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At the very outset of his treatise, the wise man gives his readers to understand that the vanity which is ascribed to all things that are, is distinctive in an especial and obvious manner of human life. This is the most interesting of all things to observe and study, as it is the most precious to possess. And there is some danger lest, if the study of it lead to despondency, the possession of it should cease to be valued.

I. THE FACTS UPON WHICH THE CONVICTION OF THE VANITY OF LIFE IS FOUNDED.

1. The unsatisfying character of human toil. Labor is the destiny of man, and is in most cases the indispensable condition of not only life itself, but of those things for the sake of which many men value life - wealth, comfort, pleasure, and fame. Yet in how many cases does toil fail to secure the objects for the sake of which it is undertaken! Men labor, but reap no harvest of their painful, wearying efforts. And when the result is obtained, how commonly does it yield little or nothing of the satisfaction desired! Men toil for years, and when they attain that upon which their hearts were set, disappointment and dissatisfaction take possession of their nature.

2. The brevity of human life, and the rapid succession of the generations. The reflection of the wise man is a reflection which must have been current among men from the earliest ages No sooner has a laborious and successful man reached the summit of his ambition, grasped the object of his desire, than he is taken away from the enjoyment of that for the sake of which he was content to "scorn delights, and live laborious days." The next generation renews the quest, only to repeat the experience of disappointment. Changes and improvements take place in many details of our life; but life itself remains throughout the ages, subject to the same limitations and the same calamities, to the same uncertainties and the same close.

3. The contrast between the transitoriness of human life and the stability of the unconscious earth. It appears strange and inexplicable that man, with the great possibilities of his nature, should be so short-lived, and that the earth should outlast generation after generation of mankind. The writer of Ecclesiastes felt, as every reflecting observer must feel, the sadness of this contrast between the perpetuity of the dwelling-place and the brief sojourn of its successive inhabitants.

4. The impossibility of any generation reaping the harvest for which it has sown. The toil, the genius, the enterprise of a generation may indeed bear fruit, but it is the generation which follows that enjoys that fruit. All men labor more for posterity than for themselves. "This also is vanity."

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE INFERENCE FROM THESE FACTS, VIZ. THAT LIFE IS PROFITLESS AND VAIN.

1. It is attributable to the reflecting and aspiring nature of man. A being less endowed with susceptibilities and imagination, with moral capacities and far-reaching aims and hopes, would be incapable of such emotions and such conclusions as this book expresses. The brute is content to eat and drink, to sleep, and to follow its several instincts and impulses. But of man we may say that nothing that he can be and do can give him perfect rest and satisfaction. It is owing to an innate and noble dissatisfaction that he is ever aiming at something better and higher, and that the narrow range and brief scope of human life cannot content him, cannot furnish him with all the opportunity he desires in order to acquire and to achieve.

2. It is attributable to the very nature of earthly things, which, because they are finite, are incapable of satisfying such a nature as that described. They may and do answer a high purpose when their true import is discerned - when they are recognized as symbolical and significant of what is greater than themselves. But no material good, no terrestrial distinctions, can serve as "profit" of labor. If so regarded, their vanity must sooner or later be apparent. There is a divinely ordained disproportion between the spirit of man and the scenes and occupations and emoluments of earth.

APPLICATION.

1. There is in human life a continuity only discerned by the reflecting and the pious. The obvious and striking fact is the disconnection of the generations. But as evolution reveals a physical continuity, philosophy finds an intellectual and moral continuity in our race.

2. The purpose of God is unfolded to successive generations of men. The modern study of the philosophy of history has brought this fact prominently and effectively before the attention of the scholarly and thoughtful. We see this continuity and progress in the order of revelation; but all history is, in a sacred sense, a revelation of the Eternal and Unchanging.

3. It is well that what we do we should do deliberately and seriously, not for our own good merely, but for mankind, and in the truest sense for God. This will lend "profit" to the unprofitable.

4. This state is not all. Life explains school; summer explains spring; and so eternity shall explain the disappointments, perplexities, and anomalies of time. - T.

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KJV: What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

WEB: What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun?