The chief object of a word of preface to the following notes is that the reader may not expect from them more, or other, than is intended. They are the result of meditations—not so much of a critical as a devotional character—on the book, in the regular course of private morning readings of the Scriptures—meditations which were jotted down at the time, and the refreshment and blessing derived from which, I desired to share with my fellow-believers. Some salient point of each chapter has been tak

Perhaps there is no book within the whole canon of Scripture so perplexing and anomalous, at first sight, as that entitled "Ecclesiastes." Its terrible hopelessness, its bold expression of those difficulties with which man is surrounded on every side, the apparent fruitlessness of its quest after good, the unsatisfactory character, from a Christian standpoint, of its conclusion: all these points have made it, at one and the same time, an enigma to the superficial student of the Word, and the ars