Under The Sun # 1

Under The Sun # 1

"What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?" (Ecel. 1:3).

This question is asked and answered by King Solomon, and in our language it means about this: "What good does a man get our of life if he lives only for what this world can give?"

If any man has ever been able to give the right answer to this great question, out of his own wisdom and experience, that man was Solomon. If any man ever came into this world with a gold spoon in his mouth, he certainly did. The devil has a mortgage on some people from the cradle, but Solomon had no such handicap, for he was well born. He was the favorite son of one of the greatest and best men who ever lived, for his father, King David, was a man after God's own heart, which means that he just suited the Lord.

Solomon was made king of a great kingdom in his early manhood, while his father was still alive to counsel and help him. From this we see that he had every advantage that high station and boundless wealth and opportunity could give him. He had wisdom, riches, wealth and honor such as no king ever had before him or since.

An invincible army stood ready to do his bidding, and all the power of a great nation that was under the special protection and favor of God was behind him. He had only to command, and it was done; to express a wish, and it was gratified. He had received the best education it was possible to give him, and was called the wisest of men. The fame of his wisdom covered the earth, and caused the Queen of Sheba, with a great retinue, to make a long pilgrimage of weary weeks and months, to sit at his feet in wonder. She looked upon the beauty of his wonderful palace and the magnificent temple he had built. She reviewed his matchless army; considered the numbers of men who served him and the elegance of their livery; then she looked in amazement upon the wealth of gold and precious things that surrounded him, and took her departure, declaring that the half had not been told her.

This is the kind of ability Solomon had with which to answer his own question. He wrote three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs, all full of wisdom. If he wasn't qualified to speak as an expert, where can we find one?

Let us see how well qualified he was to know what he was talking about from his own actual experience. Every great pleasure was at his fingertips. If he wanted anything he had only to reach out his soft-jeweled hand and take it. His kingdom had peace and rest from war during all of his reign, so himself he lost no time, for he took about all the degrees and invented a few of his own. He was a thirty-third degree sport.

He lived in a palace, surrounded by courtier who were not spring chickens, and all highbrows themselves. He was honored, admired and flattered as few men have been. No greater honor than his could be known, no greater wisdom found in any books, and no higher station attained. He was so rich that his wealth could not be measured. He had forty thousand horses and twenty thousand horsemen. The high cost of living never troubled him, for his provisions for his household and attendants one day were two hundred and eighty-one bushels of fine flour; five hundred and sixty-six bushels of meal; ten fat oxen out of the stall; twenty oxen out of the pasture; one hundred sheep, besides hart,k roebuck, fallow deer and fatted fowl.

Solomon had no ambition that had not been achieved; no curiosity that had not been satisfied. Like his princely father, he was a close observer, and nothing escaped him, so that he was able to say, "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, meaning that the world had nothing more to show him or to give him and that was certainly going some.

At some time in our lives we have all envied men of great scholarship and intellectual attainments, and have thought of what a foretaste of heaven it would be to have the time and opportunity to learn all the things we would like to know. We have believed that one of the greatest joys this life could give is the joy of knowing things. Well, Solomon not only drank that well dry, but he pulled out the pump, for he exhausted all the schools and colleges of his day, and gave all his teachers nervous prostration in their vain endeavor to teach him something more than he already knew. And then when he had pumped that fountain dry, he sighed and said, "Go to, now; I will see what I can get out of mirth and pleasure," and then he cut loose on that line, and began to carry on in a way to make a baseball fan at the world's series look like a dummy in a clothing store window.

He got into his golden chariot with the diamond-set wheels and went round the track in a way to send the bleachers crazy. At breakneck speed he galloped over the rose-lined avenues of sensuous pleasure that opened for him in every direction, looking as if they led straight to paradise; but ere long his shining car of delight lost a wheel and he was down in the mud again, and crying out to any who who might be following in his wake, "Go back! Don't come this way, for here all is vanity and vexation of spirit!"

Then he took to wine and the rosiest kind of dissipation. He hit up the booze. He tried a lot of things. He had a great auditorium built was supported by great lions. Then he began to love many strange women, laying hold on folly with both hands. That's where he struck out. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but soon had to give the same verdict as before, and again cry out, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!"

~Billy Sunday~

(continued with # 2)