Last of all, He sent His own Son, standing beside us, touching us with human hands, calling us with human voice. By the blood and the tears and the passion and the cross-and "ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." If the failure of God is mystery, the failure of man is tragedy.

III

RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH

Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over. wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not overmuch wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?-ECCLESIASTES vii. 16.

OUR text is characteristic of one of the lines of thought which run through this strange Book. The Book is autobiographical in the true sense, that it gives a record of personal thought and experience. The Book is the fruit of the contact of a Jew with alien philosophy and civilisation. There is ever the echo of the great world outside Jewry. The author had seen the world, and had tried the different ways of life which have ever been possible for men. Brought up in the strict training of his race, he had escaped from what appeared its narrowness; he had seen the cities and the ways of men, and had become cosmopolitan. He had wealth, which opened all doors to him of education and culture and social enjoyment.

The Book is full of world-weariness. The satiety

which comes from such a life seems at first to have destroyed all serious earnest purpose; and he pronounced upon all things the verdict of vanity, that everything was equally worthless, and nothing counted much anyway. It is the judgment of a man who had seen everything, done everything, enjoyed everything, tried all the pleasures and experiences within his reach, and over all he sighs failure, vanity, and vexation of spirit. The early zest for life was soon blunted. Pleasures no longer pleased. The heart was satiated to sickness. He had set out to know life, as many young men mean by knowing life, and life had broken him and held him in its toils.

He had not given himself altogether to lower pleasures. He had tried literature, knowledge, philosophy, the higher and more intellectual delights. He had tried to find out a satisfactory philosophy of life, but here too is the same vanity. Truth seems ever to elude him. And ever and again he comes back with longing to the faith of his childhood, with its inexorable moral law, with the fear of God as the one only worthy aim of life. The Book is not a systematic treatise. It is the record of all these conflicting experiences and influences. All these different threads mingle in the yarn, and we cannot separate them completely. But the withered world

weary life, so frankly revealed in this Autobiography, is itself the most terrible sermon that could be preached from the Book, of the vanity of a life lived apart from God.

The words of our text, with their doctrine of moderation, suggest a common thought in Greek philosophy. A warning against excess was usual even in the Epicurean philosophy, as excess would inevitably ruin the end aimed at, happiness. Moderation in everything, the golden mean, was a watchword. Avoid extremes, do nothing in excess, be prudent in pleasures, in nothing be violent and intemperate this is the surest way to be happy. But quite apart from the question of happiness and pleasure, in typical Greek thinking the good, or virtue, or moral excellence lay in avoiding extremes. It might be called the very central thought of Aristotle's Ethics that virtue is moderation, not of course meaning moderation in indulging in anything wrong, but that wrong itself means either excess or deficiency. He defines virtue as a habit or trained faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in observing the mean. "And it is a moderation, firstly, inasmuch as it comes in the middle or mean between two vices, one on the side of excess, the other on the side of defect; and secondly, inasmuch

as, while these vices fall short of, or exceed, the due measure in feeling and in action, it finds and chooses the mean or moderate amount." How true this is as a principle of ethics can easily be seen. Take the matter of giving money, virtue or moderation would be liberality; the two corresponding vices would be excess, which is prodigality, and deficiency, which is meanness. Even in details of life like pleasant amusing conversation, Aristotle would call moderation wit or humour, and undue excess buffoonery, and undue deficiency boorishness, as of a man who frowned gloomily on every innocent jest. This great principle of the mean is in keeping with the whole Greek ideal of culture, as the harmonious development of every part, without onesidedness.

We can see how attractive it must have appeared to a man like the author of this Book, and how easily the principle would give itself to a moral descent in a Jew, whose religious faith was breaking down. He describes one of his moods in what he calls the days of his vanity. He had seen good men failing, and wicked men succeeding, and living out their years, just because they were prudent in their wickedness. And so from that he draws

the cynical conclusion of our text. "Be not righteous overmuch, neither be thou overwise. Be not