ECCLESIASTES.* EcctzsissrEs is a poem addressed to a decaying civilization,

and a half-exhausted age. It was written, as all the great scholars of all schools now tell us, judging by language, style, and internal evidence,

not at the climax of the -Hebrew history, but long after the Babylonian exile—probably not long before the Canon of the Old Testament was

finally closed, less than four hundred years before Christ. It was put into the mouth of Solomon only as the representative of Hebrew wisdom, and really contains the free comments of spiritual thought on the "vanity ot human wishes"—a subject which every age has taken up anew in phases of either temporary or permanent self-dis- satisfaction and decadence. For the moment, perhaps—we believe only for the moment—such a mood of sceptical and languid conser- vatism is npon Europe—a mood in which there are few great men of any kind, little hope, much caution, some cynicism, and a good deal of prudent doubt. And in such a phase of thought, the titter irony with which the book of Ecclesiastes treats worldly wisdom may come with a freshness which at other times it would fail to have for us.

Of the most important qualifications of the present editor we are no competent judges, for they consist in Hebrew and Chaldee scholar- ship, and a profound study of all the critics of this book, both Rab- binical and modern. On such qualifications it would be absurd to comment here, even were it in our power to do so, which it is not ; but we may say that the greatest critics, both Jewish, German, and English, have evidently been studied with great care, and are cited wherever an important difficulty occurs ; that the notes are replete with good sense as well as learning, and that the main points for

discussion are brought out in the introduction with a clear and masterly hand. Mr. Ginsburg's only defect, as far as we are compe-

tent to criticize him, appears to be an insufficient appreciation of the

poetical exigencies of his context where he introduces a verbal cor- rection or gives a wholly new rendering to any passage. Engrafted

on the noble style of our authorized version, these interpolations too often seem like ugly patches disfiguring the original ; and this when, with a very slight change, the passage, though it might still have struck the ear as novel, would not have jarred upon it as a discord.

Thus, in the fifth verse of the first chapter, he makes the sun "go pantingly to its place ;" and in the thirteenth of the fifth chapter he makes the wealthy man's riches perish "in some unfortunate business,"

which has a twang quite ludicrously prosaic; and there are other in- stances of the same kind. For the rest the editor appears to us to have accumulated almost all the extraneous light upon his work that any ordinary reader could wish, as well as a very elaborate apparatus for the more learned reader. And to us, at least, many of his notes, illustrations, and criticisms have been of the greatest value in eluci- dating the true meaning of this remarkable poem. Ecclesiastes may be said to be the type of all subsequent poems on the "vanity of human things." It is the view of the world taken by one to whom the truth of a divine judgment on all human acts has been revealed, and who has only just escaped the creed of the cynic by laying fast hold of a faith in an unseen world, and a judg- ment that does not end with life. He begins with a prologue in which he shows that all visible things run an appointed round and end just where they began : toil only renews the necessity for toil ; the earth remains, but men succeed each other upon it like the days and seasons ; the sun rises only to go down,—and goes down only to rise. The wind veers from south to north only to turn again from north to south ; the rivers supply the sea, and the sea supplies the rivers. All things are in a continual flux : and this cannot satisfy the thought or the senses of man. "The eye could never be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing" t The old is new, and the new is old, and no cross-examination of the senses brings any further satisfaction. The former men pass, and we shall pass, and our pos- terity will pass, and how can we be satisfied with being thus tran- sitory links in an eternal flux of phenomena? So the prologue states the problem which the poem further ela- borates through the various aspects of human life. A wise man applies all his wisdom to find out something satisfying in human life —something that will appease the hunger of the spirit, and fails. First, he tries mirth and pleasure, but mirth and pleasure themselves become a toil, and unsatisfying toil. And toil, however wise, creates nothing that the man of toil can make his own—he is but the instru- ment of producing that of which he cannot secure the enjoyment— so that this also is vanity, and if we enjoy anything it is not our own doing, for it cannot be secured by any toil or wisdom of ours, but only by the gift of God, so that, for their own sakes, pleasure and labour are alike empty. The poet then proceeds with his illustration, that every human pleasure and occupation is necessarily temporary, and only good in its own time ; birth and death, planting and uprooting, killing and saving, gathering and scattering, silence and speech, hate and love, all these are good only in their time, and in their alternation with each other. Yet there is an infinity, an eternity sown in the heart which necessarily dissatisfies man with this incessant change, and makes him crave some permanence beneath it. This is the point where the present editor has thrown so much light on the text by his new, and apparently strictly accurate, translation. The common

* Cohelelh, commonly called the Book of Ecclesiastes: Translated from the Original Hebrew, with a Commentary, Ilistorkal and Critical. By Christian D. Ginsburg. (Longman.)

t We would suggest that lfr. Ginsburg mimes the meaning when he makes this refer to the mere physical impossibility of exhausting all the illustrations of per- pestuti flux. Surely the reference is to the thought, afterwards more fully expressed, that there is an " eternity put into the heart of man" which makes us insatiable of mere outward things. version reads : "He hath made everything beautiful in its time ,slso He hath set the world in their hearts, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." Mr. Gins- burg translates and gives excellent reasons for translating : "He bath made it all beautiful in its season; He bath also put e into their hearts, only that man understandeth not the work which God bath made from beginning to end." This incessant sameness of change could not then satisfy man, and if even he were satisfied fully, it is a Divine favour. " If a man cat and drink, and enjoy in all his labour, it is a gift of God"—not of the external circumstances which seem the occasion of the enjoyment. The poet then goes on to show that this hunger after something eternal beneath the chance and change of external events, is felt most of all when men see " iniquity in the place of justice, and equity in the place of iniquity." Then the craving for some deeper life becomes intolerable, then 'I said to my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time of judgment with Him, for every thing and deed." But the tyranny of the senses is represented as overpowering for the time even this conviction : " For man is mere chance, and the beast is mere chance, and they are both subject to the same chance ; as is

the death of the one, so is the death of the other, and both have the same spirit ; and the advantage of man over the beast is nothing, for both are vanity ; both go to the same place, both were made of dust, and both turn into dust again : no one knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth." And thus, taking up the hasty creed dictated by the senses, the poet proceeds to consider human life as it looks under the dark shadow of this denial. He says that there is no hope for the oppressed under it, that the fate of the dead seems happier than that of the living, and that of the unborn happier than that of the dead,—in fact the more of life the more of evil.

The poet then turns to the social side of life, and considers what sources of enduring happiness that offers. He delineates the misery of loneliness, points out the natural desire for posterity and society, and the calculable advantages even of a certain moderate piety in reli- gious matters for promoting happiness. Riches and labour are only valuable in subordination to such social affections, and so high is the value of a good place among men that the self-restraint which binds us to others, though it involves some shade of sadness or humilia- tion, is worth the sacrifice, even in a prudential point of view. But the most that can be reached from such considerations as these is the prudential wisdom not to be either "very righteous" nor "very wicked," but to keep a cautious mean between the two so as to offend neither. The social result of mere prudence is,—not to be arro- gant, but to adapt oneself to the general average standard of the times, and this is enforced by the poet with keen irony. A moderato self-restraint and disregard of mere external appearance, if not carried too far, is the best worldly course. It is well to exercise a certain restraint over impulse, to be diligent rather than idle, to be mode- rately charitable, to be observant and thoughtful, even for this world's advantage. The bread cast upon the waters will oftener return than not in personal advantage ; if we sow, even in an unfavourable season, we shall oftener reap something than not ; wisdom has not always the best of it, and yet it is better than folly on the whole. And yet it is all vanity if there is nothing more.

The "something more" that remains is to believe in the Divine judgmeut and to let that faith govern all the acts of life in youth and age as the only thingvhich can satisfy the heart in evil and good alike. And then comes the beautiful and poetical passage with which the book concludes. Though "youth and manhood are vanity," with this faith that "for all things God will bring us into judgment," the young may "put away the sorrow" which the mystery ot transi- tininess casts upon the heart. And it is with a delineation of the day when this faith is most needed that the poem concludes. The present editor gives a very different version from the usual one. He takes the passage as a description of death under the figure of a storm coming down upon a terrified Hebrew village. The Hebrews, he says, always ground their own corn in mills in their own houses, putting the bondmaids to the task ; the doors stood open during the day and were only closed when the weather was tempestuous. In the passage as lie interprets it, death is a tempest coming after a rainy day ; the sky is darkened, the servants of the house tremble, and the masters are themselves awestruck ; the maids fly from the mills ; the doors are shut, and the evening grinding half ceases ; with the lower- ing heavens the swallows fly abroad screaming, and the singing-birds go home to their nest. In short, lie renders the passage thus :

"Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the days of evil come, and the years arrive of which thou shalt say, 1 have no pleasure in them: before the sun becometh dark, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, and the clouds return after the rain ; when the keepers of the house shall quake, and the men of power writhe, and the grinding-maids shall stop because they have greatly diminished, and the women who look out of the windows shall be shrouded in darkness- and the doors shall be closed in the street: when the noise of the mill shall grow faint, and the swsllow shall rise to shriek, and all the singing- birds shall retire ; yea the people shall be frightened at that which is among from on high, and at the terrors which are on their way."

Then the metaphor changes ; the utter loss of appetite, even for delicacies, in the dying man is delineated, and finally the silver cord e hich suspends the golden lamp is parted, and the last moment comes :

"And the almond shall be despised, and the locust shall be loathed, and the caper-berry shall be powerless; for man goeth to his eternal home, and the mourners walk about the street; before the silver cord goeth asunder, and the golden bowl escapeth, or the bucket breaketh upon the fountain, and the wheel is shattered at the well, and the body, retumeth to the earth as it was, and the spirit goeth back to God who gave it.' This is a new and rather startling innovation on all our associa-

the words he has selected in the above passages. His arguments are " Dear corsair-expression, half savage, half soft."