The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth.It is written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity! A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation;but enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in the original.
[Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.-- Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy.He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.
Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none;and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy.This was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured.In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the cause.Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in place of the whole book.It was needless after this to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit;for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day.The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.
Those who knew Benjaman Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress.He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death.
Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine.-- The compilers of the Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have affixed to them the aera of B.C.1O14, at which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines.The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.
It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included those songs in that description.This is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii.8, I got me men-singers, and women-singers (most probably to sing those songs], and musical instruments of all sores; and behold (Ver.ii), "all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.
The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations upon Chronicles.Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the last three lived within the time the books of Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of those books.
I shall begin with those two, reserving, what I have to say on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of the work.
Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the end of chapter xxxix.It relates some matters that are said to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah lived.
