and gives life to all that have it. Hence even more indispensable for a. city's safety is it Lhat her dignitaries should bo good than that they should be '-'reat. 3. The piety of its people. '!'his a legitimate deduction from the statement that "there is not a just man upon the earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not" (ver. 20). In introducin,,. this sentiment, suggested _probably by the utterance of Solomon (2 Kings viii. 46), the Preacher may have WIBhed to call up the t~10ught that once upon a time ten righteous men, could they only have been found (which they were not), would have saved a city (Gen. xviii. 32);and to point to the fact that no such expectation as that of saving a city by means of its righteous men need be cherished now as a reason for resortin"' to the next best defence-that of moral wisdom instead of brute force. Yet the t~th remains that righteousness, holiness, piety, could it only be attained, would be a far more endurable and impregnable wall of protection to a people than either mighty armies or wise statesmen. LESSONS. 1. Righteousness or wisdom the highest civil good. 2. The permanence of a state determined by the number of its good men. 3. The power of moral goodness in buLh individuals and empires. 4. The universal corruption of maukind. Vers. 23-29.-A great quest, and its sorrowful result. I. THE GREAT QUEST. 1. The persm of the seeker. The Preacher (see on eh. i. l). '£he frequency with which he draws attention to himself shows that he regarded himself as one possessed of ample and perhaps well-known qualifications for the search upon which he had engaged. 2. The ob:ject of his search. To be wise-to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the reason of things; and in particular to know the wickedness of folly, and that foolishness is madness. In other words, he desired to reach that wisdom in its fulness which would enable him to solve the problem of the universe. 3. The ,pirit in which he entered on his quest. (1) Calm resolution. He said to himself, "I will be wise." (2) Genuine humility. He understood that wisdom in its ideal vast- ness and elevation was beyond his reach. (3) Earnest application. He applied his heart, or turned himself e.nd his heart, to the busineds he had undertaken. (4) Patient perseverance. His soul kept on seeking, laying one thing to another to find out the account. These qualities should distinguish all seekers after wisdom. II. THE SORROWFUL FINDING. 1. Concerning the strange woman. Not" heathenish folly" (Hengstenberg), but the flesh-and-blood harlot of Proverbs (ii. 16-19; v. 3-13). With respect to her the Preacher calls attention-speaking, no doubt, from personal experience, and recording the results of his own observation-to : (1) Her seductive arts. "Her heart is snares and nets," luring with her false beauty, bewitch- ing voice, and voluptuous person, numerous unthinking and inexperienced persons, chiefly young men devoid of understanding (Prov. vii. 7), into her embrace. (2) Her deceptive gifts. While promising her lovers liberty, she only leads them into slavery- " Her hands are as bands; " :md while flattering them with promises of hidden sweets, what she gives them is an experience "more bitter than death," i.e. an inward wretchedoe~s moro intolerable to the soul than evon darkness aml the grnve. " Her house is the way to hell, going down to Lhe chambers of death" (Prov. vii. 27). (3) Iler powerless charms-in some cases. Fascinating to the natural heart, o.nd especially to sensual dispositions, her e.ttre.ctions havo no influence upon pure minds nnd religious souls. "Whoso pleaseth God shall escape frow her;" either never b6 captivated by her spells, or bo recovered from them before it is too late. (4) Her miserable victims. Those she leads off as prey are "sinners," in whose hearts sin rules e.s a dominating principle; who are carually minded, and delight to make provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof (Rom. viii. 1 ; xiii. 14); lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God (2 'l'im. iii. 4); foolish o.nd disobedient souls, who serve divers lusts and pleasures (Titus iii. 3). 2. Concerning womankind. (1) The Preacher's finding was incorrect if designed as a universal negative, in the sen~e that, while in a thousand men ta.ken e.t random one might be found good, in a thousand women similarly taken not one could be found entitled to be so characterized. The best refutation of such woman-hating utterances is to point to" the numerous examples of noble women mentioned in Old Testament Writ, e.nd of the devoted heroines of New 'l.'este.roent days "whose names stand forth conspicuously, side by side with those of men, in the ~uster-roll of the 'noble army of martyrs'" (Wright). (2) The JljCOI,J!:SlASTEB, bi 178 ECCLESIASTES; OR, THE PREACHER. [OIi, VII, 1-29.
Preacher's finding may have been correct if accepted only as the record of his own individual experience. In this case, either his lot must have fallen in very evil times in respect of moral corruption, rivalling the days that were before the Flood (Gen. "l"i. 11; vii. 1), or he himself must have mixed with extremely questionable characters and limited his investigations to the lowest strata of society. It is doubtful if in any age, at least since the Flood, the condition of mankind has been so deplorably degenerate as the Preacher's language implies, (3) The Preacher's finding may be endorsed if it only means (as is probably the case) that woman less frequently attains to her ideal than mau does to his-which, however, need not argue deeper depravity in woman than in man, but may point either to the loftier character of woman's ideal thn.n of man's, or to the greater difficulties that stand in the way of woman realizing her ideal than hinder man from reaching his. 3. Concerning the human race. (1) Their original condition had been one of uprightness. This one of two conclusions to which the Preacher bad been conducted, viz. that whatever of evil was now perceptible in man's nature had not proceeded from the hand of God. (2) Their present condition was one of "inventive refined degeneracy" (Delitzsch). A ~econd result to which the Preacher had been led. Man had lapsed from his primitive condition of moral simplicity and had become an ingenious inventor; not always of things indifferent, but frequently of things immoral in themselves, and leading to immorality and sin as their results. LESSONS. 1. The value of wisdom as a human pursuit. 2. The worth of experience as a teacher. 3. The danger of sensuality. 4. The excellence of piety as a protection against impurity. 5. The inestimable worth of a good woman. 6. The rarity of noble men. 7. The certainty that man is not what God made him.