One would think that there could be no possible misunderstanding the sorrowful irony of the counsel "to walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes,"--expressions invariably used in an evil sense (compare Num. xv. 39; Isa. lvii. 17); and yet, to be consistent with the interpretation to similar counsel in other parts of the book, expounders have sought to give them a _Christian_ meaning, as if they were given in the light of revelation and not in the semi-darkness of nature. But here the concluding sentence, "know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment," is quite unmistakable. But here is indeed a startling assertion. Where has our writer learned, with such emphatic certainty, of a judgment to come? Have we mistaken the standpoint whence our book was written? Has the writer, after all, been listening to another Voice that has taught him what is on the other side of the grave? Does Revelation make itself heard here at last? Or may, perhaps, even this be in perfect harmony with all that has gone before, and be one step further--almost the last step--along the path that unaided (but not depraved) human Reason may tread? In a word, does Nature herself give Reason sufficient light to enable her, when in right exercise, to discover a judgment-seat in the shadows of the future? This is surely a question of deepest--yes, thrilling--interest; and, we are confident, must be answered in the affirmative. It is to this point that our writer has been climbing, step by step. Nature has taught him that the future must be looked at rather than the present; or, rather, the present must be looked at in the light of the future; for that future corresponds _in its character_ to the present, as the crop does to the seed, only exceeds it _in intensity_ as the harvest exceeds the grain sown. Thus bread hoarded gives no harvest; or, in other words, he who lives for the present alone, necessarily, by the simplest and yet strongest law of Nature, must suffer loss: _this is Judgment by Nature's law_. This, too, is the keynote of every verse--"the future," "the future"; and God, who is clearly discerned by Reason as behind Nature, "which is but the name for an effect whose Cause is God,"--God is clearly recognized as returning a harvest in the _future_, in strict and accurate accord with the sowing of the _present_. This is very clear. Then how simple and how certain that if this is God's irrefragable law in Nature, it must have its fulfillment too in the moral nature of man. It has been one of the chief sorrows of the book that neither wrong nor confusion is righted here, and those "days of darkness" to which _all_ life tends are no discriminative judgment, nor is there anything of the kind in a scene where "all things come alike to all." Then surely, most surely, unless indeed man alone sows without reaping,--alone breaks in as an exception to this law,--a thought not consonant with reason,--there must be to