comfort there; he owns his infatuation, he calls himself" an old and foolish king" (eh. iv, 13), and already he sees the throne occupied by Jeroboam, "the poor and wise child" who should nsurp his seat. He remembers his countless wives and concubines, who had led him astray, and exclaims that women are the pest of the world, and that not one in a thousand is good. He anticipates times of confusion and misrule, and counsels obedience and submission. Then, at the close of tbe book, he pictures himself aged, enfeebled, laid on his death-bed, and in solemn tones he urges early piety, the emptiness of. everything apart from God, and utters the moral of his wasted life; and sums up man's duty in the weighty climax of the book. If the treatise were Solomon's, such, indeed, might have been the course of thought. , .:Hefore• we offer our :own opinion conce.rning the purpose of the book, let us look at the views. which others have formed respecting Koheleth's standpoint. and sentiments. First of all, is our author a pessimist, as many suppose? Does he take the worst view of things, find no benevolence in the Creator, see no hope of happiness for man ? Certainly, his ever-recurring cry is, " Vanity of vanities; all is vanity; " cedainly, he affirms that death is better than life, that the lot of those is most to be envied who never have been born, that men's .labours and aims and ambitions end in disappointment, that the pnrsuit of wisdom, or art, or wealth, or pleasure is alike unsatisfying; but these .and such-like mournful utterances must not be considered apart from their context and the pince which they occupy in the treatise. They do not represent the object or teaching of the book; they occur as passing obser- vations which met the thinker in the course of bis investigation, and which he notes in order to trace the line taken by his inquiry. His pessimism, such as it is, is only a cloud seeming to obscure for a time the heaven of his faith, and dissipated by the clear shining behind it. When he speaks in desponding tones of mundane objects, he desires to call attention to the weak .point in all such things, the fault that underlies them all. Men's mistake is to think that they can secnre happiness by their own efforts, whereas they are conditioned by a higher power, and can neither achieve success nor enjoy it when won except by the gift of God. If he affirms that the day of death is preferable to the day of birth, he is virtually repeat- ing Salon's celebrated gnome that no man can be accounted happy till he has closed his life happily-that the new-born infant has a time before him full of trial and trouble, the course and end of which no one can foresee, while with the dead all is over, and we can calmly judge of his cu.reer. His faith in God's justice and benevolence is the exact contradictory of Sohopenhe,uer's school. His word is, " God bath made everything beautiful in its time" (eh. iii. 11); he believes in the moral government of the universe; he acknowledges the reality of sin; he looks to a life beyond the grave. He would not paralyze exertion, and hold back from work ; he recommends diligence in one's own duties, beneficence towards others; he xxiv IN'l'RODUC1'ION TO
leads men to expect happiness in the path on which God's providence leads them. There is no real hopelessness, no cynical despair, in his utterances taken as a whole. If he lacks the bright faith of the Christian, he in his measure feels that all works together for good for them that love God, if not in this world, yet assuredly in another. So the charge of pessimism falls to the ground when the treatise is considered. in its totality, and not estimated by isolated passages . .A strong plea for the prevalence of traces of Gentile teaching has been put forward by modern critics. Let us, then, examine the grounds on which rests the idea of the potent influence of Greece (for_ the external influence means Hellenism) in the foundation and expression of Koheleth'uentiments. First, as to language, we have certain phrases cited which are alleged to be derived Grreco Jonte. In eh. iii. 11 ha-olam, translated "the world" in our version, is supposed to be the Greek a1wv, whereas it is truly Hebraic :in form and signification, and is probably not used in the sense of "world" in the Old Testament. In the next verse the phrase, "to do good," is taken as equivalent to & 7rp'5.-rT£w, "to fare well, to prosper; " but this is not its use in the Bible, and it is best taken in the ethical sense of being beneficent, etc. The phrase, KaAos- Ka.ya.06,, is found in the "good and comely" of eh. v. 18, tob asher-yapheh, where, however, the correct rendering is, "Behold, what I have seen as good, which is also beautiful," and the Hellenistic source is wholly u.nrecognizable. Pithgam, "sentence," is not rp0lyp,a., but a Persian word Hebraized. "I gave my heart to seek and search out," "I considered in my heart," etc. (eh. i. 13; ix. 1),-such-like expressions do not imply a formal course of philosophizing, but simply the mental process of an acute observer and thinker. "That which is" (eh. vii. 24) is not -ro -rt EU7W, the real nature of things, but that which is in existence. Dean Plnmptre deems the book to be "throughout absolutely saturated with Greek thought and language." His chief proofs are such as these: the phrase, "under the sun," to express all human things (eh. i. 9, 14; iv.15, etc.); "seeing the sun," for living (eh. vi. 5). But what more natural term could be found than "under the sun " ? And why should it be borrowed ? And the periphrasis for life, or its equivalent, is found in Job and the Psalms. "Be not over-righteous or over-wise" ( eh. vii. 16) is a maxim, regarded contextually, by no means identical with the gnome p,11o't:v &.ycfv, ne quid nimis. The proverbial warning respecting the bird of the air report- ing a secret (eh. x. 20) surely need not have been derived from the story of Ibycus and the cranes ; as stimulating the mind under teaching it was more natural for a Hebrew to speak of" goads" than a Greek (eh. xii. 11). We need not go to Euripides or the social life of Hellas to account for Koheleth's disparagement of women; his own country and age, cursed with the evils of polygamy and the degraded condition of the female sex, gave bim reason enough for his remarks. Some other instances are adduced by critics who see what they desire to see; but they are all capable of easy explanation without recourse to a foreign origin being necessary. So w& ECCLE81A$'l'ES; OR, TiIE PltEACHER.