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 due 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." (Phil. iv. 11-13.) 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. This, then, brings us to the twelfth verse of chapter two, which already, thus early in the book, seems to be a summing up of his experiences. "I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly:" that is I looked "full face," or carefully considered, these three things that I had now tested; and whilst each gave me only disappointment and bitterness as to meeting my deepest needs, yet "I saw that there was a profit in wisdom over folly, as light is profitable over darkness." This then is within the power of human reason to determine. The philosophy of the best of the heathen brought them to exactly the same conclusion. Socrates and Solomon, with many another worthy name, are here in perfect accord, and testify together that "the wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness." Not that men _prefer_ wisdom to folly; on the contrary; still even human reason gives this judgment: for the wise man walks at least as a _man_, intelligently; the spirit, the intelligence, having its place. But how much further can reason discern as to the comparative worth of wisdom or folly? The former certainly morally elevates a man _now_; but here comes an awful shadow across reason's path: "but I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, 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." Ah! in this book in which poor man at his highest is allowed to give voice to his deepest questions, in