After having heard it all, this is the conclusion: Fear God, and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.

The Moral of it All
E. Johnson, M. A.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

There are times when every one of us is either constrained by sorrow, or invited by the hope of profit, to take stock of his recollections. We have all desired eagerly, we have all toiled; not one of us but has had his aspirations and his disappointments. Life has turned out, and will, we suppose, turn out differently from what we either hoped or found when we sallied forth upon its ways untried. The book is sympathetic with all who have lost their illusions; with all who watch the bright dreams die out one by one like the fairy lamps of some summer's festival. How often have we exclaimed with the Preacher, as the hollowness of each pretence of this most pretentious world has been exposed by our own trial: "This also is vanity!" But there is another side to the subject. Some things are real. Never does the author of this book speak of religion as if it were an illusion, or of God as if He were other than true. The spiritual part by which we are related to God and know God is our genuine self. It is because the soul wants truth that it discards so impatiently the counterfeits of truth that press upon its notice. If there were not a vital spark of worth in the soul it would never criticize so severely the mass of worthlessness which surrounds it. That, then, is our subject — the vanity of the world and the worth of religion, and each of these seen, and seen only, in contrast and foil to the other.

1. We may name three things on which the moralist writes the legend of vanity — human labour, human knowledge, human pleasure.

(1) One of his thoughts about labour is that it seems a fruitless fretting against the fixed forces of nature. "The earth abideth for ever." Suns arise and set; the wind shifts from quarter to quarter; the rivers flow to the sea, and the brooks flow to the rivers. There are times when we are oppressed with this thought, and it becomes unbearable. As one of our English noblemen, who had a mansion overlooking the beautiful valley of the Thames, said: "I cannot understand why people delight in the view of the river; there it is — flow, flow, flow, always the same!" How speedily the effect of man's toil vanishes from the face of Nature! There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of well-ordered gardens or cultivated field; yet how quickly does Nature, as if in defiance of man's effort at improvement, come rushing back with her weeds and wildness!

(2) Again, the contrast of human knowledge and wisdom with the sameness of human nature leads to the same reflection of disappointment. Increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow. The study of history brings to light a long series of passionate struggles after truth and good, which have incessantly to be begun anew.

(3) The Preacher turned with sickness of heart from the toil of knowledge, and betook himself to refined pleasures. The thought of death, levelling all distinctions, intruded itself upon him. The wise man is equalled in the earth at last with the fool. Life became odious to him because the work wrought under the sun was grievous to him; for all was vanity and vexation of spirit.

2. And now we come to "the conclusion of the whole matter." If this legend, "Vanity and vexation of spirit," is to be written upon the objects of human desire and delight, if the world sounds hollow wherever we touch it, where is reality to be found? The simple answer of the Preacher is, it is to be found in religion: "Fear God, and keep His commandments." God is real as the soul is real. He is, as describes Him, the Life of our life, the core of our hearts. God is that pure and perfect Being for alliance and communion with whom we long. And it is the light we have from Him and in Him which makes the world look so dark, the perception of His rightness which throws into painful contrast the crookedness of men's ways, and of His beauty which makes their wickedness so deformed. And our happiness must lie, for each one of us, in loyalty to Him, in the keeping of His laws, whether they be known to us through the study of Nature or of sacred Scriptures, or by attentive study of our own hearts and the oracular spirit of holiness, whose influence is felt therein. It is in weariness of the world that we fall hack upon the sweetness and truthfulness of pure religion for our refreshment and solace; it is when we have given up the conceit of being wiser than our forefathers, and the hope of setting crooked things straight, that we see distinctly the cultivation of our souls to be our main concern, and the only way to better the world is by reverently attending to our duty in wholeness and simplicity of heart. It is an ill thing for us if, when we have found out the hollowness of this bubble-like world, the trickiness and imposture of human nature, we say: "We will live like the rest, we will not take things seriously, we will pass on our way with a smile and a jest, trusting nothing, hoping nothing." It is only the presence of God that is of substantial and eternal good, that can console us for the vanity of earthly things, as the Preacher found so long ago.

(E. Johnson, M. A.)