--how
disappointment attends our most cherished plans, and how all mortal
pursuits fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal soul. But why does
the favored and princely Solomon, in sadness and bitterness, pronounce
knowledge also to be a vanity like power and riches, especially when in
his earlier writings he so highly commends it? Is it true that in much
wisdom is much grief, and that the increase of knowledge is the increase
of sorrow? Can it be that the book of Ecclesiastes is the mere record of
the miserable experiences of an embittered and disappointed sensualist,
or is it the profound and searching exposition of the vanities of this
world as they appear to a lofty searcher after truth and God, measured
by the realities of a future and endless life, which the soul
emancipated from pollution pants and aspires after with all the
intensity of a renovated nature? When I bear in mind the impressive
lessons that are declared at the close of this remarkable book, the
earnest exhortation to remember God before the dust shall return to the
earth as it was, I cannot but feel that there are great moral truths
underlying the sarcasm and irony in which the writer indulged. And these
come with increased force from the mouth of a man who had tasted every
mortal good, and found it all, when not properly used, a confirmation of
the impossibility of earth to satisfy the soul of man. The writer calls
himself "the preacher," and surely a great preacher he was,--not to a
throng of "fashionable worshippers" or a crowd of listless
pleasure-seekers, but to all ages and nations. And if he really was a
living speaker to the young men who caught the inspiration of his voice,
how terribly eloquent he must have been!

I fancy that I can see that unhappy old man, worn out, saddened,
embittered, yet at last rising above the decrepitude of age and the
infirmities which sin had hastened, and speaking in tones that could
never be forgotten. "Behold, ye young men! I have tasted every enjoyment
of this earth; I have indulged in every pleasure forbidden or permitted.
I have explored the world of thought and the realm of nature. I have
been favored beyond any mortal that ever lived; I have been flattered
and honored beyond all precedent; I have consumed the treasures of kings
and princes. I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards; I made me
gardens and orchards, I made me pools of water; I got me servants and
maidens, I gathered me also silver and