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A Late Awakening, July 9
Ecclesiastes
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the
labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation
of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:11
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By his own bitter experience, Solomon learned the emptiness of a life that
seeks in earthly things its highest good. He erected altars to heathen gods, only
to learn how vain is their promise of rest to the spirit. Gloomy and soul-harassing
thoughts troubled him night and day. For him there was no longer any joy of life
or peace of mind, and the future was dark with despair.
Yet the Lord forsook him not. By messages of reproof and by severe judg-
ments, He sought to arouse the king to a realization of the sinfulness of his
course.... At last the Lord, through a prophet, delivered to Solomon the startling
message: ... “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy
servant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s sake:
but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.”
Awakened as from a dream by this sentence of judgment pronounced against
him and his house, Solomon with quickened conscience began to see his folly
in its true light. Chastened in spirit, with mind and body enfeebled, he turned
wearied and thirsting from earth’s broken cisterns, to drink once more at the
fountain of life.... He could never hope to escape the blasting results of sin; he
could never free his mind from all remembrance of the self-indulgent course
he had been pursuing; but he would endeavor earnestly to dissuade others from
following after folly....
The true penitent does not put his past sins from his remembrance. He
does not, as soon as he has obtained peace, grow unconcerned in regard to the
mistakes he has made. He thinks of those who have been led into evil by his
course, and tries in every possible way to lead them back into the true path. The
clearer the light that he has entered into, the stronger is his desire to set the feet
of others in the right way
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Prophets and Kings, 76-78
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