The evil which the writer of Ecclesiastes here condemns is one of which the history of every nation affords many examples. Princes' favorites have too often been chosen from amongst the worthless herd who seek their own elevation and advantage by ministering to the vices of the young, profligate, and powerful. How many a reign has been marred by this mischief! How many a king has been misled, to his own and his country's harm, by the folly of choosing companions and counselors not for wisdom, sincerity, and patriotism, but because those chosen are of congenial tastes and habits, or are flatterers and parasites!

I. THE ELEVATION OF FOOLISH FAVORITES TO POWER IS INJURIOUS TO THOSE SO PROMOTED, Men who might have been respectable and useful in a lowly station are corrupted and morally debased by their elevation to posts of undeserved dignity and emolument. Their heads are turned by the giddy height to which they are raised.

II. THE ELEVATION OF FOOLISH FAVORITES TO POWER IS INJURIOUS TO THE PRINCES WHOM THEY PROFESS TO SERVE. What kings and rulers need is to be told the truth. It is important that they should know the actual state and needs of the nation. And it is important that any weakness or wrong bias, natural or acquired, should be corrected. But the fools who are set in high places make it their one great rule of conduct never to utter unpalatable truth. They assume the faultlessness of their master; they paint the condition of his subjects in glowing colors, and give the ruler all the credit for national prosperity. Their insincerity and flattery are morally injurious to the prince, who by the companionship of the wise might have been morally benefited.

III. THE ELEVATION OF FOOLISH FAVORITES TO POWER IS INJURIOUS TO THE COMMUNITY. The example of injustice thus presented is discouraging to the upright and depressing to the reflecting. The throne becomes unpopular, and the people generally are demoralized. The evil is no doubt greater in despotic than in constitutional states, for these latter afford fewer opportunities for rapacity and oppression. Yet nothing more injuriously affects the community generally than the spectacle of a court which prefers folly to wisdom, fashion to experience, vice to virtue, frivolity to piety. - T.

I. The wise man's heart at his right hand means that HIS AFFECTIONS ARE AT THEIR PROPER OBJECTS. The heart is the moral power or seat of principle. "With the heart man believeth." "A new heart also will I give unto you." Then the hand is the active power, the faculty by which principles are carried into action. "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners." "I will that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands to God." The right hand, again, is the ideal hand. "The Lord hath sworn by His right hand." Thus whatever a hand is or does, the right hand is and does pre-eminently. It is the perfection of all that is characteristic in a hand. When therefore, a wise man's heart is said to be at his right hand, it is said by way of commendation. It means that his moral nature is as it ought to be. It occupies its right place. It sustains its right relations. It discharges its proper functions. It is altogether a heart right in God's sight. Now, the heart is a most important portion of the body. It is the very seat and citadel of its life. Derangement in it means instantaneous derangement in every vital process. And in the spiritual life the thing we call the heart is no less essential. Out of it are the issues of life. It is the seat of principle. It is the home of the affections. It is the source of all the moral actions. The other powers are the heart's executive to obey its rule and carry out its high behests.

II. The wise man's heart at his right hand means that HIS PRINCIPLES ARE AT THE BACK OF PRACTICAL POWER. All through Scripture the right hand is the emblem of power. Our Lord styles the Father's right hand "the right hand of power." God is declared to have led Israel "by the right hand of Moses," and Israel to have obtained the Land of Promise by "God's right hand, and His arm, and the light of His countenance." So men are spiritually saved by God's "right hand," and Christ in His resurrection was "by the right hand of God exalted." The right hand of God, the right hand of man, is the organ of power in each. In the body the heart is in closest connection with the strongest hand. And in the spiritual department the same law holds. The godly man in whom exists the most perfect connection between heart and life, has for this reason a power all his own. That power is spiritual power, the mightiest power there is. It is an aspect of the force that regenerates hearts, that illuminates minds, that changes characters, that adorns lives with the transcendent beauties of holiness. Not more surely does a right hand of power connect itself with a healthy nourishing heart, than a forceful Christian life attends on and expresses the energies of a heart renewed by grace.

III. The wise man's heart at his right hand means that HIS PURPOSES ARE AT THE FITTEST AGENCY FOR CARRYING THEM OUT. When the heart chooses God's will, the hand chooses His way. It perceives the fitness of it. It believes in the policy of it. It would argue the suitableness of it in any ease from the fact that it is His way. This is true wisdom. No stronger reason for adopting a way than that it is God's way.

IV. HIS RESOLUTIONS ARE AT A DEGREE OF STRENGTH IN WHICH THEY PROMPTLY TAKE THE FORM OF ACTION. There is a constitutional unreadiness in some people. They cannot be prompt. This unreadiness which distinguishes the dull from the smart, distinguishes also the left hand from the right. It responds more slowly to the will. It acts less readily in almost every work. The right hand is the hand of promptitude as well as the hand of skill. Now, in life, as every young man should consider, film element of promptitude has an important place. The few who succeed are the wise men who have their boat of action ready to launch on the advancing wave of opportunity. The many who fail are the foolish who are indolently unobservant, and therefore always off their guard. There is a perfectly identical treatment of the question of personal godliness. Religion has its times of opportunity which are its decisive hours. Some saving truth comes home. There are stings of conviction. There are half-formed resolves that choice shall be made of eternal things. But here the curse of spiritual unreadiness comes in. The man is not prepared for immediate action. He is a spiritual "Athelstone the Unready." To God's "now" he answers "soon." To God's "begin" he answers "wait." The man whose heart is where and how it ought to be is a man who takes God directly at His word. The Divine "come" he takes to be the essence of duty, and the Divine "now" to be never untimely. And so, like doves to their windows, he flies for refuge to Christ. Then darting forth an eager hand, he lays hold on the hope set before him.

(J. E. Henry, M. A.)