The Preacher continues: Ponder the work of God, but you will find nothing in anything that you can _see_ that shall enable you to forecast the future with any certainty. Adversity follows prosperity, and my counsel is to make the best use of both,--enjoy this when it comes, and let that teach you that God's ways are inscrutable, nor can you straighten out the tangle of His providences. Evidently he _intends_ these vicissitudes that still follow no definite rule, so that man may recognize his own ignorance and impotence. In one word, reason as you may from all that you can _see_, and your reason will throw no ray of light on God's future dealings. And there again, having brought us face to face with a dense, impenetrable cloud, Ecclesiastes leaves us.
How awful that dark cloud is, it is difficult for us now to realize, so accustomed are we to the light God's word has given. But were it possible to blot out entirely from our minds all that Word has taught us, and place ourselves for a moment just by the side of our "Preacher," look alone through _his_ eyes, recognize with him the existence of the Creator whose glorious Being is so fully shown in all His works, and yet with nothing whereby to judge of His disposition toward us except what we _see_,--in the physical world the blasting storm sweeping over the landscape that but now spoke only in its beauties and bounties of His love and benevolence, leaving in its desolating track, not only ruined homesteads and blighted harvests; but, far worse, the destruction of all our hopes, of all the estimates we had formed of Him. In the world of providences the thoughts of His love, based on yesterday's peace and prosperity, all denied and swept away by to-day's sorrows and adversities,--awful, agonizing uncertainty! And, since all is surely in His hand, to be compelled to recognize that He _permits_, at least, these alternations "_to the end that_ (with that express purpose) man should find nothing of what shall be after Him"! Reason, or Intelligence, with all her highest powers, stands hopeless and helpless before that dark future, and wrings her hands in agony.