SOLOMON.

B. C. 1033-975.

THERE has seldom been offered to mankind, either a more magnificent spectacle for their imagination to feed upon, or a more awful lesson for their understanding to apprehend than the reign of Solomon. Under him in his earlier and godly years the nation of Israel attained its highest pitch of happiness and greatness; and under him in his later and ungodly years it began to decline towards its fall. There he presents a cheering token of the influence of a wise and good king for good; and here he exhibits a melancholy proof of the incurable mischief which may be done by a foolish and bad king. There he shone as the glad light set upon a hill to guide the nightly traveller through the plain and here as the disastrous light set upon a rock to warn the mariner of shipwreck. Thus piety and wisdom, succeeded by ungodliness and all its besotted folly, the one setting forth the other in greater intensity by the contrast, make his character to be an invaluable study to the moralist. Solomon was born in Jerusalem of Bathsheba. He was both conceived and born in David's penitence, and therefore from the first was loved by the Lord. David gave him the name of Solomon, or Peaceable, because of the word of the Lord concern

ing him, which foretold his birth to David', and gave him that name, to signify that God would give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. God manifested his favour towards the child after his birth by commissioning Nathan the prophet to give him the additional name of Jedidiah, or the Lord's beloved. He grew up in wisdom and godliness, and formed an exception to the general character of the sons of David. He does not come forward in history until the close of his father's reign. At that time, David being old, and laid up with his infirmities, Adonijah, the eldest, since Absalom's death, of the sons born in Hebron, resolved to seize upon the throne. His presumption, like Absalom's, had been fed by his father's overweening fondness, who would never displease him, and his beauty, like Absalom's, had procured him popularity. Joab, the great Captain, and Abiathar, the High Priest, assisted in this disgraceful conspiracy. By means of the faithful Nathan, the Prophet, David was roused to a sense of what was going on. He immediately charged Zadoc the priest, and Nathan the prophet to anoint Solomon at Gihon, in Jerusalem, and proclaim him king by sound of trumpet. Adonijah was obliged to submit, and Solomon was thus elected both into the partnership and succession of David's kingdom. The old king did not very long survive. On his death-bed he gave Solomon various injunctions respecting particularly the way in which he was to deal with certain persons who had troubled his own reign, and were well inclined to disturb that

11 Chron. xxii. 8.

of his son also. All these Solomon punctually executed on coming to his sole sovereignty. Joab and Abiathar suffered merited punishment. The first

was put to death at the altar to which he had fled for refuge. The second was deposed, and Zadoc put into his office. Thus Solomon almost immediately possessed in peace the kingdom which his father David had built up, under God, by such laborious and long struggles. It occupied a country which both to the eye and for food was the most delicious portion of earth. Even twenty centuries of almost continual devastation have not yet been able to trample out but a small portion of its fertility. The Philistine who had so lately bearded his predecessors was humble and peaceable. The Edomite, the Moabite, the Ammonite, those names of former terror, now reposed quietly under his dominion, which extended from Gaza, on the Egyptian border, to Thapsacus on the Euphrates, and formed the predominant monarchy of Western Asia. The nation had found after its long wanderings and reverses a settled resting-place, and dwelt safely, every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba. Israel had now full leisure given him to look forward from this accomplishment of God's temporal promises to the fulfilment of his spiritual. Alas! both king and people soon forgot the giver in the abundance of his gifts, and while the ox knew his owner, and the ass his master's crib, Israel would not know, God's people would not consider.

An ominous speck or two discloses itself at the commencement of his reign. He took a wife from the idolatrous house of Pharaoh. She, however,

might have become a convert to the true faith. King and people also still violated the law of Moses' by sacrificing on high places: since God had limited his presence to the tabernacle, this was a presumptuous tempting of him. But man has a perverse love for any thing novel and forbidden in preference to what is established and bidden; and whenever he feels a more than ordinary excitement, or thinks to do God a more than ordinary service, nothing ordinary, be it even ordained by God himself, will content him. Some excuse may be found for this unlawfulness at the present time from the separation of the ark and its tabernacle. The former was on Mount Sion, whither David had brought it, the latter, with all its holy furniture, was at Gibeon, which was the principal high-place 2. Thus there was no place of worship exactly corresponding to that which Moses had commanded to be the only one. It was at Gibeon that Solomon, after having offered a splendid sacrifice of a thousand burnt offerings, was vouchsafed a divine vision. The Lord appeared to him in a dream at night, and said, "Ask what I shall give thee." Solomon, expressing a deep sense of the responsibility of his station, requested understanding to rule the people committed to his charge. Such was the wise and manly answer made by a youth of eighteen. On thinking of what almost all youths in his circumstances, with his strong passions, his love. of magnificence, his possession of the proudest throne in Western Asia, would ask, we cannot but be struck with admiration of his modesty and wisdom, and of

1 Levit. xvii. 3, 4.

21 Chron. xxi. 29.

2

that diffidence in himself which turned him in confidence to God. He was not one of those feeble luxurious youths who have looked upon empire merely as the irresponsible and unlimited enjoyment of their lusts, on the government of others as the blest occasion of throwing off the government of themselves, on the supremacy of their will over fellow man as the subjection of it to their own passions. He took upon himself the royal power as God's vicegerent upon earth, as his appointed instrument of blessedness to the people whom he had chosen. He was to rule as eldest brother of a family during his father's absence, and to render an account of his charge on his return. He was the predecessor of one greater still, and prefigured him who was to gather all earth under his dominion. He was as it were riding in a glorious procession, which his orderly conduct would bring uniformly towards its end. But if he was rampant, and recklessly broke the ranks around him, he would throw the whole into confusion, and delay its progress towards the end. He was but a harbinger in that procession, and wore the livery of that Heavenly Sovereign, who, as in a triumph, closed up the rear. Thus he was guided by heavenly principles, which alone can triumph in the conflict which a monarch has to undergo. They are like the soul of man, which cannot be affected by the elements of this world, but defies their most violent assault. They are like the wind but is itself unassailable. like the body of man, yield before the assault of kindred elements, break up, and waste away by being exposed to stronger and more corrupt principles of

which throws down palaces, While worldly principles,