The Pulpit Commentary — Ecclesiastes — Section 33

HOMILIES BY V ARIOUB AUTHORS. Ver. 2.-" All i,s vanity." If we regard this book,·as Solomon's own record and statement of his remarkable experience of burp.an life, it must be deemed by us a most valuable lesson as to the hollowness and emptiness of worldly greatness and renown. If, on the other hand, we regard the book as the production of a later writer, who lived during the troubled and depressed period of Jewish history which followed the Captivity, it must be recognized as casting light upon the providentially: appointed conseqnences of national sin,. apostasy, and rebellion. In the former case the moral and religious significance of Ecclesiastes is more personal, in the latter case mQre political. In either case, the treatise, as inspired. by Divine wisdom, demands. to be received and studied with reverential attention. Whether its lessons be congenial or unwelpome, they deserve the consideration of those of every age, and of every station in society. Some readers will resent the opening words of the treatise as gloomy and morbid; others will hail them as the expression of reason and wisdom. But the truth they contain is independent of human moods and temperaments, and is only to be fully appreciated by those whose observation is extensive and whose reflection. is profound. The wise man makes a broad and unqualified statement, that all things earthly and human aro but vanity. • ' l. Tms llAY BE A STATE)[ENT OF A MEBE MOOD OF,J"EELING OWING TO INDIYIDUAL EXPERIENCE. There are times when every man who lives is distressed and disappoii:ited, when his plans come to nought, when his hopes are blasted, whe,n his friends fail him, when his prospects are clouded, when his heart sinks within him. It is the common lot, from which none can expect to be exempt.. In some instances the stormy sky clears and brightens, whilst in other instances the gloom· thickens and settles, But it may be confidently asserted that, at some period and in some circumstances,,every human being, whose experience of life is large and varied, has felt as though he.has been living in a scene of illusion, the vanity of which has been perhaps suddenly made apparent to him, and then the language of the writer of Ecclesiastes has risen to his lips, aud be has exclaimed in bitterness of soul, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!" II. THIS llAY BE A BTATE~lENT. OF PAINFUL EXl'ERIENOE, DEPENDENT UPON THE SPECIAL TIMES-POLITICAL AND EOCLESIABTIOAL-IN .WHICH THE LOT IB OAST. S\lCh is the mutability of human affairs, that every nation, every Church, passes through epochr. of prosperity, confidence, energy, and hope; and again through epochs of. adversity, discouracrement, depression, and paralysis. The Israelites bad their times of conq.uest and of progress, and they had also their times of defeat, of captivity, of subjection, of humiliation. So has it been with every people, every state. Nor. have Jhe Qburches into which Christian communities have been formed, escaped the operation of the same Jaw. So far as they have been human organizations, they have been affected by the laws to which all things human are subject. In times when a nation is teoble at home and despised abroad, when faction and ambition have reduced its power and cripplocl its enterprise, there is proneness, on the part of the 1·eflecting and sensitive among tho CH, I, 1-18.] ECCLESIASTES; OR, 'rHE PREACHER. 15