historian, a botanist, a master in the natural history of beasts and birds and fishes and creeping things; there is no danger of extravagance in affirming, that his extent of science has seldom or never been equalled. He gave his heart to it, as he says; and he signally succeeded.

If, therefore, there was ever, a man, or ever will be one, qualified by the knowledge and experience of the matter to estimate literature and science justly; that man was Solomon. And what does he say? Does he deem all this worth living for? Does it give him a relish for life, any more than his pleasure. "I said of laughter it is mad, and of mirth what doeth it?" or any more than his labors and his possessions, which might fall into the hands of a fool? Not at all. Take his own testimony. He does, indeed, in one sentence, express a preference for knowledge. He says"A wise man's eyes are in his head," i. e., a man of knowledge is not blind, while a fool "walketh in darkness." But after all, the whole array of his literature and science could not hinder his disgust of life, or make him feel it was worth living for. Read the eighth verse of the first chapter-"All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing;" science cost him more labor than it furnished him satisfaction; it could not fill an immortal soul. Read the eighteenth verse-"But in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth in knowledge, increaseth in sorrow." How is this? How is it? Why, it comes in a hundred ways; one is, that the point of satisfaction is never reached, not only, but is pushed further off, and appears more inaccessible, as knowledge increases, "that which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" (vii. 24): this is an affliction. Another is, that as knowledge increases, you will see more and more to deplore in the world, and more and more to detest in its inhabitants. As your skill unmasks selfishness, and sees through the disguises of insincerity; and as you find the very man who has a smile for your presence, will have a sneer for you in your absence; you will have less bliss, than when you had more ignorance; you will be disgusted with men, and blush to think that you belong to the race. Another way is, that your increasing knowledge will have little justice done to it. You have laboriously fitted yourself for a station, that the world will not give you. A dolt, a simpleton, a profound blockhead, whose stupidity is his only qualification, will be ushered before you, into the station, place or business, for which you have laboriously qualified your self in vain. Another way is, that knowledge will bear hard upon an irreligious pride. Fools may be vain. Vanity is a vice of the superficial. But men of extensive knowledge cannot have the stupid bliss of a high self esteem. To say all in one word, when you have explored the heights and depths of all earthly

science, and gratified your zeal for knowledge in all that is knowable among men ; you will be compelled to an increase of sorrow, because all this comes no nearer to satisfy your immortal soul, than did the ignorance in which you began. You will say, like Solomon -"As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity" (ii. 15).—Considered in view of eternity, the longest periods of time are no more than the shortest; and measured by the wants of an immortal soul the most extensive science hath no more sufficiency than ignorance and stupidity. And if you could try it all, and on the ground of your experience should desire to leave your advice as a legacy to your son; you would just copy the twelfth verse of the twelfth chapter of this Book-"By these, my son, be admonished, of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness to the flesh." "Therefore I hated life because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Disgust with life, when life is spent for any mere earthly purposes, will be an inevitable result of all sober thinking. Men cannot avoid it, but by avoiding thought, by shutting their eyes, by drowning their senses in the intoxication of thoughtless merriment, or gilded and baseless hopes.

It were easy to add to these items. Let these suffice.

But we cannot close without some other ideas, some lessons by way of inference.

1. Man was made for religion. He must have been. If not, he was made by an enemy, made for vanity and vexation of spirit. His life, and all he can gain as he spends it, will sooner or later become matter of disgust, contempt and sickening; just as surely as he lives and must die, if he does not live for immortality, and die to inherit it. If an immortal life is not within his reach ; his life is itself a dark riddle, his world a riddle, his heart and conscience and hopes are only curses to him, all cheats; and it matters scarcely a song, whether he dies this year or the next, or lives a century! If he will not live for immortality, he will soon hate life, and soon wish he had never lived at all! He was made to "fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of man."

2. The felicities of the irreligious in this life, all depend upon lack of thought, and the power of deception. They cheat themselves: the world cheats them; their hopes, their aims, all cheat them! They are not what they think, and the world is not what they think it. Life, spent as they Life, spent as they are spending it, will do them no good. How mournful, to see young people, (while life is on the wing, and its years one after another are rushing by,) spending their hours, their hopes, their energies, in a way not only to do them no good; but in a way which if not speedily abandoned, will

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force them to curse the day in which they were born! Let me tell you, my young hearers, your life was not given for this world's purposes; and if you spend it for them, you will spend it very much in vain. Your souls, your immortal souls cannot be satisfied as you hope. You need what the world cannot give. The sooner you are convinced of it the better. You need the favor of God. You need the blood of atonement, and the sustaining grace of the Holy Spirit. As you pass on in life, your hopes will be often disappointed, your world will become a blank to you, and your life a burden! What gives you most happiness will soon give you most pain what now multiplies your joys will soon multiply and embitter your sorrows; for death will cut down your friends around you! It will make the world a solitude, and life itself a distress. As you part with them, as you bear away their bones to the land of silence, your hearts will sink within you: and how will you bear the superadded distress of the thought, that your impiety embittered the dying hours of the friend, the father, the mother you will see no more? Oh, if you but had then that sweet hope that you should see them in heaven, how it would blunt the sting that enters into your soul! how it would make you realize that life is something more than a sickening scene, and death something else than an eternal separation.

Therefore,

3. How greatly desirable is early piety. This was one of the conclusions which Solomon drew form his varied experience and extensive observation. He had tried the world. He well knew its worth. He had tried religion too; and having felt how strong an enforcement for religion could be gathered from all that the world. contains; in this Book, his mind takes a truly philosophical sweep over the whole range of an earthly existence, and then comes to the conslusions which such a view could not avoid. Early piety is one of these conclusions-"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." Notice how he arrives at this conclusion. Both observation and experience help him to it. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," is an expression containing the condensation of all that he felt and knew about the world. I hated life, is a description of one of his bitter experiences, after he had tried to force the world to make him happy. He wished to save young people from the toilsome and tearful career that he had himself run, while seeking his happiness in luxury and splendor, and "amusements," in songs and science, and whatsoever his heart desired under the sun. He holds up before them the whole world as it is, when taken as a portion, vanity, vanity, vanity, written in letters of fire all over its splendor and pomp and merriment and, even science. He opens to them his heart, his own heart, torn with vexation, and sick of life, even, while its fondness hung round things under the sun.

They may glance at the picture, and then at the heart; and having done so, may take their choice, whether they will spend their earliest and best days for such vanity, only to give such vexation. But if they will hear him, an old practitioner, an old observer, he tells them in the twelfth chapter, the sentiments which he now entertains, burnt into his heart by the bitterness of an experience from which he would dissuade them. "Remember Now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened; nor the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders shall cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows shall be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low; and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird; and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home; and the mourners go about the streets; or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." What is it all? all the world? all life; Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity. I hated life. And shall the young run the same round? shall they lend their minds to the same dream, and their hearts to the same sickening? Shall their best energies be expended in vain? Will they not believe, without the bitterness of a trial, that the world cannot answer their purpose? Will they not believe philosophy, gathering up all the worth of the world, and labelling it all, vanity? Will they disbelieve history, biography, experience, the grave and God,-all which urge them to the conclusion of the whole matter, that, to fear God and keep his commandments is the whole of man? (xii. 13). But, by and bye, (if they should live), their best days spent, old, worn out, and good for nothing, their bones shaken at the grave's mouth; will they then first begin to think, that God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil? (xii. 14).-Early piety would save them from a world of vexation. Nothing but early piety can save many of them from hell. Few of them will live to be old.

My young friends: living in such a world, and hasting to such a tribunal, does thoughtlessness or merriment become you? Must you live to be " amused," and then die to be lost? Remember, you must have a meeting with God! Hide, you cannot! Shrink, you

cannot! You must stand there, where the throne blazes, and endless ruin or eternal bliss begins! Despair, perdition, are unnecessary. God waits to be gracious. He calls you to Christ. He offers you heaven. You may be saved, if you will. But let me tell you, He will soon take back His offers of fatherly and gracious kindness and love. That throne of grace on which He sits, shall soon be taken down, and He will rear on the spot His throne of judgment "Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is." (1 Cor. iii. 13). "For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that burn them up, that it shall leave neither root nor branch.” (Mal. iv. 1). If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1 Peter iv. 18). In view of that dreadful day and all its results-now, before you hate life, make your choice betwixt vanity and heaven-truth and falsehood-sin and holiness-the eternal friendship and eternal enmity of God! But, oh! choose wisely, and live for ever.

If you will not choose so, reflect.

4. How strong is the power of sin over the human heart! Men will spend their lives in the very way to make life itself a distress. They will live for the world in a way to poison life's good, and force from their own lips the bitter confession, "I hate life, because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." It need not be. This life, as an introduction into heaven, may be joy in God, and the triumph of hope over gloom, dissatisfaction, and anguish.

5. Finally, this discussion ought to be a lession to us on the matter of a worldly prosperity. One of the most amiable sins (if I may speak so), certainly one on the most excusable, (if, again, I may speak so), is the anxiety of parents for the prosperity of their children. But amid that desired prosperity, their very children may yet hate life. Let us not expend our affections unwisely. Let us be more anxious, that our children shall be disgusted with a life spent for the world, than that they shall be satisfied with it. Let us be more desirous that they shall be happy in heaven, than prosperous on earth. Let us consult for them, not merely as formed for this world, but as accountable, immortal beings, formed for eternity. If we live to the next Lord's day, let us come to the Lord's table with prayer for them; that our life and our death may not be embittered with the thought of their impiety. If the God of mercy will hear our prayers, and bring them yet to that table with us, we will no longer say-"I hate life"-we will exclaim, Lord, "Now lettest thou thy servants depart in piece, for our eyes have seen thy salvation."-God grant it. Amen.