HAMLET

Rest, rest, perturbèd spirit!—So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.
Act 1, Scene 5
Human beings suffer greatly because we are out of place in the world we have expounded, as Rilke write in the Dunio Elegies, Elegy 1  “and the resourceful creatures see clearly/ that we are not really at home/in the interpreted world.” Ecclesiastes elegantly tell us the world is vain and unsatisfying. The difficulty lies in our place, we cannot be content unless we put the purpose for which we exist:

Use 1. To press you to seek God. The motives are:—
1. It was the end of our creation. We do not live merely to live; but for this end were we sent into the world, to seek God. Nature is sensible of it in part by the dissatisfaction it finds in other things; and therefore the apostle describes the Gentiles to he groping and feeling about for God, Acts 17:27. God is the cause of all things, and nature cannot be satisfied without him. We were made for God, and can never enjoy satisfaction until we come to enjoy him; therefore the Psalmist saith, Ps. 14:2, We are ‘all gone aside, and altogether become filthy.’ Nature is out of joint; we are quite out of our way to true happiness. We are seeking that for which we were created, when we seek and inquire after God.

Thomas Manton, “Sermon III”, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 6 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1872), 23–24.