" " the beginning.
7. The patient in spirit " " " the proud in spirit.

Lofty, indeed, is the level to which Solomon has attained by such
unpopular conclusions, and it proves fully that we are listening in
this book to man at his highest, best. Not a bitter, morbid, diseased
mind, simply wailing over a lost life, and taking, therefore, highly
colored and incorrect views of that life, as so many pious commentators
say; but the calm, quiet result of the use of the highest powers of
reasoning man, as man, possesses; and we have but to turn for a moment,
and listen to Him who is greater than Solomon, to find His holy and
infallible seal set upon the above conclusions. "Blessed are the pure
in heart,--they that mourn,--and the meek," is surely in the same
strain exactly; although reasons are there given for this blessedness
of which Solomon, with all his wisdom, had never a glimpse.

Let us take just one striking agreement, and note the contrasts: "It is
better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of
feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to
his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the
countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the
house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."
That is, the loftiest purest wisdom of man recognizes a quality in
sorrow itself that is purifying. "In the sadness of the face the heart
becometh fair." In a scene where all is in confusion,--where Death, as
King of Terrors, reigns supreme over all, forcing his presence on us
hourly, where wickedness and falsehood apparently prosper, and goodness
and truth are forced to the wall,--in such a scene of awful disorder,
laughter and mirth are but discord, and grate upon the awakened
spirit's ear with ghastly harshness. Whilst an honest acceptance of
the truth of things as they are, looking Death itself full in the face,
the house of mourning not shunned, but sought out; the sorrow within is
at least in harmony with the sad state of matters without; the
"ministration of death" has its effect, the spirit learns its lesson of
humiliation; and this, says all wisdom, is "_better_."

And yet this very level to which Reason can surely climb by her own
unaided strength may become a foothold for Faith to go further. Unless
Wrong, Discord, and Death, are the normal _permanent_ condition of
things, then sorrow, too, is