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 :— 
“T 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 preéminence 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 manthat goeth upward, and 
the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? 
“Wherefore I perceive that here 7s nothing better than 
that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that zs 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 
