Beside this dangerous domestic enemy, the Lord stirred up two foreign adversaries to trouble Solomon's repose; Hadad, of the royal family of Edom, southwards; and Rezon, king of Damascene Syria, northwards, xi. 14-25.

SOLOMON'S WISDOM.

This illustrious prince, under whom the kingdom of the united tribes of Israel arrived at its highest pitch of glory, was no less celebrated for his wisdom than for his prosperity.

His political wisdom was early evinced in his famous decision of the case of the two mothers claiming the same infant; by which he so ingeniously discovered the true mother, by proposing to cut the living child asunder, and give each a part; which was instantly rejected by her "whose bowels yearned upon her son," 1 Kings iii. 16-28.

He also composed 1500 songs, or pieces of Lyric poetry, of which his Canticles, or Song of Songs, only remains; and 3000 proverbs; of which the principal are collected in his book of Proverbs; he was skilled also in Botany and Natural History of every kind; his wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east, the Chaldeans, Persians, and Arabians; and he was wiser than all his contemporaries at home, than Ethan, the author of the lxxxixth Psalm; Heman, the author of the lxxxviiith; and their brothers, Chalcol and Darda, sons of Mahol, or of" the choir ;" and the queen of Sheba, or Abyssinia, and people from all the kingdoms of the earth, came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and to prove him with hard questions; who left him in the highest admiration of the wisdom which GOD" had put in his heart," 1 Kings iv. 29-34, x.

1-24.

SOLOMON'S FAITH AND REPENTANCE.

What grand and sublime conceptions Solomon entertained of the omnipresence of THE DEITY, appears from his Dedication prayer, and from his Proverbs, xv. 3-11, &c. and Ecclesiastes v. 1-8.

How magnificently does he describe the primæval birth of the eternal SON OF GOD, under the character of WISDOM, personified; to which so many references and allusions are to be found in the OLD and NEW TESTAMENT.

THE LORD got ME, the beginning of his way †,

Before his works of old.

From eternity was I ordained ‡, from first §,

Long before the earth.

When as yet there were no depths [of the sea]

I was born:

When as yet there were no fountains springing with water,
Before the mountains were established, before the hills,

Was I born," Prov. ix. 22-25.

His Canticles, or Song of Songs, is considered by the most judicious interpreters, as a mystical allegory, representing, under the figure of a marriage with the Shulamite, or Solomon's bride, vi. 13, the spiritual union between GOD and his Church; of which the conciser model was furnished by the forty-fifth Psalm. An allegory, frequent in the prophets, Isai. liv. 5, 6, Jer. ii. 2. iii. i. &c. Ezekiel xvi. 32, &c. and adopted in the NEW TESTAMENT. Thus John the Baptist beautifully represents CHRIST as the bridegroom; himself as his friend, or

The apocryphal Book of Wisdom introduces, by a reference to this passage, the following admirable invocation, Wisd. ix. 9, 10.

"O send forth (WISDOM) out of thy holy heavens,

Even from the throne of thy glory;

That being present She may labour with me,

That I may know what is pleasing in Thy sight!"

And OUR LORD assumes the title of WISDOM, compare Luke xi. 49. with Matt. xxiii. 34, and declares that "WISDOM shall be justified of all her children," Matt. xi. 19, Luke vii. 85. He, who was "born unto us WISDOM FROM GOD," 1 Cor. i. 30.

+ CHRIST is styled "the first born of all creation," Col. i. 15; "the beginning of the creation of GOD," Rev. iii. 14.

‡ In Micah's famous prophecy of the birth of CHRIST at Bethlehem, v. 2, cited Matt. ii. 6, his eternal generation is subjoined.

"Whose issues [of life] are from old,

From days of eternity."

And the very expression, “ was I ordained," (", nisachthi,) here applied to the primæval birth, was employed by David to denote his last birth, on the day of his resurrection.

"Nevertheless, I was ordained king,

On Sion, the mount of my Holiness," Psalm ii. 6.

Proving the adulteration of the present Masoretic punctuation, ', (Nasachti,)

§ OUR LORD styles himself" the first and the last," Rev. i. 17; who had glory with THE FATHER, "before the world was,' "Whom THE FATHER loved before the

foundation of the world," John xvii. 5—24.

bridesman; and the Church, his spouse, John iii. 28. OUR LORD also adopts the title of bridegroom, Matt. ix. 15, and in the parable of the Virgins, or bridesmaids attendant on the marriage, Matt. xxv. 1. The Lamb's wife" also, the Church, is represented as " a bride adorned for her husband," Rev. xxi. 2-9 who ought to be "without spot," Ephes. v. 27; as the Shulamite is represented, Cant. iv. 7. And surely, had not this beautiful pastoral poem been understood in a spiritual sense, it would not have been admitted into the SACRED CANON by the ancient Jewish Church. This was probably one of his earliest productions, from the warmth and luxuriance of the imagery.

His last production, Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is understood by the most judicious interpreters, to contain a formal recantation of the sins of his youth, and a public test of his sincere repentance in his age, written after the last divine warning; by which he must have been an "an old and foolish king" indeed, if he were "no more to be admonished," in a passage so remarkably apposite to his own case, iv. 13.

This work appears to be a philosophical enquiry into that most important and disputed question, What is the summum bonum, or "chief good" of man ?" what is best for the sons of men to do, under the heaven, all the days of their life ?” ii. 3.

1. In the course of it he states the various opinions that had been held on the subject, and the result of his own dear-bought experience, in search of the respective enjoyments of human wisdom and human folly; classing, under the former, the pursuit of several sorts of knowledge and science; and under the latter, pleasures of the sensual kind, mirth, wine, eating and drinking, women *, &c. grandeur, magnificent works, splendid palaces, great treasures, and "whatsoever his eyes desired;" but he pronounces them all to be "vanity and vexation of spirit;" or disappointment and grief: for that " in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow," from the greater insight he acquires of the follies and vices of mankind, and of his own inability to correct or reform them, i. 18; that "of making many books there is no end, and that much study is weariness of the flesh;" from the endless variety and discordance of the opinions of philosophers

Against women he inveighs most bitterly, vi 26-23; and in his Proverbs, ii. 16— 19, vii. 6-27, ix. 13 - 18.

respecting the chief good *, xii. 12. That sensual gratifications are madness and folly, and the cares of this world, its goods and its labours, which no man knoweth "whether he shall leave it to a wise man or a fool," are precarious and deceitful, and incapable of satisfying the rational desires of man. And the result of all his researches, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,—has been, and ever will be, the course of the world †, for there is “nothing new under the sun." This is the substance of the two first chapters, and of the subsequent illustrations.

Solomon, however, was by no means a gloomy moralist,

* See this fully illustrated in Cicero's Treatise on the subject, De finibus bonorum, and on the immortality of the soul. Quæst. Tusculan.

The finest comment on this aphorism, vanity of vanities, &c. a man of the world, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, has unintentionally furnished, in the volume of his Letters published by Dr. Maty, in one of which, written not long before his death, he thus complains :—

"I have run the silly round of business and pleasure, and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value, which is in truth, very low: whereas those that have not experienced, always over-rate them. They only see their gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been behind the scenes: I have seen all the coarse pullies and dirty ropes which exhibit and move the gaudy machine; I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of an ignorant audience.-When I reflect back upon what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself, that all that frivolous hurry, and bustle, and pleasure of the world had any reality; but I look upon all that has passed, as one of those romantic dreams, which opium commonly occasions, and I do by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose, for the sake of the fugitive dream.

"Shall I tell you, that I bear this melancholy situation with that meritorious constancy and resignation which most people boast of? No, for I really cannot help it: I bear it, because I must bear it, whether I will or no: I think of nothing but of killing time, the best I can, now that he is become mine enemy.—It is my resolution to sleep in the carriage during the remainder of the journey." Horne's Sermons, Vol. IV. p. 34.

What a frightful picture does the gloomy conclusion exhibit, of a dying libertine, whose God was this world, its fashions, its follies, its principles, and its practices; whom he served so zealously in his youth, but who deserted him in his old age! If he looked forwards to futurity, and backwards to that time which he murdered, and which, therefore, was become his enemy; he must have had little disposition to sleep in his carriage. How bitterly must he have regretted, that he had not feared GOD, and kept his commandments! If he believed a future judgment, must he not have "trembled," like another Felix, for the violation of the duties of righteousness and temperance?— How different the cheering conclusion of the apostolic preacher to all true believers :

"I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which THe Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also, that love his appearance," [at his second advent in glory,] 2 Tim. iv. 6-8.

neither a morose Cynic, or snarling" philosopher, who from the abuse of this world's goods, decried their moderate and seasonable use, iii. 1-8, nor a Manichean Atheist, who held the predominance of an evil principle, Isai. xlv. 7, Amos iii. 6. On the contrary, he recommends a moderate enjoyment of the good things of this life, considering them as the gift of GOD;that "to enjoy is to obey."

"GOD hath made every thing beautiful in its time, [or proper season]—I know that there is no good in them, [the things themselves,] but for a man to rejoice [in them] and to do good in his life; and that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good in all his labour: it is the gift of GOD," iii. 11, 12.

And to prevent this abuse, GOD has implanted in the heart of man, a presentiment of a future state of retribution; founded on the otherwise unaccountable dispensations of his providence in this life, in which injustice, oppression, and vice, are not uniformly punished, nor virtue rewarded; leading the wise to the rational conclusion, that GOD will judge the righteous and the wicked, if not here, most probably hereafter; and the fool, to the opposite senseless and grovelling conclusion, that men are no better than brutes; that all go to the same place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again; upon which hypothesis there is nothing better than that a man should enjoy his own works, for that his lot is only in this world; for who shall de monstrate to him a future state of retribution ?—which he thus expresses:

GOD hath also set futurity in their heart; inasmuch as man cannot find out [or account for] the work that God doeth from the beginning to the end [of the world, otherwise]-I know that whatsoever GOD doeth, it shall be for futurity [to decide; when] there will be nothing to add, nor to diminish from it. And GOD doeth it, that [men] should fear before his presence, [for HE that is HIGHER than the highest, regardeth, v. 8.] What hath been, is now, and what shall be, is now; but GoD will require the past. Moreover I saw, under the sun, the place of judgment, that impiety was there, and the place of justice,

The word, Olam, is variably rendered, "the world," ver. 11; and “ever," ver. 14; incorrectly in both; it signifies “the future world," whose duration is “hidden," or indefinite; (which is the literal meaning of the word,) whence it is frequently rendered "eternity.”