ecclesiast

Tillemont, Mém. ecclésiast. tome vii. pp. 354-355; Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs sacrés, tome iii. pp. 531-533.

Ecclesiast. x. et Sapient. vii.

I am so much of a natural church-woman, I might say an ecclesiast, that I at once began to dream of a church of true womanhood.

The �weary king Ecclesiast� remarks that there is one event to all, to him that sacrificeth and him that sacrificeth not—that injustice and wrong seem eternally triumphant, that God has made things crooked, and none can make them straight; and concludes now in favour of a sober �carpe diem� philosophy, now in favour of a devout �fear of the Lord.�

Of course the manner in which the serious Hebrew handles these matters is very different from the levity and flippancy of the volatile Persian, but it can hardly be denied that the Ecclesiast and Omar resemble one another in the double and contradictory nature of their practical conclusions.