“VANITY of vanities,” saith the Preacher at the beginning and end of a book (Eccles.) which has been well described as the wail of a dissatisfied heart. “All under the sun” has been tried and found wanting, and what a cloud of witnesses history gives only repeating the cry of the Preacher—
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
The incident of Cardinal Mazarin’s farewell to his pictures is told in the memoirs of Louis Henri Comte de Brienne, who says, “I was walking some days after in the new apartments of his palace. I recognized the approach of the Cardinal (Mazarin) by the sound of his slippered feet, which he dragged one after the other, as a man enfeebled by a mortal malady. I concealed myself behind the tapestry, and I heard him say, ‘Il faut quitter tout cela’ (I must leave all that). He stopped at every step, for he was very feeble, and casting his eye on each object that attracted him, he sighed forth as from the bottom of his heart, ‘I must leave all’; ‘What pains I have taken to acquire all these things’; ‘Can I leave them without regret?’ ‘I shall never see them more where I am about to go.’”
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
Lord Chesterfield, the man of letters and leader of the fashionable world, a short time before his death, wrote a letter in which he says, “I have run the silly round of business and pleasure, and have done with them all; I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value (which, in truth, is very low), whereas those who have not experienced always overrate them. They only see their gay outside, and are dazzled with the glare; but I have seen behind the scenes. I have seen all—the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit and move the gaudy machine. I have seen and smelled the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of an ignorant audience. When I reflect back on what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; but I look on all that is passed as one of the romantic dreams that opium commonly occasions, and I do by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive dream.”
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
Lord Byron, the brilliant poet (who said, “I woke up one morning to find myself famous”), joins in the strain when he says—
“Count all the joys thy hours have seen,
Count all thy days from anguish free,
Then know whatever thou hast been
‘Tweer something better not to be.”
And the verses which are said to be the last which came from his pen tell their own tale of a misspent life, and the terrible awakening to a want so long ago described: “And when he had spent all he began to be in want”:
“My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers, the fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is lighted at its blaze
A funeral pile.”
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” The politician, philosopher, poet, and ten thousands more, join in the “Preacher’s” cry. It must be so, for we are all heirs to two great necessities—a guilty conscience and a dissatisfied heart. Sad fruits of departure from God. But God proposes in the gospel to meet both. The work of Christ for the conscience and the gift of Christ for the heart.
Listen to words which fell from His lips upon the ears of a poor weary Samaritan woman at Sychar’s well “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in hint a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13, 14).
Again, “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37, 38).
What a wonderful proposal! Surely the blessed Son of God would not tantalize us with magnificent impossibilities.
Dear reader, have you come to Christ, the Christ who died to meet your need in connection with your sins, and who lives to give you this marvelous gift which shall put you in touch with Him who is outside the reach of death above the sun?
It was in the sense of this that Paul, when before King Agrippa, could say, “I would to God that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds” (Acts 26:29). What a contrast to poor Byron’s “Tweer something better not to be”!
True happiness lies in the knowledge of God, for He alone is great enough for our hearts, and in the gospel, by His blessed Son, God is saying, “I want you to know Me in order that you may love Me and live to Me.”
This is what Christ proposes in the gift of living water, to “shed abroad the love of God in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.”
Oh! how blessed to know that “nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
What a contrast to poor Cardinal Mazarin’s “I must leave all that,” “I shall never see them more where I am about to go”! My reader, allow me to put a question to you at the close. What do you possess outside the reach of death?
W. J.
Know thyself.— “Two several lovers built two several cities: the love of GOD a ‘New Jerusalem’; the love of the WORLD a ‘Babylon.’ Let every man inquire of himself what he loveth, and he shall soon resolve himself of whence he is a citizen.” AUGUSTINE.