Congregations going through the Book of Ecclesiastes in their mid-week meetings, two chapters at a time. It’s good for its descriptions of the curves life can throw at you regardless of your spirituality. Solomon writes how “I have seen everything—from the righteous one who perishes in his righteousness to the wicked one who lives long despite his badness, (7:15) and “that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle, nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches, nor do those with knowledge always have success, because time and unexpected events overtake them all. (9:11) This reality lends the present life a certain “futility,” a continual theme of the book.
There is no scriptural correlation between spirituality and material wealth. Sometimes the latter works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. It is sort of like winning or losing in a game that is part skill and part dumb luck. In neither case is it the “real life” of 1 Timothy 6:19 that Witnesses make their primary hope, life in God’s new system under Christ’s reign.
A previous Sunday’s Watchtower study (Have You Learned the ‘Secret of Contentment’? – October 2025) focused on how to be content. Philippians 4:11-12 was the theme, in which Paul said: “I have learned to be self-sufficient regardlessof my circumstances. I know how to be low on provisions and how to have an abundance. In everything and in all circumstances I have learned the secret of both how to be full and how to hunger, both how to have an abundance and how to do without.”
He had had periods of both in his life. He had “learned the secret” of how to adapt to both, to be content. It’s something people very much need today—all people, not just Witnesses. There was a lot in the study article on cultivating a spirit of gratitute. It is healthy to do that. Viewing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty helps. Both descriptions are equally accurate. But they evoke different attitudes. You can be grateful for a glass half-full but we never hear of people being grateful for one half-empty.
Being content is the key. Witnesses by and large are. Even when they are not, their discontent seldom rises to the greater world’s level of discontent. It is a very tragic thing to lose faith in God’s promises because then one joins them in discontent. For whatever reason, those who have lost faith tend to gather on social media. There, I read descriptions of my own faith that I do not recognize. It is as what Paul writes to Timothy of those who have come to think materially, those who suppose that “godly devotion is a means of gain.” They immerse themselves in “things [that] give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.” (1 Timothy 6:4-5) To hear some former Witnesses carry on at the venues they have chosen, you might not even realize that there is a Bible. Faith has been shipwrecked so all people have are the minor matters to stew about, matters of human interaction reframed as “control” and “manipulation.”
When it is said that Witnesses are getting by “just fine” it’s referring more to their overall state of happiness than their material state. Materially, some do well. Others do not. The same as is true with the greater world. On the ordinary matters of life, Witnesses are as likely to say what is commonly said everywhere else: “If I knew then what I know now…” or “if I had it all to do over again….” People say such things all the time. Witnesses are people. They say it too.
They seldom say it regarding their spiritual outlook, however. They call their set of beliefs “the truth” on account of how it all dovetails together. It sees them through both good times and bad. If they have made some moves in life that, in hindsight, didn’t work out so well, it doesn’t change the tenets of faith that anchors them. I doubt there are fewer children among Witnesses than anywhere else, in a Western world that has decided not to have many, nor would home ownership be lower, in a world where some rent and some own. College, I concede, is lower. Witnesses are very much top-heavy with “workmen,” which is probably why Paul used that word in at 2 Timothy 2:15. He could have said elite or scholar, or even student. He said workman.
Of course we should think. Of course we should be reasonable. Of course we should (God help us) use “critical thinking” if that term does it for us. But don’t go thinking you’re getting to the bottom of anything that way. In the end, were stuck with what Solomon described at Ecclesiastes 8:17:
“I considered all the work of the true God, and I realized that mankind cannot comprehend what happens under the sun. No matter how hard men try, they cannot comprehend it. Even if they claim that they are wise enough to know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
They can’t really comprehend it, no matter how hard they try. When people carry on that their thinking is so sharp as to put aside emotion, it just makes things worse. It “locks in human bias under a veneer of science.”
Witness the “faith, hope, and love”—all emotions of 1 Corinthians 13:13, “but the greatest of these is love.” Contrast that with some of the baser emotions Paul mentions at 1 Timothy 6: 3-4:
“If any man teaches another doctrine and does not agree with the wholesome instruction, which is from our Lord Jesus Christ, nor with the teaching that is in harmony with godly devotion, he is puffed up with pride and does not understand anything. He is obsessed with arguments and debates about words. These things give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.
The power is in the emotions; faith, hope, love on one end and “pride, envy, strife, wicked suspicions” at the other. One can discuss either using all their powers of critical thinking, but that does not change that the first are noble and the latter are base. So use your critical thinking, but don’t let it go to your head. in matters involving God, it is like showing up at the job with a toolbox stuffed with wrenches when what is required is a screwdriver. And, by all means, don’t think it a virtue or even within your power to divorce emotions from thought. Humans are not built that way. They can blind themselves to think they are but they are not.
Most Witnesses describe their faith as the most rational of religions. They have a sense with the Bible of having put a jigsaw puzzle together. But that doesn’t mean it will satisfy the standards of “critical thinking,” which considers only that which is provable. The stuff wouldn’t be called faith if it was provable. Says Luke Johnson, “The historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent or the supernatural. Therefore, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead and so forth. Well, fair enough, the historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint . . . very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is the historian can’t talk about these things, therefore they are not real.”
Consistently, we read that those who embrace stick with faith do so on factors other than their critical thinking. Acts 13:48 simply calls it being “rightly disposed for everlasting life.” (“When those of the nations heard this, they began to rejoice and to glorify the word ofJehovah, and all those who were rightly disposed for everlasting life became believers.”) It is hard to envision that as a function of their critical thinking.
Even passages that do call for analytical thinking ability—call it “critical thinking” if you must—make clear that such thinking is not the motivator. Rather, it is the tool that one employs with motivation, but would not do so otherwise. For example, a choice was thrust upon the Boreans when Paul and Silas paid a visit in the first century:
“Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica [where the two had been run out of town], for they accepted the word with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” (Acts 17:11)
That they were rational is evident in that they carefully examined the Scriptures daily to see that what Paul and Silas were telling them was so. But from where does the eagerness come? That one will be emotion, not logic. That one will be heart, not head. That one will be people conscious of their spiritual need, and so determined to fill it. That one will be people who intuitively know they have a spiritual need and that it is analogous to their need for vitamins, without which one gets very ill and never quite knows why. Nobody hungers for vitamin C or vitamin D. Instead, they make themselves conscious of that need. That those of Borea put such a premium on spiritual matters explains that they are called noble-minded. It’s a nobility that has nothing to do with the intellect, the head. It has everything to do with emotion, with what a person is at heart.
It is high time to wrap up this series. It has spanned six parts. It doubtless includes redundancies which need be edited out if I ever combine the six. The stuff called critical thinking is fine as a seasoning, but disastrous as a main course. You would think that would be evident as the ship goes under while co-captained by luminaries all claiming to excel in such thinking. But it is not.
Isn’t “critical thinking” the prime tool of those who “think they are wise?” The holy writings have no use for that type of person: “Have you seen a man who thinks he is wise? There is more hope for someone stupid than for him.” (Proverbs 26:12) Emphasis on critical thinking gives rise to the mantra that more understanding will solve all problems. How is that one working out? Humans don’t need more of the stuff. If anything, they need less. Moreover, they need it to stand aside so that higher qualities may shine through.
Be honest, please. I understand why you might hold back, so as not to hurt my feelings. Please put that instinct aside. What do you think of the following verse?
“If the clouds are filled with water, they will pour down rain on the earth; and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, the place where the tree falls is where it will lie.”
My wife said “Duh.”
I checked the Research Guide, that tool that comes with JWLibrary. Nothing. They didn’t touch it. Probably, some brother was assigned, he said “Duh” and the editors didn’t think the remark worthy of inclusion.
So I went to some online commentaries that said, ‘It’s because you’re considering the verse separately, Tom. It’s part of a package.’
The package is verses 1-6. In the main, they encourage one to work in the face of uncertainty, not hold back, not to stymie oneself with endless what-ifs, realize you only partially control the outcome, cover lots of bases because any given one may blow up in your face, and do it before factors intervene over which you have no control—don’t procrastinate. Verse 3 offers up two of those metaphorical factors: the cloud that lets loose, and the tree that falls. Act before those things happen:
“Cast your bread on the waters, for after many days you will find it again. Give a share to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what disaster will occur on the earth. If the clouds are filled with water, they will pour down rain on the earth; and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, the place where the tree falls is where it will lie. The one who watches the wind will not sow seed, and the one who looks at the clouds will not reap. Just as you do not know how the spirit operates in the bones of the child inside a pregnant woman, so you do not know the work of the true God, who does all things. Sow your seed in the morning and do not let your hand rest until the evening; for you do not know which will have success, whether this one or that one, or whether they will both do well.” (1-6)
That settled, I turned my attention to another verse from the next chapter, also covered in this week’s Bible reading:
“As for anything besides these, my son, be warned: To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh.” (12:12)
Is this a discouragement from reading, I’ve long wondered. No, it’s not, the commentary said, it’s just encouragement to stay on matters of substance, such as the Proverbs themselves, and not the endless human philosophies which wear you out because they are endless, that offer no rest or final truth, that wear a person out without profit. It’s not anti-reading. It’s anti-rabbit-hole-ism.
I was slow on the uptake, so it added a modern parallel:
“Imagine a student today:
– Reads Proverbs → clear, godly wisdom.
– Then dives into 10,000 Reddit threads, TikTok philosophies, self-help gurus → endless, conflicting, exhausting.
**12:12 says: Stick to the Shepherd’s words. The rest is noise.”
In government, when people enter office with modest means and a few years later have amassed wealth far beyond what the paycheck would account for, is that an example of the following?
“How terrible for a land when the king is a boy and the princes start their feasting in the morning!” Ecclesiastes 10:16. [The king is a relative “boy” who allows them to get away with it.]
Bad “for a land” when that happens. Ideally, instead it will be:
“How happy for the land when the king is the son of nobles and the princes eat at the proper time for strength, not for drunkenness!” (10:17)
The king has some nobility about himself and runs a tight ship, selecting princes inclined the same way.
Regardless of whether they did or did not, you had zero say about it. Often, biblical writings present “heavens” as a metaphor for ruling kings over the people (the earth). Like the actual heavens, the ruling king could storm on you one day, shine on you the next, freeze you out thereafter, and there was not a thing you could do about. For all the hoopla about participatory government, it is pretty much the same today, in which your input is not exactly zero, but close to it.
In the meantime, as to governments in the here and now: All human governments will drop the ball. Usually it is a bowling ball. As people ponder the vulnerabilities of their toes on their right and left feet, such is decided their politics. Jehovah’s Witnesses do their best to stay away from that stuff, recognizing that it is all a manifestation of “rulership by man,” subject to “man dominating man to his injury.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) Invariably, it becomes some permutation of “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It is not just corruption, though it is that. Even in a perfected state, humans would still be subject to that described just a few Ecclesiastes verses later:
“I considered all the work of the true God, and I realized that mankind cannot comprehend what happens under the sun. No matter how hard men try, they cannot comprehend it. Even if they claim that they are wise enough to know, they cannot really comprehend it.” (8:17)
They don’t really know how it works. Even with “critical thinking” they can’t figure it out, and so there are non-ending fights on the very basics of life, on “what makes us tick,” as well as over stewardship regarding the earth itself. (One speaker at the last circuit assembly quipped that you cannot even bring up cheese without people squabbling over it.) Then, too, men “cannot comprehend,” “no matter how hard” they may try, simply because they are finite. Attentions close at hand, that they can reach out and touch, will always take precedence over ones far away that have to be envisioned in the mind’s eye.
It is why humans need God’s kingdom, and it really has to be God’s kingdom, not just some ‘nicer’ form of human rule. It has to be as when Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is in your midst,” as opposed to “the kingdom of God is within you.” Both renderings of Luke 21:11 are grammatically permissible. But only one is permissible by context. If “the kingdom of God is within you,” then it is a very weak force indeed, since Jesus was speaking to religious opponents who would later plot for his execution—no last minute change of heart for them.
Meanwhile, to get back to the kings Solomon speaks of, his book is like laying out a welcome mat for that kingdom of God, in that it highlights failure after failure of the present. Chapter 10 of Ecclesiastes ends with a corker:
“Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king, and do not curse the rich in your bedroom; for a bird may convey the sound, or a creature with wings may repeat what was said.” (Ecclesiastes 10:20)
Yeah. Like that time the king’s henchmen came calling and the householder hastened to point out that his parrot’s political views were not his own.
The Book of Ecclesiastes examines themes as the vicissitudes of life, that the swift do not always have the race, nor the strong the battle. This implies a certain “vanity” should one gloat too much over one’s accomplishments, as well as a certain “futility” brought on by the relative brevity of life. On a trip to the Pocono hills of Pennsylvania, I explored these themes in connection with some power players of long ago. It also appears in a book I wrote, Go Where Tom Goes. (billed as a travelogue for those who aren’t fussy):
Down where the widened street and its narrow companion end in two tees onto route 209, beyond is the train station, the tracks, the Lehigh River, the walkway, and another steep mountain. You are in the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. An odd name for a town, don’t you think? But when you consider the original name, Mauch Chunk, perhaps you will think Jim Thorpe an improvement. Mauch Chunk is the Lenni Lenape word for sleeping bear; a native American term that no one except the Lenni Lenape will understand. Jim Thorpe is a native American term that everyone will understand. Descendant of a chief of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe attended the nearby Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he mastered every sport he attempted: basketball, lacrosse, tennis, handball, bowling, swimming, hockey, boxing, and gymnastics. “Show them what an Indian can do,” his father charged him when he went off to represent the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. There, he won so many metals in such a variety of events that Sweden’s King Gustav V gushed, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world!” “Thanks, King,” the unassuming man replied. For years thereafter, he played major league baseball and football concurrently. ABC’s Wide World of Sports, in 2001, named him the greatest athlete of the 20th century.
Just behind and well above that aforementioned train station, up the steep hill, is the 1860 home built for Asa Packer. It is an ornate, three-story mansion open for tours, so of course, Mrs. Harley and I took one. Asa Packer came from Connecticut (on foot) in 1833 and made his fortune, first as a canal boat operator, and then as the founder of the Lehigh railroad. The idea was to transport the area’s coal to the great cities on the East Coast. It made him the third wealthiest man in the country. From his front porch, peer over the inn to see the courthouse he built, where he served as a judge, the church he built where he served as a vestryman, and the sandstone buildings where he housed his employees. Today, those sandstone buildings contain eateries, studios, and trendy stores. At one time, nineteen of the country’s twenty-six millionaires maintained seasonal homes in Mauch Chunk. Asa Packer’s words are on display just in front of his house: “There is no distinction to which any young man may not aspire, and with energy, diligence, intelligence, and virtue, obtain.”
The Asa Packer mansion at Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
Mrs. Harley and I didn’t stay in his town during our Poconos trip, however. We stayed twenty miles upstream in Stoddartsville, the town of a would-be industrialist to whom fortune was not so kind. Stoddartsville appears on the map but if you go there you will find only the foundations of a few 200-year-old buildings—and simple signs erected by the Stoddartsville Historical Society labeling what once stood on each foundation. And a graveyard whose worn tombstones reveal that several Stoddarts are buried there. And a few private residences were built on some of those ancient foundations. And a small rustic cabin overlooking the Lehigh—that is where we stayed.
John Stoddart was ambitious, too, just like Asa Packer. He also sought to harness the Lehigh, to ship grain downstream to Philadelphia, hoping to divert commerce from a neighboring system that sent it to Baltimore—this was to be a “win-lose” situation, not a “win-win,” with him the winner. He built a community straddling the Lehigh along the Wilkes-Barre Turnpike (which he controlled) with a grist mill, sawmill, and boat-building capacity. It flourished in the early 1800s, a bit before Packer’s time, but alas, Stoddart was too far upstream. The best he could do with his river was provide one-way traffic, utilizing a series of dams that held back waters until they reached flood stage, and then, releasing them all at once, his barges could ride the crest downstream to the next dam! Boats were constructed in Stoddartsville and dismantled at the destination; the timber sold along with the cargo. It was not cost-effective enough to compete with later two-way systems. John Stoddart eventually went bankrupt and his town faded from prominence. He spent the final thirty years of his life as a clerk in Philadelphia.
There is a third character, a Quaker businessman by the name of Josiah White, who touches on the fortunes of both Packer and Stoddart. To Packer, he brought success, but to Stoddart, ruin. Stoddart might have gone under in any case, but White sealed his fate. White’s endeavor was canal-building, and it was canal piloting that enabled Asa Packer to amass capital sufficient to build his railroad. Back in Mauch Chunk, just before the railroad station (which is now a tourist information center) lies a town square named after Josiah White. It was he who founded the town before Packer ever traipsed in from Connecticut.
Ironically, Josiah White’s canal ventures owe a lot to John Stoddart’s initial support. In the early days of the Lehigh Navigation Company, White tried in vain to raise money from comfortable, conservative, downstream Philadelphia merchants. They were loath to part with it. White realized he needed the backing of one man, John Stoddart, who (per White’s memoirs)
“was then a leading man among the Mound characters, being esteemed Luckey [sic] and to never mis’d in his Speculations, carried a strong influence with his actions, he being of an open and accessible habit, gave us frequent opportunities with him, & his large Estates at the head of our Navigation, authorized our beseaging [sic] him, which we did frequently.”
Sure enough, as soon as word got out that Stoddart had invested $5000.00 (with the stipulation that the navigation system begin in Stoddartsville) everyone jumped on board, and the entire hoped-for sum of $100,000 was raised in 24 hours! White began building two-way locks on the Lehigh, but that summer (1819) was unusually dry, and the river proved too shallow for transport. The following winter, ice damaged the locks to the point that White replaced them with the aforementioned one-way bear-trap locks—the locks in no way resembled bear traps, but White’s workmen named them such to dispose of pesky, “Whatcha building?” passerby—the economics of which ultimately sealed John Stoddart’s doom, not to mention, destroying the fishing upon which various Native Americans and missionaries depended.
Roaming the Pennsylvania hills where these long-dead men once maneuvered, it is hard to escape the feeling that had you switched them, put Stoddart where Packer was and vice versa, the results would have been the same. Both were subject to time and unforeseen circumstances, which might have easily gone the other way. If the Lehigh had behaved that first year of Stoddart’s transport system, or if Packer, who went way out on a limb financially building his railroad, had been subject to a clobbering winter or two, it might be Stoddart’s name that is remembered instead of Packer’s—that is, as much as any person is remembered. For, successful as he was, I knew nothing about Packer before stumbling upon his hometown. Did you? Even though he was the third richest man in the country. Doesn’t matter. We all end up in the grave, where the memory of us quickly fades.
For whatever reason, I vividly remember Brother Benner, the District Overseer, playing devil’s advocate with his own argument, an argument drawn from Ecclesiastes about the brevity of life, and its consequent “futility.” Build as you may, you are not around to reap too much benefit from your work. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon reflects upon “all that I had worked so hard for under the sun because I must leave it behind for the man coming after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish? Yet he will take control over all the things I spent great effort and wisdom to acquire under the sun.” (2:18-19)
This nearly happened in the case of Packer’s enormous wealth after the untimely deaths of his sons. Business associates threatened to squander it all, so Asa’s daughter Mary maneuvered to gain control of the family fortune. To that end, she had to marry, since unmarried women from that era were never left the estate. The fact that Mary had nursed both parents through their deaths did not matter. She married some obliging business fellow, secured the fortune, and the marriage ended soon thereafter. Was that the plan from the start? At any rate, as we toured the Packer mansion, the guide pointed to a prominently displayed plaque of Saint Fabiola, the patron saint of divorced women. (No, I didn’t know there was such a saint, either.)
Anyhow, back to Benner, he was discussing verse eleven of chapter 1, a recurring theme of Ecclesiastes: No one remembers people of former times; Nor will anyone remember those who come later; Nor will they be remembered by those who come still later. We, who were initially created to live forever on earth, are now subject to that sad reality. He spoke of how someone might attempt to counter the verse, for example, pointing to some musician or other: “Yes, so-and-so may have died,” people would gush, “but his music lives on and on.” “Give me a break!” Benner responded. “Who was the most famous singer in George Washington’s day?” Exactly.
Same thing with Mauch Chunk. Who were the other eighteen millionaires who made their home there? Or, for that matter, what about Jim Thorpe, the town’s later namesake? What became of him after his athletic days? (Alas, for all his fame, he fell upon very hard times.) You will remember imperfectly a few of the generation before you and perhaps even a handful of the generation before that, but everyone else is, at best, a name in a statistics book, like Packer or Stoddart. Some won. Some lost. But you don’t know anything about them.
The brevity of our life is what defines it. You do not get too many shots. There is a built-in frustration since every door we open represents several we have closed. Pathways take time to trod. The more ambitious the pathway, the longer it will take, and the fewer you will tread. Each pathway we go down represents a multitude we do not go down. And yet, we want to go down them all. Is this what Solomon meant about life being “calamity?” Today’s age of specialization makes the calamity even more pronounced. Increase your wisdom or wealth, as Solomon did, and you increase the pathways you can pursue. But, alas, you increase your perception of the many more you will not pursue before the clock runs out.
It was not meant to be so and it will not be so one day in the future. Humans, created to live forever but now relegated to a few scores of years, are yet to have the opportunity for everlasting life. And all these characters of the past, not to mention our own family members, are they to be among the “righteous and the unrighteous” who come out of the memorial tombs, per Acts 24:15 and John 5:28? It is the Bible’s hope. It intrigued me from the beginning. It still does, though one must stoke the hope occasionally so that static from this present system of things does not drown it out. As Jesus said: “When the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?”
The drive down to the Lehigh River is not steep, but it extends seven miles, starting at Summit Point, which for all practical purposes, is the top of the world. I mean, you know you’re way, way up there in the Poconos; look all around you, and there are no peaks. And isn’t the grid of roads up there mildly convex, as you’d expect on a mountaintop?
A couple of early steep, sharp turns, and your descent is on, unbroken and more-or-less straight. The road enters a gully in its final two miles, imperceptibly at first, nonetheless, embankments on right and left steadily rise. Then….a short string of row houses appear on your left, crammed between road’s edge and embankment. Then another string on the right side. Then…..unbroken rows on both sides….they’ve wedged a town in here!
But if this is a gully, shouldn’t there be rushing water? Ah….there it is, cascading down from the left, and a little further from the right, vanishing into a tunnel carved under the row of buildings. It must re-emerge someplace, yet I never discovered where.
The row buildings, right and left, steadily improve in appearance. They become colorful boutiques, artist dens, eateries, and general stores. The final block widens out, enough to allow angled parking, and the row buildings to the left sandwich a grand inn, but all the while this is a one-street sliver of a town. Oh…alright…toward the bottom, they somehow slip in one parallel alleyway, to the right and a bit elevated, but it hasn’t even room for its own set of right and left dwellings. On one side fronts a sandstone row of trendy shops; on the other, the backs of buildings from the main drag.
Down here the widened street and it’s narrow companion end in tees onto rt 209. Beyond is the train station, the tracks, the Lehigh river, the walkway, and another steep mountain. You’re in the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. An odd name for a town, don’t you think? But when you consider the original name, Mauch Chunk, perhaps you’ll think JT an improvement. Mauch Chunk is the Lenni Lenape word for “sleeping bear;” a native American term that no one except the Lenni Lenape will understand. Jim Thorpe is a native American term that everyone will understand. Descendant of a chief of the Sac and Fox nation, Thorpe attended the nearby Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he mastered any sport he turned his attention to: basketball, lacrosse, tennis, handball, bowling, swimming, hockey, boxing, and gymnastics. “Show them what an Indian can do,” his father charged him when he went off to represent the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Oympics. There, he won so many metals, in such a variety of events, that Sweden’s King Gustov V gushed “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world!” “Thanks, King,” the unassuming man replied. For years thereafter, he played major league baseball and football, concurrently. ABC’s Wide World of Sports, in 2001, named him the greatest athlete of the 20th century.
Just behind and well above that aforementioned grand inn, up the steep hill, is the 1860 home built for Asa Packer. It’s an ornate, three-story mansion open for tours, so of course, Mrs Sheepandgoats and I took one. Asa Packer came from Connecticutt (on foot) in 1833 and made his fortune, first as a canal boat operator, and then as founder of the LeHigh railroad. The idea was to transport the area’s coal to the great cities on the East Coast. It made him the third wealthiest man in the country. From his front porch, peer over the inn to see the courthouse he built, where he served as judge, the church he built where he served as vestryman, and the sandstone buildings where he housed his employees. Today, those sandstone buildings contain eateries, studios, and trendy stores. At one time, nineteen of the country’s 26 millionaires maintained seasonal homes in Mauch Chunk. One of the ten coolest small towns in America, declared Budget Travel Magazine in 2007. Asa Packer’s words are on display just in front of his house: “There is no distinction to which any young man may not aspire, and with energy, diligence, intelligence, and virtue, obtain.”
Mrs Sheepandgoats and I didn’t stay in his town during our Poconos trip, however. We stayed 20 miles upstream in Stoddartsville, the town of a would-be industrialist to whom fortune was not so kind. Stoddartsville shows up on the map, but if you go there, you’ll find only the foundations of some 200 year old buildings. And simple signs erected by the Stoddartsville Historical Society labeling what once stood on each foundation. And a graveyard whose worn tombstones reveal several Stoddarts are buried there. And a few private residences built on some of those ancient foundations. And a small rustic cabin overlooking the Lehigh….that’s where we stayed.
John Stoddart was ambitious, too, just like Asa Packer. He also sought to harness the Lehigh, so as to ship grain downstream to Philadelphia, in order to divert commerce from a neighboring system that sent it to Baltimore…..this was to be a “win-lose,” not a “win-win”. He built a community straddling the Lehigh along the Wilkes-Barre Turnpike (which he controlled) with grist mill, saw mill, boat-building capacity, and so forth. It flourished in the early 1800’s, (a bit before Packer’s time) but alas, Stoddart was too far upstream. The best he could do with his river was provide one-way traffic, utilizing a series of dams which held back waters until they reached flood stage, and then, releasing them all at once, his barges could ride the crest downstream to the next dam! Boats were constructed in Stoddartsville and dismantled at destination, the timber sold along with the cargo. It wasn’t cost-effective enough to compete with later “two-way” systems, and John Stoddart eventually went bankrupt, his town fading in prominence. He spent the final thirty years of his life a clerk in Philadelphia.
There’s a third character, a Quaker businessman by the name of Josiah White, who touches on the fortunes of both Packer and Stoddart. To Packer, he brought success, but to Stoddart, ruin. Stoddart might have gone under in any case, but White sealed his fate. White’s endeavor was canal-building, and it was canal piloting that enabled Asa Packer to amass capital sufficient to build his railroad. Back in Mauch Chunk, just before the railroad station (which is now a tourist information center) lies a town square named after Josiah White. It was he who founded the town, before Packer ever traipsed in from Connecticut.
Ironically, Josiah White’s canal ventures owe a lot to John Stoddart’s initial support. In the early days of the Lehigh Navigation Company, White tried in vain to raise money from comfortable, conservative, downstream Philadelphia merchants. They were loathe to part with it. White realized he needed the backing of one man, John Stoddart, who (per White’s memiors) “was then a leading man among the Mound characters, being esteemed Luckey [sic] and to never mis’d in his Speculations, carried a strong influence with his actions, he being of an open and accessible habit, gave us frequent opportunities with him, & his large Estates at the head of our Navigation, authorized our beseaging [sic] him, which we did frequently.” Sure enough, as soon as word got out that Stoddart had invested $5000.00 (with the stipulation that the navigation system begin in Stoddartsville) everyone jumped on board, and the entire hoped-for sum of $100,000 was raised in 24 hours! White began building two-way locks on the Lehigh, but that summer (1819) was unusually dry, and the river proved too shallow for transport. The following winter, ice damaged the locks to the point that White replaced them with the aforementioned one-way “bear-trap” locks, (the locks in no way resembled bear traps, but White’s workmen named them so to dispose of incessant pesky “whatcha building?” passerby) the economics of which ultimately sealed John Stoddart’s doom….not to mention, destroying the fishing upon which various Native Americans and missionaries depended.
Roaming the Pennsylvania hills where these long-dead men once maneuvered, it’s hard to escape the feeling that if you had switched them…put Stoddart where Packer was, and vice versa….the results would have been the same. Both were subject to time and unforeseen circumstances, which might have easily gone the other way. If the Lehigh had behaved that first year of Stoddart’s transport system, or if Packer had been subject to a clobbering winter or two, (he went way out on a limb financially in his railroad building) it might be Stoddart’s name that is remembered instead of Packer’s. That is….as much as any person is remembered. For, successful as he was, I knew nothing about Packer before stumbling upon his home town….did you? Even though he was the third richest man in the country. Doesn’t matter. We all end up in the grave, where memory of us quickly fades.
For whatever reason, I vividly remember Brother Benner, the District Overseer, playing devil’s advocate with his own argument – an argument drawn from Ecclesiastes about the brevity of life, and its consequent “futility.” Build as you may, you’re not around to reap too much benefit from your work. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon reflects upon the “hard work at which I was working hard under the sun, that I would leave behind for the man who would come to be after me. And who is there knowing whether he will prove to be wise or foolish? Yet he will take control over all my hard work at which I worked hard and at which I showed wisdom under the sun.” (2:18-19) This nearly happened in the case of Packer’s enormous wealth, after the untimely deaths of his sons. Business associates threatened to squander it all, so Asa’s daughter Mary maneuvered to gain control of the family fortune. To that end, she had to marry, since unmarried women back then were never left the estate (even though Mary had nursed both parents through their deaths). She married some obliging business fellow or other, secured the dough, and the marriage ended soon thereafter. Was that the plan from the start? At any rate, as we toured the Packer mansion, the guide pointed to a prominently displayed plaque of St Fabiola, the patron saint of divorced women. (no, I didn’t know there was such a saint, either. Must she not need a lot of helpers today, like Santa needs his elves?)
Anyhow, back to Benner, he was discussing the verse 1:11, a recurring theme of Ecclesiastes: “There is no remembrance of people of former times, nor will there be of those also who will come to be later.” We, who were initially created to live forever on earth, are now subject to that sad reality. He spoke of how someone might attempt to counter the verse, for example, pointing to some musician or other: “Yes, so-and-so may have died,” they would say, “but his music lives on and on.” “Give me a break!” Benner responded. “Who was the most famous singer in George Washington’s day?” Exactly.
Same thing with Mauch Chunk. Who were the other 18 millionaires who made their home there? Or, for that matter, what about Jim Thorpe, the town’s later namesake? What became of him after his athletic days? (alas, for all his fame, he fell upon very hard times) You will remember….imperfectly….a few of the generation before you, and perhaps even a handful of the generation before that, but everyone else is, at best, a name in a stats book, like Packer or Stoddart. Some won. Some lost. But you don’t know anything about them.
The brevity or our life is what really defines it. You don’t get too many shots. There’s a built-in frustration, since every door we open represents several we have closed. Pathways take a while to trod. The more ambitious the pathway, the longer it will take, and the fewer you’ll trod. Each pathway we go down represents a multitude we don’t go down. And yet, we want to go down them all. Is this what Solomon meant about life being “calamity?” Today’s age of specialization makes the calamity even more pronounced. Increase your wisdom or wealth, as Solomon did, and you increase the pathways you can pursue. But, alas, you increase perception of the many more you won’t pursue before the clock runs out.
It wasn’t meant to be so, and it will not be so one day in the future. Humans, created to live forever but now relegated to a few score of years, are yet to have opportunity for everlasting life. And all these characters of the past….not to mention our own family members…are they to be among the “righteous and the unrighteous” who come out of the memorial tombs, per Acts 24:15, and John 5:28? It’s the Bible’s hope. It intrigued me from the beginning. It still does, though one must stoke the hope occasionally so that static from this present dismal system of things doesn’t drown it out. As Jesus said: “when the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
