strange book[1] and denied its title to canonicity, partly for its pessimism, partly for its supposed Epicureanism, or that the author of the Book of Wisdom before them should have given Koheleth the most scathing of condemnations by putting almost its very language into the mouth of the ungodly.[2] The true student may no doubt be equally severe upon Koheleth for his despair of wisdom and depreciation of its delights (i. 17, 18, ii. 15, 16), which are hardly redeemed by the utilitarian sayings in vii. 11, 12.
I cannot justify Koheleth, but I can plead for a mitigation of these censures, and altogether defend the admission of the Book (not, of course, as Solomonic) into the sacred Canon. Whether Jewish or not, the pessimistic theory of life has a sound kernel. 'Our sadness,' as Thoreau says, 'is not sad, but our cheap joys. Let us be sad about all we see and are, for so we demand and pray for better. It is the constant prayer [of the good] and whole Christian religion.'[3] This too is the burden of E. von Hartmann's criticism of a crudely optimistic Christianity; and need we reject the truth for the extravagances of the teacher? Next, as to the preference of sensuous enjoyment to philosophic pursuits in Koheleth. I would not seek to weaken passages like ii. 24, viii. 15, by putting them down to the irony of a sæva indignatio. But as for the depreciation of intellectual pleasure, may it not be excused by the author's want of a sure prospect of the 'age to come' such as we find in those lines of Davenant,[4]
Before by death you nearer knowledge gain
(For to increase your knowledge you must die),
Tell me if all that knowledge be not vain,
On which we proudly in this life rely.
And as to the commendations of sensuous pleasure, have they not a relative justification?[5] The legalism of the 'righteous
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ Wisd. ii. 6; comp. Plumptre, Ecclesiastes, p. 71 &c., Wright, Koheleth, pp. 69, 70.
- ↑ Letters to Various Persons, p. 25.
- ↑ See the extracts in Trench's Household Book of English Poetry, p. 405.
- ↑ I do not of course assent to the form in which Grätz puts this, to serve his hypothesis as to the age of Koheleth. See Appendix.
