I am a sinner: conscience, with more or less power, constantly accuses. How can this awful matter of my guilt in the sight of that God, the confessed and only source of thy "good," be settled? Surely this is absolutely necessary to know ere I can enjoy thy "good that is fair." Nay, more: were a voice to speak from heaven, telling me that all the past were blotted out up to this moment, I am well assured that I could not maintain this condition for the next moment. Sin would well up from the nature within, and leave me as hopeless as ever. I carry _it_--that awful defiling thing--with me, in me. How is this to be answered, Ecclesiastes?--or what help to its answer dost thou give?...
Once and only once was such a state possible. Adam, as he walked in his undefiled Eden, eating its fruit, rejoicing in the result of his labor, with no accusing conscience, God visiting him in the cool of the day and responding to all his joy,--there is the picture of Ecclesiastes' "good that is fair." Where else in the old creation, and how long did that last? No; whilst it is refreshing and inspiring to mark the beautiful intelligence and exalted reasoning of Ecclesiastes, recognizing the true place of man in creation, dependent, and consciously dependent, on God for "life and breath and all things," as Paul spoke long afterwards, appealing to that in the heathen Athenians which even they were _capable_ of responding to affirmatively; yet how he leaves us looking at a "good that is fair," but without a word as to how it is to be attained, in view of, and in spite of, sin. That one short word raises an impassable barrier between us and that fair good, and the more fair the good, the more cruel the pain at being so utterly separated from it; but then, too, the more sweet and precious the love that removes the barrier entirely, and introduces us to a good that is as far fairer than Solomon's as Solomon's is above the beasts.
For we, too, my dear readers, have our "good that is fair." Nor need we fear comparison with that of this wisest of men.
Survey with me a fairer scene than any lighted by this old creation sun can show, and harken to God's own voice, in striking contrast to poor Solomon's portraying its lovely and entrancing beauties for our enjoyment.
