even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool" (vers. 15, 16).

So it would seem. There is enough in society to confound the wise man's wisdom and to trouble the good man's peace. Things are not all straight, and smooth, and simple, and easy. To the browsing cattle all landscapes are alike. The dog in his kennel knows not one star from another. The unconscious bird will sing in your house whether there be a child born or a child dead. But thinking man is stunned by many collisions, bewildered by many mysteries, and prayer is struck from his pleading lips by appearances which seem to say, God there is none, and righteousness is a fool's dream. The wise man dies and the fool dies, and nature makes no difference as to their burial. No angel is seen to hover over the wise man's grave more than over the fool's, and but for tolling bell and surpliced priest it might be but a beast that is laid down, and not the singing Milton or the dreaming Bunyan. And all is soon forgotten. The hot tears will evaporate, the sigh will mingle with the wind, the bent tree will straighten again when the storm ceases. This was the mystery which puzzled Coheleth and which puzzles us. The wise man and the fool die, and perhaps the fool has the better tombstone of the two. The fool leaves an estate, and the wise man leaves only an example. The fool leaves a will to be read, and the wise man leaves a character to be studied. But who cares to study it? Who would study a character if thereby he ran the risk of missing a train! Then this question was forced upon Coheleth: What is the good? what is the use? what does it all come to? A man strives after wisdom, and dies on the doorstep of her lofty habitation. A fool runs after madness, and has a short life and a merry one. A man reads many books, studies many subjects, passes many examinations, takes many prizes, and just when he is going to reap the best results of his toil he topples into the grave, and a sod is thrown on his quiet heart. Coheleth says in effect: There is no guarantee for the wise man's life more than for the fool's. No man has a life-lease which he can count upon and force to a literal fulfilment. Uncertainty is marked upon everything, and no man knows whether he will

"There is no

draw a blank or a prize from the fickle lottery. remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever." In all ages men have been stunned by the apparent confusion of wise and foolish which has occurred in the order and progress of divine providence. The prophet says, "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart." The psalmist says, "For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others." So the confusion is not on the human side only, but on the side which we have consented to describe as divine. The mystery lies there and presses upon life with the weight of a grievous burden. It is God who smites; it is God who drives men to premature graves; it is God who has taught the mystery of death to the opening mind of childhood. Why should these things be? This question will trouble the ages until God himself shall answer it.

'Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun. For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity" (vers. 17-23).

The voice of a man who is utterly sated with life. He thought that something would have come of it, but nothing came. He said, "I will make these dead stones live," and behold, when his genius and art had done their utmost, the stones were but statues. He said, "I will turn this water into wine," but lo! when his magic had played its little trick, it was found that the conjuror had only changed the colour, not the quality, of the liquid. He said, "I will find heaven on earth;" and behold, after all his searching, and devising, and construction, he confessed that he had only found a grave. "Therefore," says Coheleth, "I hated life." I found, too, that I was only working

for the man who was to come after me. I was making a chair for him to sit upon, and stocking a wardrobe to clothe him with rare raiment. I could take nothing away with me. Nor is this

the worst of it. I know not whether my successor will be a wise man or a fool; yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. How can I tell what the man will do who cometh after me? He may cut down my choice trees; he may fill up the pools and destroy the fountains which sent up their sparkling dew all day long; he may turn my favourite rooms into kennels for his dogs; he may handle my most sacred relic with irreverent hands, and venture with commercial mind to set a price upon it. Oh, sad, sad! He will not consult my memory, he will not honour my name; surveying all that I have gathered together for my pleasure and enjoyment, he may call the whole the king's folly. Therefore I despaired of life, for a busy seed-time brought next to nothing of a harvest, and what little I did put into the garner I left for my unknown successor. A man writes books, and his successor sells them for waste-paper. A man plants a tree, and his successor fells it to make a gate-post. "This also is vanity and a great evil." And there is no rest. Even sleep is a species of discontentment. It is not a benediction, but a refuge; it is not peace, it is only silence. The world is a failure, and it is full of lies and mockery and sadness. We have found Moses complaining that life became too great a burden to him: "And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness." The prophet Jeremiah was overwhelmed with the same thought, asking this poignant question: "Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame ?" The student has said: "In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." The king could not sleep in his palace in the days of Daniel; even palaces cannot guarantee the sleep which God giveth to his beloved. So it must be confessed that Providence is a daily mystery, and often a daily torment, even to the most reverently studious minds. The suggestion of the whole of this contemplation of human tumult is that surely there must come a time of explanation and reconcilement.

Surely there is something beyond all this wind and rain, and all this bitterness of soul. It is impossible that such a life as ours can have been created for this end only. Reason and instinct both arise to suggest that a time of explanation is beyond, and that in immortality we shall see the full meaning of time.

"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God" (ver. 24).

A short and easy rule would be, Eat it up; consume it; eat and drink to-day, and to-morrow die. This is what comes of endeavouring to fill the infinite with the finite, and to feed the soul through the medium of the body. Coheleth was perfectly right within given limits; it is because his limits were too narrow that his whole philosophy was defective, and his moral tone without spiritual dignity. Many men who are in error are not wrong for want either of intelligence or sincerity, but simply for want of enlargement of definition, and true perspective in proportion and colour. Coheleth overlooked the fact that goodness is self-rewarding. The heaven is in the action itself. Even if men were to die to-morrow, the heaven which comes of doing a good action to-day never can be taken from the honest heart. It is a profound and criminal mistake to suppose that because a man must die to-morrow he need not trouble himself to do good to-day. He who assists honest poverty, leads a blind man across a busy thoroughfare, helps a child to open the door of life and advance in honourable business, dries the tears of helpless sorrow, has a heaven in the very action itself, even supposing that death should be the end of all things, and there should be neither mourning nor joy beyond the last struggle. Then Coheleth forgot that goodness does not cease with the life of the good man. Even excluding the common interpretation of immortality, we cannot deny the immortality of holy influence shed by a lofty and noble example. When men die in the body they do not die as to recollection; their names may be inspirations in which great battles are fought, and great sacrifices endured with heroic patience. We cannot get rid of immortality in one form or another. When, by a daring imagination, we have closed the city of the New Jerusalem, destroyed its gates of pearl, silenced

its harps of gold, dried up its fountains of water, and, in short, made an end of the whole dream of the celestial world, there remains the immortality of recollection, thought, love, and grateful honour. Our contention, therefore, must always be that it is worth while to do good for its own sake, and always worth while so to live that death shall give a tenderer sanctity to every deed of our hand and every thought of our mind. Coheleth forgot, further, that results are not measurable and statable in words. Even Coheleth himself, in the midst of all his hatred of life and despair, has left the great teaching that even a king could not find satisfaction in things finite and perishing. Coheleth was impatient he wanted things to come to hand and at once; he wanted the good man and the wise to be visibly glorified, so as to confound the fool. This is not the way of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. The kingdom of God is as a grain of mustard seed. The spiritual kingdom, once within a man, gradually educates him to see that the least things have value, and that even in things that die there are hints and seals of immortality. "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children in the greatest sense of the word. "Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee." So in our eating and drinking to-day we may add a new sensation to the feast by remembering the poor and the hungry. "Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared." As to the wicked man, he studies himself alone, and is content with his own aggrandisement. Argument is lost upon him, and prayer itself is hardly heard on his behalf. "Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver."