The Book of the Natural Man.

The book of ECCLESIASTES is read by Christians with doubt and perplexity. They find it hard to ex tract from it anything spiritual and heavenly, and so try to read into it what is consciously contrary to its spirit and letter. To others its sayings and conclusions are most agree able; and being a book of the Bible, it seems to sanction a conduct of life at variance with the holiness and grace of Christianity. Scholars also have made it on the one hand a book of piety, and again on the other of infidelity; now it teaches only pessimism, then altogether cheerful industry and enjoyment of the things of life; and lastly, some would reject it wholly as unworthy of the Spirit of God.

It is however in the Bible; it belongs to the organism of Sacred Scripture; it was given by inspiration of God; it is there for the purpose common to all the books of Scripture, and like all the books of the Old Testament, can be fully understood only in the light of the New. Like all of them, it looks to the Messianic future; it faces Jesus Christ; it leads to Him; it is answered in Him.

Whatever may have been the understanding of this book by those of olden time, whatever meaning may have been given to it by righteous men and women, or good derived from it for their edification, to us who have the New Testament in hand it must reveal its full significance and intended use. If "by the law is the knowledge of sin," through this book may be the knowledge of "man under the sun." Herein he is seen left to himself to know himself and to look beyond himself for an enduring good. The lines of his sadly varied search are not limited by earth and time; they tend to the eternal and heavenly. Also, to one who believes that this Scripture, though so peculiar, was given by inspiration of God, it should be no surprise to find its meaning and use not fully comprehended by either the writer or the people for whom it was originally written.

In the following study of Ecclesiastes the attempt is made to prove that its tentative experiences, its reflections, conclusions and all, are of the Natural Man; that even its "Fear God" is still of "man under the sin"; but that all is intended to lead to God and to Christ as man's everlasting righteousness and portion. It is a preparation for redemption.

Discussions touching its specific teaching may all be harmonized when the book is seen to be the mirror of all men in many moods and of every man in some mood; a book not of one age, but of all time; a shew of the world and its fleeting vanities, and of the life of its dwellers which is "even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

ECCLESIASTES IS THE BOOK OF THE NATURAL MAN; it is the mirror of man under the sun held up by the Wisest of men; and its last and best Conclusion is still that of the Natural Man.