gold; I got me men-singers and
women-singers and musical instruments; whatsoever my eyes desired I kept
not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy,--and now, lo! I
solemnly declare unto you, with my fading strength and my eyes suffused
with tears and my knees trembling with weakness, and in view of that
future and higher life which I neglected to seek amid the dazzling
glories of my throne, and the bewilderment of fascinating joys,--I now
most earnestly declare unto you that all these things which men seek and
prize are a vanity, a delusion, and a snare; that there is no wisdom but
in the fear of God."

So this saddest of books closes with lofty exhortations, and recognizes
moral obligations which are in harmony with the great principle enforced
in the Proverbs,--that there is no escape from the penalty of sin and
folly; that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. The last
recorded words of the preacher are concerning the vanity of life,--that
is, the hopeless failure of worldly pleasures and egotistical pursuits
in themselves alone to secure happiness; the impossibility of lasting
good disconnected with righteousness; the fact that even knowledge, the
greatest possession and the highest joy which a man can have, does not
satisfy the soul.

These final utterances of Solomon are not dogmas nor speculations, they
are experiences,--the experiences of one of the most favored mortals who
has lived upon our earth, and one of the wisest. If, measured by the
eternal standards, his glory was less than that of the flower which
withers in a day, what hope have ordinary men in the pursuit of
pleasure, or gain, or honor? Utter vanity and vexation of spirit!
Nothing brings a true reward but virtue,--unselfish labors for others,
supreme loyalty to conscience, obedience to God. Hence, such profound
experience so frankly published, such sad confessions uttered from the
depths of the heart, and the summing up of the whole question of human
life, enforced with the earnestness and eloquence of an old man soon to
die, have peculiar force, and are among the greatest treasures of the
Old Testament.

The fundamental truth to be deduced from the book of Ecclesiastes is
that whatsoever is born of vanity must end in vanity. If vanity is the
seed, so vanity is the fruit. It is, in fact, one of the most impressive
of all the truths that appeal either to consciousness or experience. If
a man builds a house from vanity, or makes a