Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God now accepts your works.… Optimists and pessimists are both wrong, for they both proceed upon the radically false principle that life is to be valued according to the preponderance of pleasure over pain; the optimist asserting and the pessimist denying such preponderance. It is a base theory of life which represents it as to be prized as an opportunity of enjoyment. And the hedonism which is common to optimist and to pessimist is the delusive basis upon which their visionary fabrics are reared. Pleasure is neither the proper standard nor the proper motive of right conduct. Yet, as the text points out, enjoyment is a real factor in human life, not to be depreciated and despised, though not to be exaggerated and overvalued. I. ENJOYMENT IS A DIVINELY APPOINTED ELEMENT IN OUR HUMAN EXISTENCE. Man's bodily and mental constitution, taken in connection with the circumstances of the human lot, are a sufficient proof of this. We drink by turns the sweet and the bitter cup; and the one is as real as the other, although individuals partake of the two in different proportions. II. MANY PROVISIONS ARE MADE FOR HUMAN ENJOYMENT. Several are alluded to in this passage, more especially (1) the satisfaction of natural appetite; (2) the pleasures of society and festivity, (3) the happiness of the married state, when the Divine idea concerning it is realized. These are doubtless mentioned as specimens of the whole. III. THE RELATION OF ENJOYMENT TO LABOR. The Preacher clearly saw that those who toil are those who enjoy. It is by work that most men must win the means of bodily and physical enjoyment; and the very labor becomes a means of blessing, and sweetens the daily meals. Nay, "the labor we delight in physics pain." The primeval curse was by God's mercy transformed into a blessing. IV. THE PARTIAL AND DISAPPOINTING VIEW OF HUMAN LIFE WHICH CONSIDERS ONLY ITS ENJOYMENTS. 1. Pain, suffering, and distress are as real as happiness, and must come, sooner or later, to all whose life is prolonged. 2. Neither pleasure nor pain is of value apart from the moral discipline both may aid in promoting, apart from the moral progress, the moral aim, towards which both may lead. 3. It is, therefore, the part of the wise to use the good things of this life as not abusing them; to be ready to part with them at the call of Heaven, and to turn them to golden profit, so that occasion may never arise to remember them with regret and remorse. - T. Parallel Verses KJV: Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. |
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