LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
Inlnmnn tljr ]^xm, null Inlumnn tljB ^JrmljtL 
 
 A LECTUR 
 
 REV. JAMES HAMILTON, D.D., F.L.S., 
 
 MINISTER OF THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH, 
 REGENT SQUARE, LONDON. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, 
 
 EXETER HALL, FEB. 4, 1851. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN, 
 
 42 Congress Street. 
 1851, 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE 
 
 SOLOMON THE PREACIIEE. 
 
 There is no season of the year so exquisite as the 
 first full burst of Summer : when east winds lose 
 their venom, and the firmament its April fickleness ; 
 when the trees have unreefed their foliage, and under 
 them the turf is tender ; when, before going to sleep, 
 the blackbird wakes the nightingale, and night itself is 
 only a softer day ; when the dog-star has not withered 
 a single flower, nor the mower's scythe touched one ; 
 but all is youth and freshness, novelty and hope — as 
 if our very earth had become a bud, of which only 
 another Eden could be the blossom — as if, with all 
 her green canvas spread, our island were an argosie, 
 floating over seas of balm to some bright Sabbatic 
 haven on the shores of Immortality. 
 
 With the Hebrew commonwealth, it was the month 
 of June. Over all the Holy Land there rested a bliss- 
 ful serenity — tlie calm which follows when successful 
 war is crowned with conquest — a calm which was only 
 stirred by tlie proud joy of possession, and then hal- 
 lowed and intensified again by the sense of Jehovah's 
 favor. And amidst this calm the monarch was en- 
 
 3 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 ehrined, at once its source and its symbol. In the 
 morning he held his levee in his splendid Basilica — 
 a pillared hall as large as this.* As he sate aloft 
 on his lion-guarded throne, he received petitions 
 and heard appeals, and astonished his subjects by 
 astute decisions and weighty apothegms, till every 
 case was disposed of, and the toils of kingcraft 
 ended. Meanwhile, his chariot was waiting in 
 the square ; and, with their slioeless hoofs, the 
 light coursers pawed the pavement, impatient for 
 their master ; whilst, drawn up on either side, pur- 
 ple squadrons held the ground, and their champing 
 char2:ers tossed from their flowino; manes a dust of 
 gold. And now, a stir in the crowd — the straining 
 of necks and the jingle of horse-gear announce the 
 acme of expectation ; and, preceded by the tall pano- 
 ply of the commander-in-chief, and followed by the 
 elite of Jerusalem, there emerges from the palace, 
 and there ascends the chariot, a noble form, arrayed 
 in white and in silver, and crowned with a golden 
 coronet, and the welkin rings, " God save the King ! " 
 for this is Solomon in all his glory. And as, through 
 the Bethlehem gate, and adown the level causeway, 
 the bickering chariot speeds, the vines on either side 
 of the valley give a good smell, and it is a noble 
 sight to look back to yon marble fane and princely- 
 mansions which rear their snowy cliffs over the capi- 
 tal's new ramparts. It is a noble sight, this rural 
 comfort and that civic opulence — for they evince the 
 abundance of peace and the abundance of riojhteous- 
 
 * See 1 Kings viii. ; Josephus' Antiquities, Bk. viii. chaps. 5 — 7 5 
 and Fergusson's " Palaces of Nineveh Restored/' (1851,) pp. 225 — 
 232. 
 
 4 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PRKACHER. 
 
 ncss. And when, tliroujj^li orcliards and corn-fields, 
 the progress ends, the shouting concourse of the 
 capital is exchanged for tiie delights of an elysian 
 hermitage. After visiting his far-come favorites — 
 the " ai)es and the peacocks," — the hright birds 
 and curious quadrupeds which share his retire- 
 ment ; after wandering along the terraces where, 
 under the ripening pomegranates, roses of Sharon 
 blossom, and watching the ponds where fishes bask 
 amid the water-lilies, — we can imagine him retiring 
 from the sunshine into that grotto which fed these 
 reservoirs from its fountain sealed ; or in the spa- 
 cious parlor, whose fluttering lattice cooled, and 
 whose cedar wainscot embalmed, the flowing sum- 
 mer, sitting down to indite a poem in which celestial 
 love should overmaster and replace the earthly pas- 
 sion which supplied its imagery. Dipping his pen 
 by turns in Heaven's rainbow, and in the prismatic 
 depths of his own felicity, with joy's own ink, this 
 Prince of Peace inscribed that Song of Songs which 
 is Solomon's. 
 
 It was June in Hebrew history — the top-tide of 
 a nation's happiness. Sitting, like an empress, be- 
 tween the Eastern and Western oceans, the navies 
 of three continents poured their treasures at her feet ; 
 and, awed by her commanding name, the drome- 
 daries of Midian and Ephah brought spontaneous 
 tributes of spice, and silver, and precious stones. To 
 build her palaces, the shaggy brows of Lebanon had 
 been scalped of their cedars, Ophir had bled its rich- 
 est gold. At the magical voice of the Sovereign, 
 fountains, native to distant hills, rippled down the 
 slopes of Zion ; and miraculous cities, hke Palmyra, 
 1* 5 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 Started up from the sandy waste. And whilst peace, 
 and commerce, and the law's protection, made gold 
 like brass, and silver shekels like stones of the street, 
 Palestine was a halcyon-nest suspended betwixt the 
 calm wave and the warm sky ; Jerusalem was a royal 
 infant, whose silken cradle soft winds rock, high up 
 on a castle tower : all was serene magnificence and 
 opulent security. 
 
 Just as the aloe shoots, and in one stately blossom 
 pours forth the life which has been calmly collecting 
 for a century, so it would appear as if nations were 
 destined to pour forth their accumulated qualities in 
 some characteristic man, and then they droop away. 
 Macedonia blossomed, and Alexander was the flower 
 of Greece ; fiery and eifeminate, voluptuous in his 
 valor, and full of chivalrous relentings amidst his 
 wild revenge. Rome shot up in a spike of glory, 
 and revealed Augustus — so stern and so sumptuous, 
 so vast in his conceptions, so unquailing in his pro- 
 jects, so fearless of the world, and so fond of the 
 seven-hilled city, — the imperial nest-builder. Mediae- 
 val, martial Europe blossomed, and the crusader was 
 the flower of chivalry — Richard of the lion-heart, 
 Richard of the hammer-hand. And modern France 
 developed in one Frenchman, the concentration of 
 a people vain and volatile, brilliant in sentiment, and 
 brave in battle ; and having flowered the fated once, 
 the Gallic aloe can yield no more Napoleons. So 
 with Palestine at the time we speak of. Half way 
 between the call of Abraham and the final capture 
 of Jerusalem, it was the high summer of Jewish sto- 
 ry, and Hebrew mind unfolded in this preeminent 
 Hebi^w. Full of sublime devotion, equally full of 
 
AND SOLOMO.V TIIi: PREACHER. 
 
 practical saj^acity ; the extemporizer of the noblest 
 prayer in existence ; withal, the anthor of the homely 
 Proverbs ; able to mount up on Rapture's ethereal 
 pinion to the region of the scrapliim, but keenly 
 uhve to all the details of business, and shrewd in his 
 human intercourse ; sumptuous in his tastes, and 
 splendid in costume, and, except in so far as intel- 
 lectual vastitude necessitated, a certain catholicity — 
 the patriot intense, the Israehte indeed : like a Colos- 
 sus on a mountain-top, his sunward side was the 
 ^lory toward which one jMillennium of his nation 
 had all along been climbinfj, — his darker side, with 
 its overlappini^ beams, is still the mightiest object in 
 that nation's memory. 
 
 You have seen a blight in summer. The sky is 
 overcast, and yet there are no clouds ; nothing but 
 a dry and stifling obscuration — as if tlie mouth of 
 some pestilent volcano had opened, or as if sulphur 
 mingled with the sunbeams. " The beasts groan ; 
 the cattle are oppressed." From the trees the new- 
 set fruit and the remaining blossoms fall in an unno- 
 ticed shower, and the foliage curls and crumples. 
 And whilst creation looks disconsolate, in the hedge- 
 rows the heavy moths begin to flutter, and ominous 
 owlets cry from the ruin. Such a blight came over 
 the Hebrew summer. By every calculation it should 
 still liave been noon ; but the sun no longer smiled 
 on Israel's dial. There was a dark discomfort in the 
 air. The people murmured. The monarch wheeled 
 along with greater pomp than ever ; but the popular 
 prince had soured into the despot, and the crown sat 
 defiant on his moody brow ; and stiff" were the obei- 
 sances, heartless the ho&annas, which hailed him as 
 
 7 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 he passed. The ways of Zioii mourned; and wliilst 
 grass was sprouting in the temple-courts, mysterious 
 groves and impious slirines were rising every where : 
 and whilst lust defiled the palace, Chemosh and 
 Ashtaroth, and other Gentile ahominations, defiled 
 the Holy Land. And in the disastrous eclipse, 
 beasts of the forest crept abroad. From his lurking- 
 place in Egypt Hadad ventured out, and became a 
 Ufe-long torment to the God-forsaken monarch. And 
 Rezin pounced on Damascus, and made Syria his 
 own. And from the pagan palaces of Thebes and 
 Memphis, harsh cries were heard ever and anon, 
 Pharaoh and Jeroboam taking counsel together, 
 screeching forth their threatenings, and hooting in- 
 sults, at which Solomon could laugh no longer. For 
 amidst all the gloom and misery a message comes 
 from God : the kingdom is rent ; and whilst Solo- 
 mon's successor will only have a fag-end and a frag- 
 ment, by right divine ten tribes are handed over to a 
 rebel and a runaway. 
 
 What led to Solomon's apostasy ? And what, 
 again, was the ulterior effect of that apostasy on him- 
 self T As to the origin of his apostasy the Word of 
 God is explicit. He did not obey his own maxim. 
 He ceased to rejoice with the wife of his youth ; and 
 loving many strangers, they drew his heart away from 
 God. Luxury and sinful attachments made him an 
 idolater, and idolatry made him yet more licentious : 
 until, in the lazy enervation and languid day-dreaming 
 of the Sybarite, he lost the perspicacity of the sage, 
 and the prowess of the sovereign ; and when he woke 
 up from the tipsy swoon, and out of the swine-trough 
 picked his tarnished diadem, he woke to find iiis 
 8 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 faculties, once so clear and limpid, all perturbed, his 
 strenuous reason paralyzed, and his healthful fancy- 
 poisoned. He woke to find the world grown hollow, 
 and himself grown old. He woke to see the sun 
 bedarkened in Israel's sky, and a special gloom en- 
 comi)assing himself. He woke to recognize all round 
 a sadder sight than winter — a blasted summer. Like 
 a deluded Samson starting from his slumber, he 
 felt for that noted wisdom which signalized his Naz- 
 arite days, but its locks were shorn ; and, cross and 
 self-disgusted, wretched and guilty, he woke up to 
 the discovery which awaits the sated sensualist : he 
 found that when the beast gets the better of the man, 
 the man is cast oft' by God. And like one who falls 
 asleep amidst the lights and music of an orches- 
 tra, and who awakes amidst empty benches and the 
 scattered fragments of programmes now preterite — 
 hke a man who falls asleep in a flower-garden, and 
 who opens his eyes on a bald and locust-blackened 
 wilderness, — the life, the loveliness, was vanished, 
 and all the remaining spirit of the mighty Solomon 
 yawned forth that edict of the tired voluptuary : 
 — " Vanity of vanities ! vanity of vanities ! all is 
 vanity ! " 
 
 There are some books of the Bible which can 
 only be read \nth thorough profit, when once you 
 have found the key. Luther somewhere tells us, 
 that he used to be greatly damped by an expression 
 in the outset of the Epistle to the Romans. The 
 apostle says, " I am not ashamed of the gospel ; for 
 therein is the righteousness of God revealed." By 
 »' righteousness " Luther understood the justice of 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 God — his attributes of moral rectitude ; and so 
 understanding it, he could scarcely see tiie superior- 
 ity of the gospel over the law, and at all events his 
 troubled conscience could find no comfort in it. But 
 when at last it was revealed to him that the term 
 here alludes not to God's inherent, but his out-wrought 
 righteousness — that it means not justice, but God's 
 justifying righteousness — the whole epistle was lit up 
 with a flood of joyful illumination ; and the context, 
 and many other passages which used to look so dark 
 and hostile, at once leaped up and fondled him with 
 friendly recognition ; and to Luther ever after the 
 gospel was glorious as the revelation and the vehicle 
 to the sinner of a righteousness divine. And, to take 
 another instance : many read the Book of Job as if 
 every verse were equally the utterance of Jehovah ; 
 and sayings of Bildad and Zophar are often quoted 
 as if they m ere the muid of the Most High ; entirely 
 forgetting the avowed structure of the book — forget- 
 ting that through five and thirty chapters the several 
 collocutors are permitted to reason and wrangle, and 
 darken counsel by words without knowledge, in order 
 to make the contrast more striking when Jehovah at 
 last breaks silence from on high, and vindicates his 
 own procedure. But when you advert to its real 
 structure — when you group the difterent elements 
 of its poetic painting — when, under the canopy of 
 a dark cloud, you see the patriarch blasted and life- 
 weary, and his three friends assailing him with calum- 
 nious explanations of his sore affliction : but above 
 that cloud you see Jehovah listening to his loyal ser- 
 vant, and his pious, but narrow-minded neighbors 
 — listening with a look of fatherly fondness, and 
 10 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 from heaveirs cornucopia* ready to shower on his 
 servant's head the most overwhelming of vindications 
 — the blessings twice repeated, which Satan snatched 
 away : when you see this, and when you know that 
 Jehovah is to be the last speaker, instead of nervously 
 striving to torture into truths the mistakes of Bildad 
 and Zophar, and Job himself, you feel that their mis- 
 rakes are as natural and as needful to the plan of the 
 hook, as are all the cross-purposes and contradictory 
 colloquies of a well-constructed drama. And when 
 so understood, you feel that all the rather because of 
 the misconceptions of the human speakers, the book 
 is eloquent with divine vindication, and teaches what 
 Cowper sings so touchingly — 
 
 " Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take ! 
 The clouds ye so much dread 
 Are big- with mercy, and shall break 
 In blessings on your head. 
 
 " Blind unbelief is sure to err. 
 And scan his work in vain ; 
 God is his own interpreter, 
 And he will make it plain." 
 
 Perhaps, no portion of Holy Writ more needs a 
 key than the book which has suggested the subject of 
 our lecture. On the one hand, " Ecclesiastes " has 
 always been a favorite book with infidels. It was a 
 manual with that coarse scoffer, Frederick the Great 
 of Prussia ; and both Volney and Voltaire appeal to 
 it in support of their sceptical philosophy. Nor can 
 it be denied that it contains many sentiments at 
 seeming variance with the general purport of the 
 
 * Job xlii. 14, Keren-happuch ; i. e. Horn of Plenty. 
 
 11 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 Word of God. "Be not righteous overmuch; why 
 shouldest thou destroy thyself ? " " All things come 
 alike to all : there is one event to the righteous and 
 to the wicked ; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that 
 sacrificeth not." " There is a time for every thing. 
 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he 
 laboreth 1 " " As the beast dieth, so dieth man. Do 
 not both go to one place ] " *' A man hath no better 
 thing than to eat and drink and be merry." These 
 texts, and many like them, are quoted by the moral- 
 ists of expediency ; by the fatalist, the materialist, the 
 Pyrrhonist, tlie epicure. 
 
 On the other hand, many able commentators have 
 labored hard to harmonize such passages with the 
 sayings of Scripture ; I may add, they have labored 
 hard to harmonize them with other sayings of Solo- 
 mon, and other passages of tliis self-same book. But 
 I cannot help thinking they have labored in vain. 
 For the moment, and when reading or listening to 
 some eloquent exposition, you may persuade yourself 
 that such texts are, after all, only pecuhar and para- 
 doxical ways of putting important truths ; but when 
 Procrustes has withdrawn his pressure, and the re- 
 luctant sentence has escaped from the screw and lever, 
 it bounds up elastic, and looks as strange and ungainly 
 as ever. 
 
 These are the closing words of " Ecclesiastes : " 
 " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : 
 Fear God and keep his commandments ; for this is 
 the whole of man. For God shall bring every work 
 into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be 
 good, or whether it be evil." This is the conclusion 
 of the matter, and a mse and wholesome conclusion, 
 12 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 Worthy of Him wlio s.iid, •♦ Seek first tlie kinj^dom of 
 God and his rijrljteousness, and all these things shall 
 be added unto you." But what is the " matter " of 
 which this is the ** conclusion " 1 To ascertain this 
 we must cfo back to the beginninf^. There you read, 
 " I the preacher was king in Jerusalem, and I gave 
 my heart to search out by wisdom concerning all 
 things that are done under heaven. Then I said in 
 my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth : 
 therefore enjoy pleasure," &:.c. In other words, you 
 find that this matter was a long experiment, which 
 the narrator made in search of the sumnium bonuin, 
 and of which " Ecclesiastes " records the successive 
 stages. But how does it record them ? By virtually 
 repeating them. In the exercise of his poetic power 
 the historian reconveys himself and his reader back 
 into those days of vanity, and feels anew all that he 
 felt then ; so that, in the course of his rapid mon- 
 ologue, he stands before us, by turns, the man of 
 science and the man of pleasure, the fatalist, the ma- 
 terialist, the sceptic, the epicurean, and the stoic, with 
 a few earnest and enlightened interludes ; till, in the 
 conclusion of the whole matter, he sloughs the last 
 of all these "lying vanities," and emerges to our 
 view, the noblest style of man, the believer and the 
 penitent. 
 
 This we believe to be the true idea of the book. 
 We would describe it as a dramatic biography, in 
 which Solomon not only records, but reenacts, the 
 successive scenes of his search after happiness ; a 
 descriptive memoir, in which he not only recites his 
 past experience, but in his improvising fervor be- 
 comes the various phases of his former self once 
 2 13 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 more. He is a restored backslider, and for the 
 benefit of his son and his subjects, and, under the 
 guidance of God's Spirit, for the benefit of the 
 church, he writes this prodigal's progress. He is a 
 returned pilgrim from the land of Nod, and as he 
 opens the portfolio of sketches which he took before 
 his eyes were turned away from viewing vanity, he 
 accompanies them with lively and realizing repe- 
 titions of what he felt and thought during those 
 wild and joyless days. Our great Edmund Burke 
 once said that his own life might be best divided 
 into " fyttes " or " manias ; " that his hfe began with 
 a fit poetical, followed by a fit metaphysical, and 
 that again by a fit rhetorical ; that he once had a 
 mania for statesmanship, and that this again had 
 subsided into the mania of philosophical seclusion. 
 A-nd so, in his days of apostasy, the intense soul of 
 Solomon developed in a fit of study, succeeded by 
 a fit of luxury. He had fits of grossness and refine- 
 ment, a mania of conviviality, a mania of misanthro- 
 py. He had a fit of building, a fit of science, a fit 
 of book-making ; and they all passed off in collapses 
 of disappointment and paroxysms of downright misery. 
 And here, as he exhibits these successive tableauxy 
 these fac-similes of his former self, like a modern 
 lyrist on St. Cecilia's day, he runs the diapason of 
 his bygone frenzies, and in the successive strophes 
 and antistrophes, as it were, feels his former frenzies 
 over again, in order that, by the very vividness of 
 the representation, we may be all the better " ad- 
 monished." * 
 
 * Chap. xii. 12. 
 14 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHEH. 
 
 " The preacher was kiiij^ over Israel, and because 
 he was wise, lie taught tlie people knowledge. He 
 long sought to find out acceptable words, and that 
 which was written was upright," * a true story, a 
 real statement of the case. " And by these, my son, 
 be admonished." Do you, my son, accept this 
 lather's legacy ; and do you, my people, receive at 
 your monarch's hand this " Basilicon Doron," this 
 autobiography of your penitent prince. These chap- 
 ters are " words of truth ; " revivals of my former 
 self — reproductions of my reasonings and reg^rets — 
 my fantastic hopes and blank failures, during that 
 sad voyage round the coasts of vanity. " By these 
 be admonished." Without repeating the guilty exper- 
 iment, learn the painful result — listen to the moans 
 of a melancholy worldling ; for I shall sing again 
 some of those doleful ditties for which I exchanged 
 the songs of Zion. Look at these portraits — they 
 are not fancy sketches — they are my former self, 
 or, rather, my former selves : that lay figure in the 
 royal robes, surmounted first by the lantern-jaws of 
 the book-worm, now exchanged for the jolly visage 
 of the gay gourmand, and presently refining into the 
 glossy locks and languid smile of the Hebrew exqui- 
 site : now chuckling with the merriment of the laugh- 
 ing philosopher, curling anon into the bitter sneer of 
 the cynic, and each in succession exploding in smoke ; 
 not a masque, not a mummery, not a series of make- 
 believers, but each a genuine evolution of the various 
 Solomon — look at these pictures, ye worldlings, and 
 
 Chap. i. 1, 2, 12, 13. 
 
 15 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 as ill water face answers to face, so in one or other 
 of these recognize your present Ukeness and foresee 
 your destiny.* 
 
 There is little difference in men's bodily stature. 
 A fathom, or thereabouts — a little more or a little 
 less — is the ordinary elevation of the human family. 
 Should a man add a cubit to this stature, he is fol- 
 lowed along the streets as a prodigy ; should he fall 
 very far short of it, people pay money for a sight of 
 him, as a great curiosity. But, were there any exact 
 measurement of mental statures, we should be struck 
 by an amazing diversity. We should find pigmy 
 intellects too frequent to be curiosities. We should 
 
 * " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," and it is not 
 the less " profitable " because some of it is the inspired record of 
 human infirmity. Thus, in the 73d Psalm, which is just a lesser 
 Ecclesiastes, Asaph says — "Behold, they are the ung-odly, who 
 prosper in the world ; they increase in riches. Verily I have 
 cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency." 
 But at last he recovers his " feet which were almost gone ; " and 
 Asaph's " conclusion of the whole matter " is, " For, lo, they that 
 are iar from thee shall perish : thou hast destroyed all them that 
 go a whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to 
 God : I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all 
 thy works." Nor is Ecclesiastes the less " profitable for correction 
 and reproof and instruction in righteousness," because a large pol-- 
 tion of it consists of the dark reasonings and futile experiments of 
 one whose "steps" had actually "slipped." Apart from the inci- 
 dental instruction with which its successive portions aboujid, its great 
 lesson must be sought in the very contrast betwixt its intermediate 
 reasonings and its grand conclusion. Whatever may be the merits 
 of the view above given, the lecturer is persuaded, that the better 
 we understand the plan of every Bible book, we shall be the more 
 convinced of the plenary inspiration of Scripture. He need scarce- 
 ly add, that there are other elements in the structure of Ecclesiastes 
 which his limits did not allow him to develop. 
 16 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 find fragile uiiderstaiuliiigs to which the grasshopper 
 is a burden, and dwarfish capacities unable to en- 
 compass the most common-place idea : whilst, on the 
 other hand, we should encounter a few colossal 
 minds, of which the altitude must be taken not in 
 feet, but in furlongs, — tall, culminating minds, 
 which command the eiitire tract of existing knowl- 
 edge — minds whose horizon is their coeval hemi- 
 sphere ; or, loftier still, prophetic minds, on which 
 is already shining the unrisen sun of some future 
 century. 
 
 Such a mind was Solomon. His information was 
 vast. He was the encyclopaedia of that early age. 
 He was an adept in the natural sciences — " he 
 spake of trees, from the cedar to the hyssop ; he 
 spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping 
 things, and of fishes," as the sacred liistorian simply 
 words it ; or as our more pompous diction would 
 express it, he was a botanist, and acquainted with all 
 departments of zoology, from the Annelides up to 
 the higher vertebrata. His wisdom excelled the wis- 
 dom of all the children of the East country, and all 
 the children of Egypt. And then his originality was 
 equal to his information. He was a poet : his 
 "Songs" were upwards of a thousand. And a mor- 
 alist ; liis Proverbs were three thousand. He was a 
 sagacious politician ; and as the cliief magistrate of 
 his own empire, he was famous for the equity and 
 acuteness of liis decisions. He had a splendid taste 
 in arcliitecture and landscape gardening ; and his 
 enormous wealth enabled him to conjure into palpable 
 reaUties the visions of his gorgeous imagination ; 
 2- 17 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 whilst, to crown the w hole — unlike Moses and many 
 others, men of stately intellect, but stammering speech 
 — the wisdom of Solomon found utterance in lan- 
 guage like itself; and whilst the eloquence still lived 
 of which the Bible has preserved some examples — 
 crowned students, royal disciples, came from the 
 utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of 
 Solomon. 
 
 Now, this man, so mightily endowed ; if you add 
 to liis intellectual elevation the pedestal of his rare 
 good fortune, mounting the genius of the sage on 
 the throne of the sovereign — this peerless man, this 
 prime specimen of humanity — it would appear that 
 Providence raised up for this, among other purposes. 
 From the day when Adam fell it had been the great 
 inquiry among men. Where and how to find the true 
 Felicity ? And though the Most High assured them 
 that they could only find it where they had lost it — 
 in unison with Himself, and in His conscious friend- 
 ship : of this they were quite incredulous. It was 
 still the problem. Apart from Infinite Excellence, 
 how shall we be happy ? Though Blessedness was 
 not far from any one of them, in delirious search of it, 
 men burrowed in gold mines, and rummaged in the 
 rubbish-heaps, drilled deep into the rock, and dived 
 deep into the sea. And though none succeeded, few 
 despaired. There was always an apology for failure. 
 They had sought in the right direction, but with 
 inadequate appliances. They were not rich enough ; 
 they were not strong enough ; they were not clever 
 enough. Had they been only a little wealthier ; had 
 they been better educated ; had they possessed more 
 leisure, talent, power — they were just about to touch 
 18 
 
A^D SOLOMON THK PRKACHEH. 
 
 llic talisman : they would have brought to li«i:ht the 
 pliilosophcr's stone. And as it is part of man's 
 uiijjodliness to believe his fellow-sinner more than his 
 Creator, the Most IIi<jh provided an unimpeach- 
 able testimony. He raised up Solomon. He made 
 him healthy and handsome — wise and brilliant. He 
 poured wealth into his lap, till it ran over. He made 
 him absolute monarch of the finest kingdom which the 
 world at that time offered — and, instead of savages 
 and pagans, gave him for his subjects a civilized and 
 a religious people. And that he might not be dis- 
 tracted by wars, and rumors of wars, he put into his 
 hand a peaceful sceptre, and saved him from the 
 hardships of the field and the perils of the fight. And 
 thus endowed and thus favored, Solomon commenced 
 the search after happiness. Every thing except 
 godly, he devoted himself to the art of enjoyment. 
 And in carrying on his own experiment, he unwit- 
 tingly, but effectually, became God's demonstration. 
 Into the crucible he cast rank and beauty, wealth and 
 learning ; and, as a flux, he added youth and genius ; 
 and urged the furnace to its whitest glow, with all the 
 ardor of his vehement nature. But when the grand 
 projection took place, from all the costly ingredients 
 the entire residuum was, Vanity of vanities ! And 
 ere he left the laboratory, he made ink of the ashes ; 
 and in the confessions of a converted worldling, he 
 Avas constrained to write one of the saddest books in 
 all the Bible. 
 
 His first recourse was knowledge. Communing 
 with his own heart, he said, " Lo, I am come to great 
 estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they 
 that have been before me in Jerusalem : yea, my 
 
 19 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. 
 And I gave my heart to know (more) wisdom, and to 
 know madness and folly (that is, fun and satire) : I 
 perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in 
 much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth 
 knowledge increaseth sorrow." And, as he adds else- 
 where, " Of making many books there is no end ; and 
 much study is a weariness to the flesh." 
 
 No, no. Carpe diem. Life is short, and learning 
 slow. Quit that dingy study, and out into the laugh- 
 ing world. Make a bonfire of these books, and fill 
 your reed-quiver with bird-bolts. Exchange the man 
 of letters for the man of pleasure. And so he did. 
 " I gave myself to wine, I made me great works, I 
 builded me houses, I planted me vineyards." But 
 here, too, he was destined to disappointment. For 
 the coarse pleasures of the carouse and the wine-cup 
 his cultivated mind had little affinity ; and when next 
 norning revealed the faded chaplets, the goblets cap- 
 sized, and the red wine-pools on the floor of the ban- 
 quet-hall ; when the merry-making of yesternight only 
 lived in the misery of the morning, he exclaimed, 
 " Such laughter is mad ; and such mirth, what docth 
 it 1 " And so of the more elegant pastimes — the 
 palace, the fish-pond, the flower-garden, the menagerie, 
 the enjoyment ended when the plan was executed ; 
 and as soon as the collection was completed, the 
 pleasure of the collector ceased. " Then I looked on 
 all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the 
 labor that I had labored to do : and, behold, all was 
 vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit 
 under the sun." 
 
 But there still remained one solace. There must 
 20 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PllEAClIEK. 
 
 be sonietliiii^ very sweet in absolute power. Though 
 the battle has been going on for six thousand years, 
 and the odds are overwhelming — a milhon resisting 
 one — yet still the love of power is so tremendous, — 
 to say to one, Go, and he goetli ; and to another, Do 
 tliis, and he doeth it — the right to say this is so deli- 
 cious, that, sooner or later, the million lose the battle, 
 and find the one their master. Now, this ascendency 
 over others Solomon possessed to a rare degree. 
 " The Preacher was king in Jerusalem." He was 
 absolute monarch there. And to flatter his instinct 
 of government still more, surrounding states and sove- 
 reigns all did homage at Jerusalem. But no sooner 
 did he tind his power thus supreme and unchallenged, 
 than he began to be visited with misgivings as to his 
 successor — misgivings for which the sequel showed 
 that there was too good reason. " Yea, I hated 
 all the labor which I had taken under the sun, be- 
 cause I should leave it unto the man that shall be 
 after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a 
 wise man or a fool 1 Yet shall he have rule over all 
 my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I 
 have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also 
 vanity." 
 
 And 1 need not say how the experience of most 
 worldling>» luis been Solomon's sorrow repeated, with 
 the variations incident to altered circumstances, and 
 the diminished intensity to be expected in feebler 
 men — vanity and vexation of spirit all over again. 
 And as we are sometimes more impressed by modern 
 instances than by Bible examples, we could call into 
 court nearly as many witnesses as there have been 
 hunters of happiness — mighty Nimrods in the chase 
 
 21 
 
SOLOMON THE PKlNCi:, 
 
 of Pleasure, and Fame, and Power. We might ask 
 the Statesman, and, as we wished him a happy new 
 year, Lord Dundas would answer, " It had need to 
 be happier than the last, for I never knew one happy 
 day in it." We might ask the successful lawyer, and 
 the wariest, luckiest, most self-complacent of them all 
 would answer, as Lord Eldon was priv^ately record- 
 ing when the whole bar envied the Chancellor, — "A 
 few weeks will send me to dear Encombe, as a short 
 resting-place between vexation and tlie grave." We 
 might ask the golden millionaire, " You must be a 
 happy man, Mr. Rothscliild." " Happy ! — me happy ! 
 What ! happy, when just as you are going to dine 
 you have a letter placed in your hand, saying, ' If you 
 do not send me =£500, I will blow your brains out ' ? " 
 Happy ! when you have to sleep with pistols at your 
 pillow ! We might ask the clever artist, and our 
 gifted countryman would answer of whose latter days 
 a brother writes, " In the studio, all the pictures 
 seemed to stand up like enemies to receive me. This 
 joy in labor, this desire for fame, what have they 
 done for him 1 The walls of this gaunt sounding 
 place, the frames, even some of the canvasses, are 
 furred with damp. In the little library where he 
 painted last, was the word ' Nepenthe 1 ' written in- 
 terrogatingly with white chalk on the wall." * W^e 
 might ask the world-famed warrior, and get for an- 
 swer the " Miserere " of the Emperor-monk,t or the 
 sigh of a broken heart from St. Helena. We might 
 ask the brilliant courtier, and Lord Chesterfield would 
 tell us, " I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, 
 
 * Memoirs of David Scott. t Charles V. 
 
 22 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 and I do not rcgfret their loss. I have been behind 
 the scenes. I have seen all the coarse pulleys and 
 dirty ropes which move the gaudy machines ; and I 
 have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illu- 
 minate the whole decorations, to the astonishment of 
 an irjnorant audience." We might ask the dazzling 
 wit, and, faint with a glut of glory, yet disgusted with 
 the creatures who adored him, Voltaire would con- 
 <lense the essence of his existence into one word, 
 *' Enmdy And we might ask the world's poet, and 
 we would be answered with an imprecation by that 
 splendid genius, who 
 
 " Drank every cup of joy, lieard every trump 
 Of fame; drank early, deeply drank; drank draughts 
 That common millions might have quenched — then died 
 Of thirst, because there was no more to drink." 
 
 But without going so far as these historic in- 
 stances, I make my appeal to all the candor and 
 self-knowledge here present, and I ask, Who is there 
 that, apart from God's favor, has ever tasted solid 
 joy and satisfaction of spirit ? You have perhaps 
 tried learning. You have wearied your flesh ac- 
 quiring some branch of knowledge, or mastering 
 the arcana of some science ; and you promised 
 yourself that, when once you were an adept, it would 
 introduce you to a circle of transcendental friends, 
 or would drown you in a flood of golden fame. You 
 won the friends, and found them so fiill of petty 
 feuds and jealousies, so cold-hearted or so coarse- 
 minded, alongside of this special accomplishment, 
 that you inwardly abjured them, and vowed that 
 you must follow learning for its own rewards ; or 
 
 23 
 
SOLOMON THE PKINCE, 
 
 you won the fame — you secured the prize — ' you 
 caught the coveted distinction, and Hke the senior 
 wrangler,* you found that you had " grasped a shad- 
 ow." Or you tried some course of gaiety. You said, 
 " Go to now — I will prove thee with mirth : therefore 
 enjoy pleasure." You dressed — you took pains 
 with your appearance ; you studied the art of 
 pleasing. But even self-love could not disguise 
 that some rival was more dazzling, more graceful 
 and self-possessed, and had made a more brilhant 
 impression : and you came home mortified at your 
 own sheepishness and rustic blundering; or, if con- 
 tent to mingle passively in others' merriment, 
 tattling with the talkers, and drifting along the 
 tide of drollery, was there no pensive reflection as, 
 late at night, you sought your dwelling ? — did you 
 not say of laughter. It is mad 1 and of mirth, What 
 doeth it 1 Or, perhaps, at some pleasant time of 
 year, you made up a famous ploy. And the ex- 
 cursion went off, but the promised enjoyment 
 never came up. Mountain breezes did not blow 
 away your vexing memories, nor did the soft sea- 
 wind heal your wounded spirit. In the rapid train 
 you darted swiftly, but at the journey's end you 
 were mortified to find that your evil temper had 
 travelled by the same conveyance. And though it 
 was a classic or a sacred stream into which you 
 looked, not even Arethusa nor Siloah could polish 
 from off your countenance the furrows of carking 
 anxiety, or the frown of crossness wliich wrinkled 
 there. The fact is,' all will be vanity to the heart 
 
 * Henry Martyn. 
 24 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 which is vile, and all will be vexation to the spirit 
 which the peace of God is not possessing. When 
 you remember how vast is the soul of man, and 
 also what a mighty virus of depradty pervades it, 
 you might as well ask, How many showers ^vill it 
 need to make the salt ocean fresh 1 as ask, How 
 many mercies will it need to make a murmuring 
 spirit thankful and happy? You may as soon ask, 
 How many buckets of water must you pour down 
 the crater of Etna before you convert the volcano 
 into a cool and crystal jet (Veaii 7 as ask. How many 
 bounties must Providence pour into a worldling's 
 spirit before that spirit will cease to evaporate them 
 into vanity, or send them fuming back in complaint 
 and vexation ? 
 
 " Attempt how vain — 
 With things of earthly sort, with aug^ht but God, 
 With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love — 
 To satisfy and fill the immortal soul ! 
 To satisfy the ocean with a drop ; 
 To marry immortality to death ; 
 And with the unsubstantial shade of time, 
 To fill the embrace of all eternity ! " * 
 
 It was autumn with the Hebrew commonwealth. 
 Like withered leaves from the sapless tree, the Jews 
 easily parted from the parent Palestine, and were 
 blown about adventurers in every land ; and like that 
 fungous vegetation which rushes up when nobler 
 plants have faded, formaUsm and infidelity were 
 rankly springing every where ; and it was only a berry 
 on the topmost bough — some mellow Simeon or 
 Zacharias — that reminded you of the rich old piety. 
 
 * Pollok's " Course of Time," book iv. 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 The sceptre had not cjuite departed from .Tudah, but 
 he who held it was a puppet in the Gentile's hand ; 
 and with shipless harbors, and silent oracles, with 
 Roman sentinels on every public building, and Ro- 
 man tax-gatherers in every town, patriotism felt too 
 surely, that from the land of Joshua and Samuel, of 
 Elijah and Isaiah, of David and Solomon, the glory 
 was at last departing. The sky was lead, the air a 
 winding-sheet ; and every token told that a long 
 winter was setting in. It was even then, amid the 
 short days and sombre sunsets of the waning dynasty, 
 that music filled the firmament, and in the city of 
 David a mighty Prince was born. He grew in stature, 
 and in due time was manifested to Israel. And what 
 was the appearance of this greater than Solomon 1 
 What were his royal robes ? The attire of a common 
 Nazarene. What were his palaces 1 A carpenter's 
 cottage, which he sometimes exchanged for a fisher- 
 man's hut. Who were liis Ministers and his court 
 attendants ? Twelve peasants. And what was his 
 state chariot ? None could he afford ; but on one 
 special procession he rode on a borrowed ass. Ah ! 
 said we so 1 His royal robe was heaven's splendor, 
 whenever he chose to let it through ; and Solomon, 
 in all his glory, was never arrayed like Jesus on 
 Tabor. His palace was the heaven of heavens ; 
 and when a voluntary exile from it, little did it 
 matter whether his occasional lodging were a rustic 
 hovel, or Herod's halls. If fishermen were his 
 friends, angels were his servants ; and if the bor- 
 rowed colt was liis triumphal charger, the sea was 
 proud when, from wave to wave of its foaming 
 billows, it felt his majestic footsteps moving ; and 
 26 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 when tlie lime had arrived for returiiinn^ to his Father 
 and his (xod, the clouds lent tlie cliariot, and obse- 
 quious airs upbore him in their reverent hands. 
 Solomon's pulpit was a throne, and he had an audi- 
 ence of kinjrs and (jueens. Tlie Saviour's synaj^oj^ue 
 was a mountain-side — his pulpit was a j2;rassy knoll or 
 a tishing-boat — his audience the boors of Galilee ; and 
 yet, in point of intrinsic greatness, Solomon did not 
 more excel the children playing in the market-place, 
 than He who preached the Sermon on the Mount 
 excelled Iving Solomon, 
 
 Looking at Solomon as a Teacher, the first thing 
 that strikes us is, that he was a great querist. Next 
 to the man who can answer a question thoroughly, is 
 the man who can ask it clearly. Our world is full of 
 obscure misery — dark wants and dim desiderata : like 
 a man in a low fever, its whole head is sick, and its 
 whole heart faint ; but it can neither fix exactly on 
 the focus of disease, nor give an intelligent account 
 of its sensations. But in tliis respect Solomon was 
 the mouth-piece of humanity. Speaking for himself, 
 he has so described the symptoms, that a whole ward 
 — an entire world of fellow-sufferers — may take 
 him for their spokesman. " These are exactly my 
 feeUngs. I have experienced all that he describes. 
 I am just such another fitful anomaly — just such a 
 constant self-contradiction. One day I wish time to 
 fly faster ; another I am appalled to find that so 
 little remains. One day I believe that I shall die 
 like the brutes ; and, frantic in thinking that a spirit 
 so capacious is to perish so soon, I chafe around 
 my cage, and beat those bars of flesh which enclose a 
 captive so god-like ; I trv to burst that cell wluch 
 
 27 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 is ere long to be my sepulchre : anon I am content, 
 and I say, ' Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow 
 you die : ' and no sooner is the carnival over than I 
 start up, conscious of my crime — descrying the for- 
 gotten judgment-seat, and aghast at my own impiety 
 in embruting an heir of immortality. One day I 
 deny myself, and save up a fortune for my son and 
 successor ; another, it strikes me he may prove a 
 prodigal, and I fling the hoard away. Now it seizes 
 me that I must needs be famous ; and then I grow 
 disgusted with the praise of fools. What will cure a 
 broken heart 1 What will fill an abysmal gulf ? What 
 will make a crooked nature upright ? What will re- 
 store liis Creator unto man, and man unto himself? " 
 
 And Jesus answers : " Believe in God and believe 
 in me, and that faith will heal heart-trouble. Hunger 
 after righteousness, and your craving spirit will be 
 filled. The words that I speak unto you are spirit 
 and life : imbibe them, ponder them, delight in 
 them, and they will satisfy the vastest desires of 
 the most eager soul. What will make the crooked 
 upright 1 Be born again. What will restore the 
 Creator to revolted man 1 God so loved the world, 
 that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in him should have eternal life." And 
 thus, one by one, the great Evangelist answers the 
 queries of the great Ecclesiastes. And if the sage 
 has done a service, who, in articulate words, 
 describes the symptoms of the great disease, how 
 incomparably greater is the service done by the 
 Saviour, who prescribes the remedy ! After all 
 Solomon is only an eloquent patient; Jesus is the 
 Divine Physician. 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 A^ain : Solomon's teacliiiinr is mainly neirative. 
 Five centuries later, it was the business of the wisest 
 Greek to teach his brethren knowledc^c of their 
 ij^norance. And so dexterously did he manaL''e his 
 obli(jue mirrors — so many of his countrymen did he 
 surj)rise with side-views and back-views of them- 
 selves ; so much fancied knowledge did he confute, 
 and so many Athenians did he put out of conceit 
 with themselves, tliat at last the Athenians lost 
 conceit of Iiim, and killed the mortifying mis- 
 sionary. And, like Socrates, Solomon is an apostle 
 of sincerity. His pen is the point of a diamond ; 
 and as it touches many of this world's boasted 
 jewels, it shows that they are only colored crystal. 
 His sceptre is a rod of iron, and as it enabled him to 
 command all pleasures, so it enables him to prove 
 their nullity ; and before his indignant sweep they 
 crash like potsherds, and dissipate in dust. But 
 more sincere than Socrates. His tests, his probes, 
 liis solar lamp, the Greek employed for his neigh- 
 bors' benefit ; such an awful earnestness had God's 
 Spirit enkindled in the Hebrew sage, that his grand 
 struggle was against self-deception ; and the illusions 
 on which he spends his hottest fury are the phantoms 
 which have befooled liimself. Socrates gossips ; 
 Solomon communes with his own heart. Socrates 
 gets his comrade to confess ; Solomon makes liis 
 own confession. And so terrible is his intensity, 
 that if it be well for our modern idoloclasts and 
 showers up of shams that there is no Socrates 
 now-a-days to show them to themselves, it will be 
 well for us all if we take a pattern from Solomon's 
 noble fidelity, and if we strive after his stern self- 
 3*' 29 
 
90L0M0N THE PRINCE, 
 
 knowledge. And yet the result was mainly negative. 
 He had dived deep enough into liis nature to find 
 that there was no genuine goodness there ; and from 
 the heights of his stately intellect he swept a wide 
 horizon, and reported that witliin his field of view 
 there was perceptible no genuine happiness. If he 
 was taller than other men, he was sorry to announce 
 that, as far as he could see, no fountain of joy now 
 sprang in this desert : no tree of life grew here- 
 away. If he was stronger than other men, he had 
 bad news for them ; he had tried the gate of Eden, 
 and shoved it and shaken it ; but he feared no 
 mortal shoulders could move it on its hinges, nor 
 any human contrivance prise it off its fastenings. 
 
 But if Solomon in his teaching was mainly 
 negative, Jesus was as mainly positive. Solomon 
 sliook his head, and told what happiness is not : 
 .Tesus opened his lips, and enunciated what it is. 
 Solomon said, " Knowledge is vanity. Power is 
 vanity. Mirth is vanity. Man and all man's pur- 
 suits are perfect vanity." .Tesus said, " Humility is 
 blessedness. Meekness is blessedness. Purity of 
 heart is blessedness. God is blessed for evermore, 
 and most blessed is the creature that is likest God. 
 Holiness is happiness." " We labor and find no 
 rest," said Solomon. .Tesus answered, " Come unto 
 me, all ye that labor, and I will give you rest." 
 " All is vanity," sighed the preacher. " In the world 
 ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have 
 peace.*' replied the Saviour. " What is truth ? " 
 asks Ecclesiastes. " I am the truth," returns the 
 Divine Evangelist. Solomon was tall enough to scan 
 the most of earth and see an expanse of sorrow; 
 3P 
 
AND SOLOMON THE PREACHER. 
 
 the Son of man knew all that is in heaven, and 
 could tell of a Comforter who, like a flask of bal- 
 sam floating in the sea, can fill with peace un- 
 speakable the soul immersed in outward misery. 
 Solomon could tell that the gate of bhss is closed 
 against human effort. Jesus hath the key of David, 
 and opens what Adam shut ; and undertakes to usher 
 into the Father's propitious presence all who come 
 through Him. Solomon composed Earth's epitaph, 
 and on the tomb of the species wrote, All is Vanity. 
 Accustomed to date men's history from their death, 
 Jesus substituted, All is Heaven or Hell. 
 
 Nay, so positive was the Saviour's teaching, that 
 in order to understand him rightly, we must remem- 
 ber that he was not only the Prophet, but the doc- 
 trine ; not only the Oracle uttering God's truth, but 
 his very self that Truth. Other prophets could 
 tell what God's mind is : Jesus was that mind. 
 The law — a portion of God's will — was given by 
 Moses ; but grace and truth — the gracious reality, 
 the truthful plenitude of the Divine perfections, 
 came by Jesus Christ. He was the express image 
 of the Father. He was the Word Incarnate. And 
 to many a query of man's wistful spirit, he was the 
 embodied answer. Is there any immortality to tliis 
 soul ? Is there any second hfe to this body ? " In 
 my Father's house are many mansions. I go to 
 prepare a place for you, and I will come again and 
 receive you to myself." "I am the Resurrection 
 and the Life : he that beheveth in me shall never 
 die : I will raise liim up at the last day." Is there 
 any mediation betwixt man and his Maker ? is there 
 any forgiveness of sins ? " I am the way. Whatsoever 
 
 31 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give 
 it you. Go in peace : thy sins are forgiven thee." 
 Is there any model of excellence exempt from all 
 infirmity ? any pattern in which the Most High 
 has perfect complacency ? *' He was holy and harm- 
 less, separate from sinners. This is my beloved 
 Son, in whom I am well pleased : hear ye him." 
 
 Solomon was wise ; but Jesus was Wisdom. 
 Solomon had more understanding than all the 
 ancients ; but Jesus was that eternal wisdom of 
 which Solomon's genius was a borrowed spark — of 
 which the deep flood of Solomon's information 
 was only an emitted rill. To which we only add 
 the contrast in their tone. Each had a certain 
 grandeur. Solomon's speech was regal. It had 
 both the imperial amplitude and the autocratic 
 emphasis, — stately, decisive, peremptory. But the 
 Saviour's was Divine. There was no pomp of 
 diction, but there was a God-like depth of mean- 
 ing ; and such was its spontaneous majesty, that 
 the hearer felt. How easily He could speak a 
 miracle ! And miracles he often spake ; but so 
 naturally did they emerge from his discourse, and 
 so noiselessly did they again subside into its current, 
 that we as frequently read of men astonished at his 
 doctrine, as of men amazed at his doings. But' 
 though both spake with authority — the one with 
 authority as a king of men, the other with authority 
 as the Son of God — there is a wonderful difference 
 in point of the pervasive feeling. Like a Prome- 
 theus chained to the rock of his own remorse, the 
 Preacher pours forth his mighty woes in solitude, 
 and, truly human, is mainly piteous of liimself. 
 
 32 
 
AND S0L0310N THE PHEACHKU. 
 
 Consequently his enthroned misery — his self-fibsorhed 
 and stately sorrow, moves you to wonder, ratlier than 
 to weep ; and, like a j^ladiator dying in marble, you 
 are thankful that the sutierer is none of your kindred. 
 But though greater in his sorrows, the Saviour was 
 also greater in his sympathies ; and though silent 
 about his personal anguish, there is that in his mild 
 aspect which tells each who meets it — if his grief be 
 great, his love is greater. And whilst Solomon is 
 so king-like that he does not ask you to be his friend, 
 the Saviour is so God-like that he solicits your 
 affection, and so brotherly that he wins it. Indeed, 
 here is the mystery of godliness — God manifest in 
 flesh, that flesh may see how God is love ; and that 
 through the loveliness of .Tesus we may be attracted 
 and entranced into the love of God. O melancholy 
 monarch ! how funereal is thy tread, as thou pacest 
 up and down thy echoing galleries, and disappearest 
 in the valley of Death-shadow, ever sounchng — 
 Vanity of vanities ! O Teacher blessed ! how beau- 
 tiful are thy feet on the mountains, publishing peace ! 
 How benign thy outstretched hand, which, to the sin- 
 ner weeping over it, proves God's golden sceptre of 
 forgiveness, and which then clasps that sinner's hand 
 and guides him to glory ! O Thou greater than 
 Solomon ! " let me see thy countenance, let me hear 
 thy voice ; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance 
 is comely." 
 
 A greater than Solomon. The cedar palace has 
 long since yielded to the torch of the spoiler ; but 
 the home wliich Jesus has prepared for his disciples 
 is a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 
 heavens. Thorns and thistles choke the garden of 
 
 33 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, 
 
 Engedi, and the moon is no longer mirrored in 
 the fish-ponds of Heshbon ; but no brier grows in 
 the paradise above, and nothing will ever choke or 
 narrow that fountain whence life leaps in fulness, or 
 stagnate that still expanse where the Good Shepherd 
 leads his flock at glory's noon. And Solomon — the 
 splendor of his age — his grave is with us at this 
 day ; his flesh has seen corruption ; and he must 
 hear the voice of the Son of man, and come forth to 
 the great account : but Jesus saw no corruption. 
 Him hath God raised up, and made a Prince and a 
 Saviour ; and hath given him authority to execute 
 judgment, because he is the Son of man. And re- 
 verting to the allusion of our outset — Solomon 
 effloresced from his country's Golden Age — a greater 
 than Solomon appeared when miry clay was mixing 
 with its Age of Iron. Solomon was, so to speak, an 
 effusion of his age, as well as its brightest ornament : 
 the Son of Mary was an advent and an alien — a Star 
 come down to blossom on a brier-bush — a root of 
 Deity from our earth's dry ground. But though it 
 was the Hebrew winter when he came, he did not 
 fail nor wax discouraged. He taught, he lived, he 
 fulfilled all righteousness — he loved, he died. It 
 was winter wheat ; but the corn fell into the ground 
 ungrudgingly ; for as he sowed his seeds of truth, 
 the Saviour knew that he was sowing the summer 
 of our world. And as, one by one, these seeds spring 
 up, they fetch with them a glow more genial : for 
 every saved soul is not only sometliing for God's 
 garner, but an influence for the world. Already of 
 that handful of corn which this greater Solomon 
 scattered on the mountain-tops of Galilee, the first- 
 34 
 
AND SOLOMON THK PREACHER. 
 
 fruits are sj)ringing ; and by and by the fruit shall 
 shake hkc Lel)an<)ii, and the Churcli's citizens sliall 
 be abundant as j^rass of the earth. On the wings of 
 prophecy \X is liastening towards us ; and every 
 prayer and every mission speeds it on — our world's 
 latter summer-burst, our earth's perennial June — 
 when the name of Jesus shall endure for ever, and 
 summer as long as the sun : when men shall be 
 blessed in Him, and all nations shall call Him 
 blessed. 
 
 So great is this Prince of prophets, that the least 
 in his kingdom is greater than Solomon. The saint 
 is greater than the sage, and discipleship to Jesus is 
 the pinnacle of human dignity. In Him are hid all 
 the treasures of wisdom, and all the germs of unde- 
 veloped goodness. He is the true theology, the perfect 
 ethics, the supreme philosophy ; and no words can 
 limit the mental ascendency and moral beauty to which 
 that young man may aspire, who, in all the suscepti- 
 bility of an adoring affection, consecrates himself to 
 the service and society of the Son of God. IMy 
 brothers ! is it a presumptuous hope that, even whilst 
 I speak, some of you feel stirring within you the desire 
 to join yourselves to blessedness by joining yourselves 
 to Jesus ? Is it too much to hope that some of you, 
 who are Christian young men already, are wisliing 
 and praying that God would make you characters less 
 commonplace, and render your influences in your day 
 more abundant and benign ? Is it too much to hope 
 that, even from this rapid survey, some shall retire 
 with a happy consciousness — Blessed be God ! I 
 belong to a kingdom which cannot be moved, and am 
 embarked in a cause which cannot be defeated 1 Is 
 
 35 
 
SOLOMON THE PRINCE, ETC. 
 
 it too much to hope that some one who has found, in 
 regard to godless enjoyment, " All is vanity," may 
 now be led to exclaim, with the gifted youth to whom 
 our poet-laureate has inscribed " In Memoriam," 
 " Lord, I have viewed this world over, in which thou 
 hast set me ; I have tried how this and that thing will 
 fit my spirit, and the design of my creation, and can 
 find notliing on wliich to rest, for nothing here doth 
 itself rest ; but such things as please me for awhile in 
 some degree, vanish and flee as shadows from before 
 me. Lo ! I come to Thee — the Eternal Being — 
 the Spring of Life — the Centre of Rest — the Stay 
 of the Creation — the Fulness of all things. I join 
 myself to Thee ; with Thee I will lead my hfe and 
 spend my days, with whom I am to dwell for ever, 
 expecting, when my little time is over, to be taken up 
 into thine own eternity." * 
 
 * From a deeply interesting account of Arthur H. Hallam, in the 
 '< North British Review," for February, 1861. 
 36 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
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 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTEDINU.S.A.