(Continued from page 173.) CHAP. II
The wise man, having found that wisdom brought with it but increased sorrow, turns to the other side-to all those pleasures that the flesh, as we speak, enjoys. Still, he gives us, as in chap, 1:, the result of his search before he describes it, "I said in my heart, ' Go to now ; I will prove thee [1:e., I will see if I cannot satisfy thee,] with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure:' and behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, 'it is mad;' and of mirth, 'what doeth it ?' " For he now has tried wine, the occupation of laying out of vineyards, gardens, parks, the forming of lakes, and the building of houses, all filled without stint, with every thing that sense could crave, or the soul of man could enjoy. The resources at His command are practically limitless and so he works on and rejoices in the labor, apparently with the idea that now the craving within can be satisfied, now he is on the road to rest. Soon he will look round on the result of all his work, and be able to say, "All is very good; I can now rest in the full enjoyment of my labor and be satisfied." But when he does reach the end, when every pleas-tire tried, every beauty of surrounding created, and he expects to eat the fruit of his work, instantly his mouth is filled with rottenness and decay. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do ; and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit; and there was no profit tinder the sun." Thus he groans again:a groan that has been echoed and re-echoed all down the ages from every heart that has tried to fill the same void by the same means.
Ah! wise and glorious preacher, it is a large place them art seeking to fill. "Free and boundless its desires." Deeper, wider, broader than the whole world, which is at thy disposal to fill it. And them mayest well say, "What can the man do that cometh after the king ?" for them hadst the whole world and the glory of it at thy command in thy day, and did it enable thee to fill those "free and boundless desires"? No, indeed. After all is cast into that hungry pit, yawning and empty it is still. Look well on this picture, my soul; ponder it in the secret place of God's presence, and ask Him to write it indelibly on thy heart that thou forget it not. Then turn and listen to this sweet voice:" If any man thirst" (and what man does not ?) "let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water " Thirst not only quenched, but water to spare for other thirsting ones-the void not only filled, but running over with a constant flow of blessing. Who can express the glories of that contrast!
Pause, beloved reader; turn your eyes from the page and dwell on it in thy spirit a little. What a difference between "no profit under the sun" and " never thirst " !-a difference entirely clue simply to coming to Him-Jesus. Not a coming once and then departing from Him once more to try again the muddy, stagnant pools of this world:no, but to pitch our tents by the palm-trees and the springing wells of Christ's presence, and so to drink and drink and drink again of Him, the Rock that follows His people. But is this possible ? Is this not mere imaginative ecstasy, whilst practically such a state is not possible ? No, indeed ; for see that man, with all the same hungry longings of Solomon or any other child of Adam; having no wealth, outcast, and a wanderer without a home, but who has found something that has enabled him to say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound:everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
What, then, is the necessary logical deduction from two such pictures but this:The Lord Jesus infinitely surpasses all the world in filling the hungry heart of man.
Look, oh my reader, whether thou be sinner or saint, to Him-to Him alone. F. C. J.
( To be continued.)