THE NEED OF RETAINING THE BEST WISDOM.
No one can read the story of Solomon's life, as given in the Bible and
as given in eastern writings, without wonder. That story in the Bible is
amazing; that story in the historic legends of Persia, Abyssinia,
Arabia, and Ethiopia is still more amazing. It is said of Solomon that
"those who never heard of Cyrus, or Alexander, or the Caesars have heard
of him," and that "his name belongs to more tongues, and his shadow has
fallen farther and over a larger surface of the earth than any other
man's. Equally among Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan nations his name
furnishes a nucleus around which have gathered the strangest and most
fantastic tales."
Almost at the beginning of his public activities he made a prayer to
God that may well be the prayer of every one. In a dream God appears to
him, asking what he most wishes God to confer upon him. Humbly and
earnestly he asks for a discerning mind--a mind capable of
distinguishing between good and evil. He passes by long life, passes by
wealth, passes by victory over enemies, and he asks only for such
understanding as shall enable him to know the right from the wrong.
We cannot call this prayer a surprise to God, but we can call it a
delight to Him. There are very many kinds of wisdom, but in God's
judgment, the best wisdom is that which always discriminating between
the good and the bad, the true and the false, the permanent and the
fleeting, prefers the good, the true, and the permanent. It surprises us
that Solomon was wise enough to make the desire for discrimination the
one petition of his heart. He was comparatively young, he was
inexperienced in life's responsibilities, he was at the threshhold of
what promised to be a great, almost a spectacular career. Most men,
under such circumstances, given the opportunity of asking for anything
and everything they pleased, would have said, "Give me many, many years
of mental growth; give me much, very much material wealth; give me great
and constant triumphs over all who in any way oppose me." But Solomon
asked only for a discerning mind that could see the difference between
right and wrong, and in asking that, he asked for the best wisdom any
human life can ever have.
Solomon had other kinds of wisdom. How they came to him we do not know.
Perhaps he was born with a large degree of mother wit and with a very
strong mental grasp. Perhaps his father, himself a thoughtful man and a
brilliant writer, provided the best teachers that wealth could procure
for his son. Perhaps his mother, who had eager ambition for her son,
constantly urged him on to large intellectual development.
Explain his case as we may, the facts are that he had _scientific_
wisdom. He knew nature so well that careful writers have even called him
"the father of natural science." He knew trees, from the lordly
cedar-tree that graced Lebanon to the little hyssop that springs out
from between the stones of a wall, as I once saw it in an old well near
Jerusalem. He knew beasts of the field, fowls of the air, animals that
creep on the ground, and fishes that swim in the water. Such is the
brief resume by the Scriptures of his acquaintance with nature. The
legends of the East add that he could interpret the speech of beasts and
birds, that he understood the hidden virtues of herbs, and that he was
familiar with the secret forces of nature.
He had also _literary_ wisdom. He was a beautiful, trained, and
forceful writer. The seventy-second Psalm, beginning "Give the king thy
judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son," is
ascribed to him. So is the one hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm, opening
with the words, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain
that build it." Much of the book of Proverbs is written by him or
compiled by him--a book whose concise, striking, intelligent, helpful
utterances are a monument of literary skill. Ecclesiastes, with its
philosophical dissertations on the fleeting and disappointing elements
of human life, is also assigned to him. So is the Song of Solomon, which
breathes a wealth of poetical fervor, that understood and applied
spiritually, is as sweet as the voice of the meadow lark soaring skyward
in the light and beauty of a summer day. Yet these writings are only a
part of what he produced. His songs were a thousand and five, his
proverbs not less than three thousand. What we have in the Bible simply
suggests the variety and power of his literary style, the force and
sagacity of his sound sense, the brilliancy and fitness of his practical
wisdom. Solomon's words are such that to this day, in this land, and in
every land of the earth, they are competent to teach prudence, economy,
reverence for parents, self-protection, purity, honesty, and
faithfulness to duty. The boy that learns them and carries them with him
as a vital principle of being and of conduct will move unsoiled and
unhurt wherever he may go. The home that places them at its center and
reveres them will be cheerful and brave. The grown man that carries them
with him into every detail of business and care will be upright and
beautiful.
The wisdom of Solomon was _commercial_ as well as scientific and
literary. He recognized the advantages of trade. He extended it. He sent
ships so far away to the east that passing through the Red Sea out into
the Indian Ocean they brought back the treasures of Arabia and India and
Ceylon--gold and silver and precious stones; nard, aloes, sandalwood,
and ivory; apes and peacocks. He sent other ships along the
Mediterranean coasts to the north, where Hiram, king of Tyre, lived, and
then to the west, out between the gates of Hercules, past the present
Gibraltar, up the Atlantic Ocean to the north until they touched at
southern England, at Cornwall, where they found the tin which, combined
with copper, formed the bronze for armor and for all so-called "brazen"
furniture. Not alone through ships of the sea did he seek out the best
treasures of all the accessible earth and beautify Jerusalem with them,
but also through ships of the desert--camels--did he do the same. He
caused the great caravan routes of the day to pass through Jerusalem,
and he levied duties on the objects transported from Damascus on the
north to Memphis on the south, and from Tadmor in the east to Asia Minor
in the west. He put himself into contact with all the thought and
purposes of other nations than his own, he learned what their kings and
queens, their merchants, their sailors, their writers, were saying and
doing, and thus he brought home to his mind the leading ideas of his
time. His knowledge of men, of methods, and of enterprise became vast.
Nor did his wisdom stop with commerce; it included government also, and
was _political_. He took the throne at a time when government was weak,
or almost disorganized. David's last years were years of physical
disability, wherein he could not curb the rebellious spirits that were
gaining influence in many quarters. Solomon, upon his assumption of
rule, judiciously subdued all rebellion of every kind, united the entire
kingdom, and started that kingdom upon the period of its greatest glory.
He made treaties that bound adjacent principalities to him and caused
them to pay tribute. He held such power that nations did not care to
fight with him, and so he became a king of peace. He laid taxes on his
own people that brought in large revenue. It was indeed the golden
period of Israel.
The effect of Solomon's wisdom was great and extensive. His
_reputation_ went far and wide. People made long journeys to see him,
ask him questions, and honor him. Even one like the Queen of Sheba came
with a great retinue, up through the desert, past village and town, to
bring him costly gifts and talk with the man who knew so much. His
_influence_ became pervasive. It entered into the legends of people who
never saw him, and became so fixed a part of those legends, that those
legends, repeated until to-day, still sound his praise. He was known in
tent and in palace as the wisest man that had ever lived, and the most
exaggerated statements were made and received of his insight into the
mysteries of the spirit world and his power to control the supposed
spirit forces of the air. His _wealth_ became almost incredible. Nothing
like it has ever been known--not in the time of the Roman emperors, nor
in the time of to-day. The fabulous magnificence of Mexican and Peruvian
kings helps us to realize Solomon's glory. "The walls, the doors, the
very floor of the temple, were plated with gold, furnishing gorgeous
imagery for John's description of heaven." Two hundred targets and three
hundred shields of beaten gold were held by the guard through whose
lines Solomon passed to the temple or to his house of the forest. His
throne of ivory, as were its steps, was overlaid with plates of gold.
All his drinking-vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house
of the forest were of pure gold, none were of silver. He was able to
make the temple the costliest structure for its size the world has ever
seen. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into its erection and
decoration. When to-day the traveler visits Baalbec and sees stones over
seventy feet in length and fourteen in width and in depth--stones
quarried, conveyed, raised up into high walls and securely masoned
there; when to-day the traveler sees the golden jewelry gathered from
ancient Grecian graves and placed on exhibition in Athens; and when
to-day the traveler examines the massive work done in Egypt, whose ruins
are overpowering in their grandeur, and seeing these stones, jewelry,
and structures remembers that Solomon knew all the skill, wealth, and
buildings of the whole Mediterranean world, then he can understand how
Solomon, with his resources, built a city like Palmyra, and a house of
worship like the temple, and made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem.
Ah, if this Solomon, so brilliant and so powerful, so "glorious," as
Christ called him, could only have preserved the best wisdom all through
his years, whose name--except Christ's--would be comparable to his!
He asked God for the wisdom that discerns between the good and the
evil. God answered that prayer and gave him such wisdom. How clearly he
saw at the first! If two women came to him, each claiming to be the
mother of a little child, and asking for the child's possession, how
skilful he was in ordering that the child be cut in twain in their
presence, thus causing the true mother to cry out in love for her child
and then giving her the child unhurt. The traditions of the east--some
of them perhaps once a part of those lost books mentioned in the Bible,
The Book of the Acts of Solomon, The Book of Nathan the Prophet, The
Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, The Visions of Iddo the Seer, tell
again and again how quiet and accurate Solomon's perception was in
distinguishing real flowers from artificial, in distinguishing girls
from boys though dressed alike, and in deciding case after case of legal
perplexity. He did have a discerning heart when, in his early days, he
knew who his enemies were and he crushed them, who his true counselors
were and he listened to them, what his supreme duty was and he built
God's house, what his sinful heart needed and he shed the blood of
atonement for it. It was discernment when, though he made his own house
rich, he made God's house richer; when he counted his gift of millions
of dollars to God's honor a delight; and when he would let neither
knowledge nor pleasure nor pomp nor glory withdraw his supreme affection
from God.
Would that he had always continued as he was! Would that he had
remembered that the prayer offered to-day for a blessing in character
must be offered again to-morrow if that blessing in character is to be
retained! Prayer is not so much a momentary wish as a continuous spirit.
His momentary wish and the resolve that sprang from it were at the time
all that God or man could desire. A mind distrustful of its own
omniscience, humbly waiting on God for discernment, is the wisest of all
minds. That mind was once in Solomon, but not always. When grown to
maturity he talked philosophy, still he was wise. But when he came to
act upon his philosophy, he was unwise. He failed to discern between the
value and the curse of wealth. He became a lover of money for money's
sake. He laid taxes on the people that they could not endure. He treated
them no longer as a father, but as a master. He ceased to distinguish
between the beauty and the disease of luxury. He built gardens and
palaces, and made displays, not with the thought of any praise they
would be to Jehovah, or to the establishment of God's people on a sound
financial and political basis, but for the honor and recognition that
would come to him. He became a captive to the love of magnificence and
to the desire for display. He made marriages that were matters of state
expediency and were not matters of heart conviction, and thus put
himself under the influence of those whose religious purposes were
wholly opposed to his own. He filled his palaces with women whose
presence indeed was a great indication of Oriental affluence, but whose
presence was a menace to clear vision of integrity, and was a woeful
example to the nation. He grew blinder and blinder to fine perceptions,
not alone of what was good in taste, but of what was right in principle.
He became so broad in his religious sympathies that he seemed to forget
that there can be but one living and true God. He even went after
"Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcar, the
abomination of the Amonites." And as a last blind act of folly, he even
raised within sight of God's holy temple "an high place for Chemosh, the
abomination of Moab, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of
Ammon, in the hill that is before Jerusalem." What men like Daniel would
not do, what men like Shadrach would not do, what martyrs in after days,
asked to say the simple word "Caesar" and throw a grain of corn on an
heathen altar, would not do, though death awaited them, Solomon did. He
gave up the fine distinction between the true and the untrue, between
God and idolatry, between divine principle and human expediency. And
with this loss of the best wisdom came loss of manliness, loss of peace,
and loss of the favor of God. Wealth, power, luxury, praise, glory, were
still about him, but he had made the most serious of all serious
mistakes. Later he recognized his mistake. We hope that he repented,
genuinely repented, of his mistake, and before his death turned back to
God and the best wisdom. But whether he died repentant or unrepentant
Solomon is the man who is forever the example of unparalleled wisdom and
of ruinous folly--of ruinous folly because his wisdom failed to retain
the element of the discerning mind.
Here, then, is a lesson: "With all thy getting, get understanding." Life
is not a best success, whatever else it may have in it, unless it draws
fine lines of separation between good and evil. The wealth and learning
and glory of the wide world cannot make up for a lack of sensitive
conscientiousness. The study and ambition of life must be applied to the
securing and retaining of fine powers of moral discrimination if we are
to be truly wise. Every one can have this discerning mind, at least to
such a degree as shall enable him to avoid the fearful mistake of
palliating evil and of becoming enslaved to evil. A little child may in
this respect be wiser than the oldest man; the simple peasant may be
safer than the most cultured scholar. Not even libraries of knowledge
can save the character of the man whose vision of good and evil is
blunted.
Youth is the time to make this prayer for true wisdom--when life's
decisions are first opening before us. Youth is the time when God can
best answer and when God cares most to answer prayer for the discerning
mind. We need to start upon our careers with hearts exceedingly
sensitive to the least variation from right. As the gunner cultivates
his aim and notes his least deviation from the true line to the target,
so should we cultivate clearness of moral perception. We need the
"practiced" eye and the "practiced" heart, for safe judgment.
"The grand endowment of Washington," wrote Frederic Harrison, "was
character, not imagination, not subtlety, not brilliancy, but wisdom.
The wisdom of Washington was the genius of common sense, glorified into
_unerring truth of view_."
Almost the same tribute can be paid to Victoria. When, six months after
her accession, Victoria drove to the House of Parliament, there was not
a hat raised nor a voice heard. But when sixty years later her jubilee
was held, such paeans of admiration and love swelled in London's streets
as never before had greeted any sovereign's ears--and all because the
people saluted in Victoria's person the _discrimination_ that had
shunned vice, corrected abuses, exalted integrity, and glorified
religion.
What every one needs, Washington, Victoria, and all--and what every
one should crave--is such wisdom, as all through life shall keep him
from confusing moral principles and shall make him see, choose, love,
and follow the best.
THE BEST POSSESSION.