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It is of course quite impossible in these pages to give any adequate idea of the breadth
and wealth of Aristotle's teaching. And yet, with all his wisdom, and with all that he has
contributed to the world of thought and research, he did not reach the position attained by
the poor unlettered beggar who had seen the Lord and could say: "One thing I know,
that, whereas I was blind, now I see."
There is one thing that is conspicuously absent from the writings of most of these wise
men of the earth, and that is the sense of sin. This sense is aroused by the preaching or
the reading of the Scriptures, and sends the self-confessed sinner on the quest, not for
happiness merely, but for forgiveness and reconciliation, for peace with God and life.
Until these things are ours, the matters that occupied the attention of these men of old are
but trifles. Important though they may be in themselves, they will take no one beyond the
grave, and if there is one lesson we have learnt from Ecclesiastes it is surely that of the
paramount importance of the "life to come".
"Granted that there is a life beyond the grave, then though wickedness may sit in the
place of judgment (Eccles. 3: 16), and though many inequalities and perplexing
mysteries of providence may still baffle us (Eccles. 7: 15; 8: 14, 17), though the race
is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but all have to reckon with time and
chance, yet the conclusion of the matter sets all right. It will be our wisdom to fear God
and keep His commandments, for a day of judgment is coming, and if a day of judgment,
then a day when the crooked shall be made straight, the inequalities made equal, a day of
LIFE from the dead, where vanity and vexation of spirit shall never more intrude, for
death and Hades shall be destroyed in the second death, and God shall solve all life's
mysteries in the LIFE TO COME" (Extract from Volume X, page 168).