Produced by Al Haines OLD GROANS AND NEW SONGS BEING Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes by F. C. JENNINGS, NEW YORK. Glasgow: PICKERING & INGLIS, PRINTERS & PUBLISHERS, The Publishing Office, 73 Bothwell Street. LONDON: S. BAGSTER & SONS, LTD., 15 Paternoster Row, E.C 1920 PREFACE. The chief object of a word of preface to the following notes is that the reader may not expect from them more, or other, than is intended. They are the result of meditations--not so much of a critical as a devotional character--on the book, in the regular course of private morning readings of the Scriptures--meditations which were jotted down at the time, and the refreshment and blessing derived from which, I desired to share with my fellow-believers. Some salient point of each chapter has been taken and used as illustrative of what is conceived as the purpose of the book. As month by month passed, however, the subject opened up to such a degree that at the end, one felt as if there were a distinct need entirely to re-write the earlier chapters. It is, however, sent forth in the same shape as originally written; the reader then may accompany the writer, and share with him the delight at the ever-new beauties in the landscape that each turn of the road, as it were, unexpectedly laid out before him. There is one point, however, that it may be well to look at here a little more closely and carefully than has been done in the body of the book, both on account of its importance and of the strong attack that the ecclesiastical infidelity of the day has made upon it: I refer to its authorship.