The Pulpit Commentary — Ecclesiastes — Section 201

condition of Oriental society, we do not know. But there was, no doubt, so much of realism about the picture that we may learn a very practical lesson therefrom. It is twofold. I. THE AWFUL POSSIBILITIES OF DEGRADATION. That woman, created by God to be a belpmeet for man, and so admirably fitted, as she is at her best, to comfort his bee.rt and to enrich and bless his life-that woman should be spoken of in such terms as these, is sad and strange indeed. It would be unaccountable but for one thing. The explanation is that man, in his physical strenglh and in his spiritual weakness, hns systematically degraded woman; has made a mere tool and instrument of her whom he should ha'\"e treated as his trusted companion and truest friend. And if you once degrade any being ( or any animal) from his or her true and right position, you send that being <lown e.n incline, you open the gates to a long and sad descent. You take away self-respect, and in so doing you undermine the foundation of all virtue, of all moral worth. Dishonour any one, man or woman, lad or child, in his (her) own eyes, and you inflict a deadly injury. A very vile woman is probably worse than a very bad man, more inherently foul and more lamentably mischievous; it is the miserable consequence of man's folly in wishing to displace her from the position God meant her to hold, and in making her take a far lower position than she has the faculty to fill. To degrade is to ruin, and to ruin utterly. II. •rnE NOBLE POSSIBILITIES OF ELEVATION. How excellent is the impossibility of seriously writing such a sentence as that contained in the twenty-eighth verse, in this age and in this land of ours! Now and here it certainly is not more difficult to find a woman worthy of our admiration than to find such a man. In the Churches of Jesus Christ, in the homes of our country, are women, young and old and in the prime of their powers, whose character is sound to the centre, whose spirit is gracious, whose lives are lo~ely, whose influence is wholly beneficent, who are the sweetness and strength of the present generation, as they a.re the hope and promise of the next. And this elevation of woman all comes or treating her as that which God meant her to be-giving to her her rightful position, inviting and enabling her to fill her sphere, to cultivate her powers, to do her work, to take her heritage. 1. It is easy as it is foolish and sinful to degrade; assume the absence of what God bas given and deny the opportunity which should be offered, and the work is speedily done. 2. It is quite possible as it is most blessed to elevate; treat men and women, wherever found and at whatever stage in worth or unworthiness they may be taken, as those God meant to be his children, and they will rise to the dignity and partake the inheritance of "the sons and daughters of the living God."-C. Ver. 1.-The charm of gooanus. When our author wrote these words he had. for a time at any rate, passed into a purer atmosphere; some gleams of light, if not the full dawn of day, had begun to shine upon him. Up to this he has been analyzing the evil conditions of human life, and has depicted all the moods of depression and sorrow and indignation they excited in him. Now he tells us of some things which he had found good, and which had cheered and strengthened him in his long agony. They were not, indeed, efficient to remove all his distress or to outweigh all the evlls he bad encountered in his protracted examination of the phenomena. of human life; but to a certain extent they bad great value and power. 'l'he first of these compensations of human misery is the beauty and attractiveness and lasting worth of a good character. The name won by one of honourable and unblemished character, who has striven against vice and followed after virtue, who has been pure and unselfish and zealous in the service of God and man, "is better than precious ointment." It is not unwarrantable thua to expand the sentence; for though the epithet " good" is not in the original, but supplied by our translators (Revised Version), it is undoubtedly under- stood and also it is taken for granted that the renown so highly praised is fully deser~ed by its possessor. " Dear," he saya, "to the human senses "-speaking, remember, to an Eastern world-" is the odour of costly unguents, of sweet frankincense and fragrant spikenard; but dearer still, more prccioUB still, an honoured name, whose odour atlracts the love, and penetrates and fills for a while the whole heart and memory of our friends" (Bradley). There is in the original a play upon wor<ls (ahem, a D&.Ille; £hemen, ointment) which harmonizes with the brightness of the thought, and OH, Vll, 1-29.] ECCLESIASTES; OR, THE PREACHER. 189