Evening, December 2, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“All is vanity and striving after wind. — Ecclesiastes 1:14

Nothing can satisfy the entire man but the Lord’s love and the Lord’s own self. His followers have tried to find security in other roads, but they have been driven out of such fatal refuges. Solomon, the wisest of men, was permitted to make experiments for us all, and to do for us what we must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his testimony in his own words: “Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.” “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” What! The whole of it vanity? O favored monarch, is there nothing in all your wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra’s glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all your music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? “Nothing,” he says, “but weariness of spirit.” This was his verdict when he had travelled the whole round of pleasure. To embrace our Lord Jesus, to dwell in his love, and be fully assured of union with him–this is all in all. Dear reader, you need not try other forms of life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian’s: if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Savior’s face; if you could have all the comforts of life, if you lost your Savior, you would be wretched. But if you win Christ, then if you should rot in a dungeon, you would find it a paradise; if you should you live in obscurity, or die with famine, you will yet be satisfied with favor and full of the goodness of the Lord.