live nigh to God, and in sweet communion with your Lord and Saviour : for if you draw back from God in secret, you will, in respect of happiness, be in a worse condition than the world themselves : for whilst you deny yourselves the pleasure which you might have in carnal things, you will have no real pleasure in spiritual exercises. But be true to your principles, and you never need envy the poor worldlings their vain enjoy- ments. They drink of a polluted cistern, that contains nothing but what is insipid and injurious, and will prove fatal to their souls ; but you draw from the fountain of living waters, which whosoever drinks of, shall live for ever.]
Eccl. ii. 13. Then I saw, that tvisdom exceUeth folly , as far as light excelleth darkness.
THE more exact is our scrutiny into the things of this world, the more decided will be our judgment respecting them. If persons ever think highly of them, it is because they have never set down seriously to examine their true character, or laboured to form a right estimate respecting them. Solomon possessed means of ascertaining their real value beyond any other person that ever existed : for, possessing wisdom above any other of the sons of men, he had a greater capacity to extract all the sweetness that was in them ; and, being a monarch, he could command all things through the whole range of nature, to present to him their tribute of gratification according to their respective abilities. But, after a minute examination of every thing, he was constrained to give this, at last, as the result of his experience : '' Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness."
Now this, I conceive, refers in part to human wis- dom, as occupied in intellectual pursuits. For it is certain, that amongst objects that relate only to this present life, there is nothing to be compared with this. Intellect is that which distinguishes man from the brute creation ; and the enlargement of it with arts and sciences is that which elevates man above
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