om, and who is our Life, it is our health and joy to
remember.

The Preacher continues: Ponder the work of God, but you will find
nothing in anything that you can _see_ that shall enable you to
forecast the future with any certainty. Adversity follows prosperity,
and my counsel is to make the best use of both,--enjoy this when it
comes, and let that teach you that God's ways are inscrutable, nor can
you straighten out the tangle of His providences. Evidently he
_intends_ these vicissitudes that still follow no definite rule, so
that man may recognize his own ignorance and impotence. In one word,
reason as you may from all that you can _see_, and your reason will
throw no ray of light on God's future dealings. And there again,
having brought us face to face with a dense, impenetrable cloud,
Ecclesiastes leaves us.

How awful that dark cloud is, it is difficult for us now to realize, so
accustomed are we to the light God's word has given. But were it
possible to blot out entirely from our minds all that Word has taught
us, and place ourselves for a moment just by the side of our
"Preacher," look alone through _his_ eyes, recognize with him the
existence of the Creator whose glorious Being is so fully shown in all
His works, and yet with nothing whereby to judge of His disposition
toward us except what we _see_,--in the physical world the blasting
storm sweeping over the landscape that but now spoke only in its
beauties and bounties of His love and benevolence, leaving in its
desolating track, not only ruined homesteads and blighted harvests;
but, far worse, the destruction of all our hopes, of all the estimates
we had formed of Him. In the world of providences the thoughts of His
love, based on yesterday's peace and prosperity, all denied and swept
away by to-day's sorrows and adversities,--awful, agonizing
uncertainty! And, since all is surely in His hand, to be compelled to
recognize that He _permits_, at least, these alternations "_to the end
that_ (with that express purpose) man should find nothing of what shall
be after Him"! Reason, or Intelligence, with all her highest powers,
stands hopeless and helpless before that dark future, and wrings her
hands in agony.

But look, my beloved reader, at that man who speeds his way with fleet
and steady footfall. His swift tread speaks no uncertainty nor doubt
of mind. Mark the earnest, concentrated, forward look. His eye is
upward, and something he sees there i