you matter of very exalted joy ? Go on then, " forgetting what is behind, and reaching forward to that which is before :" and know that, " when tlie days arrive in which you shall say, you have no pleasure in them,''' you shall experience " a joy with which the stranger intermeddleth not ;" which this world can neither give nor take away ; and which shall be to you a pledge and earnest of everlasting felicity in the bosom of your God.]
Eccl. xii. 13, 14. Let us hear the coiiclusion of the whole matter ; Fear God, and keep his commandments : for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
IN this book are many things difficult to be under- stood, and capable of being perverted by any one who desires to justify himself in an undue attach- ment to the world. But a reference to the condition of the author will enable us to explain the whole in a satisfactory and consistent manner. Solomon was possessed of all that this world could afford ; and he rendered every object, and every employment, sub- servient to his own comfort. In all this he sinned not. It was not in the use of God's creatures that he sinned, but in the abuse of them. And we also may both possess and enjoy all that God in his providence has allotted to us, if only we enjoy God in the creature, and have earth subordinated to heaven. What the real drift of all his observations was, is told us in the words which we have just read, and which give us a clew to all that he has before spoken. In them we see,
I. The sum of all moral and religious instructions —
Many things we have to say both on the subject of morals and of religion ; but they are all compre- hended in this one saying, " Fear God, and keep his commandments."
In this is contained the whole substance of re- ligion—
[By the fear of God we understand, not a slavish dread of him, but a holy filial regard, arising from a sense of his re- lation to us as a reconciled God and Father. And in " keeping