parison between isolated parts of Ecclesiastes and equally isolated sayings generally of the later representatives of post-Aristotelianism. And very much the same results might be manufactured in the interest of the opposite opinion by prudent selection of passages to illustrate points of essential difference. Koheleth is too characteristically Semitic, even although not typically Jewish, to be put into the straitjacket of Epicureanism or Stoicism, and such presumed parallels as he does present may be equally well explained by reference to human nature as a whole. A man who finds political life rotten, and who takes refuge in discussion of the best means for the conduct of his own career in the circumstances, will, no matter where, arrive at conclusions similar to those reached by his fellow-men elsewhere and under analogous conditions. The elaborate apparatus of the pursuit of " pleasure," invented by Epicurus, and the machinery for the production of "wisdom" in use by the Stoics, are nowhere present in Ecclesiastes. Koheleth's "pleasure" is not the "pleasure" of Epicurus, nor is his "wisdom" that contemplated by Zeno. What the Greeks discussed, looking mainly to means, he gnomically propounded in the shape of certain aphorisms. The general looseness of his phrases contrasts strangely with the close welding of the post-Aristotelian systems. The Greeks, possessed of a well-defined method, directed their energies towards certain ends; Koheleth, guiltless of any particular convictions, formulated a view of man's life, the main quality of which is its adaptability. His pessimistic tendency lies precisely in this lack of system, from which the optimism of the early post-Aristotelians-that of Epicureanism and Stoicism, ere the one became Horatian

and the other semi-religiously sad-would have saved him. Equally, too, this freedom from formulism precludes him from being classed with the constructive pessimists of the nineteenth century. They declare that life is as bad as bad can be, and try to account for its wretchedness. He missed the signs of God's governance, which would have satisfied his Jewish instinct, and attempted to supply the want for himself. His problem was how to make the best of life, not how to fit it into a huge plan of universal damnation.

Finally, Koheleth's theism differentiates him at once from Greek philosophy and from modern pessimism. We can trace a double effect which it produced in his thought. On the one hand, his very belief in God seems to sadden him by its faintness. He could not have failed to be acquainted with the records of more fervently religious times in the history of his country. The testimony there borne was to the continual presence of Yahveh, whose watchful care ever secured ultimate safety and often averted impending catastrophe. Of this Koheleth could perceive no sign in his generation. So much so that he openly advised men to give up searching for evidence of God's hand in the current of events. "Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun; because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it." 1 No doubt the power of a foreign conqueror was tending more and more to interpose a seeming barrier of unfulfilled promises between the Jew and his God. Koheleth feels that the deity is not now so near to the people as he 1 Chap. viii. 17.

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must have been in the brighter and enthusiastic time when the prophets spoke their winged words. Filled with this sense of the aloofness of Yahveh, he is prone to urge the fear of the Lord. The positive side of this, the negative influence of his theism, is that the fear of God is a judicious thing, and likely to ward off many evils. It is mainly because his theism is thus dashed with grey, so to speak, that his teaching, even at its highest, is not far exalted. Lack of enthusiasm, painful uncertainty, and a dread of what might be, all tended to render him calculating rather than inspired. He saw much that he could not explain, and so the sphere of certainty was itself "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." On the other hand, Koheleth, in the last resort, supported himself on the traditional Jewish belief. Despite his scepticism and pessimism, he has this ray of hope,-that, at the last, God will see to the explanation of all these riddles. Man may be weak, his thoughts and pursuits may be vanity, but still God is there to be remembered. Life may be passed well enough if one but take advantage of circumstances as they present themselves. "The rest is silence." But it is the silence of a mystery of which God is at once the origin and the solution. Koheleth's acquiescence in this undiscovered ideal world-order is no more a convention than Socrates' sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius. Theism constitutes his pessimism a thing sui generis, and this is a result of Jewish influences, of which it may be taken as the typical remnant. A Jew might lose sight of God, he might sink to Koheleth's depth of discontent, but he could never reconcile himself to an atheistic conception of the uni"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God

verse.

is in heaven and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few. . . . For in the multitude of dreams and many words are divers vanities; but fear thou God. . . As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all." This is the burden of his teaching. A pessimist all through his searching and in the tendencies which he exhibits, he is a theist from the beginning; and at the end, though with no further access of fervour, he still holds by his theism. A representative of the slowly dying ancient world, he yearned for salvation; a Jew, he sought comfort in the ultimate presence of deity; a man of the old time, he knew not God by wisdom. Yet it was the cry of Koheleth and of such as Koheleth-it was their search for salvation and their failure to divine its promise on earth-that prepared the way for the Christian revelation, nay, rendered it an imperative necessity.

IV. Jewish Theism and Pessimism.

Belief in God thus stayed the Jewish mind even when, face to face with the great mysteries of life, it sounded the lowest depths of despair. No matter what might happen, no matter what the doubts produced by foreign doctrines, Hebrew confidence in the moral government of the universe remained steadfast. When the pulse of faith beat slowly, as with Koheleth, hope lost not a little of its warmth. But complete paralysing of belief never occurred to bring about atrophy of ideals. To the spiritual eye, dimmed though it was, the future always scintillated in the far distance, 1 Chaps. v. 2, 7; xi. 5.

even if nearer regions lay wrapt in darkness. Conviction that God already is all that man ought to be, not only inspired hope, but also produced a deep sense of human unworthiness. This misgiving, charged as it was with a large pessimistic element, possessed inestimable value as a religious and moral influence. Uncertainty, not now with regard to the mysteriousness of the world, but rather respecting man's fitness for divine favour, acted as a powerful incentive to righteousness. Very dismay in presence of sin revealed but the other side of a capacity, often of a resolve, to revive uprightness. This was the peculiar strength of Judaism. Under the influence of this conviction of defect, and in the light of the presupposition of deity which it implied, the Jews came to take their distinctive place in the van of religious advance. Their inveterate optimism was their reply to Yahveh's reproof; for, by his favour would they not rise to newness of life? The conception of the absolutely moral nature of deity gave birth to the consciousness of man's lapse. And, for this reason, the Jews were the first to realise completely the terms of the schism that sin implies. God is a co-operator with man, and cannot but fulfil his part. Man, however, is weak; the evil is that he transgresses against God, and the problem is how to wipe out the offence, how to prevent its recurrence.

Judaism, accordingly, denies speculative evil by implication, and thence passes to emphasise sin. Thus the enigma of conflict is removed from the universal to the individual sphere. Yet this narrow centralisation, seeing that it depended upon the presence of a special relation between Yahveh and the chosen nation, did not embody the forces necessary to a solution of the problem of defect in single lives. Hence the construc