Homilies on Ecclesiastes

“The words of the Ecclesiast, the son of David, king … Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, said the Ecclesiast. What advantage is there for a human being in all his toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, and the earth stands for ever. And the sun rises, and the sun sets, and it draws to its place; rising there, it goes toward the south and circles toward the north. Circling, circling, the wind goes, and on its circuits the wind returns. All the torrents go into the sea, and the sea is not being filled; to the place where the torrents go, there they return to go again. All the … And the eye will not be filled with seeing, and the ear will not be filled with hearing. What is it that has been? The very thing that will be [made] … And there is nothing at all fresh under the sun, who will speak and say, ‘Look, this is new’; it has already been in the ages that were before us. There is no memory of the first, and also of the last who come to be there will be no memory of them with those who come to be at the last.”

The Ecclesiast lies before us for exposition, and the labour of contemplating it is equal to the greatness of its benefit. For once the thoughts of the Proverbs have already given the mind its preliminary training — their dark sayings and wise utterances and riddles and the varied turns of speech, as the prologue of that book contains — then, for those who have grown toward the more perfect lessons, the ascent comes to this Scripture, so lofty and inspired by God. If, then, the proverb and the exercise that prepares us for these lessons is so laborious and so hard to contemplate, how much labour must one spend in looking into these lofty thoughts themselves, which now lie before us for contemplation? For just as those under a trainer strip for greater sweat and toil in the athletic contests, so the teaching of the Proverbs seems to me to be a kind of exercise, training our souls beforehand for the contests of the church and making them supple. If, then, the exercise is achieved with so much sweat and toil, what must one reckon about the contests themselves? What hyperbole could anyone conceive that would set forth worthily in words how great are the strains that the stadium of this Scripture displays to those who contend, through athletic experience, for the security of intelligible things, so as not to show the argument in a fall, but in every grappling of thought to keep the mind upright through the truth? Nevertheless, since this too is one of the Master’s commands, that one must search the Scriptures, it is altogether necessary — even if our mind, in searching, comes in behind the truth because it does not reach the greatness of the thoughts — still to carry it out by zeal for the word as far as we can, so as not to seem to overlook the Lord’s commandment. Let us therefore search the Scripture set before us as far as we are able. For surely he who gave the command to search will also give the power for this very thing, as it is written: “The Lord will give a word to those who preach good news with great power.”

And first let the title of the book be set before us for contemplation. In every church Moses and the law are read, the prophets, the psalmody, all the history, and whatever belongs to the Old and the New Covenant: all are proclaimed in the churches. How, then, is this book alone singled out by the title “Ecclesiast”? What is it, then, that we have understood about this? That in all the other Scriptures, histories and prophecies, the aim looks also to certain other things not altogether useful to the church. For what does it matter to the church to learn precisely the disasters of wars, or which rulers of nations and founders of cities there were, and who were colonists of whom, or what kingdoms would appear in later time, and how many marriages and begettings of children were carefully recorded, and all such things as each Scripture has to teach? What would be so great for the … But the teaching of this book looks only to the church’s way of life, setting out the means by which one may achieve the virtuous life. For the aim of what is said here is to raise the mind above sense-perception and to make it stop, leaving behind whatever appears great and splendid among the things that exist; to peer up through the soul toward what sense-apprehension cannot reach, and to take up the desire for those things which sense does not attain. Perhaps, too, the title looks to the leader of the church. For the true Ecclesiast, who gathers what was scattered into one fullness and calls into one assembly those who had wandered in many directions through various deceptions — who else would he be but the true king of Israel, the Son of God, to whom Nathanael said, “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel”? If, then, these words are those of the king of Israel, and this same one is also Son of God, as the Gospel says, then the same one is also named the Ecclesiast. Perhaps it is not unreasonable that we refer the meaning of the title to this sense, so that we may learn from it that the force of these words is referred to the very one who established the church through the Gospel. For it says, “The words of the Ecclesiast, the son of David.” So too Matthew at the beginning of the Gospel names him, calling the Lord “son of David.”

“Vanity of vanities,” said the Ecclesiast, “all is vanity.” By “vain” is understood what has no substance, which has its being in the mere utterance of the word; no substantial thing is indicated by the meaning of the name, but it is an idle and empty noise in the shape of some word, uttered at random in syllables, striking the hearing without meaning, like the words some people coin in play, which signify nothing. That is one kind of vanity. Another kind of vanity is the uselessness of things done with some zeal but toward no aim: children’s buildings in the sand, shooting arrows at the stars, hunting the winds, a runner’s race against his own shadow, when someone eager … the shadow …, or anything else of this kind we find among things done at random; all of these fall under the word “vanity.” Often, too, in common usage this is called vain: when someone, acting toward some aim and pursuing zealously something set before him as profitable, does each thing, and then, when something contrary happens, the toil comes to nothing; then zeal that has advanced to no achievement is signified by the word “vain.” For common usage says in such cases, “In vain I toiled, in vain I hoped, and for nothing I endured many labours.” And not to go through each of the cases in which the name of vanity is properly used, in brief the notion of the word is this: a word without meaning, or a thing without profit, or a plan without substance, or a zeal that has no end, or in general what has no existence for anything useful. If, then, we have understood the notion of “vain,” it would remain to examine what the “vanity of vanities” means. Perhaps what is sought would become clearer to us if we examined alongside it the usage of Scripture in things understood in the better sense. The doing of necessary and beneficial things is named “work” by Scripture …; those that look to the worship of God itself are called “works of works,” as the history shows, the passage indicating, I think, by a certain analogy drawn from the “work of works,” which of our pursuits is to be preferred. For as zeal for works stands to complete idleness, so the activity directed to the loftier and more valuable of our pursuits stands to the other works. So too something is called “holy” in Scripture, and again “holy of holies,” as though by an equal measure surpassing in holiness what is holy beyond the holy; and again beyond this, “the holy of the holies,” what is contemplated as supreme in sanctification. As, then, we have been taught in the better sense, the usage of Scripture signifying by such a form the comparison of the underlying thought, we shall not go wrong if we understand this also of the vanity of vanities. For it says that the things appearing among beings are not simply vain, but such in a certain superlative degree of the meaning of vanity, as if someone were to say “deader than the dead” and “more lifeless than the lifeless” … does not have this in such things, but nevertheless it is said in this phrase to make clear the excess of what is meant. As, then, there are “works of works” and “holy of holies,” whose superlative indication is interpreted toward the better, so the “vanity of vanities” shows the unsurpassable excess in what is vain.

And let no one suppose that what is said is an accusation against creation; for the charge would pass to the one who made all things, if he who constituted all things out of what is not were shown to be the maker of these things, if all things were of vanity. But since the constitution of the human being is twofold, the soul running together with the body, … is divided … correspondingly to each of the things contemplated in us … the form of life. For the soul’s life is one thing and the body’s another: the one is mortal and perishable, the other passionless and pure; the one looks only to the present, while the aim of the other extends to the everlasting. Since, then, there is a great difference between the mortal and the immortal, and between the temporary and the eternal, the voice of the Ecclesiast tends to this: that we must not look to this sense-perceived life, which, compared with the real life, is something without existence and without substance. But someone might say that the argument is nonetheless not free from accusing the Creator, since from him come both soul and body; so that if the life through the flesh is accused, and God is the maker of the flesh, such blame would necessarily be referred to him. But this would surely be said by one who has not yet come outside the flesh, nor looked closely into the loftier life. For one who has been instructed in the divine mysteries is surely not unaware that the life proper and natural to human beings is the life made like the divine nature, while the sense-perceived life, carried on through the activity of the sense organs, was given to nature for this purpose: that it should receive the knowledge of what appears and become the soul’s guide to the knowledge of the invisible, as Wisdom says: “From the greatness of the beauty of created things the maker of all is seen by analogy.” But human … did not see what is wondered at through the things that appear, but wondered at what it saw. Since, then, the activity of the senses is temporary and short-lived, we learn this through this lofty saying: that the one who looks at these things sees nothing. But one who is guided through them to the understanding of what is, and through the things that run past has understood the stable nature, and has come to perceive what is always the same, has seen the truly existing good, and what he saw he possessed; for the knowledge of this good is its possession.

“For what advantage,” it says, “is there for a human being in all his toil at which he toils under the sun?” He called the life in the body “toil”; for it ends in no achievement. “Advantage,” he says, “for the human being” … That is: what is left over for the soul from the toil of livelihood, for those who live for what appears? In what, indeed, does life consist? Which of the beautiful things that appear remains the same? The sun goes round its own course, shining in turn and being darkened, lighting the air above us when it shows itself above the earth, and drawing darkness after it through its setting. The earth stands and remains immovable in its fixity; what stands does not move, and what moves does not stand. Through them all things are shown in all the extent of time to … nothing …, through … the sea … of the waters flowing together from every side, and neither does the confluence cease nor does the sea grow. What is the aim of the course for the waters, always filling what is being filled? For what purpose does the sea receive the inflows of the waters, not increasing by the addition …? He says these things so that from the very elements in which human life consists he may interpret beforehand the insubstantiality of the things we strive for. For if this ordered course of the sun has no limit, and the alternation of light and darkness admits no rest, and the earth, sentenced to standing, remains immovable in its fixity, and the rivers toil without end, consumed by the insatiable nature of the sea, and the sea receives the inflows of the waters in vain, taking into its bosom to no increase what is poured in continually — if these things are so with them, in what is the human likely to consist, which has its life among these? And why are we surprised that a generation goes and a generation comes, and this course does not fail nature, the generation that has come in being pushed out by the one coming in after it? What, then, does the word cry out to the church through these things? This: “O human beings, look at the universe and understand your own nature. What you see in heaven and earth, what you observe in the sun, what you perceive in the sea — let these interpret your nature to you.” For our nature too, like the sun, has a rising and a setting; one road for all, one circle for the journey of life. When we rise through birth, we are drawn down again to the place akin to us. For when our life has set, our light too goes under the earth, when the perception by which we apprehend light …; and surely the earth is dissolved into what is akin to it, and this is a circle always rolling round in the same things. As with the sun’s course, it says — that rising over the upper part of the earth it passes through the southern parts, and under the earth … in this way, always going round, it circles its own course and comes round again (for it says, “circling, circling”) — so too your spirit goes (naming the whole human being from a part: “spirit”) this circular course through … “the spirit, and on its circuits the spirit returns.” Whoever has understood these things would gain no small benefit for his own life. What is brighter than light? What is more manifest than the rays? And yet if the sun goes under the earth, its light is hidden, and the … Looking at these things, let one pass through his own life more soberly, despising the splendour here, having learned from what is seen that distinction does not last for ever, but the alternations of opposites turn swiftly, and nothing remains for ever as it is at present: not youth, not beauty, not the splendour that comes from positions of power. These things, then, are for those who live in some good fortune; but those to whom the life of virtue seems laborious, let the soul be trained by the example of the earth to endure hardships. “The earth stands for ever.” What is more wearisome than this immovable fixity? And yet its standing is prolonged to the end of the age. But for you the time of contest is short. Do not be more lifeless than the earth; do not be more senseless than things without sense, you who have been allotted reason and are governed in life by reason; but “remain,” as the Apostle says, “in what you have learned and been assured of,” in a firm and immovable standing. For this too is one of the divine commands: “Be steadfast and immovable.” Let faith be fixed, love unchangeable, the standing in every good thing immovable, so that the earth in you too may stand for ever. But if someone gapes after greed and, spreading out the measurelessness of his desire like a sea, is insatiable toward gains flowing in from every side, let him look at the real sea and be healed of the disease. For as the sea does not go beyond its own measure in the countless inflows of the waters but remains at the same fullness, as though no addition from the waters came to it, in the same way human nature, confined within its own measures in the enjoyment of what is supplied, cannot greedily enlarge its capacity for enjoyment by the multitude of revenues; what flows in ceases, and the power of enjoyment is kept within its own limit. If, then, enjoyment cannot increase beyond the measure of nature, why are we drawn on toward the inflows of revenues, never overflowing with what comes in toward doing good to others?

Since, according to the account of vanity given us, vanity is either the profitless word or the profitless thing, the passage rightly begins from there, so that we may reckon nothing done and nothing said as having substance, if one looks to the aim here. For every human pursuit busied with anything that concerns this life is plainly children’s toys on the sand, for whom the enjoyment of what they made ended together with their zeal for making it. For as soon as they stopped labouring, the sand too, flowing together upon itself, kept nothing of what had been laboured over. This is human life: ambition is sand, power is sand, wealth is sand, each of the things eagerly enjoyed through the flesh is sand. In these childish souls now play at vanity with insubstantial things, and many … about each patch of sand — I mean life in the flesh; then they will recognize the vanity of their pastime here. For with the material life also … but they take nothing with them except their conscience alone. This, it seems to me, the great Ecclesiast too — as though already outside these things and treading with a naked soul upon the immaterial life — said those things which we too shall probably say one day, when we are outside this place on the seashore around which lies the sand spat out by the sea of life, with all the waves crashing and rushing about us; bringing with us from the sea we have come to understand only the memory of what was pursued here, we shall say: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, and there is no advantage for the human being in what he toils at under the sun.” For thus, in my view at least, this is the saying of every soul when, stripped of the things here, it moves to the life that is hoped for. For whether it achieved something of the loftier things in this life, it accuses the state in which it was, by comparison with what it has found, holding the past in dishonour; or whether, having been passionately disposed toward matter, it sees what it did not expect and learns by experience the profitlessness of what it pursued in life, then, lamenting, it will utter this cry, as we human beings do from regret, recounting our own follies in our lamentations: “vanity of vanities,” and the rest.

“All words,” he says, “are wearisome, and a man will not be able to speak.” And yet nothing is thought easier and more readily at hand than speaking. For what weariness is there for one who says whatever he wishes? The tongue is supple and nimble, shaping itself without effort to whatever form of words it wishes; the drawing of the airy breath, which it uses to produce the sounds, is unhindered; the service of the cheeks is painless, and so is the cooperation of the lips in uttering what is said. What weariness, then, does he see in speech? For it is not by digging earth, or rolling stones, or carrying loads on our shoulders, or doing any other laborious work that we go through a speech; rather, the thought formed in us, revealed through the voice, became speech. But since such speech involves no weariness, we must consider which are the wearisome words of which a man will not be able to speak. “Let the elders,” it says, “be counted worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in the word.” By usage one is called an “elder” who has passed out of the disorderly age and come into the settled condition of old age; so that if someone is unstable in reasoning and has his life in disorder, such a one is not yet an elder, even if he appears grey-haired, but still a man. So the words that are truly words, those that come about for the profit of soul and the benefit of human beings, are full of sweat and toil and bring much weariness, that they may become words. “For the labouring farmer must be the first to receive the fruit,” says the craftsman of such words, as though “word” must be understood not as a spoken expression but as the virtue in deeds, set before those who see it as a teaching for life, becoming instead of a word for those who are taught. All such words, then, are wearisome, the words of those who lead the way in virtue by first achieving in themselves what they teach. For this is what it means to have to be first to partake of the fruits, which, before the others, we cultivate for ourselves through virtue. Or perhaps the passage also interprets the weakness of rational nature. For when the mind, having gone outside the senses — which have been named “vanity” — and somehow slipped into the contemplation of invisible things, attempts to set forth in speech what it has understood, then much weariness comes upon speech through this interpreting voice, which finds no device for making clear what cannot be uttered. We see the heaven, we receive by sense the rays of the luminaries, we have set foot on the earth, we draw the air in with our mouth, we use water for what nature thinks fit, we take fire into partnership in life; and if we wish to understand anything about these — what each of the things that appear is by the account of its essence, whence or how it took its subsistence — a man will not be able to speak, even if he happens to be above the others, since all knowledge that comprehends falls short before what cannot be reached. If the discourse about these things involves a weariness surpassing the human power and nature of speech, what would one say those suffer who discourse about the Word himself, or about the Father of the Word? Surely all lofty speech and grandeur of voice is a kind of obscurity and silence, if judged against the true meaning of what is sought, so that this alone can properly be said in his case: even if one sets every thought in motion and omits nothing that befits God, if the utterance is judged against the very dignity of the subject, whatever one says is not a word. “For a man will not be able to speak.” For sight has not brought to a halt the contemplation of what appears, which comes to the soul through the eyes; but always seeing as though they had not yet seen, they are still in ignorance of what … through … sight cannot; it has as the measure of its own activity what appears to it on the surface of things. Therefore it says, “The eye will not be filled with seeing, and the ear will not be filled with hearing.” The power of hearing, receiving the account of each thing, has no nature to be filled. For no one will be found … what is sought. How then will hearing be filled with listening about what is sought, when what would fill it does not exist?

Then after these words he questions himself and answers himself. For having asked, “What is it that has been?” he says, “The very thing that will be”; and “What is it that has been made? The very thing that will be made.” What, then, does the question mean? Following what we have learned, we object to him and say: “If all these things are vanity, clearly not one of these things, which do not subsist, has come into being. For the vain is altogether non-existent; and what does not exist no one would reckon among the things that have come to be. If, then, these things are not, tell us what it is that has come to be, which remains in being.” His answer to the question is brief: “Do you want to know what it is that has come to be? Understand what will be, and you will recognize what has been.” That is: “Understand, O human being, what you will become when you have raised yourself through virtue, if you are formed in soul in every respect by good features, if you come outside the stains of vice, if you wash off from your nature all the filth of material defilements — what you will become, adorned by such things, what form you will put on. If you understand this by reasoning, you have been taught what came to be at the first, that which is according to the image and likeness of God.” And where is that now, I shall say to the one teaching these things, which once came to be and is hoped for again later, but is not now? But he who teaches lofty things surely answers us with the same account: that the present things are named vanity for this very reason, that those things are not among the present ones. “And what,” it says, “is it that has been made? The very thing that will be made.” Let none of the hearers think this wordiness and a vain repetition of phrases in which there is no difference between what has come to be and what has been made. For by each of the two words the passage shows the difference of the soul from the flesh. The soul has come to be, and the body has been made. It is not because the force of the words signifies one thing and another that the passage uses this difference of words for each of the things signified, but in order to give you what is fitting to reckon about each: the soul came to be in the beginning as that which, cleansed later, will appear again; the body was made, formed by the hands of God, as that which the resurrection will show at the appointed times. For whatever you will see after the resurrection, such it surely was made at the first. For the resurrection is nothing else than the [return] to the original state. Therefore he adds what follows from this, saying that outside the original there is nothing. “For there is not anything fresh,” it says, “under the sun”; as if he were saying: if something is not according to the original, it is nothing at all, but is only thought to be. “For there is not,” he says, “anything fresh under the sun, so that someone should speak and point to something that comes later, that this is new and really subsists.” This is the sense of what was said. And the wording is as follows: “And there is nothing at all fresh under the sun, who will speak and say, See, this is new.” And he presses the argument further in what follows, saying: “If anything truly has come to be,” he says, “it is that which came to be in the ages before us.” For the very words of Scripture point to this sense, which run thus: “It has already been in the ages that came to be before us.” And if forgetfulness of what came to be has prevailed, do not be surprised at all; for the things that are now will also be overtaken by forgetfulness. For when nature inclined to evil, we fell into forgetfulness of the good things; but when there comes to be … toward the good, and our restoration again, evil in its turn will be covered over by forgetfulness. For I think this is the sense in what is said, where he says, “There is no memory of the first, and also of the last who come to be there will be no memory,” as if he were saying: the things that will come to pass at the last will wipe out the memory of those that came after the original good fortune, through which humanity came to be among evils. “For there will be no memory of them with those who come to be at the last,” that is, … the last state made a complete effacement of the memory of evils from nature. … in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages.

“I,” it says, “the Ecclesiast.” We have learned who the Ecclesiast is: the one who gathers into one what had wandered and been scattered, and makes all things one flock, so that nothing may be unable to hear the good voice of the shepherd, which gives life to all things. “For the words,” he says, “that I speak are spirit, and they are life.” He names himself Ecclesiast, as he names himself physician, and life, and resurrection, and light, and way, and door, and truth, and all the names of his love for humankind. As, then, the physician’s voice properly belongs to the sick, and the Word of life becomes active in the dead — who, when they hear the voice of the Son of Man, no longer remain in their ancient deadness — while those who are in tombs seek the voice of the resurrection, and the word of light is fitting for those in darkness, and the way is smooth for those who have wandered, and the door for those who need to enter, so too the Ecclesiast surely speaks to those who assemble as a church. So the Ecclesiast speaks to us; and let us, the church, listen to his words. For as the chorus looks to its leader, and sailors to the helmsman, and the battle line to the general, so too to the leader of the church [look] those who are in the fullness of the church. What, then, does the Ecclesiast say? “I became king over Israel in Jerusalem.” When was this? Surely when “I was established king by him on Zion his holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord” — he to whom the Lord said, “You are my Son,” and “Today I have begotten you.” For of the maker of the universe, the father of the ages, he said “today I have begotten,” so that by joining the temporal word to the moment of birth he might present not the existence before the ages but the birth in time through flesh for the salvation of human beings. These things, then, the true Ecclesiast goes through, teaching, I think, the great mystery of godliness, for whose sake God was manifested in the flesh.

“For I gave my heart,” he says, “to seek out and to examine in wisdom concerning all the things that come to be under heaven.” This is the reason the Lord came to dwell among human beings through the flesh: that he gave his heart to examine in his own wisdom the things that come to be under heaven. For the things above heaven did not need one to visit them, just as what is not held by disease does not need one to heal it. Since, then, the evils were around the earth … For the serpent, that crawling and violent beast, dragging itself on breast and belly, makes earth its food, feeding on nothing heavenly, but dragging itself in what is trodden underfoot, it always looks to what is trodden, watching the heel of the human journey, and injecting its venom into those who have lost the authority to tread upon serpents. For this reason he gave his heart to seek out and examine all the things that come to be under heaven. For in the things above the heavens the Prophet sees the divine magnificence unhumbled, saying, “Your magnificence has been lifted above the heavens”; whereas the heavenly part too was humbled through vice. For so the Psalmist says, that because of their sins they were humbled. This the Ecclesiast came to examine: what had come to be under heaven which was not there before; how vanity entered, how the non-existent prevailed, what is the power of that which does not exist. For evil has no substance, because it has its subsistence from what is not; and what is not, arising from what is, surely does not even exist according to its own nature; but vanity nevertheless prevails over those who have become like vanity. He came, then, to seek out in his own wisdom what had come to be under the sun, what the confusion of affairs here is, how what is was enslaved to what is not, how the insubstantial holds power against what is. And he knows that “God gave an evil distraction to the sons of men, to be distracted with it.” But it is not reverent to think this as one might understand it at first sight, that God himself gave the evil distraction to human beings; for then the cause of evils would be referred back to him. For he who is good by nature is surely also the giver of good things, because “every good tree produces good fruits,” and neither does a grape grow from thorns nor a thorn from a vine. What, then, is good by nature would not bring out anything evil from its treasures. For neither does the good man speak evil things out of the abundance of his heart, but utters what corresponds to his own nature; how much more, then, would the source of good things not pour out from its own nature anything evil? But the more reverent understanding suggests that we understand this: that the good is God’s gift. This is the self-determining … [which] became an instrument for sin. For the self-determining and unenslaved is by nature good, while what is held by necessities no one would count among the goods; but this self-determining impulse of the mind, slipping away without discipline toward the choice of vice, became a temptation to the soul, dragged down from the lofty and honourable things toward the passionate movements of nature. This is what “gave” signifies: not that he himself made evil in human life, but that the human being, through folly, used the good things given by God in the service of evils. It is customary for holy Scripture to declare such thoughts in such expressions: “God gave them up to dishonourable passions,” and “He gave them up to a debased mind,” and “He hardened the heart of Pharaoh,” and “Why, O Lord, did you make us wander from your way, did you harden our hearts so as not to fear you?” and “He made them wander in a trackless place and not on a road,” and “You deceived me and I was deceived,” and whatever is similar to these. In such cases the precise understanding does not establish that something of evil came to be in human nature from God, but accuses the [freedom], which is a good and a gift of God given to nature, but became evil through its inclination to the opposite.

The Ecclesiast, then, saw all the things made in the life under the sun, that all were vanity. For there was none who understood, there was none who sought God, since all turned aside, together they became worthless. Therefore, having said, “And see, all is vanity,” he added the cause: that God is not the cause of these things, but the free choice of human impulse, which he named “spirit.” He accuses this spirit, not because it was such from the beginning — for it would be beyond accusation if it had been made such — but because, having been distorted, it was put out of joint with the … “For what is distorted,” he says, “cannot be set in order”; that is, what is distorted could not belong to the creation set in order by God. For as the craftsman who constructs something for himself according to a plan straightens with rule and line the parts that complete the work of the vessel by their skilful relation to one another, and if any of them is not made straight by the line, the straight fitting surely does not admit the distortion, but that part too must be brought to the line and become straight, if it is to … — so the Ecclesiast says that nature distorted by vice cannot belong to the creation set in order by right reason. “And a lack,” he says, “cannot be counted.” Scriptural usage teaches us to understand “to lack” as to fall short, and this can be confirmed from many passages. For Paul, who was initiated in everything and in all things, knows both how to lack and how to abound; and the one who spent his father’s substance in prodigality began to lack when famine took hold; and Paul, going through the account of the saints, among the other things he says of what they suffered in body, adds this too, that they were “lacking, afflicted.” So here too the passage, saying “lack,” indicated by the word what is missing; and what is missing cannot be counted among the things that are. For the disciples too, as long as all were in their own fullness, were twelve in number; but when the son of perdition perished, the number was cut short, so that what was missing was not counted with those who were; for after Judas they both were and were called eleven. So, he says, “the lack will not be able to be counted.” What does he signify by this passage? That once our [nature] too was counted with the whole; for we too were [among the hundred sheep] in the holy [flock] of rational beings; but when the one sheep, our nature, … of the mountain way of life … was dragged down through vice to this salty and parched place, the same number is no longer recorded for the flock of those who did not wander, but they are called ninety-nine; for what is vain comes to be outside the number of the things that subsist, because “a lack will not be able to be counted.” He came, then, to seek and to save what was lost, and taking it up on his shoulders to restore to the things that are what was perishing in the vanity of the non-existent, so that the number of God’s creation may again become complete, what was lost having been saved and joined to those that were not lost. What, then, is the return of the one who wandered, and what is the manner of the return from evils to the good, we are taught in what follows. For he who was tested in all respects in likeness to us without sin speaks to us from what is ours; he who took up our weaknesses shows, through the very weaknesses of nature, the road out of vice.

Now, then, understand that Wisdom speaks from Solomon himself according to the flesh, and speaks those things through which above all we may be led to disdain for what human beings strive for. For his argument does not come about in the manner of the many, who do not have what they desire in their power, so that on this account … lacks credibility when he accuses things he has not experienced. For we do not learn everything by our own experience, but we know through reasonings alone those things whose experience in the enjoyment of pleasures poverty prevents. And if some advice is offered by us to someone, that one ought to count as nothing the things honoured by human beings, the hearer’s objection is ready at hand: that we dishonour those things because we have not come to know them by experience in them. But with the one who discourses on these things to us, every such objection is idle. For it is Solomon who says these things; this Solomon was third among the kings of Israel, after the famous Saul and after David, chosen by the Lord. He received the rule from his father, and having already grown to greatness of power, he was shown king to the Israelites; one who no longer [kept the country] subject by war and battle, but, living in peace with every authority, made it his business not the acquisition of what he did not have but the enjoyment of what he had, as though there was no hindrance to him in any of the things he desired. For his wealth extended as far as his desire, and his leisure for enjoyment was unrestricted, since nothing unwelcome [interrupted] his life amid what he desired. And being otherwise wise, and able by intelligence to devise any of the things that please, he said that he had devised this and that of the things pursued for enjoyment, and having done all that he enumerated in order in his account, he said that he had learned by experience itself that the one end of what is pursued in these things is vanity. He gave this order to his narrative: that first, in the first years of his life, he gave his leisure to education and was not softened in his zeal for the labours of such things, but used the free choice of the spirit — that is, the impulse of nature — for the increase of knowledge, even though what he strove for was achieved with labour; and that, having grown in this way through wisdom, he examined not only by reason the passionate and irrational deceit of human beings concerning bodily enjoyments, but also came to recognize, through the very experience of each thing pursued, its vanity. That is the aim of what has been examined. It would be time also to set out in order, following the sequence of what is written, the contemplation of the wording.

“I spoke in my heart, saying, See, I have been made great.” For since I saw about myself the greatness of power and the weight of kingship suddenly come upon me — but before these things I made the possession of wisdom my chief concern, which cannot be acquired otherwise than with labour and sweat. Therefore, having said, “I spoke in my heart, saying, See, I have been made great,” he added, “I added wisdom.” For the weight of power which came to me of its own accord I increased by the addition of wisdom, saying this to myself: that for this reason above all I must be shown superior to the kings before me, and must have the advantage in wisdom. “For I added wisdom,” he says, “beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem, and I understood how these things might come to be.” For who does not know that wisdom consists in the knowledge of what others have laboured over before, for those who love labour? “Therefore,” he says, “my heart saw many things, wisdom and knowledge,” the knowledge of such things not having come of its own accord and without toil. “But since,” he says, “I gave my heart to know wisdom and knowledge” — as though I would not have learned those things unless labour and practice had led the way to their knowledge — “I also came to know parables and understanding,” that is, the apprehension of what lies beyond, which comes from analogy through comparison with the things near at hand. And he says that he learned these: “For I came to know parables and understanding.” Just as in the Gospel, too, the Lord, teaching his hearers, brings the account of the kingdom before their eyes by describing a pearl, or a treasure, or a wedding, or a grain, or leaven, or something of this kind, not saying that these things are the kingdom, but through the likeness of the things signified in them [setting out] parabolically to the hearers certain glimmers and riddles of realities beyond comprehension — “and for this,” he says, “the free choice of the spirit came to be in me: that a multitude of wisdom might come to be in me,” so that by becoming wise I might not miss the knowledge of the things that are, nor come to be outside the discovery of what is profitable. For knowledge consists from wisdom, and knowledge makes our judgment of what we should attend to easier. But this does not by nature come to those who strive for it without toil; rather, he who adds knowledge to himself surely increases the labour along with the learning. Therefore he says, “He who adds knowledge adds pain.” And having become such a man, then … of pleasant things as … For he says, “I said in my heart, Come now, I will test you with gladness, and see in good things. And this too is vanity.” For he did not at once give himself to such testing, nor, without having tasted the hardened and more austere life, did he slip into participation in pleasures; but having been trained in those, and having first achieved in his character what is … and unyielding, through which above all the lessons of wisdom come to those who strive for them, then he lets himself down to the things thought delightful to the senses, not dragged down to them by passion, but for the sake of examining whether sense-perception, when it comes to be among these things, contributes anything to the knowledge of the truly good. Since from the beginning he then makes even laughter his enemy, and names the passion “distraction,” which in meaning is equal to derangement and madness. For what else would one properly call laughter, which is neither speech nor an act accomplished for some aim? An unseemly loosening of the figure, a shaking of the breath, a convulsion of the whole body, a stretching of the cheeks, [a baring] of teeth and gums, … and contortions …, an unreasonable breaking of the voice, chopped up together with the breaking of the breath — what else would this be, he says, but madness? Therefore he says, “To laughter I said, Derangement,” as if he said to laughter: “You are mad and out of your senses and do not stay within the settled state, behaving unseemly of your own will and distorting the form in the passion, working the distortion for nothing useful.” “And I said to gladness, Why are you doing this?” — which is equal to saying, “I stood in opposition to pleasure, suspecting its first approach, as of some thief slipping secretly into the storerooms of the soul. I never let it gain mastery over my mind. For as soon as I recognized pleasure creeping like some beast around my senses, I at once stepped out against it, saying to this servile and irrational gladness, ‘Why are you doing this? [Why do you] slacken the tension of the mind? Why do you unnerve the soul’s vigour? Why do you outrage the reasonings? [Why] do you make gloom with your own mist in the clear sky of pure thoughts for me?’” “Having done these and such things,” he says, “I examined whether my heart would draw my flesh like wine”; that is, so that care for intelligible things might become stronger than the movements of the flesh, so that nature should not be at strife with itself, the mind choosing some things and the flesh [inclining] to others, but that the mind of our flesh should be persuaded by and … to the intelligible part of the soul, the lesser being drawn in and swallowed up, in the way that happens with the thirsty. For wine does not remain in the cup, if it is brought to a thirsty mouth, but passes over to the drinker and vanishes, being drawn inside eagerly. When this happened, the guidance toward the knowledge of the things that are became for me without wandering and without hindrance. “My heart,” he says, “guided me in wisdom,” by which I mastered the uprising of pleasures, and education became for me the cause of mastering … over gladness. For so the sequence of the wording contains it. But what I strove for most of all in knowledge was not to busy my life with anything vain, but to find that good, attaining which one does not miss the judgment of what is beneficial; which is lasting and not temporary, and extends through the whole of life, a hope for good that comes to every age — first, middle and last — and to the whole number of the days. “Until I see,” he says, “what is the good for the sons of men, which they will do under the sun, the number of the days of their life.” For the things pursued through the flesh, even if they entice the senses ever so much for the present, have their gladness for a moment. For it is not possible to take lasting pleasure in any of the things that happen in the body; the pleasure of drinking ends together with satiety; likewise with eating, fullness quenches appetite; and any other desire in the same way withers with the presence of what is desired, and if it comes again, again it withers. Nothing of what delights the senses lasts for ever, nor remains the same. And besides this, there is one good for infancy and another for the prime of life, another for one past his prime, another again for the one beyond his age, and another again for the old man already flowing into the earth. “But I,” he says, “was seeking that good which is equally good for every age and for every time of life; of which satiety is not expected and fullness is not found, but the appetite extends together with the participation, and the longing grows to its height together with the enjoyment, … and is not circumscribed by the age of what is desired. But the more one delights in the good, the more the desire extends together with the delight, and the delight is kindled together with the desire; and in every interval of life it is always beautiful to those who pursue it, not changing with the instability of ages and times; which is good for one who is asleep and one who is awake, for one who is grieved, for one who passes the night and one who passes the day, and for all things in life without exception; becoming neither worse nor better, neither lessened nor increased, by what befalls anyone through circumstances.” This, in my view at least, is the truly existing good, which Solomon was seeking to see, which human beings would do under the sun for the whole number of their life; which seems to me nothing else than the work of faith, whose activity is common to all, set before those who wish it on equal terms, all-powerful, and remaining lastingly with life. This is the good work, which may it also come to be in us, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory for the ages of ages. Amen.

It would be time to search out what the voice of the Ecclesiast will teach us after this. We learned at first what we learned: that the one who assembles the whole creation into a church, who seeks what was lost and gathers into one what had wandered, is the one who visits the earthly life. For what is under heaven is earthly, what the passage calls “under heaven,” in which are deceit and the non-existent. In the second exposition we learned that the accusation against the disposition given to enjoyment and passion was made in the person of Solomon, so that the rejection of such things might be credible to us, since it comes from one who had in his full power whatever leads to pleasure for enjoyment, and who spat on all the things that seem to be eagerly pursued among human beings as worth nothing. What, then, do we learn now in the third place, following the sequence? What I think is the lesson most fitting of all for those who assemble in the church: I mean the confession of the things that have been done against reason, which produces in the soul the passion of shame through the open declaration of what was out of place. For the modesty that lies in human beings seems to be a great and strong weapon for escaping sin, placed in us by God, I think, for this very purpose, so that such a disposition of the soul might become for us an aversion from what is worse. Modesty and the passion of shame are akin and closely related to one another, and through both of them sin is hindered, if one is willing to use such a disposition of the soul for this end. For often modesty more than fear has trained one to avoid what is out of place; but shame too, following on the exposures of a fault, is enough of itself to bring the sinner to his senses so that he does not again fall into the same things. And if one were to write down their difference in a definition, shame is intensified modesty, and modesty, conversely, is relaxed shame. The difference and the kinship of the passions are shown also by the colour of the face. Modesty is marked by blushing alone, the body somehow sharing in the soul’s feeling by a natural disposition, and the warmth about the heart boiling up to the surface of the face; but the one who is ashamed at the disclosure of his fault … becomes … and reddish, fear having mixed pallor with the blush. Such a passion, then, would be enough to keep those who have been caught in something out of place from falling again into the things whose exposure they have made with shame. If, then, these things are so, and the passage has rightly aimed at the passion, since such a disposition is implanted in nature as a guard against faults, it is good to regard as a lesson proper to the church the amendment that comes through the open confession of faults; for through this one can secure one’s own soul with the weapon of shame. For just as, if someone through immoderate gluttony has collected in himself certain humours hard to digest, and then, when the body has become inflamed, is cured of the disease by the knife and cautery, he has, as it were, a tutor against disorder for the rest of his life when he sees the scar of the cautery on his body, so the one who has posted himself up publicly through the confession of hidden things sets the memory of the passion of shame as a tutor for the life that follows. These, then, are the things in which the church is instructed through the present reading of what is written in the Ecclesiast.

For he says this, publishing it with a free voice, and setting up before all human beings, as it were a written pillar, the confession of what he had done — things such that ignorance of them and the silence of speech would be more honourable. He says them; whether he truly did them or is fashioning them for our benefit, so as to carry the argument through to its aim by a consistent sequence, I cannot say precisely. In any case he says these things, which one who looks to virtue would not willingly be carried along with. But whether, for the sake of a saving arrangement, he narrates as having happened things that did not happen, and accuses them as one who has experienced them, so that we may turn away from desire for what has been accused before we experience it; or whether he really let himself down willingly to the enjoyment of such things, so as to train even his senses through their opposites — let it be left to the free choice of whoever wishes to take his conjecture in whichever direction he wants. But if someone says that he really came to be in the experience of pleasures, we understand it thus. Just as those who [dive] to the depth of the water, in case they might find a pearl somewhere or something else of the things born in the deep — for whom the hardship under the water brings no pleasure, but the hope of gain has made them divers — so, if what Solomon says in these passages really happened, he surely gave himself to luxury like one of those who dive for purple in the sea: not so as to be filled with the brine of the sea — I call pleasure brine — but to seek what is useful for the mind in such a deep. What would be found useful through such things, according to my conjecture at least, is either to blunt the impulses of the body by setting before it in full what it wants — for nature always has its movements more contentious toward what is forbidden — or the teacher comes into these things for the sake of credibility, so that the thing despised by one who learned its vanity by experience might no longer be thought desirable by human beings. For they say that physicians too succeed in their art in those matters where they have come to know the form of the illness through their own bodies, and they become safer advisers and healers of those whose knowledge they had through being healed first, inasmuch as they were taught beforehand by their own suffering. Let us see, then, what the one who heals our life says he experienced in his own life.

“[I made great],” he says, “my work; I built houses.” At once the passage begins from an accusation. For he does not speak of the work of God, which I am, but says, “I made great what is mine.” My work is nothing else than what brings pleasure to the senses. This work is one by its general account, but in detailed division it is compelled by the needs of luxury to be split into many. For whoever has once come to be within the matter of the deep must necessarily turn his eye in every direction from which pleasure may possibly appear. For as water is channelled in many directions from one spring through pipes, and what is divided from the spring is no less water, even if it happens to flow in countless jets, so pleasure, being one by nature, flows everywhere, differently and in different ways, by underground channels in the differences of pursuits, introducing itself together with the needs of life. For example, life has made dwelling necessary for nature; for the human being is by nature too weak to bear the extremes of heat and cold. Up to this point the house has its usefulness for life; but pleasure has forced the human being to pass beyond the limits of need. For as though not providing what the body needs, but devising delights and luxuries for the eyes, he is almost grieved that he did not make heaven itself a roof, and cannot fit the very rays of the sun into his ceiling. Therefore he widens on every side the outlines of his buildings, founding the enclosure of his dwelling for himself as though it were another inhabited world. He stretches the walls up to the greatest possible height; he decorates the interiors of the rooms with ornaments. … Thessalian and … stone is opened out, and by iron into slabs …; the metals of the Nile and those of Numidia are sought out, and somewhere too the Phrygian stone [is brought] by the zeal of those [who desire it], whose purple dye … becomes a luxury to greedier eyes, having painted on the white a varied and many-shaped diffusion of colour. How much zeal about these things! How many shapes! How many machines! some sawing through the materials with water and iron, others with human hands, those who work the cutting toiling night and day! And not even these sufficed for those who labour over vain adornment; even the purity of glass is stained with drugs into varied dyes, so that something from it too may be added to the luxury of their conceits. How would one describe the elaborateness of the ceilings, in which the beams made of cedar are turned back again by the devices of art into what are thought to be trees, putting forth branches and leaves and fruits in the carvings? I say nothing of the gold stretched out into thin and airy films and spread everywhere over these, so as to turn the greed of the eyes toward itself. And the importation of ivory for the elaborate adornment of …, or the silver beaten in with nails, and all such things — what would one say? Or the floors of the houses gleaming beneath with the varied dyes of stones, so that even their feet may luxuriate in the gleam of the stones; and the ambition for the multitude of such houses, whose construction the need of life does not make necessary, but desire, advancing through folly, finds what is unseasonable. For some parts of the houses must be running-tracks, others …, some for entrances, others again for gatehouses. For they do not think the gates and porches sufficient for display, nor the spaciousness inside the gates, unless something of this kind meets those who enter first, such as to strike the one who comes in with amazement at once at what he sees. And besides these, baths that go along with ambition in their use, flooded with whole rivers in the abundance of their jets; and gymnasia set before them, and these too excessively fitted out with varied marbles for adornment; and colonnades on every side round the dwelling …, when bronze in the statues is shaped into countless forms, to whatever the desire for elaborateness pours the material; and the images of marble, and the paintings on panels, through which … commit fornication with their eyes, art stripping bare by imitation what should not be seen; and all that one can see in such things to strike amazement and charm … How could one go through each thing in speech, in which the zeal is an accusation and an exposure of carelessness about the things that come first? For the more one increases his zeal for what is built, in number and in ambition for materials, the more it exposes the soul’s lack of adornment. For one who looks to himself and adorns his own real dwelling, so as one day to receive even God as its inhabitant, has other materials from which beauty is gathered for such a dwelling. I know a gold that glitters in such works, the gold mined from the thoughts of Scripture; I know a silver, the divine oracles tried in the fire, whose brilliance flashes, shining out through the truth. And if you understand the gleams of varied stones, with which the walls of such a temple are adorned and the floors of the building, as the varied dispositions of the virtues, you would not miss the adornment that befits the house. Let the floor be paved with self-control, through which the dust of earthly thought will [not] trouble the one who lives there. Let the hope of the heavens beautify the ceiling; looking up to it with the eye of the soul, you will see not images of beauty shaped by carving, but the archetypal beauty itself, not embroidered with gold and silver, but what is above gold and much precious stone. And if we must also sketch in speech an adornment on the sides, let incorruptibility and freedom from passion overlay the house on this side; on that side let righteousness and freedom from anger adorn the dwelling. On another part let humility and long-suffering shine out, and on another again reverence toward the Divine; and let love, the good craftsman, fit all these together harmoniously with one another. And if you desire baths, if you wish you have a bath at home, and your own jets through which one can wash off the stains of the soul — the bath the great David too used, luxuriating in such a bath every night. Do not elaborate Phrygian or porphyry columns to support the colonnade of the soul; but let what is firm and immovable in every good be more precious than these material ornaments. Images of every kind, whether in paintings or in sculptures, all that human beings contrive by deceit for the imitation of truth, such a dwelling does not admit, filled as it is with the statues of truth. If you desire running-tracks and walks, you have the way of life in the commandments. For so Wisdom says: “I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I turn about in the midst of the paths of judgment.” How good it is for the soul to move and exercise itself in these, and, having passed by its motion through the place of the commandment, to turn back again to the same; that is, having fulfilled the commandment of the things it strives for, again to the second and third … Let the amendment of character and the decorum of life adorn it. One who trains his own building to beauty in this way will care little for earthly matter, will not trouble himself with mines, will not cross the Indian seas so that the bones of elephants may be attached to the material by art; but he has at home the wealth that supplies such constructions.

… For to the better-disposed among the sons the [father’s] unseemliness was thought worthy of pity, but to the reckless and undisciplined one it was an occasion for laughter … of drunkenness … the confession of the planting of vineyards. For the passage includes in its force all the passions that wine produces, how many and of what kind they are. For who of all people does not know that wine, when through immoderation it goes beyond need, is a kindling of licentiousness, a supply of pleasures, a ruin of youth, a disgrace of old age, a dishonour of women, a drug of madness, a provision for drunken violence, a poison of the soul, a deadening of the mind, an estrangement from virtue? From it comes laughter without excuse, lamentation without cause, spontaneous tears, groundless boasting, shamelessness in lying, desire for the non-existent, hope for the impossible, overweening threat, irrational fear, insensibility to what is truly fearful, causeless suspicion, unreasonable friendliness, promising of the impossible; to pass over the other things — the unseemly nodding, the drooping heavy-headedness, the disgrace that comes from immoderate repletion, the loosening of the joints, the bending of the neck, which no longer holds itself up on the shoulders, since the moisture from the wine loosens the binding of the neck. What brought about the lawless abomination of intercourse with daughters? What stole away Lot’s mind from what was happening, so that he both dared the abomination and did not know what he had dared? Who, as in a riddle, coined the strange naming of those children? How did the mothers of that accursed birth become sisters of their own children? How did the children have the same man as father and grandfather together? Who confounded nature in lawlessness? Was it not wine, going beyond its measures, that brought in this unbelievable tragedy? Did not drunkenness weave such a tale into the history, one that by its excesses surpasses even real tales? “For they made their father drink wine,” it says; and thus, his mind having been driven out by the wine, as if held by some enchantment he left this tragic narrative to life, his perception having been stolen from him by drunkenness at the time of the abomination. Those women who carried the wine out with them — O evil from an evil mixing bowl for the father! How much better it would have been for that wine too to have perished in Sodom with everything, before becoming the supplier of such a tragedy! And though there are such examples, and so many evils from wine in life every day, the one who shamelessly posts up his own deeds through confession says that he did this too: that he not only used wine that existed, but [took care] how the [supply] of such a thing might increase. “For I planted for myself,” he says, “vineyards.” I would not need [vineyards], if I myself had become a flourishing vine, a spiritual vine, luxuriant and spreading, entwined with what is akin to it by the branches of life and the tendrils of love, and in leaf, instead of leaves, with the decorum of its ways, and nourishing the sweet and ripe cluster of virtue. One who plants these in his own soul and cultivates the wine that gladdens the heart, and works his own land according to the proverb, as the law of such cultivation requires — calling, as it were, his life to account by his reasonings, plucking out the bastard growths that spring up beside the roots of the virtues, watering the soul with lessons, and pruning with the sickle of the discerning word the mind’s inclination toward what is superfluous and profitless — such a one would be most blessed in his farming, pressing out his own cluster into the mixing bowl of wisdom. But he who speaks of the earth and embraces its things does not know such planting. For he adds to these the [gardens] and parks of wealth … What need of many parks for one who looks to the one paradise? What benefit to me from a garden that grows vegetables, the food of the sick? [If I had been in] the paradise, I would not have been poured out into the desire for many parks. If I had kept my soul in health, so as to be able to share in the more solid food, [I would] not [have sought] the food suited to weakness. But since luxury has once come in together with need, and desire has passed its limits, after the extravagance in houses and the expense on vain things under a roof, he then cultivates luxury in the open air as well, and uses even the nature of the air for the desire of pleasures. For trees are cultivated for him by farming, evergreen and dense, becoming a ceiling of air, so that even in the open he may luxuriate as in a house; and the surface of the earth is clothed with every kind of plant by the gardeners’ art, so that pleasant things from every side may meet the eye wherever it turns its gaze, and he may always be among the things he desires, and see in each season of the year what is beyond the season: grass in winter, and flowers before their time, and the vine trained up trees, entwining its own branches with others’, and the graceful windings of ivy about the trees, and all the kinds of fruit, which, mixed with one another from different kinds, do violence to nature, so as to seem in form and taste whatever arises from the blending of different stocks. All these, and anything else that art has found in plants by doing violence to nature — things which the need of life did not seek, but undisciplined desire seeks — these, says the one who confesses his own deeds, came about in his love of art in gardens and parks. For by saying, “I planted every fruit tree,” he indicated by this comprehensive phrase that he left out nothing of such things. Then, after the luxury in the open and under a roof, not even water is left without its contribution to the supply of pleasures, as though one must luxuriate in all the elements: in earth through what belongs to it, in air through the trees, in water through a hand-made sea. For so that the sight of water too may sweeten the deceit of the eyes, the ground becomes a lake, the water being enclosed by buildings all round, so that swimming may bring pleasure to those … bodies, and the outflow, divided everywhere for the needs of what is watered, may furnish parks. “For I made for myself,” he says, “pools of water, to water from them a forest sprouting trees.” But for me there was the spring of paradise, that is, the teaching of the virtues, by which the drought of the soul was bedewed, having looked beyond earthly waters, whose enjoyment is temporary and whose nature is passing. It would be better, then, to channel for ourselves a small outflow from the divine spring, by which the virtues of the soul spring up and are watered, so that the grove of good … may flourish in our souls, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.

The topic of confession still holds our discourse. For the one who narrates his own deeds goes through almost everything by which the vanity of the affairs of this life is made known. But now he touches, as it were, on a greater accusation of the things he … from which the passion of arrogance … For what is there so conducive to conceit among the things enumerated — a costly house, a multitude of vines, the beauty of gardens and of waters, the collecting of water in pools and its distribution in parks — as for one who is a human being to think himself master of his own kind? “For I acquired,” he says, “male and female slaves, and home-born slaves were mine.” You see the swelling of boastfulness. Such a saying lifts itself up directly against God. For we have heard from prophecy that all things are slaves of the power that is above all. So the one who makes God’s possession his own possession, and apportions power to his own race, so as to think himself master of men and women — what else does he do but overstep nature through arrogance, regarding himself as something other than those he rules? “I acquired male and female slaves.” You condemn to slavery the human being, whose nature is free and self-determining, and you legislate against God, overturning his law for nature. For the one who was made for this very purpose, to be lord of the earth, and was appointed to rule by the one who formed him — this one you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though you were overstepping and fighting against the divine command. You have forgotten the limits of your authority: that your rule is restricted to the governance of the irrational creatures. For it says, “Let them rule over birds and fish and four-footed beasts.” How is it that you pass by the slavery that is subject to you and lift yourself up against the free nature itself, counting your own kind with the four-footed and even the footless creatures? “You subjected all things to man,” the Word cries through prophecy, and it brings under number the things subject to reason: cattle, and oxen, and sheep. Were human beings born to you from your cattle? Did your cows give birth to human offspring? For the irrational creatures are the only slaves of human beings: “making grass spring up for the cattle, and green plants for the service of human beings.” But you, splitting nature into slavery and lordship, have made it be a slave to itself and lord over itself. “For I acquired male and female slaves.” For what price, tell me? What did you find among existing things worth as much as this nature? For how many coins did you value reason? For how many obols did you sell the image of God? God said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” Who, tell me, is the one who sells, who is the one who buys, the one who is in the likeness of God, who rules all the earth, and has received from God as his inheritance authority over everything on the earth? This belongs to God alone; or rather, not even to God himself, almost. For “his gifts,” it says, “are irrevocable.” God, then, would not enslave our nature, he who called us back to freedom when we had been enslaved to sin of our own choosing. But if God does not enslave the free, who is it that sets his own power above God’s? And how will the ruler of all the earth and of all earthly things be sold? For the property of the one sold must necessarily be handed over with him. For how much, [then, would you value] the things under all the earth? But if these things are beyond price, of what price, tell me, is the one above them worth? Even if you name the whole world, not even so have you found a price equal to his worth. For he who knew human nature precisely did not say even that the whole world is worthy to be valued as an exchange for a human soul. So whenever a human being is for sale, nothing else is brought to the market than the lord of the earth. Then surely the creation that belongs to him will be auctioned along with him. And this is land and sea and islands and everything in them. What, then, will the buyer pay? What will the seller receive, when so great a property follows the transaction? But the small document, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols have deceived you into thinking that you are master of the image of God. O the folly! If the contract were lost, if the letters were destroyed by moths, if a drop of water falling on it from somewhere wiped it out, where are your pledges of slavery? Where are your credentials of mastery? For I see nothing more that you get from the name, compared with the one subject to you, except the name. What has this authority added to your nature? Not time, not advantages. Your birth is from the same things, your life of the same manner; the passions of soul and body prevail equally in you who are lord and in him who is yoked under the lordship: pains and cheerfulness, gladness and distress, griefs and pleasures, angers and fears, diseases and deaths. Is there any difference in these between the slave and the one who is lord? Do they not draw in the same air when they breathe? Do they not see the sun in the same way? Do they not equally preserve their nature by taking in food? Is the arrangement of their inward parts not the same? Are not the two one dust after death? Is not the judgment one? A common kingdom, and a common Gehenna? You who are equal in all things, in what, tell me, have you more, that you, a human being, think yourself master of a human being? “And I acquired,” you say, “male and female slaves,” as though they were a herd of goats or of swine. For having said, “I acquired male and female slaves,” he added the cheerfulness he had from flocks and herds: “And I had a great possession of herds and flocks,” as though both the one and the other were yoked under his authority in the same rank.

Then after these things the confession proceeds as by a road to the greater sins. For he cries out against himself the root of all evils, which is love of money. And he says, word for word: “I gathered for myself also silver and also gold.” For what harm did the gold do, mixed in with the earth and remaining in the places where it was placed from the beginning by the Creator? What more did the Maker owe you concerning the fruits of the earth? Did he not allot you the fruits of trees and the seeds alone for food? Why [do you pass] the limits of [need] …? Or show me that these too were granted you by the Creator, so as to mine and dig up and melt down in fire what lies beneath, and to gather the things you did not scatter. Perhaps someone may reckon this no charge at all, to gather money for oneself in this way from the mines of the earth. But since the passage adds “the treasures of kings and of the countries,” the sense of the gathering no longer tends toward the blameless. For as royal power is permitted to gather an abundance of money from the countries — that is, to impose taxes, to exact tithes, to compel subjects to contribute money — so he says he gathered both gold and silver. However that may be, whether so or otherwise, I would gladly learn what more there will be for one who gathers such materials. Let it be granted by hypothesis that it comes to the lovers of money not by the mina or the drachma or the talent, but that all things together are turned to gold for them: the earth, the sand, the mountains, the plains, the glens; let us suppose all are changed at once into this material. What will life gain toward happiness through these things? If he sees everywhere what he now sees in a little, which of the goods of the soul, which of the things pursued for the body, will come about through such abundance? Will there be any hope through this that one who lives in so much gold will become wise, quick-witted, contemplative, knowledgeable, a friend of God, self-controlled, pure, passionless, unmixed with and unreceptive of everything that drags down to vice? Or if not this, will it be possible for the body, stretching life out to many hundreds of years, to be ageless, free from disease and harm, and all that is pursued in the life in the flesh? But no one is so vain, nor so ignorant of our common nature, as to think that these things would come to human beings if the material of money were poured out to all at will in unstinted abundance. For even now one can see many of those who excel in such abundance living in a pitiable body, who, even if their attendants were present, [would not be] able to live without them. If, then, the abundance of gold that our argument set forth by hypothesis has shown no gain either for body or for soul, much more is what is shown in small amount proved useless for the benefit of those who have it. For what would come to the owner from the material itself, which is active neither for taste nor for smell nor for hearing, and to touch is the same as anything resistant? Let no one bring up to me the [value] attached to gold. For the one who exchanged gold for bread or a garment has traded the useless for the useful, and lives by making bread his food, not gold. But the one who has gathered this material for himself through such transactions — what use did he get from the money? What counsel through it, what teaching of affairs, what foretelling of the future? Who had comfort in it for the pains of the body? He counted it, he stored it away, he sealed it with a seal; asked for it, he denied it; disbelieved, he even swore an oath. This is the blessedness, this the end of the zeal, this the enjoyment, this far the happiness: to have procured material by perjury. “But the form of gold,” he says, “is of fine colour.” Is not fire too of fine colour, … brighter than the rays of the sun? Who prevents you from this enjoyment, so that you must procure the pleasures of the eyes through the fine colour of gold? “But the fire is quenched,” he says, “and the sun sets, and the charm of its brightness does not last.” But what difference, tell me, has gold from lead in the dark? “But from fire or the stars,” he says, “we could not have necklaces and bracelets, and brooches, and girdles, and collars, crowns, and such things; whereas gold makes these and anything else contrived for adornment.” The pleading of the material has led the zeal to the summit of vanity. For I would say this very thing to them: for what purpose does he strive who binds gold on his hair or hangs it from the [lobes] of his ears, or puts it round his neck in luxurious necklaces, or wears it on some other part of the body, … of the body, himself in no way transformed toward the gleam of the gold? For one who looks at the wearer of gold sees the gold just as if it happened to be lying in the shops, but sees the wearer such as he is by nature. Even if the gold is well worked and engraved, even if [set with] green [stones] …, nature has received some [benefit] for perception from the things placed beside it? But if there is some disfigurement about the face, or something natural is lacking, or an eye is [missing], or a cheek is hideously hollowed by a scar, the ugliness remains in what is seen, not in the least darkened by the gleam of the gold; and if he happens to be in pain in his body, it brings no comfort to the sufferer. What, then, brings nothing useful to those who strive for it, neither for beauty nor for the good condition of the body nor for comfort in pains — for whose sake is it striven for? And what is the disposition of those who have melted their heart into this material, when they are conscious of having such a possession and exult in themselves as having something more? If someone asked them whether they would accept having their nature changed into that, and becoming that which they honour with so great a disposition, would they choose the change, so that their nature passed over from human beings to gold, and they were shown to be no longer rational and intelligent and using their senses for life, but pale and heavy and voiceless, soulless and senseless, such as the nature of gold is? I do not think they would choose this, not even those who are most melted into the material by desire. If, then, to people of sound mind it is already a curse to come to be in the properties of soulless matter, what is this irrational madness about the possession of things whose end is vanity, so that those who have gone raving mad for money dare even murders and robbery for it? And not only this, but also the wicked device of interest, which one would not be wrong to name another robbery and bloodshed. For what difference is there between making oneself master of a traveller’s goods by murdering him and acquiring what does not belong to one through the compulsion of interest? O evil name! Interest, “offspring,” becomes the name of robbery. O bitter marriages! O … union, which nature did not know, but the disease of the [greedy] … in soulless things! O cruel conceptions, from which such offspring is born! Among existing things only the living has been distinguished by the difference of male and female. To these the God who formed them said, “Increase and multiply,” so that what is given life might increase to a multitude through generation from one another. But the offspring of gold — from what marriages is it constituted? From what pregnancy is it brought to term? But I know the birth-pangs of such offspring, having learned them from the Prophet: “See, he travailed with injustice, he conceived trouble, and he gave birth to lawlessness.” This is that offspring, which greed travails with, lawlessness bears, and hatred of humankind delivers as midwife. For the one who always hides his means, and confirms by oath that he does not have them, when he sees someone choked by necessity, then appears pregnant in his purse; then, through love of gain, he travails with the wicked offspring, … the hope of the loan, like one who quenches the flame with oil. For he did not heal the loss with the loan, but increased it; and as fields bear thorns of their own accord in droughts, so in the misfortunes of those in distress the interest of the greedy grows wild. Then he holds out his hand with the money, like the fishing line [hiding] the hook … to the present plenty, and if he had anything hidden in store, he vomits it out together with the pull of the hook. Such are the benefactions of interest. And if someone takes away another’s provisions by force, or steals them secretly, he is called violent and a robber, and the like; but the one who makes injustice attested by witnesses and bitterness [legal], and strengthens lawlessness with contracts, is called a lover of humankind and a benefactor and a saviour and all the good names. And gain from theft is called a theft; but the one who strips the debtor through such necessity calls his bitterness by the pet name of kindness. For so they name the losses of the wretched.

“I gathered for myself also silver and also gold.” But the wise man who instructs our life counted these too in the list of things confessed for this reason: so that human beings, learning from one who condemned it by experience that this is one of the things condemned as out of place, may guard against the attack of evil before experiencing it; just as one can pass through places infested by robbers and wild beasts unharmed because those who have faced danger in them have gone before. And well does the divine Apostle, well does he define the passion of love of money, declaring it the root of all evils. For just as, if a corrupt and putrid humour flows into some part and inflammation arises in the place, the fluid that has settled there must necessarily break out into an abscess and corruption, its quality escaping to the surface, so with those into whom the disease of love of money has flowed, the passion breaks out for the most part into licentiousness. Therefore he adds to the abundance of gold and silver the unseemliness that follows in sequence from the disease that took hold first. “For I made for myself,” he says, “male and female singers, [the delights of the sons of men,] for the banquets male and female cupbearers.” The mention of the names was enough to post up publicly the passion that the disease concerning money had paved the way for. O this monstrous love of art! How it brings upon the soul the flood of pleasures all at once, flooding souls through hearing and sight as with double torrents, so that evil may be both seen and heard! … Then sight vies with hearing, and hearing with sight. From there the female voice, through the loose harmony of the songs, brings the passion in with it into the heart; from here sight, like some engine of war, through the eyes … overthrows the soul. And the general of this battle line is wine, like some wicked archer shooting the human being with double arrows, directing the points at hearing and at sight; for to hearing the arrow is the song, to sight what appears. For “cupbearers” is not a bare name; the title surely comes from the work. When, then, neat wine is poured out unsparingly for the drinkers, and youth trained to beauty serves in such ministry — either boys made effeminate by their adornment, or the female sex itself moving about the banquet and confounding unseemly reasoning with the loving-cups — in what is it likely that such pursuits will end? For the one who makes each of these things his aim, and passes by need through elaborateness, how he adorns the [singers] …, their dress — it is better to keep silent about such things and not go deeply into them in our discourse by describing them, so that the memory may not, through the very accusation, scratch open the wounds of the more passionate. For these things the gold, and for these the silver, so that it may prepare such things!

Or perhaps for this reason the passion of pleasure is named a serpent by Scripture, whose nature is such that if its head slips into a joint of the wall, it draws all the trailing coil behind it in after. I mean something like this: nature makes a dwelling necessary for human beings; but through this need pleasure, slipping into a joint of the soul, turned need aside into an immoderate extravagance of adornment and transformed its zeal; then to certain vineyards, and pools and parks and the … After these it rises to its peak in arrogance and coils itself in conceit, yoking under itself rule over those of its own kind. After this it drags the coil of love of money, which licentiousness necessarily follows, the last and tail part of the beastliness of pleasure. But just as one cannot pull a serpent out by the tail end of its spine, since its scales by nature resist in the opposite direction those who pull, so one cannot begin from the last parts to expel the creeping thing of pleasure from the soul, unless one shuts out the first entry of evil. Therefore the guide to virtue commands us to watch its head, naming the beginning of vice its head; if this is not admitted, the rest is ineffective. For one who has set himself against pleasure in general as an enemy would not be carried away by the partial attacks of passion; but one who has admitted the beginning of the passion has admitted the whole beast into himself together with it. For this reason the one who publishes such passions, having gone through them all, takes up the account in summary. For having said at the beginning, “I made my work great,” he now adds, after the detailed exposition of what happened, “I was made great,” showing that his knowledge of the opposites did not come about through small things, but that his experience advanced to the very greatest magnitude, so that in no memory of those before him was there anything equal. For he says, “I was made great,” and added, “beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem”; and he has now revealed the aim for whose sake, having been trained beforehand in all wisdom, he went down to the experience of such things. For he says, “And my wisdom stood by me.” He signifies by these words: “Through wisdom [I found out] every device for enjoyment, and my mind is at the very summit of what is found in these things.” Sight cooperated with desire, and free choice, through the pleasure of the eyes, [with] the things devised for enjoyment … but participation in pleasures became for me a portion of possession; which seems to me to signify nothing else than: “I encompassed in myself every device for enjoyment, taking gladness from what happened as from some possession.” “For I did not keep back my heart from any gladness, and my heart was glad in all my toil, and this became my portion from all my toil” — calling his possession a portion. Since, then, he went through the luxury in detail, running from beginning to end, and went through in speech everything by which pleasures are roused in those who enjoy them — the beauties of buildings, the vineyards, the gardens, the pools, the parks, rule over those of his own kind, the abundance of money, the preparation for delights at banquets, all, as he names them, the luxuries in which his wisdom was busied, searching out such things and bringing them to invention, which he says he enjoyed through every sense, the eyes finding what made for pleasure and the soul having everything unhindered as it desired — then he interprets the first saying, which he made in the prologue of his discourse, declaring that all things are vain. For he says, looking at these things, that he declares concerning human life that all is vanity which sense sees and which human beings [contrive] for gladness. “For I looked upon all my works which my hands had done, and on all my toil at which I toiled to do, and see, all is vanity and a choice of spirit, and there is no advantage under the sun.” For all the power and activity of the senses has the life under the sun as its limit; but to pass beyond and come to perceive the goods that lie above, sense-perceiving nature cannot. Having examined, then, all these and such things, he instructs our life not to be disposed with admiration toward anything here — wealth, ambition, rule over subjects, delights and luxuries, banquets, and anything else that is thought valuable — but to see that the one end of all such things is vanity, of which no advantage is found afterward. For just as those who write on water do produce the writing with their hand, tracing the shapes of the letters in the liquid, but nothing of the marks remains in shape — the zeal of writing exists only in the writing, for the surface of the water always follows the hand — so all the zeal and activity for enjoyment appears in what is being done. For when the activity ceases, the enjoyment too is wiped out, and nothing is stored up for afterward, nor is any trace of gladness or remnant left to those who took pleasure once the activity of pleasure has passed. This is what the passage signifies when it says that there is no advantage under the sun for those who toil at such things, whose end is vanity. May we too come to be outside these things, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of [ages. Amen].

Now from the great leader of the church comes our initiation into the loftier lessons. For having first cleansed our souls through the preceding words, and having removed every desire for what is vain that arises in human beings, he thus brings the mind to the truth, [having lifted] off the weight of vain things like a load from the shoulders. Let the church be instructed in this as a doctrine, having learned through the present teaching that the beginning of the virtuous life is to come to be outside vice. For the great David too, when he gives in the Psalms an introductory guidance toward the pure way of life, does not begin his account from the perfection of the things contemplated in blessedness. For he did not say first that blessed is the one who prospers in all things, who is like the tree, who is rooted beside the channels of the waters, who remains evergreen in good things, who gathers the fruits of life at the proper times; rather, he made the departure from evils the beginning of blessedness, since it is not possible to become good before washing off the filth of vice. So too, then, this great Ecclesiast first removes vain things by his discourse, so that, as with a sick body, [once the cause of the disease is removed] the good of health comes in. For this reason he ran through the account of vanity, saying that sense-perception is not a safe criterion of the beautiful; he brought into view the non-existence in what is pursued; he separated our desiring disposition from bodily enjoyment; and so he points out what is truly to be chosen, what is truly desirable, the pursuit of which is something active and substantial, remaining for ever with those who pursue it, [free] of all vanity.

“For I looked,” he says, “to see wisdom.” So that I might see exactly what was longed for, I first saw both distraction and folly. For contemplation of the things pursued becomes more exact by comparison with the opposite. And he names wisdom also “counsel,” saying, “Who is the man who will follow after counsel, in all that it has done?” He teaches, then, what human wisdom is: that it is to follow the true Wisdom, which he also names “counsel,” the maker of the things that truly are and subsist and are not contemplated in vanity. This is the sum of human wisdom; but the true Wisdom and Counsel is nothing else, in my view at least, than the Wisdom conceived before the universe. This is the one in whom God made all things, as the Prophet says: “You made all things in wisdom.” And Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, in whom all things came to be and were set in order. If, then, human wisdom is this, to come to understand the true works of the true Wisdom and Counsel — and the work of that Counsel or Wisdom, in my view, is incorruptibility, the blessedness of the soul, courage, righteousness, prudence, and every name and notion understood in terms of virtue — then perhaps by consistent sequence we are brought to the knowledge of the good things. “For since I saw these things,” he says, “and judged as in a balance [between what is and] what is not, so as to find the difference between wisdom and folly, such as would be found when light is examined against darkness.” And it seems to me that he fittingly used the example of light for the use of the good. For since darkness by its own nature is non-existent (for if there were not something blocking the sun’s ray, there would be no darkness), while light is something in itself, understood in its own being, he shows by the example that vice does not subsist of itself, but has a parasitic existence through the privation of the good; [whereas the] good always remains the same, abiding and fixed, and does not have a parasitic existence through any prior privation of anything. What is understood as the opposite of the good does not exist in essence; for what does not exist of itself is nothing at all; for vice is the privation of what is, and not an existence. The difference of light from darkness, then, is equal to that of wisdom from folly. For by a part he embraces the whole good under the name of wisdom, and with folly he interprets the whole nature of evil. But what gain is it to us to admire the good, unless some road to its possession is also shown by the teacher? Let us hear, then, from the one who teaches how we too can come to share in the beautiful. “The wise man’s eyes,” he says, “are in his head.” What does he mean by this? Is there any living creature at all that has its organs of sight outside its head, whether you mean one in the water, on land or in the air? For in all the eye is set in front of the rest of the body and seated in the head of those that have a head. How then does he speak here of the head of the wise man alone? Surely he hints by this that there is a certain analogy between the things contemplated in the soul and the parts of the body. And just as in the formation of the body the part that is foremost of the whole is named the head, so too in the soul the ruling and foremost part is understood as the head; and as we call the base of the foot the heel, so the base of the soul would be that by which it touches its union with the body, from which it sends the power and activity of perception into what lies beneath. When, then, the discerning and contemplative power of the soul is busied with the objects of sense, the nature of its eyes is moved to its heels, through which it sees what is below, remaining without sight of the lofty spectacles. But if, having recognized the vanity of what lies below, it should lift its eyes up to its own head, which is Christ, as Paul interprets, it would be blessed in its keenness of sight, having its eyes there where there is no darkening of evil. Paul the great, and any others great like him, had their eyes in the head, and so do all who live and move and have their being in Christ. As one who is in light cannot see darkness, so one who has his eye in Christ cannot gaze at anything vain. So the one who has his eyes in the head — and we understood the head as the beginning of all — has his eyes in every virtue (for Christ is the complete virtue): in truth, in righteousness, in incorruptibility, in every good. “The wise man’s eyes, then, are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness.” For the one who has not put his own lamp on the lampstand, but puts it under the base of the bed, has made the light darkness for himself, becoming the maker of the non-existent. And the non-existent is vain; darkness, then, is equal in meaning to the vain. The soul of the fool, then, having become body-loving and fleshly, in seeing these things sees nothing; for keen sight in these things is truly darkness. Do you see these sharp and nimble people in life, whom we call skilled in the law courts, how they make injustice easy for themselves — by witnesses, advocates, documents, courting of the judges — so as both to accomplish evil and to escape punishment? Who does not admire the shrewdness and versatility of such people? But nevertheless such people are blind, if they are examined against that eye which sees what is above, which is set in the head of all things; those who adorn their own heel, which is torn by the serpent’s teeth, are plainly blind. For by the things through which they see what is below they engrave the doctrines of sin on themselves. For he who loves injustice hates his own soul, and what is called blessed in them among human beings is more pitiable than any misfortune. And how many again, on the contrary, who are filled with the contests on high and are at leisure for the contemplation of what truly is, are thought to be blind and useless in material affairs, as Paul too boasts of being, saying that he is a fool for Christ’s sake. For his prudence and wisdom were busied with none of the things pursued here. Therefore he says, “We are fools for Christ’s sake”; as if he said, “We are blind to the life below, because we see what is above and have our eyes in the head.” For this reason he was without shelter and without a table, poor, a wanderer, naked, worn down by hunger and thirst. But consider what the one who was such below was like in the things above. For lifted up to the third heaven, where his head was, he had his eyes there, exulting in the unspeakable mysteries of paradise, seeing what is not seen, and delighting in all that is beyond sense and thought. And who would not have thought him pitiable, seeing him a prisoner, tormented with blows, in a shipwreck in the deep, carried along in his chains by the waves across the sea? Yet although his affairs among human beings were such, he was not turned away from always having his eyes in the head, saying: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ, which is in Christ Jesus? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” — which is equal to saying, “Who will dig out my eyes from the head and move them to what is trodden underfoot and earthly?” And we too are commanded to do the same, in the instruction to set our minds on things above, which is like saying [to have our eyes] in the head. But if we have learned how the wise man’s eyes are in his head, let us flee folly, which becomes darkness for those who walk in this life. “For the fool,” he says, “walks in darkness.” And the fool, as the prophecy says, is the one who says in his heart that there is no God, who has become corrupt and abominable in his practices.

The sequence of the discourse, through what is said next, heals those who are small-minded in their attitude to this life, to whom death is thought something hard, and who for this reason believe that there is no gain in the virtuous life for those who pursue the loftier life, since for both the life ends in the same end, and there is no escape from death except through life. Making such objections as though in his own person, he again takes hold of the absurdity of those who put them forward, as having given no thought to the nature of what is, and he teaches the difference, in what virtue has the advantage over vice: that no equal honour is hoped for in them because death is common, but the difference is found through the good or evil things that await afterward. The wording of the objection is this: “I knew that one event will befall them all. And I said in my heart, As the event of the fool, so it will befall me too; and why then have I become exceedingly wise? I spoke in my heart, for the fool speaks out of abundance, that this too is vanity. For there is no memory of the wise man with the fool for ever, since already the days that are coming — all things were forgotten; and how will the wise man die with the fool?” To these he adds that he thought all things worthy of hatred about which he had earlier been passionately disposed, embracing the vain as good. And he says he hated all that he toiled at with a view to this life, because he toiled at nothing for himself, but at all for the one after him, who he cannot know beforehand, because of the uncertainty of the future, how he will use what has been toiled for. He says, word for word: “And I hated life, because the work done under the sun was evil to me, for all is vanity and a choice of spirit. And I hated all my toil at which I toil under the sun, because I leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, and whether he will have power over all my toil at which I toiled and in which I became wise under the sun? This too is vanity.” Having said this, he says that he was also disposed with estrangement in his soul toward this: toward thinking that the portion is one for the one who has lived virtuously and for the one who has made no effort toward it. For he says that the toil of the one is in wisdom and knowledge and courage, and of the other in anger and pains, which come through his zeal about life. To bring these to equality with one another, he says, is not only vanity but also wickedness. And this wording is as follows: “And I turned to renounce in my heart all my toil at which I toiled under the sun; for there is a man whose toil is in wisdom and in knowledge and in courage, and a man who did not toil in it will be given his portion. This too is vanity and great wickedness. For what comes to the man in all his toil and in the choice of his heart, at which he toils under the sun? For all his days are of pains, and of anger is his distraction; even at night his heart does not sleep. This too is vanity.” Again he brings forward against himself another objection of those who judge the life of enjoyment preferable to the loftier life, and he overturns what is put forward, going through both in his own person, the solution and the objection. For the objection is that one should think nothing good except what one takes into oneself; and this is eating and drinking. The answer to it is that the things by which the human being is nourished and gladdened are not these, but wisdom and knowledge; so that to have zeal for these is good, but what is pursued through the flesh is a distraction of the soul and vanity. The words of the lofty teaching run thus: “There is nothing good for a man who will eat and drink and show his soul good in his toil. And this too I saw, that it is from the hand of God, what one will eat and drink apart from him. For to the man who is good before him he has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness, and to the one who sins he gave a distraction, to add and to gather, to give to the one who is good before the face of God. … This too is vanity and a choice of spirit.” The sense of what is written next, then, and the preliminary contemplation following the sequence, is this which we have now set out briefly. It would be time to take up the wording again and to fit the thoughts precisely to the words.

“And I knew, I too, that one event will befall them all, and I said, As the event of the fool, so it will befall me too, and why then did I become wise?” This is the objection that he puts to himself, saying: “If this event of death befalls both, and virtue does not exempt the one who has come to be in wisdom from sharing in death, my zeal for wisdom has come to be in vain.” And what is the passage’s answer to what was said? “I,” he says, “spoke this superfluously in my heart, for the fool speaks out of abundance. And this too is vanity: for there is no memory of the wise man with the fool for ever.” For he condemns this objection as having been brought in superfluously and inconsistently, and names folly the argument which brings forward nothing from the stores, nothing from the treasuries of wisdom, but is like an excrement of the mind; for like foam it speaks out of overflow. To use speech in this way is vain and to no further purpose, since the argument has zeal for nothing else than to persuade us not to look at what appears. For the objector makes his battle from what is seen; for death is among the things that appear. What, then, does he say? The judgment of the virtuous and the wicked life does not consist in this, as though only the wicked had to die in body while the good remained without experience of bodily death; [the objector] does not know in what the immortality of virtue consists, and what death is for those who live in vice. “Of the wise man,” he says, “the memory lives for ever, and extends through all the age; for the fool even the remembrance is extinguished.” For the Prophet too says of such people, “Their remembrance perished with a noise,” that is, conspicuously and manifestly; for this is what the addition of “noise” indicates. “There is no memory, then,” he says, “of the wise man with the fool for ever”; but the life of the wise man lasts through the ages by memory, whereas forgetfulness succeeds the fool. For in the days that are coming all that belongs to the fool comes to be in forgetfulness; so always saying, in the phrase “since already the days that are coming, all things [were forgotten]” … If, then, the wise man seeks wisdom, and the fool has vanished in the death of forgetfulness, how, he says, do you say that the wise man will die with the fool?

For this reason he is pained and ashamed at what he pursued for this life, and says that he hates all he pursued for this life, suffering much as if someone, having shamelessly gorged himself on drugged honey out of gluttony, should then perceive, as a bad humour [arose] in him from his greed, the drug mixed in, spitting it out together with the honey, and on this account should hate the honey by the memory of his disgust, because the fullness, through the drug, brought about the upheaval. For this reason, having filled himself, though not to satiety, with what is pursued for luxury, in the vomiting of confession, loathing and abhorring the shame at what he had done as if it were the quality of some poison, he cries out that he hates that life, saying thus, word for word: “And I hated life, because the work done under the sun was evil to me.” For I became evil, he says, not to anyone else, but to myself, by what I did under the sun. For nothing of what came to be has stood fast for me; all the things pursued were a fancy and an impulse of choice. “For all is vanity and a choice of spirit,” he says. And he says another thing: that zeal here deserves hatred because one toils not for oneself but for the one after him, whatever one happens to have worked at with zeal in this life — dockyards, harbours, the splendid and costly constructions of battlements and buildings, gateways and towers, the beauties of colonnades, monuments, and the works of love on the land, groves of every kind, the beauties of meadows, vineyards rivalling the seas in their breadth, and anything else of this kind. Whoever happens to have toiled at them toils, but the one who comes into life after him shares in them. And it is unclear whether he will not make the abundance a material for vice. For it is not for all to let their perception down into the experience of such things for the sake of knowledge. “This I,” he says, “did by wisdom. With authority, letting the impulse of nature, like a colt, leap a little after the passions below, I curbed it again with the rein of reason and brought it under its authority. Who knows,” he says, “whether that man too, whoever after us comes to be among these things, will have authority over the enjoyment, and will not rather be mastered by them, like some captive slave, under the power of pleasure?” Therefore, he says, “I hated all my toil at which I toil under the sun, because I leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, and whether he will have power over all my toil at which I toiled and became wise under the sun?” For I think this is the meaning of this saying: that he did not slip into the life of enjoyment through passion, but came to it by a certain reasoning of wisdom, making his participation in it with authority, and not being himself mastered by this power. “Who, then, knows,” he says, “whether the one after me will not be mastered by these things, at which I toiled not through passion but by wisdom?” For by naming luxury “toil” he shows that he accepted participation in pleasure under constraint, like some contest hard to win. “And let this too,” he says, “be counted among the vain things.” And he says that his soul renounced something else of the things here, and makes clear by his words what he means. For he is set against the one who fails in right judgment, because, seeing clearly the difference between the opposite lives — of which the one toils at virtue and brings down its desire to nothing human, while the other, conversely, endures none of the toil of the virtuous, but is worn out only in bodily toils — when someone gives the vote for the beautiful to the latter, overlooking the one who excels in wisdom, he declares this unjust judgment not only vain but also wicked. He says in these words: “And I turned,” he says, “to renounce my heart in regard to the other toil at which I toiled under the sun.” What, then, is it that I renounced? “That there is a man whose toil is in wisdom and in knowledge and in courage,” and another man who has toiled at nothing in such things. How then will someone add the portion of preference to such a one? “And a man,” he says, “who toiled in it” — that is, in the good — “will be given his portion,” instead of “will define such a life as belonging to the lot of the good.” “But this,” he says, “is vanity and great wickedness.” For how is it not great wickedness, when he knows the zeal and choice that lies in the human being about toils? For this is what he says: “He knows for the man, in all his toil and in the choice of his heart, at which he himself toils under the sun.” What, then, does he know? “That all his days,” he says, “are of pains, and of anger is his distraction; even at night his heart does not sleep.” For in truth for those who busy their souls with this temptation life is painful, lashing the heart as with goads by the desires for more; and zeal for greed is painful, not so much gladdened by what it has as pained by what it lacks; their labour is divided between night and day, working correspondingly through each of them, the day being spent in toils, and the night sending sleep away from the eyes. For the cares of gain knock sleep away. Then how does one who looks at these things not condemn the vanity of this zeal? Therefore he adds to what has been said, “This too is vanity.” Again he takes hold of another objection; … is this: “If you count what is outside us among the vain things, what we take into ourselves would not reasonably be condemned as vain. But eating and drinking take place in ourselves. Such a thing, then, is not among the things to be rejected, but one would define such a grace as a divine benefaction.” This is the sense of the objection; and the words run thus: “There is nothing good,” he says, “in a man, except what he will eat and drink, and show his soul good in his toil. And this too I saw, that it is from the hand of God, that one will drink apart from him.” These things the advocate of gluttony objects to the teacher. But that the guide of wisdom says to this, “to the man who is good” — the addition of “good” surely showed the distinction of the beautiful and the worse, through what we have now learned, so that what is understood as the opposite of goodness is clear. To the man, then — not to the beast, nor to one bent down over his belly, possessing a gullet instead of reason, but to the good man who lives according to the image of the only Good — God did not legislate this luxury after which the cattle-like nature gapes; but he gave him, it says, instead of food, wisdom and knowledge and gladness. For how could anyone increase in goodness through the foods of the belly? “Man shall not live by bread alone.” This is the word of the true Word. Virtue is not nourished by bread; the power of the soul does not thrive and grow fat on meats. The lofty life is nourished and grows strong on other foods. The food of the good man is self-control, his bread is wisdom, his relish righteousness, his drink freedom from passion, his pleasure not that of the body, such as the disposition toward what one desires, but that whose name and work is gladness; for this reason too he named with this title the disposition that arises in the soul toward the beautiful, because such a state comes from right-mindedness. We must learn here too, then, what we have also heard from the Apostle: that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and freedom from passion and blessedness. [What] is pursued by human beings for the sake of bodily enjoyment is the zeal of sinners and a distraction of the soul, dragged down from the things above to the things below, whose whole span of life in this world is spent in zeal to add and to gather. So the one who judges this good before the face of God does not know that he is defining the good in what is vain. These things I have said in my own voice; but the setting out of the divine words will put the seal on this sense. For it says: “To the sinner he gave a distraction, to add and to gather, to give to the one who is good before the face of God. For this too is vanity and a choice of spirit.” As much as … from this side-by-side examination of the reading, may it become for us a help toward fleeing what has been condemned, and a provision for what is achieved toward the better …

“For all things there is a time, and a season for every matter under heaven”: this is the beginning of the oracles set before us for contemplation. The labour too is …, and the gain from the labour is worth the labour. For perhaps the aim of what we contemplated in the first parts of the book is made manifest above all in this part, as the discourse, proceeding, will show through the sequence. In the preceding discourses all things were condemned as vain that are pursued among human beings for no gain to the soul. For the good was pointed out, toward which one must look through the thoughts set in the head; and for those [who have] wisdom … luxury. It remains to learn how one may live according to virtue, receiving through the discourse, as it were, an art and method for setting life right. These, then, are the things which the present examination of the words promises us in its prologue, in which it declares that “for all things there is a time, and a season for every matter under heaven.” For if anyone [looks] into the depth of [the sense] … enclosed in the words, both contemplative and giving counsel about what is beneficial. And so that we may have a brief approach to the contemplation of the saying, we shall take up the discourse thus. Of existing things, one kind is material and perceptible by sense, the other intelligible and immaterial. Of these the incorporeal lies above sense-apprehension; we shall know it then, when we put off the senses. But sense-perception, which grasps the material nature, has no nature to pass beyond the heavenly body and penetrate to what lies beyond the things that appear. For this reason the discourse speaks to us about earthly and heavenly things, so that we may pass through this life without stumbling. This life is material, our living through flesh; and the contemplation of the beautiful is somehow darkened by what appears to the senses. We need, then, some knowledge for the judgment of the beautiful, so that, as with constructions, a rule or plumb line may straighten everything that is made. This, then, is shown us beforehand by the discourse, by which life is straightened toward what it ought to be. For he says that there are two criteria of the beautiful in life, in each of the things pursued in this life: due measure and right timing. And he lays this down as doctrine now, saying, “For all things there is a time, and a season for every matter.” “Time” must be understood as standing for measure, because time extends alongside everything that comes to be. Whether, then, these criteria of the beautiful are suited universally for every achievement of virtue, I do not yet assert, until the discourse, proceeding, shows it. But that the greater part of an ordered life is set right by such observance, anyone could perceive. For who does not know that virtue too is a measure, measured by the mean of the things considered beside it? For what falls short of the due measure, or exceeds it, could not be virtue; as with courage, whose deficiency is cowardice and whose excess becomes rashness. For this reason some of the outside wisdom, perhaps having become thieves of what is ours, divided between them the sense signified in this saying: one [laid down] that nothing should fall short, …; for one declared that measure is best, and the other legislated “nothing too much.” And it is shown by both that failing to reach the measure sought in virtue is among the things condemned, and that [going beyond] due proportion is to be rejected. But the same account will be given us also about the part concerning right timing: that neither what anticipates the right moment nor what lags behind it is judged to belong to the lot of the good. What did it profit the farmer who [undertook] the cutting of the ears before the crops had ripened in their season, or who put off his effort at the harvest until the seeds had flowed off the stalk? For in neither case does the effort become effective for good, since in the untimeliness of the cutting he loses the benefit, on either side, of the right moment. What has been said in a part can be perceived in everything too. For seafaring too knows the same, whether one speaks of the right moment …; or if one speaks of medicine, how much harm comes from excess and deficiency of the time and measure proper to treatment? But these things must be left, since in what follows the … becomes clearer in the very words of the Ecclesiast.

But for what reason have we contemplated these things beforehand? Because neither the measureless is good nor the untimely; but that is beautiful and to be chosen which has its perfection through both. For if only the one is in it, [and] what is lacking [is neglected] in the effort, even what has been achieved will be profitless because of what is lacking. So, just as when we make our motion with two feet, if something happens to one, even the unhurt one is useless for running because of the weakness of its partner, so if measure is lacking to timing, or timing to measure, what is present too has surely been made useless by what is lacking. But proportion within timing, and timing within measure, have usefulness. “Time,” then, has been understood by us as standing for measure, because time is the measure of every measure of each thing. For the things that come to be surely come to be in time, and the extent of time stretches together with the extension of each thing that comes to be: little time in the lesser, and more in the greater. A measure of pregnancy, a measure of the growth of the ears, a measure of the ripening of fruits, a measure of a voyage, a measure of a journey, a measure of each age: of the infant, the little child, the stripling, the boy, the youth, the man, the middle-aged, the mature, the one past his prime, the elder, the old man. Since, then, the measure that comes from time is not one for all — for it is not possible for all things to be equal in measure to one another because of the difference of the subjects — but time, as has been said, is the common measure of all that is measured, containing all things in itself, for this reason he did not say “a measure for all,” because there is much inequality of more and less among the things measured, but he said “a time for all,” the generic measure by which everything that comes to be is measured. For just as in humanity one part is [already] weakening, another is not yet settled, and the best is the mean of the two, which escapes the unpleasant features of both — in which is shown strength separated from the disorder of youth, and prudence separated from the feebleness of old age, so that there is strength blended with prudence, equally avoiding both the feebleness of old age and the rashness of youth — so the one who assigns “a time to all” separates by his discourse the vice that comes from measurelessness on each side, both the excessive and the deficient … But it would be time, following the sequence, to add the contemplation of the God-inspired words themselves.

“A season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” Well has he yoked together in his discourse at the very first this necessary pair, joining death to birth. For death follows of necessity upon childbirth, and every coming-to-be is dissolved into corruption; so that by showing death and birth joined together he may rouse, as with a goad, by the memory of death, those who are sunk deep in the life according to the flesh, and stir them to care for the things to come. This Moses too, the friend of God, teaches, as has been said, in the first titles of his books, setting Exodus at once beside Genesis, so that those who read the titles may be instructed in what concerns themselves by the very order of the books. For one cannot hear “genesis” without at once thinking of “exodus.” The great Ecclesiast, having understood this here too, shows it, by setting death as the counterpart of birth. “For there is a season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” The season came, he says, and I was born; the season will come, and I shall die. If we all looked to this, we would not abandon the short road and go round in a circle with the ungodly, wandering the circuitous wandering of life, in powers and … and riches; through which, entangled in the many roads of this life, we no longer find the exit from this life, confounding for ourselves, through the very things we seem to pursue, the signs of the road that does not wander. How blessed, he says, are those among human beings who, leaving the circuitous deceits of life, lead themselves to the short road of virtue. And this is to turn the soul toward nothing of the things here, but to be strained with zeal toward what is set before us in hopes through faith.

Let us examine the saying again. “A season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” Would that for me too the birth might be in season, and the death well-timed! For one could not say that this involuntary travail and the spontaneous death are being set before us now by the Ecclesiast as an achievement of virtue. For neither is travail at the will of the woman, nor is death in the free choice of those who die. And what is not in our power one could define neither as virtue nor as vice. So we must understand the well-timed birth, and the death that comes about in season. To me a birth seems to be ripe and not an abortion when, as Isaiah says, one who has conceived from the fear of God gives birth to one’s own salvation through the travail of the soul. For we become in a certain manner fathers of ourselves, when through good free choice we form and beget ourselves and bring ourselves forth into the light. And this we do by receiving God into ourselves, becoming children of God, children of power, and sons of the Most High; and again, as the Apostle says, [when] the form of Christ [is formed in] us. “For the man of God,” it says, “must be complete.” And complete is surely that one in whom the account of nature has been perfectly fulfilled. So if someone through virtue has made himself a child of God, having received authority for this noble birth, he has known the season of the good travail, and rejoices, according to the Gospel, with reason, “that a man has been born into the world.” But the one who has become a child of wrath, and a son of perdition, and offspring of darkness, a brood of vipers, an evil offspring, and all the other names by which the wicked birth is reproached, has not known the life-giving season. For one season gives birth into life, and not many. Whoever misses it, in the untimeliness of the birth, travailed with himself for perdition and delivered his soul to death. And if it is plain how we are born in season, it is clear to all how we die in season. Thus for the holy Paul every season was a timely season for the good death. For he cries in his own words, making a kind of oath, where he says, “I die every day, by my boasting in you,” and, “For your sake we are being put to death all the day long,” and, “We ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves.” And it is surely not unclear how Paul dies every day: he who never lives to sin, who always puts to death the members of the flesh, and carries about in himself the dying of the body of Christ, who is always crucified with Christ, who never lives for himself but has Christ living in him. This would be, in our judgment at least, the well-timed death, the one that brings about true life. “For I will kill,” he says, “and I will make alive”; so that we may be persuaded that it is truly a gift of God to be put to death to sin and made alive by the Spirit. For by killing, the divine voice promises to make alive. And what follows is like what has been said.

“A season,” he says, “to plant, and a season to pluck up what has been planted.” I know who our farmer is, and whose field we are. The one we have learned from Christ, the other from Paul, the servant of Christ. For the Lord says, “My Father is the farmer,” and the Apostle says to us, “You are God’s field.” The great farmer, then, knows how to plant only good things — “For God planted a paradise in Eden toward the east” — but he plucks up what is opposed to the good. For “every plant which my Father … did not plant [will be rooted up]” … and unbelief, and ingratitude toward the wonders done by the Lord: these are the plants that are being plucked up … For the proclamation of salvation must prevail. “The Gospel must be proclaimed in the whole world.” “Every tongue must confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Since, then, these things must surely come about, the unbelief that now prevails among some is not from the Father’s planting, but from the one who sows [weeds] alongside, or who plants beside the Master’s vineyard the vine-shoot of Sodom. What, then, we were taught in the Gospel by the voice of the Master, this we have now been taught also in the riddle of the Ecclesiast: that the same season is for receiving the saving plant of faith and for plucking up the weed of unbelief. And what has been said in part about the achievement in faith, one would understand consistently of every virtue too. A season to plant self-control, and to pluck up the plant of licentiousness. So too, when righteousness has been planted, the shoot of injustice is uprooted; and the plant of humility overturned conceit, and love, sprouting, withered the wicked tree of hatred; just as, from the opposite side, the tree of hatred — that is, iniquity multiplied — made love grow cold; and all the other things in the same way. So that we may not spend time telling each one, if we understand them similarly, we shall not go wrong.

Again the following saying agrees with the [preceding]. “For there is a season,” he says, “to kill, a season to [heal].” This is clearly [shown] in the prophetic word, which says in the person of God: “I will kill and I will make alive.” For if we do not kill enmity in ourselves, we shall not heal the loving disposition in us that has become sick through hatred. So too with all the other things that live against us for evil — I mean the wicked battle line of the passions, and this civil war that campaigns against us through pleasures and takes us captive by the law of sin: there is a season to kill them. For the slaughter of such things becomes the healing of what has been weakened by sin. Physicians say that worms, and certain other such creatures, are brought to life within the bowels from bad humours, whose life becomes disease to the body; but if those are destroyed by some drug …, the sick person returns to health again. Such passions of the body correspond to the illnesses of the soul: when anger sucks it dry from within, or unnerves the vigour and reasonings of the soul through resentment, or the beast of envy, or any other such evil that a bad way of life brings to life. The one who perceives that his soul feeds a beast within will use in good season the drug that destroys the passions. And this is the teaching of the Gospel, so that when those have been slain, healing may come to the one who has done it.

“A season to pull down, and a season to build up.” These things can be learned from what was said by God to the prophet Jeremiah, to whom power was given from God first to pull down, and to root out, and to dig away, and then to set up again, and to build up, and to plant. For first the buildings of vice in us must be thrown down, and then a season and room may be found for the construction of the temple of God, which is built in souls, whose material becomes virtue. For “if anyone builds on this foundation gold or silver, precious stones,” these are named virtue; but “wood and hay and straw” interpret the nature of vice, which is prepared for nothing else than for consumption by fire. When, then, the buildings are of hay and straw — that is, of injustice and arrogance and the rest of the vice of life — the word commands us first to bring these to destruction, and then to make the gold of virtue the material for the construction of the spiritual house. For silver cannot grow together with straw, nor gold be stuck onto hay, nor the pearl onto wood. But if the one is to be, the other must surely be destroyed. “For what fellowship has light with darkness?” So the things of darkness will be pulled down first, and then the bright buildings of life will be constructed.

“A season to weep, and a season to laugh.” This saying is made clear by the voice of the Gospel spoken in the person of the Lord, which says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now, then, is the season to weep; the season to laugh is laid up through hope; for the present dejection will become the mother of the gladness hoped for. And who would not spend all his life in lamentations and gloom, if he came to perceive himself, and knew within himself what he had and what he lost, and in what state nature was at the beginning and in what it is at present? Then there was no death, disease was absent; “mine” and “yours,” these wicked words, were banished from life. For as the sun was common, and the air common, and before all things God’s grace common, the blessing common, so the participation in every good was set before all on equal terms, at their disposal; the disease of greed was not known, and hatred of those who excel, arising from being worse off, did not exist. For there was no excelling at all. And countless other things besides, which one could not even set forth in speech, far surpassing in greatness what has been said: I mean equality of honour with the angels, freedom of speech before God, the contemplation of supramundane goods, our being made beautiful too with the unspeakable beauty of the blessed nature, showing in ourselves the divine image shining with the beauty of the soul. And instead of those things — such as the wicked swarm of passions, the evil wasps’ nest of sorrows — … which of the evils of life would one name first? All are of equal rank with one another, all take first place in the eminence of evils, all become occasions for equal lamentation. For what would one lament more in our wretchedness? From what would one bewail nature more — the short span of life, its toil, its beginning with tears and its ending in tears, pitiable infancy, … the many toils of those settled in age, the burden of marriage, the loneliness of the unmarried, the rootlessness of childlessness, the envy that wealth draws, the pain of poverty? And I am silent about the manifold differences of diseases, the disfigurements, the incurable rottings, the maimings of the senses, the derangements caused by demons, all that nature contains in itself, which each human being has in potential, having the passions in his nature. The madness of passionate loves, and the foul-smelling mire into which such frenzy ends, I pass over; and I do not speak of the disgust joined to nourishment through excretion, so as not to seem to post up life entirely in my discourse, showing our nature to be a maker of dung. Leaving all these and such things aside, I say that this above all is worthy of tears for those who perceive it: to know that, when this shadowy life has run past, there awaits us a certain expectation of judgment, and a zeal of fire that will consume the adversaries. Does not the one who reckons these and such things … ? It would therefore be the season now to take these things into one’s reasoning. For from being gloomy toward the present life [comes] committing no fault in it; [and so] the grace of gladness that has been promised will be laid up for us through hope; and hope does not put to shame, as the Apostle says.

What is added is like a repetition of what was said before. For having spoken of the right season for tears and for laughter, he added, “A season to beat the breast, a season to dance,” which is nothing else than the intensification of each of the things mentioned. For the deeply felt and heartfelt lament is called “beating the breast” by [Scripture], and likewise dancing signifies the intensification of gladness, as we learned such a thing in the Gospel, where it says, “We piped to you, and you did not dance; we lamented to you, and you did not beat your breasts.” So the history says that there was beating of breasts among the Israelites at the departure of Moses, and that David danced as he led the procession of the ark, when he [brought] it back from the foreigners, … not appearing in his accustomed bearing. For it says that he sang along with harmonious melodies, striking up on the musical instrument, and moved to the rhythm with his foot, and by the rhythmic motion of his body made public his inner disposition. Since, then, the human being is twofold — of soul, I mean, and body — and life too is twofold, correspondingly in each of the things active in us, it would be good, while beating our breasts for the bodily life — for the occasions for lament in this life are many — to prepare for the soul the harmonious dance. For the more life is darkened by dejection, the more the occasions of gladness are gathered for the soul. Self-control is sombre; humility is downcast; to suffer loss is lamentation; not to be equal to those in power is a cause of grief. But he who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who contends with poverty will be crowned, and he who teems with sores and shows his life to be worthy of lament in all respects will rest in the bosom of the Patriarch. In which may we too come to be, by the mercy of Jesus Christ who saves us, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages.

“A season to throw stones, and a season to gather stones.” The commander of the church’s forces has already increased the strength of his hearers by what he has shown, so that they can both strike their opponents and supply the means for striking. For what we were taught beforehand — by which we have learned to fit the measure of time to all things and to make right timing in everything the criterion of the beautiful — leads us to this power: that a certain arm of our soul may be understood, which sends at the target the stones that destroy the enemy, and calls them back again, so that whatever enemy we strike, we may always strike down the adversary with the same stones. Those, then, who look only to the letter and stand by the ready sense of what is said will perhaps fit Moses’ law to the present words, under which the law orders stones to be thrown at those found breaking the law, as we have learned from the history itself in the case of those [guilty] of … and of the one [who stole] the sacred things, and in the other faults for which the law prescribed punishment by stones. But I — if the Ecclesiast had made only the throwing of stones timely, and not also gathering stones, about which no law commands anything, nor does the history narrate a similar act — would have agreed with those who interpret the saying through the law, as though the season to throw stones were when someone [broke the law]. But now the addition that the stones must be gathered again, which is laid down by no law, leads us to another sense. Let us learn what kind of stones these are, which after the throw become again the property of the one who threw them. For when we have thrown the stones in season, we are taught to gather them again in season. To me, indeed, it seems that one should not take even the law in so lowly a way, according to its ready meaning. For what befitting God and great appears in the bare sense of what is written? If someone was caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath, ought the man for this reason to have been stoned, when no injustice appeared in the fault? For what wrong did a man do by [gathering] dry twigs scattered by chance in the desert for the use of fire? For he is not accused of taking what belonged to another, so that the injustice might seem reasonably punished; rather, what lay before all in common became for him the cause of the stoning. But because he did this on the Sabbath, he is for this reason condemned as a wrongdoer. Who does not know that each thing that is done is judged by its own nature, whether it is evil or not? And the time in which an action is performed is considered outside the nature of what is done. For what has the interval of time in common with what is accomplished by our free choice? If someone asks us what a day is, we shall surely answer that it is the sun’s being above the earth, and make its measure dawn and evening. But such an account of the day will not be fitted to some one alone of the days that come round in the weekly cycle; the account is the same for the first and second and up to the seventh, and the day of the Sabbath does not differ at all from the others in being a day. But if one examines the meaning of sin — that one must do nothing against one’s neighbour — we shall surely say, for example: “You shall [not] commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal,” and the rest, of which the general law, containing each in itself, is also that of loving one’s neighbour as oneself. These, kept and broken equally on every day, are surely either good or understood as the opposite. No one would think that what was judged evil when done today, whether the fault were murder or anything else forbidden, would be good on the following day. If, then, evil is always such, at whatever time it happens to be dared, so too what is blameless would not become blameworthy because of the time. If, then, gathering sticks and lighting a fire before the Sabbath is outside injustice and punishment, how does this very same thing become a fault on the following day? But I know the Sabbath of rest; I know the law of inactivity, which does not command a human being to be inactive by fettering him from natural activity. For it would command impossible things in ordering us to be inactive, for whom, apart from other works, the very form of life is a work: of the eyes, sight; of the hearing, its natural activity; of the nostrils, smell; of the mouth, the drawing in of air; of the tongue, speech; of the teeth, the service of food; of the inward parts, digestion; of the feet, movement; of the hands, … those things which these members are by nature made to do for us. How then can the law of inactivity be ratified for those whose nature does not admit idleness? How shall I persuade the eye not to see on the Sabbath, when it is its nature to see something in any case? How shall I hold back the activity of hearing? How will my sense of smell be persuaded to lay aside its perception of vapours on the Sabbath? And how will the inward parts not perform their own activity, serving the law, so that food remains undigested in the body, in order to show nature idle on the Sabbath? If, then, the rest of our body cannot accept the law of idleness (for what is not active will not be in life at all), [the observance] of the Sabbath is surely not [kept] … even if the hand or the foot remains motionless in the same posture and place. Since, then, the law is laid not on some part but on the whole human being, we shall not keep the law better by being inactive in one of the members, if, while our other senses are active according to nature, we break what was commanded. But the law is from God; and nothing commanded by God is of such a kind as to be, as it were, against nature, or to be shown outside the account of virtue. And irrational idleness is not virtue. We must seek, then, what the command of the [Sabbath] means. I say, then, that every legislation given by God has one aim: that those who have received the law should be pure of the work of vice; and every law that forbids what is prohibited commands us to keep Sabbath from wicked works. This is the aim of the tablets, of the Levitical observance, of the precision in [the] …: that we should be idle and inactive in those things whose work is vice. If, then, one takes the law in this way, that the human being is to be idle in vice, I too agree that the wise Ecclesiast sets a season for throwing stones at one who gathers wood for himself — by which the collecting of the twigs of vice, gathered as fuel for fire, is prevented. But if one persists in love of the letter, I do not know how he would reckon what befits God in the law. So we must understand what the stones are that are thrown at such a one, so that the zeal for gathering sticks may not reach its end. If the wood is that by which the fire will be kindled for the one who gathered it — and surely these things are not unclear to one who brings to bear any mystical account at all; for well does the Apostle name the wicked building “wood, straw and hay,” because such buildings become fire in the season of judgment, and “the chaff,” says the voice of the Gospel, “is prepared for fire,” and it declared the fruitless branch fit only for fire — it would be clear that the wood gathered in preparation for fire is the vain pursuits of life, and this is the one who is struck with stones in season, whom one would not be wrong to understand as the reasoning that inclines to evil. And we must surely understand that the reasonings that destroy vice are the stones slung with good aim by the Ecclesiast, which must always both be sent and be gathered: sent to pull down what is lifted up against our life, and gathered so that the bosom of the soul may always be full of such supplies, so that the throw against the enemy may be at hand, if ever he should otherwise conceive a plot against us. From where, then, shall we gather stones with which to bury the enemy? I heard the prophecy saying, “Holy stones roll upon the earth.” These would be the words coming down to us from the God-inspired Scripture, which we must gather in the bosom of the soul, so as to use them in season against those who trouble us; whose throw is so good that it both destroys the enemy and does not leave the hand of the thrower. For the one who strikes down with the stone of self-control the licentious reasoning, which gathers through pleasures the fuel of fire, has both defeated it with the throw and always carries the weapon in his hand. So too righteousness becomes a stone against injustice, destroys it, and is kept in the bosom of the one who threw it. In the same way, all things understood in the better sense become destructive of the worse and are not separated from the one who achieves virtue. And according to our account, one must throw the stones in season and gather stones in season in this way: always sending the good throws to destroy what is worse, and never letting the abundance of such weapons fail us.

The next saying in sequence [sets out] the season and the unseasonableness of a certain embracing. The wording is this: “A season to embrace, and a season to be far from embracing.” These thoughts could not become plain to us otherwise unless the word were first understood from Scripture, so that it may become clear to us of what the God-inspired word is accustomed to use this expression. The great David indicated it through the Psalms, and cries, saying, “Encircle Zion, and embrace her”; and this same Solomon, when he made the inward union of the one lovingly disposed toward wisdom, says among other things by which our union with virtue comes about, and adds this: “Honour her, that she may embrace you.” If, then, David exhorts us to embrace Zion, and Solomon said that those who have honoured wisdom are embraced by her, perhaps we shall not miss the fitting sense, if we learn the thing whose embrace is timely. For Zion is a mountain rising above the citadel of Jerusalem. So the one who urges you to embrace her exhorts you to grow together with the lofty way of life, so as to reach the very acropolis of the virtues, which he indicates by the riddle of the name Zion. And the one who makes you dwell with wisdom proclaims to you the good news of the embrace that follows from her. So there is a season to embrace Zion and to be embraced by wisdom, the name Zion indicating the loftiness of the way of life, and wisdom signifying by a part the whole of virtue. If, then, we have learned through what has been said the timeliness of the embrace, we have been taught through the same things of which the separation from union is more profitable. “For there is a season,” he says, “to be far from embracing.” One who has become familiar with virtue has been estranged from his relation to vice. “For what fellowship has light with darkness, or Christ with Beliar?” Or how is it possible for one who serves two opposed masters to be well disposed to both? For love of the one has produced hatred of the other. When, then, the loving disposition acquires the beautiful — and this is what is timely — estrangement from the opposite has truly followed. If you truly loved self-control, you would have hated its opposite. If you look lovingly toward purity, you have clearly abhorred the mire of the evil one’s embrace. And if someone should take the meaning of “embracing” to refer to the embrace of wealth, this saying too shows what kind of wealth it is good to embrace, and the embrace of what kinds of possessions to send away. I know a treasure that is striven for: the one hidden in the field, not the one that appears to all. I know, again, a wealth that is dishonoured: not the one hoped for, but the one that appears before the eyes. The voice of the Apostle teaches this, saying, “Since we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” If we have understood these things, let us also [understand] the following saying through them.

“For there is a season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” For one who has understood through what has been examined from what one should keep oneself far from embracing, and to what one should be joined, would know both what one should seek and of what things the loss is gain. “For there is a season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” What, then, is it that I must seek, so as to attain the due season? Prophecy shows what must be sought, saying, “Seek the Lord and be strengthened,” and again, “Seek the Lord, and call on him when you find him,” and “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad.” I have learned, then, through what has been said what one must seek: that of which the finding is the very act of always seeking. For seeking is not one thing and finding another; but the gain of seeking out is the very seeking. Do you want to learn the right time too, what the season is for seeking the Lord? I say briefly: the whole of life. For in this case alone every effort is the season for effort. For it is not good to seek the Lord at some appointed season and limited time; but never to leave off at all, always seeking: this is the true right time. “For my eyes,” it says, “are continually toward the Lord.” Do you see how carefully the eye searches out what is sought, giving itself no relaxation nor any interval in the contemplation of what is sought? For by adding “continually” it showed the unceasing and uninterrupted character of the effort. In the same way let us understand also the season to lose, judging it gain to lose that whose possession becomes a loss to its owner. Love of money is an evil possession: then let us lose it. Resentment is a wicked thing stored up: then let us throw it away. Licentious desire is a destructive possession: let us become poor in this above all, so that through such poverty we may gain the kingdom. “For blessed are the poor in spirit,” that is, those who lack such wealth and all the other treasures of the devil. More blessed, indeed, is never to have acquired any at all, so that we may be entirely without possession of what defiles. But it is no less good for one who has been taken by the wicked acquisition to lose such possessions and bring them to destruction. But never to have any share at all in such things is beyond human nature; whereas to destroy them once received — for this the power of human beings too has strength. Therefore to have had none of the adversary’s possessions belongs to the Lord alone, who shared the same sufferings with us without sin. “For the ruler of this world comes,” he says, “and finds nothing of his own in me.” But to cleanse oneself through careful repentance can be seen also in the case of human beings who make themselves bright through virtue. Paul lost the wicked possession of unbelief, through the grace of prophecy working in him; he became full of the treasure he sought. Isaiah lost, in the cleansing of the divine coal, all filth of word and thought; for this reason he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Everyone, in partaking of the better, loses all that is understood as its opposite. So the self-controlled loses licentiousness, the righteous injustice, the modest arrogance, the well-disposed envy, the loving enmity. For just as the blind man in the Gospel found what he did not have by losing what he had — for when the blindness was taken away, the gleam of light came in instead — and in the case of the leper, when the disease vanished, the grace of health returned, and in the case of those who rose from death, deadness withdrew at the presence of life, so too in the philosophy set before us one cannot acquire any of the lofty things without having lost the zeal for what is earthly and lowly. For in finding these, the more valuable things are lost to us; and conversely the loss of these will bring about the finding of the valuable. This we have learned from the voice of the Lord: “[He who loves] his soul will lose it, and he who loses his soul for my sake will find it.” For the soul’s being found among the things pursued in matter becomes the cause of its not being found among the true goods; and conversely the deprivation and loss of these becomes the possession of what is hoped for. “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?” “A season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” If, then, we have learned what the gain sought is, which is found by losing what was evilly acquired, let us seek the one and lose the other: let us seek the good things, let us lose the evil.

Well and fittingly to what has been examined the sequence of what is written is added. For it says, “A season to keep, and a season to cast out.” To keep what? Clearly what we have found, [whose] loss was thought profitable … A right thought has come to you; there has entered a desire to see God; your soul has thirsted for God, the mighty, the living; a longing has come to you to be in the courts of the Lord — and the courts of the Lord, in my view at least, would be the virtues, in which the Word dwells, and everyone who follows the Word. Keep these, so that the wealth of the pure possessions of your mind may not flow away from you. Some contrary reasoning slips in, like a secret thief, bringing about the disappearance of the pure thoughts: it must be cast out and sent away from the mind. For in driving it off, the treasure of good things will be kept safe for us. But if the destroyer is not cast out, there will be no gain from the possession, in the plotting of the burglars. Since, then, we have been taught the season to seek, and everyone who seeks finds, let us set an exact guard on the treasure for what has been found. “With all watchfulness,” it says, “keep your heart” — after finding, keeping the grace that has been found; as the one who came in faith found the purity that comes through the washing. But the labour is greater in keeping what one has received than in finding what one did not have. As, then, we said that the right time for seeking is not limited to some period, but that the whole of life is one season for that good seeking, so we declare that the season for keeping too is measured by the whole of life, setting out now too the same voice of prophecy, which says, “My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the snare.” For in this lies the inviolable keeping of our good possession for us: in making God the keeper of what is ours. For when my eyes are continually toward the Lord, then the snares of the adversary become ineffective, by which he contrives his plot against the precious things in the soul. “Do not give your foot to be moved,” it says, “and he who keeps you will not slumber.” So the present saying is consistent with the preceding one. That one commanded us to seek so that we may find; this one counsels us to keep, so that we may not lose. And the manner of keeping the good things is in casting out what is understood as their opposite; just as in a city at war the guard becomes safer when the traitors have been cast out, but as long as they are inside, the hidden ones plot more than the open enemies. “For there is a season,” he says, “to keep, and [a season to cast out].”

The next sequence of the discourse leads the soul to a greater philosophy concerning intelligible things. For it shows that the universe is continuous with itself and the harmony of intelligible things has no break, but there is a certain concord of beings with one another; and the universe is not split off from its connection with itself, but all things remain in being by the power of what is. And what truly is, is either goodness itself, or whatever name signifying the incorruptible nature one conceives beyond this. For how could anyone find a name for that which the divine voice of the Apostle says is above every name? Except that whatever name is found to interpret the unutterable power and nature, what is signified is surely good. This good, then, or what is beyond the good, both is itself in very truth, and through itself has given and gives to the things that are both the power to come to be and continuance in being. But everything contemplated outside it is non-existence. For what is outside being is not in being. Since, then, vice is contemplated as opposite to love, and God is complete virtue, vice is then outside God; and its nature is grasped not in its being, but in its not being good. For we have given the name “vice” to what is outside the notion of the good; thus vice is contemplated as opposite to the good as non-being is divided against being. Since, then, by the self-determination of our impulse we flowed away from the good — just as those not in light are said to see darkness, for seeing darkness consists in seeing nothing — then the non-existent nature of vice received substance in those who flowed away from the good; and it exists as long as we are outside the good. But if again the self-determining motion of our will should be torn away from its relation to the non-existent and grow together with what is, that which no longer has being in me will not have being in me at all. For evil lying by itself outside free choice does not exist. But I, having sewn myself on to what truly is, remain in what is, which always was and always will be and now is. These seem to me to be the thoughts which the season to tear and the season to sew suggest: so that, torn away from that, … [to what] … the cleaving is good. “For it is good for me,” it says, “to cleave to God, to put my hope in the Lord.” And one might usefully apply the counsel to many other things too, such as: “Drive out the wicked one from among yourselves.” These things the divine Apostle commands concerning the one condemned for the lawless union, commanding that he be torn away from the common fullness of the church, “so that,” he says, “a little leaven” of the condemned man’s vice “may not make useless the whole lump” of the church’s prayer. But the one [torn away] through sin he sews on again through [love], “lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow.” So he knows how in season to tear away a stained part from the tunic of the church, and again in season to sew it on, when through repentance it has been washed of its defilement. And many such things can be seen, both in the more ancient narratives and in our own life, all that is carried out with discernment in the churches. For you know from whom we tear ourselves away, and to whom we are always sewn on. For [from the fellowship] of heresy [we tear ourselves] …, then seeing the tunic of the church untorn, when it is torn away from fellowship with heresy. Whether, then, the passage philosophizes about beings according to the contemplation we examined earlier, or teaches such things through this counsel, the saying contains in every respect what is beneficial and useful, tearing away in season those whose union is wicked, and joining again in season.

Let us proceed to what comes next in the discourse, to which the account contemplated according to the loftier philosophy seems to me to have a closer affinity with the text. For the season to be silent is put first, and after the silence he gave the season to speak. When, then, and about what is it better to be silent? One who looks to character might say that in many cases silence is more seemly than speech, as Paul distinguishes the right time for silence and for speech, sometimes legislating silence and sometimes permitting speech: “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth” — this is the law of silence; “but if there is any good word for the building up of faith, that it may give grace to those who hear” — this is the season to speak. “Let the women be silent in the churches” — again he gave the season to silence. “But if they wish to learn anything they do not know, let them ask their own husbands at home” — again he showed the right time for speech. “Do not lie to one another” — this too is a right time for silence. “Let each one speak truth with his neighbour” — again the authority of speech. And many such things can be said from the older Scripture as well: “When the sinner stood against me, I was deaf and humbled and kept silent from good things,” and “like one deaf I did not hear, and like one mute not opening his mouth.” One who remains unmoved toward repaying evil becomes voiceless; but where it is fitting to use speech, he opens his mouth in parables, utters problems, fills his mouth with praise, makes his tongue a pen. But why, when there are countless examples in Scripture, should one refine the discourse in what is agreed? What came to my mind before these, as the right time for silence and speech agrees with the contemplation given about tearing and sewing, this I wish to take up again and say briefly. For there the word, having torn away the soul evilly grown on to the opposite, led it into union with what truly is through cleaving — which is beyond word, as the preceding discourse explained. And here, for this reason, silence seems to me to have been put first: that is, because that which is above every thought and name, which the soul torn away from evil both seeks continually and longs to be sewn on to once found, is higher than every interpreting voice. Whoever contends to drag it down under the meaning of [a word] unwittingly offends against the Divine. For what is believed to be above all is surely also above word. And one who tries to grasp the boundless by word no longer allows that to be above all against which he sets it, thinking that his own word is something of such a kind and so great as the word could contain in speaking, not knowing that in being persuaded that the Divine is beyond knowledge, in this the God-befitting notion of what truly is is kept; because everything that is in creation looks by nature to what is akin to it. And none of the things that exist, having come to be outside itself, remains in being. Fire is not in water, nor water in fire, nor the land creature in the deep, nor the water creature on dry land, nor the earthly creature in the air, nor again the airy creature in the earth; but each, remaining within its own limits of nature, exists as long as it remains within its own limits. But if it should come outside itself, it will also come outside being. And just as the power of the senses, remaining in its natural activities, cannot pass over to the neighbouring one — for neither does the eye perform the functions of hearing, nor does hearing taste, nor touch speak, nor the tongue do the work of sight or of hearing, but each has as the limit of its own power its natural activity — so the whole creation cannot come outside itself through comprehending contemplation, but always remains in itself; and whatever it sees, it sees itself; and even if it should think it sees something beyond itself, it has no nature to see what is outside itself. For example, it forces itself to pass beyond the notion of extension in the contemplation of beings, but it does not pass beyond. For along with every thought that is found it surely contemplates the extension that is grasped together with the subsistence of what is thought; and extension is nothing else than creation. But that good which we have learned both to seek and to keep, being above creation, is above comprehension. For how would our mind, travelling through extended stretching, grasp the unextended nature, by the analysis of time always searching out what is older than the things it finds? It has run past all that is known through its busy inquiry; but it finds no device to run past the notion of the age, how it might set itself outside itself and go beyond what is contemplated before all beings and the age itself. But as though one found oneself on some mountain ridge … Let it be supposed that there is a smooth and sheer rock, reddish in appearance below, stretching down to an infinite length, and from above holding up to the height that summit which, in the projection of its brow, falls sheer to some immense depth: what one standing there would likely feel, touching with the tip of his foot the ridge that overhangs the depth, and finding no footing any longer for the foot nor hold for the hand — this, it seems to me, the soul too feels when it has passed beyond what can be walked on in extended things, in the search for the nature that is before the ages and without extension, having nothing to grasp: no place, no time, no measure, nothing else of this kind; it does not admit the stepping-on of our mind; but, [slipping] on every side …, it grows dizzy and is at a loss, and turns back again to what is akin to it, content to know only so much about what lies above, as to be persuaded that it is something other than the nature of what is known. For this reason, when the word comes to what is beyond word, then it becomes the season to be silent, and to hold uninterpreted, in the secret of conscience, the wonder at that unutterable power, knowing that the great ones too spoke of the works of God and not of God, saying, “Who will speak the mighty acts of the Lord?” and “I will recount all your works,” and “Generation will praise your works.” These they speak of and go through, and entrust to the voice the declaration of what has come to be; but when the word is about him who is above every notion, through what they say they legislate silence outright. For they say that of his magnificence, his glory, his holiness there is no limit. O the wonder! How the word feared to draw near to the glory of the divine wonder, so that it did not even grasp the wonder of one of the things contemplated outside him! For it did not say that there is no limit to the essence of God, judging it altogether daring to bring this into thought; but it marvels in word at the magnificence contemplated upon the glory. And again it could not see the essence even of the glory itself; but it was struck with amazement when it perceived the glory of his holiness. How far, then, he kept from inquiring into the nature, what it is, he who could not marvel at the last of the things that appear! For he did not marvel at his holiness, nor at the glory of the holiness; but having proposed to marvel only at the magnificence of the glory of the holiness, he failed even at the wonder of this. For the limit of what was marvelled at did not come within his mind. Therefore he says, “Of his glory, of his magnificence, of his holiness there is no limit.” So in discourse about God, when the inquiry is about the essence, it is the season to be silent; but when it is about some good activity, the knowledge of which comes down even to us, then it is the season to speak of the mighty acts, to proclaim the wonders, to recount the works, and to use the word up to this point. But in what lies beyond, not to permit creation to go beyond its own limits, but to be content if it knows itself. For if, in our view at least, creation has not yet known itself, nor grasped what the essence of the soul is, what the nature of the body, whence the things that exist come, whence births from one another, how what is not receives substance, how what is is dissolved into what is not, what the harmony from opposites in this world is — if creation does not know itself, how will it recount the things above itself? So there is a season to be silent about these things; for silence is better in them. And there is a season to speak of the things through which our life advances toward virtue, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.

“A season to love, and a season to hate.” Who, then, will have his hearing so cleansed as to receive purely the word about loving, [admitting] nothing of filthy love into himself? Perhaps our ears too need the fingers of Jesus, so that through the divine touch of the true Word the hearing power of our soul may be freed from all filth that blocks the hearing, so as both to understand the praiseworthy love and to receive in the soul what the season to love is and what the season to hate. I do not think this season is anything other than the beneficial. For the benefit from each of these, in my judgment at least, is the right timing of the use of both; so that if what is done should come outside what is profitable, it would be outside the season too. But first, I think, we must understand what is signified by these two words — I mean “to love” and “to hate” — so that we may thus also perceive by reason their timely use. Love is the inward relation to what is desired, effected through pleasure and passionate attachment; hatred is estrangement from what is unpleasant and turning away from what gives pain. Each of these dispositions can be used profitably and also for the opposite, and the whole virtuous life has, as it were, its beginning from here. For to whatever we incline in love, that we make our own in our souls, and toward whatever we are disposed with hatred, from that we are estranged. For whether the soul’s relation is toward the beautiful or toward the evil, what is loved is somehow blended into the soul. And whatever hatred falls between, of that it brings about the separation, whether of the beautiful or of the worse. So it would be necessary to examine what is by nature lovable and what hateful, so that, using such a disposition of the soul in season, we may become estranged from evils through hatred and be blended with the nature of good things. And would that human nature had been taught this before all things — I mean the discernment of the beautiful and what is not such! For the passions would have had no entry against our life if we had come to know the beautiful from the beginning. But as it is, making irrational sense-perception the criterion of the beautiful at the first, we are brought up from the beginning with the judgment about beings that arises in us [from it], and for this reason we are hard to tear away from the things thought beautiful by sense, having made our relation to them our own by being reared with them. What brings some pleasure to the eyes by fine colour appears beautiful to human beings, whether in soulless matter or in living spectacles. Melody is beautiful to the hearing; and in flavours and smells the beautiful is defined, the one by taste, the other by smell. But the heaviest and most irrational of all is touch, through which licentious pleasure takes first place in nature in the vote on the beautiful. Since, then, the senses are born together with us as soon as we come to be, and we grow up with them in our first life — and the sensing power has a great kinship with irrational life, for all such things are seen in the irrational animals too — while the mind is somehow hindered from its proper activity, not finding room in infancy, but is in a manner squeezed out by the dominance of the more irrational sense: for this reason the misdirected use [of the senses] becomes the beginning and ground of the life of vice. For since our nature is in a sense twofold, blended of intelligible and sensible, our life too is accordingly twofold, each arising in us correspondingly: bodily in the sensible part, and incorporeally in the other. Likewise the beautiful and what is not such are not the same for each form of our life, but for the intelligible it is intelligible, while for the sensible and bodily part it is such as sense wishes. Since, then, sense grows with us from our first birth, while the mind waits for the advance to the proportioned age, so as to be able to appear gradually in the subject, for this reason the mind, which arises little by little, is ruled by sense, and is always forcibly obedient to it, judging beautiful or base whatever sense chooses or rejects. For this reason the perception of the truly good becomes hard and difficult to achieve for us: because we have been taken beforehand by the criteria of sense, defining the beautiful in what gladdens and pleases. For just as one cannot look at the beauties in heaven when mist has filled the air overhead, so neither does the eye of the soul see clearly toward virtue, having been taken up, as it were, by a fog upon its sight through pleasure. Since, then, sense looks to pleasure, and the mind is hindered by pleasure from seeing virtue, this becomes the beginning of vice: that the mind too, ruled by sense, has voted for the irrational judgment about the … beautiful; and if the eye says that the beautiful is in the fine colour of what appears, the mind too inclines with it. And likewise with the rest: what gladdens the senses has carried the vote for the beautiful. But if it had somehow been possible from the beginning for the true judgment about the beautiful to arise in us, the mind testing the good by itself, we would not have become cattle-like, enslaved to irrational sense …

So that such confusion in us may be distinguished, and what is by nature lovable, and again what is otherwise, may be recognized without error, the Ecclesiast now says in his discourse: “A season to love, and a season to hate.” Through these he distinguishes the nature of things, showing what is beneficially loved and what hated. For youth, boiling with the passions of its age, says that it is the season for it to love what is dear to youth. But the Ecclesiast cries out against youth, defining another season for pure love. For he says that the erring relation of the soul to what is out of place is not love at all. For just as, when nature is prospering in health, thirst comes to the body in season, but for those in whom the bite of the thirst-viper has produced such a disposition no one would say that thirst is at work in season — for in them thirst is not a natural appetite but a disease — so too the filthy love of youth is not love but a disease, arising in the mind and judgment from the bite of age. Not every love, then, is timely, but only the love that is directed to what alone is lovable. But one cannot receive clear knowledge of these things without dividing the account thus in contemplation. Of the good things pursued by human beings, some are really such as they are called, while others have a false name. For those that do not give temporary enjoyment, nor are such that what seems beautiful to someone becomes useless to others, but are good always and throughout and in all things for those in whom they come to be — these are truly good, always the same, and [not] admitting the mixture of the worse. These things, for those who examine precisely, are contemplated in the divine and eternal nature alone. But all the other things that are beautiful to sense, appearing beautiful through the deceit of fancy, are neither by nature nor do they subsist, but, being of the flowing and passing nature, through some deceit and vain preconception they are thought by the uninstructed to be real. If, then, holding on to unstable things, they do not reach out for the things that always stand — the Ecclesiast seems, as though standing on some high lookout, to cry out to human nature through what he says: “A season to love, and a season to hate,” because the truly good things are other, which are themselves beautiful and make those who share in them such. For whatever is shared in is by nature, toward that the sharer too must be changed along with it; as the mouth of one who has taken fragrant spices through the mouth becomes fragrant, and again foul-smelling in one who eats garlic or some other of the fouler things. So since every filth of sin is foul-smelling, while on the contrary virtue is the fragrance of Christ, and the loving relation naturally brings about a blending with what is loved, whatever we love through affection, that we become: either the fragrance of Christ or a stench. For the one who has loved the beautiful will himself be beautiful, the goodness of what has come to be in him changing the one who received it into itself. … For this reason the One who always is sets himself before us as food, so that, receiving him into ourselves, we may become what he is. For he says, “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” So the one who loves this flesh is not a lover of his own flesh, and the one who is disposed toward this blood will be pure of perceptible blood. For the flesh of the Word, and the blood within this flesh, have not one grace only, but are sweet to those who taste, desirable to those who long for them, and lovely to those who love. But if someone turns his love toward things that do not subsist, then of necessity the one who comes to be in them becomes such as they are by nature. Since, then, among the things that exist one is true and the other vain, [the Ecclesiast speaks thus] so that through the contrast we may understand the nature of what truly is. For so all the saints do, bringing back those who have strayed from the straight road and travel by the wandering one to the road from which they turned aside, crying out from afar, “Flee the road on which you are going; for there are robbers on it and highwaymen and ambushes of murderers,” so that at once the traveller may turn from the danger of the destructive road, and his withdrawal from it may become guidance to the road that saves. So too the great Ecclesiast was crying from above to human nature wandering in a trackless place and not on a road, as the Prophet says, saying outright through what he utters: “Why do you wander through life, O human beings? Why do you love vain things, and [busy yourselves] with these, which have no substance? There is another road, without wandering and saving: love that, walk on that through love — whose name is truth and life and incorruptibility and light and such things. But this road by which you now run is worthy of hatred and aversion; for it is without light and enclosed in darkness, and leads to cliffs and pits and haunts of wild beasts and ambushes of robbers.” So the one who said, “A season to love,” showed what is truly lovable and beloved; and the one who prescribed the season for hatred taught from what we must turn away. Having learned, then, what is by nature lovable, let us cling to it through love, never turned aside by lack of discernment about the beautiful, spending our love on the things which the great David too forbids, saying, “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood?” For one thing alone is by nature lovable: what truly is, about which the legislation of the Decalogue says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.” And one thing again is hateful in truth: the inventor of vice, the enemy of our life, about whom the law says, “You shall hate your enemy.” For the love of God becomes the strength of the one who loves, while the disposition toward vice brings ruin to the one who loves evil. [For] the prophecy says: “[I will love] you, O Lord, my strength; the Lord is my firm foundation and my refuge and my deliverer.” And about the opposite it says, “But he who loves injustice hates his own soul; he will rain snares upon sinners.” The whole of life, then, is the season for love toward God, and the whole of life for estrangement from the adversary. And the one who comes to be outside the love of God for a little of life surely comes to be outside him from whose love he has been separated. And the one who has come to be outside God must be outside the light, because God is light; and outside life and incorruptibility and every thought and thing contemplated toward the better, all of which God is. For the one who is not in these is surely in their opposites. So darkness and corruption and utter destruction and death await such a one. The word of the Ecclesiast, having distinguished these things in a short saying, shows them by timely love and hatred exercised in season, revealing the nature of each of the things understood as opposites. “A season,” he says, “to love the good, and again a season to hate the opposite.” And he says: “You, O human being, [should direct] your reason to look toward the beautiful.” For the reversed and erring disposition of our soul toward each of these is the root and beginning of sin. “For no one,” it says, “can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other.” The contrast has taught who is the one who rules evilly, from whom we must be estranged through hatred, and who the one who rules his subject for good, to whom it is fitting to be joined through love. But if someone holds to what is hateful and despises what is lovable, this is the one who exchanges the right times of love and hatred to his own harm. For the one who despises a thing will be destroyed by it, while the one who holds to destruction will acquire for himself what he held to. Having distinguished, then, by reason the things understood in terms of virtue and of vice, you will recognize the right time of how one must stand toward each of them. Self-control and pleasure, temperance and licentiousness, moderation and conceit, goodwill and ill will, and all the things understood as opposites, are clearly pointed out to you by the Ecclesiast, so that, being well disposed in soul toward them, you may take profitable counsel. There is a season, then, to love self-control and to hate pleasure, so that you may not become a lover of pleasure but rather a lover of God; and all the other things likewise — love of strife, love of gain and …, and all that through the use of love for what ought not to be loved separate one from the relation to the good. As it were in passing we have learned a doctrine: that every movement of the soul was constructed for good by the one who made our nature; but if the erring use of such movements has produced the occasions for vice, then our self-determining power, being a beautiful thing, becomes, when it is active toward evil, the last of evils. And conversely the power that drives away what is unpleasant, whose name is hatred, is an instrument of virtue, when it is armed against the opposite; but it becomes a weapon of sin when it is set in opposition to the good. So every creature of God among the things constructed in us is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; but the ungrateful use of them made the creature a passion, through which the kinship with God departs, and the opposites, coming in instead, are set up in the place of God, so that for such people the passions are made gods. So for the gluttonous the belly becomes a god; so the greedy make their disease an idol for themselves; so those darkened by deceit in this age in the eyes of the soul have made vainglory a god for themselves. And to put it briefly: to whatever one has yoked his own reasoning … and made it slave and subject, that he has made a god in his own passion; he would not have suffered this unless he had made the evil his own through love. If, then, we have understood the right time of love and hatred, let us love the one and [hate] the other.

“For there is a season,” it says, “of war, and a season of peace.” You see the battle line of the opposing passions, the law of the flesh campaigning against the law [of the mind]. Attend to the varied arrangement of the battle, how manifold is the adversary’s generalship against your city: he sends spies, wins over traitors, sets ambushes on the roads, gathers allies, and campaigns against you with those who fight hand to hand, the cavalry, and all such things. And surely you are not ignorant of the sense of what is said: who the traitor is, who the spy, who the men in ambush, who the slingers, who the archers and close fighters and the squadron of horsemen. We too, then, seeing all these things, must arm ourselves, summon our allies, and examine our subjects to see whether anyone is minded with the enemy, foresee the ambushes by the roadside, secure ourselves against the missiles with shields, [meet] those who grapple with us hand to hand from above, and trench off the approach of the horsemen against us. It would also be fitting for some to be applied against the siege engines. But surely we need no discourse to interpret each thing: how the enemy of the city of each of us — the one in the soul, [built] by God — tests our strength through spies, and has some of our own who become traitors to our strength. So that the thought may be revealed more clearly: the first attack of temptation, from which the passions take their beginning, is such. This becomes the spy of our strength. For example: a sight fell on the eye that can renew desire. Through this, then, the enemy spies out the strength in you, whether it is strong and well prepared, or slack and easily taken. For if you were not troubled by the figure, nor was the effort of your mind loosened toward what appeared, but you let the encounter pass without passion, at once you terrified the spy, showing the spy a phalanx of hoplites bristling with spears — I mean the preparation of your reasonings. But if sense is softened by pleasure toward the sight, and the image of the form slips into the mind through the eyes, then the general of those within, the mind, is defeated, as having nothing manly or vigorous, but being slack and feeble, and a crowd of traitors from the populace of the reasonings is assembled around the spy. These are the traitors of whom the Lord says, “A man’s enemies are those of his own household” — those that come out of the heart and defile the man, whose names can be learned clearly from the Gospel. From this point it will no longer be difficult for you to perceive in sequence each detail of that war’s arrangement, of the one who lies in ambush from the unseen, into which those fall who travel the road of life without foresight. For those who, under the guise of friendship and goodwill, drag the one who is persuaded down to the destruction of sin — these are the ones who lie in ambush on the roads: the praisers of pleasure, those who lead people by the hand to the theatres, those who show the ease of evil and by what they do call others to imitate the like, naming themselves brothers and friends for the destruction of those who perish. Of them it is written, “Every brother will supplant with the heel, and every friend will walk deceitfully.” If we have understood the ambushes, it would be clear also to search out [the slingers]. For the insolent and angry and abusive, by beginning the insults, slinging and hurling provoking words instead of missiles or stones, wound in the middle of the heart those who travel without breastplate and without guard. And those who transfer the passion of conceit and arrogance to the prancing of horses would not be wrong. For there are certain horses that are simply high-necked and high-headed, trampling down the modest with the swollen words of conceit as with hollow hooves. Of them Scripture says, “Let not the foot of arrogance come against me.” And the siege engines by which the joining of the wall is loosened one would rightly understand as love of money. For nothing is so heavy and hard to withstand in the enemies’ preparation as the engine of love of money. Even if [souls] have fortified themselves very greatly with the other virtues through their construction, the engine nonetheless often slips in through these too. For one can see love of money falling in even through [self-control], and through faith, and through exactness in the mysteries, through self-control and humility, and coming within all such things — this heavy and irresistible attack of evil. Hence some who are self-controlled and temperate, fervent in faith, sober in manner and moderate in character, are unable to hold out against this disease alone. If, then, we have understood the host of the enemies, it would be the season to make war. But no one would be confident of routing the opposing battle line without taking hold of the Apostle’s panoply. And surely no one is ignorant of the manner of that divine armour, by which he makes the one who stands against the phalanx of enemies invulnerable to the opposing missiles. For the Apostle, dividing the virtues into kinds, has made each kind of virtue a proper weapon for each of the vital parts in us. For weaving and plaiting righteousness together with faith, he prepares the breastplate for the hoplite through these, arming the soldier with a breastplate well and safely through both. For one cannot, separated from the other, become a safe weapon by itself to the one who wields it. For neither is faith without the works of righteousness able to save, nor again is the righteousness of life safe for salvation by itself, separated from faith. For this reason, weaving faith and righteousness together into this weapon as its materials, [he protects] the region about the heart … for in the breastplate the heart is understood. And he secures the head of the champion with hope, signifying that the good soldier should hold the hope of lofty things upward, like a crest. And the shield, the covering weapon, is unbreakable faith, which the point of the arrows cannot penetrate. And let us understand the arrows shot by the enemies to be the varied attacks of the passions. And the saving weapon that arms the right hand of those who champion against the enemies is the Holy Spirit, fearful to the adversary, saving to the one who wields it. And the whole teaching of the Gospel makes the feet secure, so that no part of the body is found naked and exposed to a blow.

If, then, we have learned with whom we must make war, and how to take up the battle, we must learn also the other part: with whom the word bears witness that we should be at truce and at peace. Who, then, is the good general to whom I shall make myself kin through peace? And who is the king of such an army? Surely it is clear — we have heard both from the God-inspired Scripture — that the heavenly army is the battle line of the angels? “For there came,” it says, “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” And Daniel sees myriads of myriads standing by, and sees thousands of thousands among those who minister. And the Prophet, bearing witness to such a thing, names the Lord of all “Lord of hosts” and “Lord of powers.” And to the son of Nun the one mighty in war says, “I am [the commander] of the power.” If we have understood what the good alliance is, and who the leader of these allies is, let us make a truce with him, let us run to his rule, let us become friends to the one who possesses such power. And the manner of our kinship with him is taught us by the one who brings about this friendship, the great Apostle, where he says, “Being justified, then, by faith, we have peace with God”; and again, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” For while we were by nature children of wrath in doing what is not fitting, … [we have been changed] by the right hand of the Most High, having put away ungodliness and worldly desires, living holily and righteously and godly. Through this peace we shall be joined to the true Peace. For so the Apostle says of him: “He himself is our peace.” This word is the end and the sum of all that is done in season. For we were taught to do all things in season so that we may achieve this for ourselves: to have peace with God through being set as enemies against the adversary. And surely, if one were to call the virtues the army of peace, toward which we must be friendly, he will not have his account outside the sense given; because every name and thought of virtue is referred to the Lord of the virtues. And why should one lengthen the discourse in such matters, when what has been said is enough to reveal the sense contained in the words?

But since through these … the soul of the one previously trained in these lofty lessons, he again leads up the soul of the one who follows the word to a lofty state, and says, “What advantage has the one who works in that at which he toils?” — which is equal to saying, “What [comes] from all human toils, from which there is no gain?” [One labours] with toils, trades, suffers loss, gains, goes to law, fights, goes away defeated, carries the winning vote, is pitied, is called blessed, stays at home, wanders among strangers — all that is seen in life in varied pursuits, some in some, others in others. What more does zeal about these things bring to the one who spends his own life through them? Did not living cease, and all was covered over by forgetfulness at once? And bereft of the things he pursued he goes away naked, bringing with him nothing of the affairs here except only his conscience about the affairs; from which, in a manner, this voice comes afterwards, [from heaven], to the one who wandered with life through such occupations: “What advantage has come to you from those many toils at which you toiled? Where are the splendid houses? Where the buried purses? Where the bronze statues and the voices of those who praised you? See, now there is fire and scourges, and the impartial judgment, and the examination of what was lived that cannot be deceived.” “What advantage, then, has the one who works in that at which he toils?” And after this, he says, “I saw the distraction which he gave to the sons of men, to be distracted with it: all the things which he made beautiful in its season. And he gave the age in their heart, so that a man may not find the work which God has made from beginning to end.” What does he mean by this? “I recognized,” he says, “from where human nature was distracted from life, taking its occasions from the divine benefits.” For he made all things for good, and gave to those who share in being a reason that distinguishes the better, through which the right timing of the use of each thing, once recognized, grants the perception of the beautiful to those who use it. But since it fell from the right judgment about beings, turned aside from settled reason by wicked counsel, the reversal of season turned what is useful in each case to the contrary experience. As if someone set on a table every preparation for a feast, and placed beside it certain utensils suited to help with the food, such as are made by those who love the art of such things — either fine knives by which the guests cut for themselves some of what is set before them, or the silver forks, whose hollow grown on at the other end is made suitable for the [eating] — and then one of those invited to the feast, reversing the use of what was set before him, should use each for what is not fitting, and with the knife should cut either himself or one of those beside him, and with the fork should prick out the eye of his neighbour or his own: one would say that so-and-so had misused the host’s preparation for evil, though the host did not prepare the cause of what would happen; rather, the evil use of what was set before him led the one who used it foolishly into this suffering. “So,” he says, “I too recognized that each thing came from God for every better purpose, if the use of each should come about in season as is fitting; but the turning aside of right judgment about beings turned good things into an occasion for evils.” I mean something like this: what is sweeter than the activity of the eyes? But when sight, having suffered passion, becomes the servant of such things, he says that what came to be for benefit has become a cause of evils; which is nothing else than that someone, using the beautiful badly, made the use a passion. So too all the other things that nature has from God lie in the free choice of those who use them, to become material either of good or of evil things. Therefore he says, “All the things which he made beautiful in its season. And he gave the age in their heart.” And the age, being a notion of extension, signifies all the creation that has come to be in it. So the passage shows, from what contains, everything that is contained. All things, then, that have come to be in the age God gave to the human heart for good, so that through the greatness and beauty of created things one might contemplate through them the one who made them. But those who were harmed through these things were harmed by not using each as is fitting and for what is profitable. Therefore he says, “So that a man may not find the work which God made” for the aim of benefit, in all the things that have come to be from the beginning of creation to the completion of the universe, since there is no evil among the things that exist. For evil has no nature to grow from good. And if the cause of all things is good, then surely all things that have their subsistence from the good are good.

Then he says, “I recognized that there is nothing good in them except to be glad and to do good in his life.” What has been said is summed up in the passage. For if the use of the divine works in season defines the beautiful for human life, the one beautiful thing would be the continual gladness in beautiful things, which is born of good works. For the working of the commandments now gladdens, through hope, the one who leads in beautiful works; and afterward, having received the enjoyment of the good hopes, it sets gladness before the worthy as their own, when the Lord says to those who have done good, “Come, you who are blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” And what eating and drinking are to the body, by which nature is preserved, this to the soul is looking toward the good; and this is truly a gift of God … to gaze intently at God. For this is the [gift] which is interpreted in what is said next. The wording is this: “And every man who will eat and drink and see good in all his toil — this is a gift of God.” For as the fleshly man, he says, has his strength in eating and drinking, so the one who looks toward the good (and the true good would be the only Good) has as a gift of God in all his toil this very thing: always to look toward the good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.