Ecclesiastes 5

13-16. The remaining verses in this chapter give the mutations of earthly life as seen in the case of kings. Here also we may see that wisdom is better far than folly; wisdom in the sense of sagacity; folly as manifesting itself in egregious self-conceit and stolid ignorance. Better is a child, poor but wise, than a king, old (and rich withal) but foolish, who knows not to be any more enlightened, i.e., who is past being taught—past learning anything—being too wise in his own conceit to be ever really any wiser. H. C.

Solomon must have had a prophetic glimpse of the future by his own inspiration or that of the seer Ahijah. The “old and foolish king” is himself. He who “comes out of prison” to glory, like a second Joseph, is Jeroboam. If the prophecy came through himself, he is rapt unto the future. He looks back from the quiet land upon this crowded, passionate life. He sees the throngs of living men moving restlessly to and fro. But in that day they walk not with David’s heir, but with the “second young man,” i.e., Jeroboam; and in the following verse there is an allusion to the meaning of the name Jeroboam (i.e., “whose people are many”). But “the people that come after” shall not rejoice in him. Bishop Alexander.

1. KEEP thy foot when thou goest to the house of God; for to draw nigh to hear is better than to give the sacrifice of fools: for 2 they know not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God; for God is in heaven, and thou upon 3 earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh with a multitude of business; and a fool’s voice with a multitude of 4 words. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou 5 vowest. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not 6 pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the 7 work of thine hands? For in the multitude of dreams there are vanities and in many words: but fear thou God. 8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and the violent taking away of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for one higher than the high regardeth; and there be higher than they. 9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field. 10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance 11 with increase: this also is vanity. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what advantage is there to the owner thereof, saving the beholding of them 12 with his eyes? The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 13 There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept by the 14 owner thereof to his hurt: and those riches perish by evil adventure; and if he hath begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand. 15 As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labour, which he 16 may carry away in his hand. And this also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath 17 he that he laboureth for the wind? All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he is sore vexed and hath sickness and wrath. 18 Behold, that which I have seen to be good and to be comely is for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labour, wherein he laboureth under the sun, all the days of his life which God hath given him: 19 for this is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his 20 labour; this is the gift of God. For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.

Chap. 5. At the beginning of this chapter a difference of style marks a transition to a new branch of the main subject. The Preacher now begins to address his hearer in the second person. The soliloquy, hitherto unbroken, is henceforth interrupted by personal addresses, which are repeated with increasing frequency from this place to the end of the book. Knobel, who divides the whole book into two parts, the first theoretical, the second practical, begins his second division here. The writer, he says, is gradually quitting the position of a philosophical inquirer, and begins to lay down the principles and maxims which he has deduced from his view of life. W. T. B.

The discourse becomes preceptive and monitory, which thus far it has not been. The first great question for a man who reverences God is, “How shall I demean myself toward Him, when His providence has placed me in the midst of such trials and disappointments, from which there is no escape? Shall I shun His presence and cease to worship Him, since I despair of any solid good in the present life? If not, how can I worship Him acceptably?” Here Coheletth feels it needful to give his advice in the way of precepts and precautions. M. S.

1. It is of the house of God, which in its full significance means a dwelling made by man for God, by God’s command, the building which He calls His dwelling-place, within which He hath inscribed His name, and so consecrated as man’s house of prayer and praise, man’s place of devout heed to what God Himself declares through His Word and by His Spirit; it is of this consecrated house that the Spirit speaks directively and solemnly in this text. And the direction, Keep thy foot when thou goest thither, and be ready to hear, plainly refers to and intimates what disposition of mind and heart, what tone of thought and feeling befits the soul in entering and abiding within this house. B.

“Keep thy foot” enjoins that the very approach to the house of God should be with reverence, even as the Lord said to Moses, “Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Ex. 3:6). Draw near to hear is precisely the sense of the second clause, and exhorts the worshippers to enter the inner court, where the priests were accustomed to read the law, and to listen there to this reading as better than to remain without, feasting in a merely sensual way on the portions of their slain animals which in certain forms of sacrifice were designated for this purpose. These professed worshippers really acted the part of fools in neglecting to hear the Word of God and in resorting to the temple only for the sake of these low forms of sensual gratification. Solomon says of them, “They are reckless as to the doing of evil.” They seem to have no thought or care how much they sin. H. C.

To rest in the sign and ceremony and the outside of the performance, without regarding the sense and meaning of it, that is the sacrifice of fools; none but fools will think thus to please Him who is a Spirit, and requires the heart. They are fools, for they consider not that they do evil; they think they are doing God and themselves good service, when really they are putting a great affront upon God and a great cheat upon their own souls by their heartless devotions. H.—God is much displeased with listless minds, irreverent postures, and heedless spirits in His Church. No doubt it may be pleaded that such faults come of want of thought, and not of any evil intent; but want of thought is itself a very grave offence in such a matter as the service of God. Even levity is inexcusable; for, at all events in adult persons, it comes of hardness of heart, ingratitude to Christ, neglect of reflection on sacred themes and objects, engrossment of thought and affection with the things which are seen, and an indifference to the presence and purpose of the Holy Spirit. Let us study reverence. “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the holy ones, and to be had in reverence of all that are round about Him.” D. F.

The eye that searches and knows us penetrates to the heart, and there only God finds the genuine elements of worship. The lowly sense of personal unworthiness, the wondering contemplation of the Divine love, the eager longing for mercy to pardon and grace to help, the faith that grasps the promises, the hope that is anchored within the veil, the kindness that breathes benediction all round, the love that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things—it is these things, breathing forth from the hearts of a congregation, that give pleasure to God. W. G. B.—He that truly loveth his friend transporteth himself often to the place where he was wont to see his friend; he delighteth in reading his letters, and in handling the gages and monuments that he hath left behind him. How grateful is the sight of anything that presents unto him the memorial of his absent friend! And thus the child of God, to testify his love to Him, transporteth himself often to the place where he may find God, in His sanctuary, among His saints. He delights in His letters (the Scriptures), in those holy pledges (the sacraments) which He hath left behind Him, as tokens of His good-will, until He come again. Thomas de Trugillo.

Though the most remarkable progress of the believer may be upon his knees in secret intercourse betwixt God and him, yet public ordinances are the means of these private intercourses; though the secret may be more comfortable and refreshful, yet the public ordinances lay the foundation of that secret comfort and refreshment. Public ordinances are the wells; but, for ordinary, the children of God are not so much refreshed with the water thereof till once they get home to some secret corner with it, and there they get a more hearty, refreshing drink of the water of life than they got at the public well; but still it was from thence it was fetched; and so the foundation of these private and refreshing meals is ordinarily laid in the public ordinances. It is true, some that go to fetch home water from the well may, according to their need, get a hearty drink of water even at the side of the well, before they bring any water home; and so the Lord’s people may, and sometimes do, get a very heartsome and refreshing draught of living water, even at the well-side of public ordinances, while they are hearing the Word, or receiving the Sacrament of the Supper. Erskine. —In cases of necessity Christ in the sacrament vouchsafes to come home to me, and the court is where the King is. His blessings are with His ordinances wheresoever; but the place to which He has invited me is His house. He that made the great supper in the Gospel called in new guests; but he sent out no meat to them who had been invited, and might have come, and came not. Chamber prayers, single or with your family, chamber sermons, sermons read over there, are blessed assistants and supplements to a believer; but when he is become a part of the congregation he is joint tenant with them, and the devotion of all the congregation, and the blessings upon all the congregation, are his blessings and his devotions. Donne.

Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is. A man who is not a church-goer has fallen below a right comprehension of human relations and social reciprocations. Behold the solitary wanderer who has gone away by himself on the holy Sabbath morning! He has missed the Divine idea. He should have said, No; to the centre! to the meeting-place! to the rendezvous!—together, all together—common prayer, common song, common study; and then radiate as you please, carrying the public personality with the narrow individualism, and enlarging the little unit by the infinite completeness of human nature. To hear another human voice is a hint of fellowship, a hint of consolidation, a hint of heaven. We need the Sabbath day, the memorial sacraments, the Holy Book, the preaching man, the fellow-suppliant, the congregation. J. P.

Church vagrancy is a legitimate outcome of the Sunday lyceum view. Those who seek little beyond entertainment in going to church will go where they can get the most of it, and will always be drawn by a fresh attraction. We have “auditories” nowadays, and congregations often appropriately figure as “audiences.” We cannot too seriously remind ourselves that we ought to go to church, first, last, and always, to worship God, and that everything about the place and the service should help us to do that. New York Examiner.

Let thy words be few. Do not speak much, and as men in light and free conversation with familiar friends and equals are apt to do. Speak as penetrated by reverential awe of the exalted majesty and power of God. M. S.—3. This caution applies to all words addressed to God. A multitude of words, poured out irreverently and without serious thought, is compared to the incoherent and unmeaning fancies of dreams when the mind has been overborne with business and cares. In no such manner and spirit should men approach the great God. Let them rather think of Him as filling the highest heavens and yet as condescending in His great compassion to bend His ear thence to the humble prayer of mortals. Let them, therefore, approach his mercy-seat with profoundest gratitude and reverential awe, blended, indeed, with a filial but never a reckless spirit. H. C.

He is a profane person that performs holy duties slightly and superficially; all our duties ought to be warmed with zeal, winged with affection, and shot up to heaven from the whole bent of the soul. Our whole hearts must go into them; and the strength and vigor of our spirits must diffuse themselves into every part of them. Truly all our Christian sacrifices, both of praise and prayer, must be offered up to God with fire; and that fire which alone can sanctify them must be darted down from heaven; the celestial flame of zeal and love which comes down from heaven, and hath a natural tendency to ascend thither again, and to carry up our hearts and souls upon its wings with it. Bishop Hopkins.

4,5. The Mosaic Institutes permitted and regulated these solemn vows. (See Num. 30 throughout and Deut. 23: 21-23.) The latter passage is fully in harmony with these words of Solomon. The spirit of the admonition here is, Do not make a rash vow, and then resort to this plea of inadvertence to excuse or extenuate your guilt or justify non-fulfilment. Rather consider beforehand and act deliberately. Make no solemn vow without a serious purpose to perform it. When made, see that you do perform it faithfully. Why should you provoke the displeasure of Almighty God by your rash words and your guilty irreverence, and so bring down His judgments upon the work of your hands?

6. In this somewhat difficult passage I understand the mouth to be named as the organ of speech in making vows and in irreverent prayers. Let not thy mouth rashly involve thy entire person in guilt and consequent suffering. The “angel” here is doubtless the priest, so called because in a sense the messenger of God—the agent acting for God—in the matter of vows especially and of sacrifices and Divine worship generally. H. C.

7. Here the multitude of words refer both to the unmeaning, wordy prayers, and the rash and hasty vows described in the preceding verses. Such prayers and vows are likened to the dreams of the night; they have no meaning, no value; therefore avoid them. Fear God; for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. J. M. M.—Men are in peril when they talk too much, and especially when they speak rashly and thoughtlessly before God. The precept of wisdom in this case is, Fear thou God. Let a deep and wholesome reverence toward God possess thy soul and guard thy tongue against rash words before Him. H. C.

8. Solomon, having clearly announced the doctrine of a future judgment (3: 16, 17; 4: 1), in connection with the oppressions and injustice which are permitted to exist among men, reasserts it here. There is a Higher One in heaven, to whom the highest earthly rulers are accountable. J. M. M.—The last clause of this verse I would translate, “For one who is higher than this high one is observing, and the Most High is over them both;” the meaning of which is that a higher officer is over this oppressive magistrate, taking cognizance of his acts; and the Most High God is over both of them, so that if the superior human ruler fails to bring his subordinate to account, the great God will punish both. H. C.

9. This puts a great honor upon the husbandman’s calling, that it is the most necessary of all other to the support of man’s life; the many have the benefit of it, the mighty cannot live without it; it is for all. H.

10. Not be satisfied with silver, . . . with increase. The love of money is a passion which money cannot gratify in full. The passion is increased in strength, and made more clamorous by that on which it feeds. As age advances, the restless, insatiable passion exerts a still mightier away. Silver cannot—it never did and never can—satisfy the love of silver. What emphasis truly is there in the words of Solomon, “This is also vanity!” J. M. M.—One evil which attends the possession of riches is an insatiable desire of getting more. It would be no hard matter to assign more instances of such as riches have made covetous than of such as covetousness has made rich. Upon which account a man can never truly enjoy what he actually has through the eager pursuit of what he has not; his heart is still running out, still upon the chase of a new game, and so never thinks of using what it has already acquired. And must it not be one of the greatest miseries for a man to have a perpetual hunger upon him, and to have his appetite grow fiercer and sharper amid the very objects and opportunities of satisfaction? Yet so it is usually with men hugely rich. They have, and they covet; riches flow in upon them, and yet riches are the only things they are still looking after. Their desires are answered, and while they are answered they are enlarged; they grow wider and stronger, and bring such a dropsy upon the soul that the more it takes in, the more it may. South.

To greed there may be “increase,” but no increase can ever be “abundance;” for could you change all the pebbles on the beach into minted money, or conjure into bank-notes all the leaves of the forest; nay, could you transmute the solid earth into a single lump of gold, and drop it into the gaping mouth of avarice, it would only be a crumb of transient comfort, a cordial drop enabling it to cry a little louder, Give, give. Hamilton.—If this be the nature of this vice, the more it gets still to covet the more, then nothing can be more unreasonable than to think to gratify this appetite; because, at this rate, the man can never be contented, because he can never have enough. Nay, so far as it is from that, that every new accession to his fortune sets his desires one degree farther from rest and satisfaction; for a covetous mind having no bounds, it is very probable that the man’s desire will increase much faster than his estate; and then the richer he is, he is still the poorer, because he is still the less contented with his condition. Tillotson.

11. With the increase of wealth in goods, cattle, lands, there comes a demand for an increase of servants and employés to manage them. All these must be fed. Thus the outgoes advance with the incomes. What good, then, has the owner above his servants, except in this, that he can look on these possessions and say, All these are mine! Each alike has his daily bread; the owner no more; and his family, his household and servants no less. Hence the actual enjoyments of life are more nearly equal than is commonly supposed; the special advantage of the rich man above the poor is less than he is wont to think. These facts have a wholesome bearing upon the class for whom Solomon is specially writing. Luther comments tersely: “Whoso then gathers riches, gathers devourers. Therefore, why plague thyself to increase thy treasure? However many possessions thou hast, thou canst not do more than fill and clothe thy poor body. If God gives thee riches, use thy share as thou usest thy share of water, and let the rest flow on; and if thou doest it not, thy gathering will still be in vain.” H. C.

Translated into its equivalent, money just means food and clothing and a salubrious dwelling. It means instructive books and rational recreation. It means freedom from anxiety and leisure for personal improvement. It means the education of one’s children and the power of doing good to others. And to inveigh against it, as if it were intrinsically sinful, is as fanatical as it would be to inveigh against the bread and the raiment, the books and the Bibles, which the money procures. It would be to stultify all those precepts which tell us to provide things honest in the sight of all men; to do good and to communicate; to help forward destitute saints after a godly sort; to make friends of the unrighteous mammon. “Remembering the words of our Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive,” the true disciple will value wealth chiefly as he can spend it on objects dear to his dear Lord. To him money is a talent and a trust; and he will feel it a fine thing to have a fortune, because it enables him to do something notable for some noble end. Hamilton.

12. Comparing the man of daily labor with the man of wealth, the former is pretty sure to eat as well and to sleep much better. Such labor almost insures health, and with health the best pleasures of food and sleep. On the other hand, abundance—an excess above his real wants—is so much to be cared for and kept, often with a degree of anxiety that forbids sleep. In this balancing of the relative enjoyments of the two classes, the laborer has altogether the advantage. This also is wholesome doctrine for the wealthy classes, to whom Solomon specially addresses his book.

13. A sore evil it is that riches, the avails of so much labor, should be hoarded by their owner to his damage; kept, locked from use, to be only a curse to their possessor. What a man has paid for so dearly, one would think ought to pay him well in return. What, then, if it only pays him in hurt—rewards him with calamities and curses! The true wisdom of life lies in laboring not for one’s self, but for others. Riches accumulated and used on this principle are choice and precious blessings, not only to the great number of others blessed thereby, but specially to the almoner of these blessings. How unlike his expanded and overflowing heart is the shrivelled soul of the miserly man who hoards and keeps to his hurt, so that the more he has, he is only the more wretched! H. C.

It is easy to be ruined by success; success is very often failure, and failure success. It is surprising how soon children come to take the conferments of their parents as a matter of course. It is surprising how soon we come to take the conferments of God as a matter of course. C. H. P.—Relatively to others a man may have a right to do what he will with his own, but in truth and before God, no man has a right to use anything except for the end for which it was given. No man has a right to destroy his property wantonly or to use it foolishly, though no other man may have a right to prevent him. M. H.

14. Men leave their riches either to their kindred, or to the public; and moderate portions prosper best in both. A great estate left to an heir is as a lure to all the birds of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the better established in years and judgment. Bacon.—Great wealth often proves disastrous to the children of its possessors. It begets dispositions and habits which unfit them to meet the reverses and rebuffs of life. The expectation of a large inheritance prevents their cultivation of those self-reliant feelings and those habits of application to useful employment which are of greater advantage to a young man than the most extensive patrimony.

15,16. Should a man retain all his wealth, and go on adding thereto up to the very hour of his death, he must then leave it all. He can carry nothing away with him when he dies. “In all points as he came, so shall he go.” “As his friends,” says Henry, “when he came naked into the world helped him with swaddling-clothes, so when he goes out they help him with grave-clothes, and that is all.” J. M. M.—The value of all works may be proved by this very simple test, will they follow us? Accompanying us in this world, will they go with us into the next? That only is of real value to a man which he can carry with him. A touchstone that, which neither gold, nor houses, nor broad acres, nor sounding titles, nor household comforts can stand! Guthrie.—We shall have only what we are. What we have made of our life will be all that we can carry with us out of this world up to the judgment-seat. The test of success will be what survives our dust. And that which is most precious does survive. And what is it? The results, the harvest, for good or evil, for weal or woe, of these fleeting years. What shall these be? They are your inventory for eternity. They are your portion forever, to rejoice in or regret. Gillett.

16. The ever-recurring question rises once again, “What profit?” As in Prov. 11:19; Job 16:3; Isa. 26:18, the “wind” is the emblem of emptiness and nothingness. E. H. P.

17. The general sentiment is that this rich man does not even enjoy his food, but all his life eats in darkness, i.e., in sadness, anxiety; is full of discontent; his infirmities irritate his temper and make him intensely unhappy. Probably the writer alludes to those diseases which naturally result from luxurious living, and which so often help to poison the cup of the rich. Thus closes one of the most vivid and truthful descriptions ever drawn by human pen of the wretchedness and folly of the selfish pursuit of wealth.

18. “To this conclusion,” he says, “I have come from my observation of human life. It is both good in itself and comely, in the sense of appropriate, befitting man in all his relations, whether to God or to his fellow-men, that he should eat and drink what is needful and wholesome, and should enjoy the good of his labor as he passes on through life, accepting it all with grateful heart to his great Benefactor and Preserver.” The beauty of the passage lies in its recognition of God’s hand in both the gift of days to live in, and the gift of food and drink to enjoy while he lives. It is pre-eminently wholesome in its moral bearings to keep this sense of God’s favor in the gift of days and of daily food evermore fresh upon the heart. It begets a humble trust for the future; allays all wasting anxieties for great accumulations; and inspires us to a ready sympathy and benevolence toward our fellows who may have fallen under sore affliction from the hand of the Lord. This is using the world as not abusing it; using it so as to fill it with heavenly influence toward a filial trust and a grateful love of our Divine Father. H. C.

Devotion does not enjoin contempt of the pleasures of human society. It brings amusement under due limitation, without extirpating it. It forbids it as the business, but permits it as the relaxation of life; for there is nothing in the spirit of true religion which is hostile to a cheerful enjoyment of our situation in the world. Blair.—It is lawful and right moderately to taste those pleasures which gratify the innocent sensibilities of our nature, and temperately to join in those rational amusements which serve to recruit the mind after great exertion, and to prepare it for future activity. As sleep is necessary to refresh the powers of the body, so relaxation and amusement are useful in restoring the energies of the mind. But there is great risk of running to excess in these things, and sinking into idleness and frivolity, or something worse. The point of a wise care is to guard against the gradual encroachments of a love of amusements which, though not positively wrong, may come to absorb the whole heart and consume the whole time, rendering us insensible to our proper duties, and at length incapable of discharging them. William Fleming.

Christianity forbids no necessary occupations, no reasonable indulgences, no innocent relaxations. It allows us to use the world, provided we do not abuse it. It does not spread before us a delicious banquet and then come with a “touch not, taste not, handle not.” All it requires is that our liberty degenerate not into licentiousness, our amusements into dissipation, our industry into incessant toil, our carefulness into extreme anxiety and endless solicitude. So far from forbidding us to engage in business, it expressly commands us not to be slothful in it, and to labor with our hands for the things that be needful; it enjoins every one to abide in the calling wherein he was called, and perform all the duties of it. It even stigmatizes those that provide not for their own, telling them that they are worse than infidels. When it requires us to “be temperate in all things,” it plainly tells us that we may use all things temperately; when it directs us to “make our moderation known unto all men,” this evidently implies that within the bounds of moderation we may enjoy all the reasonable conveniences and comforts of the present life. Porteus.

The worldly spirit says, “Time is short; take your fill; live while you can.” Christianity says, “Use the world, but do not abuse it. All things are yours. Take them and use them; but never let them interfere with the higher life which you are called to lead.” Unworldliness is the spirit of holding all things as not our own, in the perpetual conviction that they will not last. It is not to put life and God’s lovely world aside with self-torturing hand. It is to have the world, and not to let the world have you; to be its master and not its slave. To have Christ hidden in the heart, calming all, and making all else seem by comparison poor and small. Worldliness is determined by the spirit of a life, not the objects with which the life is conversant. It is not the “flesh,” nor the “eye,” nor “life” which are forbidden, but it is the “lust of the flesh,” and the “lust of the eye,” and the “pride of life.” Worldliness consists in these three things: devotion to the outward, to the transitory, to the unreal; in opposition to love for the inward, the eternal, the true; and one of these affections is necessarily expelled by the other. If a man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. But let a man once feel the power of the kingdom that is within, and then the love fades of that emotion whose life consists only in the thrill of a nerve, or the vivid sensation of a feeling; he loses his happiness and wins his blessedness. Let a man get but one glimpse of the King in His beauty, and then the forms and shapes of things here are to him but the types of an invisible loveliness; types which he is content should break and fade. F. W. R.

Christianity does adopt and welcome and embrace every trait that the intuition of right minds follows with its admiration. It asks no man to be a whit less manly, less cordial in his fellowships, less cheerful in his temper, less companionable and genial in his relations to society, less penetrating in his sagacity, less noble in his manners, or less punctual in his industry. Manliness enters into the composition of piety. All that the unperverted judgment of the world approves, the Gospel invites. The religion of Jesus has realized its own promise—completing not only Judaism, but all good yearnings and beginnings everywhere. It did not come to destroy, but to fulfil. It had its kindly word at the outset, even for those that, having not the law, did by nature the things contained in the law. And ever since it has spread the benignant arms of its adoption over every worthy purpose and every pure aspiration that will acknowledge its guardianship. Wherever the germs of lofty action unfold themselves, there the fostering hand of its discipline is present to train them. The sublimity of all honorable achievements, the valor of pure-hearted patriots, disinterested sufferings, the patience and fortitude and constancy that come out so grandly in fearful emergencies—they are all as much the Gospel’s as they are humanity’s. F. D. H.

Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana, life, and profession. Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us we come not into the world to run a race of delight, but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit were to play away an uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Browne.

19. This verse adds to the thought in v. 18 this consideration, that if God gives to a man both riches and the ability to enjoy them, he should accept both these gifts, and especially the latter—the power to enjoy worldly good—as the very gift of God. It so often happens that where God gives riches He gives not the power to enjoy them, that the bestowment of both blessings upon the same man should awaken special gratitude.

20. He will have small occasion to dwell in mournful reminiscence upon the scenes of the past, however trying and laborious they may have been, for God now meets the desires of the heart, giving him both a competence of earthly good, and the ability to enjoy it. H. C.—The man who receives and enjoys his wealth as the gift of God will be a truly happy man. Life to him will not be like the life described in v. 17, one continued scene of darkness, dejection, infirmity, and irritation. J. M. M

Careful observers of the times see only too many proofs of the power of the worship of wealth to choke out of the lives of professing Christians the wealth of worship. The perils of mammonism are all the more dangerous because of their insidious character. Some vices so reveal their hideous horror that men are instinctively put on guard, but the love of money eats into character like a canker worm into the root of a tree, secretly, slowly, and surely. Watchfulness over the motives that guide and control human activity will always keep clear the supreme purpose of life, doubtfulness about which is apt to produce a moral mist dangerously suggestive of shipwreck. “Show me,” says Fichte, “what thou truly lovest, show me what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart, and thou hast already shown me thy life. This love is the root and central part of thy being. What thou lovest is that thou livest.” Every one, consciously or unconsciously, has mapped out for himself some ideal of life to the realization of which he gives the strength of mind and body. The man who makes wealth the object of his pursuit, the goal of his unceasing endeavor, says life is money, and exposes himself to the perils of mammonism.

Bad as the aristocracy of the past, with its pomp and pride of social distinction, was, the plutocracy of the present, which threatens to be the aristocracy of the future, is worse. Carlyle had truth and soberness on his side when he denounced the aristocracy of the money-bag as the basest yet known, and when he described mammon as the basest of known gods, even of known devils. Wealth consecrated to noble purposes exalts a nation; wealth which ministers to selfish pleasures and pretentious luxury degrades a people to low levels of thought and action. The millionaires of to-day might with profit learn a lesson from Alexander the Great, who, when asked why he did not gather money and lay it up in a public treasury, replied: “For fear lest, being keeper thereof, I should be infected and corrupted.” The keepers of money should live in a mood of salutary fear about the infectious and corrupting qualities of the wealth they possess, ever remembering that while it makes a good servant it makes a bad master, and that the slavery of mammon has power to shrivel manhood into a caricature of what God meant it to be.

Covetousness is one great peril of mammonism. The warning of our Lord ought to ring out loud and often from the pulpits of to-day: “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Another peril of mammonism is its downward look. God meant men to look up to His sky, shining with the splendor of the sun by day and the glory of the stars by night. In the look upward one begins to worship, great thoughts are wakened, aspirations to be and do kindle, and the education of the soul commences in its being drawn out of the selfish interests of life. But he who yields to the spell of mammonism has his thoughts and looks drawn downward. Other perils of mammonism might be mentioned, but one contains in it at least the germ of all other perils. We refer to the atheism engendered by the life of money-making. The man who thinks and says he is the maker of his own money thinks and speaks blatant atheism. He may be a well-known figure in religious circles and one of the pillars in a prominent church, but all the same he is an atheist, inasmuch as he denies God’s share in the prosperity of his life. The man of business who would save himself from the soul-destroying atheism of money-making ought to write in large letters over his desk, read and ponder daily, the words, “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth.” Shut God out of your business life, and you will soon shut Him out of your spiritual life.

The perils of mammonism threaten those who make little money as well as those who make much money. The spirit which leads to overvalue and over-love of money is independent of amount. Safety lies in placing one’s self in a right moral relation to money. The man who feels himself drifting on to the quicksands of mammonism will find an anchor, sure and steadfast, in cheerful and prompt obedience to the apostolic precept: “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him.” Recognize your stewardship; “honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase;” let the first act of worship on every Sabbath be a setting aside of a portion of the week’s proceeds for religious and philanthropic purposes, and you are safe from the perils of mammonism. D. Sutherland.

Coheleth is no epicure. Specially is he remote from epicurism, as it concerns the acknowledgment of a God, and gratitude to Him for His blessings. Most earthly pleasures he finds at last to be altogether empty and vain: but the enjoyment of the fruits of one’s industry, he repeatedly declares, is a good, and the only good that promises much, while even this is short-lived and transitory. But whatever there

is in it of satisfaction, this is God’s gift, and not procured by ourselves. A deep and reverential feeling toward God must have prompted such a sentiment, in such a connection. Providence is not taxed with injustice, nor is unbelief in it excited, on account of the apparently indistinguishing distribution of good and evil in the world, or because of the untoward events of life. All good comes from God, and demands thankful acknowledgment. Suffering and sorrow, when they come on all alike, are not things which give us any right to complain. M. S.