Ecclesiastes 3:22

22. Wherefore Seeing, then, that man’s hold is only upon the present, and no one can reveal to him the future, what is left but to enjoy the present, getting from it all the good which it can yield? The point of view now reached is certainly very gloomy and discouraging. It is not, be it remembered, the conclusion of the whole matter. The writer is now not far from the state of mind in which Hamlet utters his sad and beautiful soliloquy: he discusses “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” “the law’s delay,” “to grunt and sweat under a weary life,” with no comfort from any thing after death, that “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns;” only that Koheleth, instead of being goaded to desperation, takes the wiser counsel of courageous endurance, and cheerful enjoyment of what good so sad a state may yet contain.