simple-in the soogs of Anacreon and Horace and Omar Khayyam. It would indeed be a mistake to imngine that the advice he gives, however often it is repeated, is the best that can be given, or even the best that he has to give. It prescribes but a temporary relief from sorrow and care and perplexity. And even when be makes the most of the satisfacUon gained by" eating and drinking and bein~ merry," we remember his own words, that " it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting" (eh. vii. 2).-J. W. Vera. 16, 17.- Yanity of philosophizing. The endeavour bad been in vain to discover the principle according to which it happens that the just sometimes receive the reward of the wicked, and the wicked that of the righteous (eh. viii. 14). Equal failure attends the endeavour to understand the purpose and end of the toil and labour in which men are ceaselessly engaged. That all that was done was" a work of God," the carrying out of a Divine law, the accomplishment of a Divine plan, he did not doubt (ver. 17); but he was unable to see the connection of the individual parts with the whole-the order and symmetry of events in their course he could not recognize. Two things he had sought to attain: (1) to know wisdom, to understand the csseoce and causes and objects of things; and (2) to bring this wisdom to bear upon the facts of life, to find in it a clue for the interpretation of that which was perplexing aod abnormal. Ilut success io bis endeavour was denied him. The toils and cares which fill up laborious d~ys, and drive away sleep from the eyes of the weary, seemed to him to btl in many cases utterly fruitless; to be imposed upon men for no end; to have no connection with any higher plan or purpose by which one might suppose the world to be governed. What, th~n, is .his conclusion? It is that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite; that no effort is adequate for the task; that the highest human wisdom is but as folly when it is bent upon forciog a solution of this great problem (ver. 17). "Then I beheld all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun : because however much a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, moreover, though a wise man think to know it, yet he shall not be able to find it." The agnosticism of the writer does not tend to atheism. He does not deny---on the contrary, he affirms-his faith in a great Divine plan to which all the labours of men are related, though what it is and how it is being fulfilled he does not know. The tone in which be records bis failure is not without a strain of bitterness; but one would wish to believe that its prevailing note is that of reverent submission to the Almighty, whose ways he could not comprehend, and that the writer's thoughts would find adequate expres~ion in the devout ejaculation of the apostle, "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God I how unsearchable are his ju<lgments, and his ways past finding out I" (Rom. xi. 33). The pregnant words of Hooke1· describe the attitude appropriate for creatures in presence of their Creator: "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his Name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him, and our safest eloquence con- cerning him ie our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity aod reach. He is above, nod we npon the earth ; therefore it beboveth our words to be wary and few " (' Eccl. Pol.,' i. 2, 3).-J. w.
EXPOSITION. CHAPTER IX. I oonaidered in my heart even to deolare all Vere. 1-6.-0ne fate happens to all, and this; literally,/or all this laid I in my lteart, and all thu I have been about (equivalent to I the dead are out off from all the feelings and sought) to clear up. The reference is both to interests of life in the upper world. what has been sai<l and to what is comin"'. Ver. 1.-This continues the subject treated The l,i, "for" (which the Vulgnte omits) abovo, confirmillg the conclusion a.rrived at at the beginning gi vee the reason for th~ in eh. viii. 17, viz. that God's government trutli of whnt is advnnced; the writer hns of the world is nufuthomable. For all this omitted no means of nrriving l\t a con• ECCLESIASTES; OR, 'l'HE PREACHER. [OH, IX, 1-18,