Solomon's Final Verdict

"Behold, all is vanity!" Ecclesiastes 1:14

Nothing can fully satisfy a person except the love of God and the Lord himself. Christians have tried other pursuits, 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: "So I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind! Nothing was gained under the sun!" "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!"

What! Is the whole of it meaningless? 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 your glorious palaces? Is there nothing in all your music, dancing, wine and luxury? "Nothing!" he says, "but a chasing after the wind!" This was Solomon's final verdict after he had trodden 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 pleasure in order to see whether they are better than Christ. If you roam the whole world, you will see no sights like a sight of the Savior's face! If you could have all the comforts of life without the Savior, you would be most wretched. But if you possess Christ, though you should you rot in a dungeon, you would find it a paradise! Though you should you live in obscurity or die with famine, yet you would be satisfied with the favor and goodness of the Lord!

- C. H. Spurgeon