476 Life and Immortality. 



the Hebrew word is identical is both cases. In the Jewish 

 Bible the rendering is verbatim the same as that of our 

 authorized version. Read, instead of an isolated verse, the 

 entire passage : 



" I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of 

 men, that God might manifest them, and that they might 

 see that they themselves are beasts. 



" For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; 

 even the one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so 

 dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a 

 man hath no preeminence above a beast : for all is vanity. 



" All go to one place ; all are of the same dust, and all 

 turn to dust again. 



" Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and 

 the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ? 



" Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than 

 that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his 

 portion ; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after 

 him?" 



Every page of Ecclesiastes breathes of the self-reproach 

 of the Preacher for a wasted life. Speaking from his own 

 sad, bitter experience, he shows that riches, glory, pleasure 

 and even wisdom are nothing but utter emptiness. The 

 same theme pervades the forty-ninth Psalm, but the Psalmist 

 treats it with grave solemnity, admonishing his hearers of 

 the shortness of human life, and showing that if a man for- 

 gets the glory of his manhood, made in the image of God, 

 he puts himself on the level of the dumb brutes. Though 

 reaching the same conclusion, yet the Preacher views the 

 subject from a different standpoint. Employing biting sar- 

 casm rather than solemn warning, he exposes the vanity of 

 all worldly and selfish pleasures, and the miserable fate that 

 awaits the voluptuary, and then ironically advises his readers 

 to place in such their entire happiness. 



So palpable is the bitter irony of the author throughout 

 the book, and even in the twenty-first verse of the third 



