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This is the substance of this great man's last estimate of life. You read it, and, as you read, you watch the writer trying to fight down the black shadows as they rise. Here and there too, all through his sermon, he will say a noble thing on the right side; as if the old power of piety was strong enough yet to burn through, and force its way to the parchment. But, when the best is said and done, the result is a belief in a God who exacts more than He gives, and punishes more readily than He blesses. And so it is that this woeful estimate of life has made this book by far the most difficult to understand in the whole range of the Scriptures. The statements in it are as positive as any other. Solomon is as clear when he says, "Man has no pre-eminence over a beast," as John is when he says, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." So it comes to pass, that, if you take this book as it stands, and undertake to believe it, the result is very sad. It chills all piety, paralyzes all effort, hushes all prayer. If there is grief in wisdom, had I not better be a fool? It cannot be denied, again, that the book is but the vocal utterance of many a silent sermon in many a lonely heart. It was this, no doubt, that made it the text-book of Voltaire and the bosom friend of Frederick the Great. Its monotones of despair are echoed out of a thousand experiences. When a friend wished a great English statesman a happy new year, "Happy!" he said; "it had need be happier than the last, for in that I never knew one happy day." When an English lawyer, whose life had seemed to be one long range of success, mounted the last step in his profession, he wrote, "I in a few weeks shall retire to dear Eneombe, as a shore resting-place between vexation and the grave." When one said to the great Rothschild, "You must be a happy man," he replied, "I sleep with pistols under my pillow." The most brilliant man of the world in the eighteenth century said, "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of life, and I do not regret their loss; I have been behind the scenes, and seen the coarse pulleys and ropes and tallow-candles." And the most brilliant poet of the last generation said, "The lapse of ages changes all but man, who ever has been, and will be, an unlucky rascal." Now, then, for all this, I have but one answer. I cannot believe it. In the deepest meaning of the truth and the life, this assertion that all is vanity is utterly untrue. God never meant life to be vanity; and life is not vanity. And that we are right and all such men wrong can be proven, I think, outside our own experience, on several different counts.

1. For, first of all, this Solomon is not the right man to testify. When he said this of life, he was in no condition Co tell the truth about it, and he did not tell the truth. Universal testimony makes this sermon the fruit of his old age. If his book was the work of Solomon's old age, the face of itself supplies the first reason why we have such a sermon; for the man who wrote this sermon, and the youth who offered that noble prayer at the dedication of the temple, are not the same man. The young king knelt down in the bloom of his youth, when the fountains of life were pure and clean; when through and through his soul great floods of power and grace rose to springtide every day; when the processions of nature and providence, the numbers of the poet, the wisdom of the sage, the labours of the reformer, and the sacrifices of the patriot, were steeped for him in their rarest beauty, endowed with their loftiest meaning, and filled with their uttermost power. But that old king in the palace, writing his sermon, is weary and worn; and, worst of all, the clear fountains of his nature are changed to puddles; the fresh, strong life has been squandered away; the delicate, divine perception blunted, clogged, and at last smothered to death. Can we wonder that such a man should write "all is vanity," when he had come Co be the vanity he wrote? Believe me, we cannot form the true estimate when the life is ruined. What he said when he was his best self, before his ruin, was true; and the estimate he made, when he was a lower man, was as much out of true as the man was.

2. Then there was an error in this man's method of testing life, that I suspect to be at the root of much of the weariness that is still felt; and that is, the man does not seem to have tried to be happy, in making others happy, in bringing one gleam more of gladness, or one pulse more of life, into any soul save his own. In the sad days recorded here, nature, books, men, women, were worth to him just what they could do for him. He gave up the present sense of God in the soul; the high uses of worship; the inspiration hidden in great books; the deep blessedness of being father, husband, friend, teacher, patriot, and reformer; buried himself in his harem; turned a deaf ear to all the pleadings of his better angel; and, when he had come to this, who can wonder that all was vanity?

3. But now I must state the reason, that to me is greatest of all, why I know all is not vanity. A thousand years after this sad sermon was written, there was born of the same great line another little Child. He had no royal training, no waiting sceptre, no kingly palace, but the tender nurture of a noble mother, and, from the first, a wonderful nearness to God, — and that was all. He grew up in a country town that had become a proverb of worthlessness. The good He knew, and the bad He knew, as I suppose it was never known before. The human heart was laid bare before Him down to its deepest recesses. None ever felt, as He did, the curse of sin, or had such a perfect loyalty and love for holiness. Nature, Providence, Heaven, and Hell were actual presences, solid certainties to His deep, true sight. Listen while I try the ring of a few sentences from each of them. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," cries the first preacher. "Blessed are the poor, blessed are the mourners, blessed are the quiet, blessed are the hungry for the right, blessed are the giving and forgiving, blessed are the pure-hearted, blessed are the peace-makers, and blessed are the sufferers for the right," cries the second. "Be not righteous overmuch," cries the first. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," cries the second. "That which befalleth a beast, befalleth a man," cries the first. "The very hairs of your head are numbered," cries the second. "There is no knowledge, nor wisdom, nor device in the grave," cries the first. "I go to prepare a place for you; and I will come again, and take you to Myself, that where I am there ye may be also," cries the second. This last preacher tested life also. Whatever can be done to prove all is vanity, was done to Him. Giving out blessing, getting back cursing. Surely, if over man would write "Vanity of vanities" over life, this was the man to do it. God was to Him the Father. The future life was more of a reality than the present. He saw resurgam written over every grave, and could see past sorrow and pain, the perfect end, and say, "Of all that My Father has given Me, I have lost nothing: He will raise it up at the last day." Then, if I cannot see heaven of myself, let me look at it through His eyes. If earth grows empty and worthless to me, let me believe in what it was to Him, and be sure that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; so, holding fast by faith in Him, I may come at last to a faith in earth, and heaven, and life, and the life to come, and all that is most indispensable to the soul. If I cannot pray because I see no reason, then that bonded figure on Olivet is my reason. If I cannot distinguish between fate and providence, let me rejoice that He can, and that my blindness can make no difference to His blessing.

(R. Collyer.)

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KJV: Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

WEB: "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."