s. See the king, in his old age, sinking into
idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the
moral of his own proverbs. He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand
the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it. This prudent
and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all
the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court. What a
contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34
and the same king in his degenerate old age!

It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of
Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story. With marvellous
penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and
paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful
darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only
sphere.

Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly
darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.

These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.

The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and
charm.

The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly
knowledge,--Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.

And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old
age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up. But though so sad
and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come.
Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking
out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a
despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it. It
describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited
worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.

The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing
new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving
in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the
world.[363] It declares that _work_ amounts to nothing, for one cannot do
any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces
sorrow; that pleasure satiates.[364] Knowledge has only this advantage
over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does
not make them better, and the