of God. A profound belief in a. governing Providence underlies all hie utterances; it is the mysteriousness, the secret working, of this govern- ment that arrests hie attention and leads him to contrast with it man's ignorance and impotence, and to lay skill, prudence, science, under the feet of the great Disposer of hearts and circumstances. In all this he is not speculative; there is no theorizing or philosophizing; it is wholly practical, tending to rules of daily life, not to questions of metaphysics or minute theology. There is another point on which the Preacher is said to exhibit the taint of scepticism, and that is on the question of the immortality of the soul. Some would make him a predecessor of the Sadducees; some cannot find a. trace of the orthodox doctrine in his pages, and indeed consider it to have been unknown at hie epoch ; others venture to say that he had not even the Greek's idea of the soul and immortality, and held that man, in the matter of life, differed nothing from the beast, had nothing to expect after death. Without entering upon the general question how far the Old Testament countenances the dogma of tho immortality of the soul, we will see what Koheleth says upon this absorbing topic. The first passage which bears upon the subject is found in the last five verses of the third chapter, where the destiny and being of men are compared with those of beasts. Properly translated and explained, the words enunciate certain unimpeachable facts. First they say that man, regarded as a mere animal, irrespectively of the relation in which he stands to God, has no more power than the lower creatures; is, no more than they, master of his own fate. Then it is added that the lot of men and beasts is the same; both have the breath of life; when this is withdrawn, both die; so in this respect man has no advantage over the beast-both come from dust and both return to dust. There is no question here of the soul's continued existence ; the animal life alone is spoken of, the physical breath or power which gives life to all animals of whatever nature they may be; and all are placed in the same category by having to succumb to the law of death. There is no scepticism thus far; but round the twenty-first verse controversy has gathered. This is rendered in the Revised Version, "Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth?" I£ we surrender the Authorized translation, "The spirit of man .that goeth upward," etc., which states a truth not before enunciated, we must see whether the charge of scepticism is sustained by the Revised Version, which has the authority of the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, and Targum. Now, it may be that Koheleth merely affirms that there are but few who arrive at any knowledge on the subject, or he may say that no one knows for certain anything about the respective destinies of the life of man and brute; but he does not deny, if he refrains here from expressly affirming, the continued existence of the personal soul. If we conceive that he is referring only to the animal life, he intimates that in the manner of p.eath no Q~e c"-n teU what differe~c(I there is betw•en the withdra.wal <>f XXX INTRODUCTION TO
life from man and from brute. If he refers to the spirit, the ego of man, his question implies belief in a continued t'.xistence after death; if it was annihilated, if it perislred with its earthly tabernacle, there conld be no inquiry as to what became of it. To assert that no one can track 'its course is to certify that it has a course before it, though this be not capable of demonstration. Plainly, too, he differentiates the fate of man and beast. The vital principle of the latter may go with the body to the dust; the spirit of the former may, as he says later (eh. xii. 7), return to the God who gave it ; to hold the impossibility of attaining to certainty in this mysterious subject by human reason or senses, does not make a man a sceptic. The stage of the argument i-equired this unsatisfying statement of the case ; it is not till the close of the book that doubt is cleared'· away, and faith shines forth undi=ed. There is a further difficulty in the final clause of this paragraph: "For who shall bring him [back] to see what sha11 be after him ? " Some have explained this clause, "What shall become of him after his death?" by which may be signified a doubt whether he has any future or not. But what is intended is either the thought that we cannot tell whether after death we shall have any knowledge of what passes on eaTth, or else that we cannot foresee what will happen fo n's or to any one in the future in this world. In either case there is ':U:o denial of the great verity of the immortality of the soul. But what is Koheleth's view of the judgment to come? In eh. ix. he speaks of the dead thus: "To him that is joined with all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; forth~ memo;y of them is forgotten. As well their love as their hatred . . . is now perished·; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done u·nder the sun . . . Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy inrght; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol whither thou goest." The existence of the soul after death is here preen.i'pposed ; its condition in the other world is the point elaborated.· This is considered in accordance with the view that obtains in Job, _the Psalms, and other writings of the Old Testament. Sheol is a place beneath·the earth, gloomy, awful, whither go'. the souls of the dead. • In the utterances of the poets it has its -gates, bars, valleys; its inhabitants are called rephaim, "the weak. 11 Their mode of existence differs from that of their brethren in 'the upper world. They know nothing; they are cut off from action; they have no scope for the exercise of passion or affection; they are joyless, deprived of all that made life worth living ; but they retain their individuality and have to undergo a particrifal' judgment. That Koheleth believed in this last event has been questioned, and passages which seem to warrant the idea. have been distorted and explained away; or boldly' dismissed as interpola- iicnis. But taking for granted the integrity of the book as it has· come down to ns, we cannot fairly escape. from such inference. Thus, in view ~f the partiality and iniquity of men in high position, our antlior comforts ECOLESIAS'l'~S; OR, THE PREACHER. xxxi