hit the point of the argument when he writes, ‘Since all things fade with time, and there is a time of destroying and building, weeping and laughing, for silence and speaking, and those other things which are said concerning time, why do we strive and press forward in vain, and imagine the brief labours of life to be perpetual, nor are we content, according to the Gospel, with the evil of to-day, and so take no thought for the morrow?’
16 ¶ And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there ”

“ Every one who can remember the days when Canon Melvill was the preacher of the day, will be glad to see these four-and-twenty of his sermons so nicely reproduced. His Sermons were all the result of real study and genuine reading, with far more theology in them than those of many who make much more profession of theology. There are sermons here which we can personally remember; it has been a pleasure to us to be reminded of them, and we are glad to see them brought before the present generation. ”

“ The author of ‘A Dominican Artist,’ in writing this new life of the wise and loving Bishop and Prince of Geneva, has aimed less at historical or ecclesiastical investigation than at a vivid and natural representation of the inner mind and life of the subject of his biography, as it can be traced in his own writings and in those of his most intimate and affectionate friends. ”

“ When thou hast vowed a vow (‘If by any means thou hast done this,’ for considerable emphasis is given by the repetition of ‘vow,’ according to the well-known Hebrew idiom) to God, do not defer to pay it (the alacrity with which men vow is commonly in strong contrast with the tardiness with which they pay) , because there is nothing of providence (חפץ, with its usual technical meaning, and also equivocal, in the sense of ‘pleasure’) in befooled ones: with respect to what thou hast vowed, pay (the LXX. render σὺ οὖν ‘thou then,’ but the emphasis given by את אשר may easily account for this) . ”

“ It might be more valuable to a few scholars if it were, but it would certainly fail to obtain perusal at the hands of the great majority of those whom the writer, not unreasonably, hopes to attract by the narrative style she has adopted. What she has set before us is a series of brief outlines, which, by their simple effort to clothe the information given us in a living garb, reminds us of a once popular childs’ book which we remember a generation ago, called ‘Sketches of Human Manners.’”—Church Times. ”

“ It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a more elaborate description of a book destined to effect an entire change in musical teaching without entering into details that could not but prove uninteresting to the general readers, while to the musician and amateur, the possession of the book itself is recommended as a valuable confirmation of ideas that exist to a large extent in the minds of every one who has ever thought about music, and who desires to see established a more uniform basis of study. ”

“ I hated then, I myself (emphatic pronoun, because again we have Koheleth’s personal experience, as we should say, ‘I was disgusted’) , with respect to all my toil which I (again strongly personal, meaning so far as it was my toil) had toiled at under the sun that I should leave it (close relative qualifying the verb, and giving the idea that the grievance was that he would have to leave this work) to a man (i.e. some man as a human person) which will be after me.
19 And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? ”

“ All the toil of humanity is for the gratification of appetite, and yet the desires are never satisfied.
(7.) Every toil of the man (i.e. humanity) is to his mouth (remembering the meaning of עמל, the sense is clear; the anxiety of men is directed to their mouths, to satisfy physical or moral hunger) , and besides the soul (i.e. the self, the ego, as metaphysicians write) is not filled (i.e. satisfied, or fills itself) .
8 For what hath the wise more than the fool? what hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living?
What profit then is there to the wise above the befooled? ”

“ There is nothing of scoffing epicureanism in this book; the life of man is ever spoken of in the most serious and solemn tones. There is, indeed, much sarcasm, but it never touches upon lightness or indifference; it is always grave and solemn, and even when to superficial observation appearing equivocal or sceptical, proves, on further examination, to hide promises and hopes beneath its bitterness. ”

“ Youth is the time of choice, the time of productions, or, if one will――and the expression will preserve an equivoke similar to that in the text――conception; but this time is evanescent. We choose our path in life when young, but then we cannot go back. He who changes his calling once rarely succeeds in it, and never if he chooses twice.
CHAPTER XII.
REMEMBER now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them ”

“ This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
There exists a solitary who has no fellow; neither son nor brother has he, yet there is no end to all his toils: and besides no satisfaction to himself in all his wealth: who never asks, ‘For whom am I now toiling and depriving myself of good?’ This is an instance of evanescence and uncertainty, which is evil and nothing else.
(8.) There is one, and there is not a second (evidently meaning that there is one who is quite alone in the world) . ”

“ For no one can tell what is a real good to mankind in any life: that life being a number of evanescent days, which he spends as a shadow, and of which no one can tell to any man what shall result to him――in this hot work-day world. ”

“ Good is the seeing of the eyes above the walking the soul (but the participle מראה is singular, and eyes are plural, hence ‘better is a sight with the eye than,’ etc. But may not there be this equivoke? מהלך might be a participle also, and then the whole would read thus, ‘A real good, the seeing of the eye, the wandering of the soul’) . Moreover, this is vanity and vexation of spirit (this clause being in this case the answer to the above. So curt and enigmatical a sentence was no doubt in some way intended to be equivocal) . ”

“ For what is profiting to the wise beyond the befooled? what (repeated, ‘even what’) to the poor (but ‘poor’ in the sense of oppressed or unfortunate) made to know to walk in the presence of the living ones? We must notice, in explaining this very obscure passage, that החיים, being with the article, must be looked upon as denoting lives generally; moreover נגד has the meaning of ‘in the presence of,’ ‘amongst,’ ‘in the midst of.’ Thus the advantage, or that which is really profitable to the wise, is to know how to walk, proceed, or act; to know which way to go in the presence of the living ”

“ To alter the text to סכלות, as some have proposed, is not even to cut the Gordian knot, for with the true meaning of this word, ‘clever-folly,’ ‘false-wisdom,’ no better sense will be made, although it is quite possible that שכ״ may have been chosen for the equivoke it gives, not even differing in sound, if the pointing can be trusted, from סכ״. The truth is that so much of our elaborate wisdom and best plans are but elaborate mistakes, that to attempt to judge the one from the other is a hopeless task. ”

“ Attending then to these principles of grammar, the meaning will be, ‘observe this, I have found it, and announce it as Koheleth,’ an additional proof that here we have a personal experience of Koheleth’s) one to one to find a wise result, (that is collecting instance after instance, or trying one method after another so as to find the wise result, in contrast to the disappointing folly mentioned above) which yet seeks my soul, and has not found (the ‘not’ is emphatic, and denies that he has discovered it: experimental science did no more for him than moral) ”

“ The existence of oppression makes the wise man mad by reason of disappointed hopes, and destroys his purpose; but he must wait to see the end, and be patient. ‘Good’ has occurred in seven paradoxical relations, having the appearance of evil. ”

“ God (gives or appoints) wealth and riches, and it is caused him to have power in order to eat (which we have seen is used as the highest type of enjoyment in the active sense) of it, and to take his portion (for a man may possess without being able to eat or enjoy at all, hence the necessity for this clause in the course of the argument; נשא has the meaning to ‘lift up,’ ‘carry,’ or ‘bear’) , and to rejoice in his toil (which――considering the exact meaning assigned in this book to עמל, the ‘care’ one takes in one’s labour――to rejoice in is to see it come to a successful end) ”

“ In a day when sore moved are the keepers of the house, and the mighty mortals sadly perplex themselves, and the grinding maids are idle because there is little to grind, and the ladies look into gloom through the windows ”