some difficulty of explanation. It is a poem liable to be perverted by
an unsanctified soul, since it is foreign to our modes of expression.
For two hundred years it has been variously interpreted. It was the
delight of Saint Bernard the ascetic, and a stumbling-block to Ewald the
critic. To many German scholars, who have rendered great services by
their learning and genius, it is only the expression of physical love,
like the amatory songs of Greece. To others of more piety yet equal
scholarship, like Origen, Grotius, and Bossuet, it is symbolic of the
love which exists between Christ and the Church. It seems, at least, to
be a contrast with the impure love of the heathen world. But whether it
describes the ardent affection which Solomon bore to his young Egyptian
bride; or the still more beautiful love of the innocent Shulamite
maiden for her betrothed shepherd feeding his flock among the lilies,
unseduced by all the influences of the royal court, and triumphant over
the seductions of rank and power; or whether it is the rapt soul of the
believer bursting out in holy transports of joy, like a Saint Theresa in
the anticipated union with her divine Spouse,--it is still a noble
tribute to what is most enchanting of the great certitudes on earth or
in heaven; and it is expressed in language of exquisite and incomparable
elegance. "Arise, my fair one, and come away! for the winter is past and
gone, and the flowers appear upon the earth, and the voice of the turtle
is heard in the land. Make haste, my beloved! Be thou like a roe on the
mountains of spices, for many waters cannot quench love, nor the floods
drown it; yea, were a man to offer all that he hath for it, it would be
utterly despised." How tender, how innocent, how fervent, how beautiful,
is this description of a lofty love, at rest in its happiness, in the
society of the charmer, exultant in the certainty of that glorious
sentiment which nothing can corrupt and nothing can destroy!
If this unique and beautiful Song was the work of Solomon in his early
days of innocence and piety, the book of Proverbs seems to be the result
of his profound observations when he was still uncorrupted by
prosperity, ruling his kingdom with sagacity and amazing the world with
his wisdom. How many of those acute sayings were uttered by Solomon we
know not, but probably most of them are his, collected, it is supposed,
during the reign of Hezekiah. They are written on almost every subject
pertaining to ethics, to nature, to science, and to society. Some are
allusions to God, and others to the duties between man and man. Many are
devoted to the duties of women, applicable to the sex in all times. They
are not on a level of the Psalms in piety, nor of the Prophecies in
grandeur, but they recognize the immutable principles of moral
obligation. In some cases they seem to be worldly-wise,--such as we
might suppose to fall from the mouth of Benjamin Franklin or
Cobbett,--recognizing worldly prosperity as the greatest of blessings.
Sometimes they are witty, again ironical, but always forcible. In some
of them there is awful solemnity.
There are no more terrific warnings and exhortations in the sacred
writings than are found in the Proverbs of Solomon. The sins of
idleness, of anger, of covetousness, of gossip, of falsehood, of
oppression, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity, are uniformly
denounced as leading to destruction; while prudence, temperance,
chastity, obedience to parents, and loyalty to truth are enjoined with
the earnestness of a man who believes in personal accountability to God.
The ethics of the Proverbs are based on everlasting righteousness, and
are imbued with the spirit of divine philosophy; their great peculiarity
is the constant exhortation to wisdom and knowledge, to which young men
are especially exhorted. Like Socrates, Solomon never separates wisdom
from virtue, but makes one the foundation of the other. He shows the
connection between virtue and happiness, vice and misery. The Proverbs
are inexhaustible in moral force, and have universal application. There
is nothing cynical or gloomy in them. They form a fitting study for
youth and old age, an incentive to virtue and a terror to evil-doers, a
thesaurus of moral wisdom; they speak in every line a lofty and
comprehensive intellect, acquainted with all the experiences of life.
Such moral wisdom would be imperishable in any literature. Such
utterances go far to redeem all personal defects; they show how
unclouded is a mind trained in equity, even when the will is enslaved by
iniquity. What is still more remarkable, the Proverbs never apologize
for the force of temptation, and never blend error with truth; they
uniformly exalt wisdom, and declare that the beginning of it is the fear
of the Lord. There is not one of them which seeks to cover up vice with
sophistical excuses; they show that the author or authors of them love
moral beauty and truth, and exalt the same,--as many great men, with
questionable morals, give their testimony to the truths of
Christianity, and utterly abhor those who poison the soul by plausible
sophistries,--as Lord Brougham detested Rousseau. The famous writings of
our modern times which nearest approach the Proverbs in love of truth
and moral wisdom are those of Bacon and Shakspeare.
In striking contrast with the praises of knowledge which permeate the
Proverbs, is the book of Ecclesiastes, supposed to have been written in
the decline of Solomon's life, when the pleasures of sin had saddened
his soul, and filled his mind with cynicism. Unless the book of
Ecclesiastes is to be interpreted as ironical, nothing can be more
dreary than many of its declarations. It even seems to pour contempt on
all knowledge and all enjoyments. "In much knowledge is much grief, and
he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.... What profit hath a
man of all his labor?... There is no remembrance of the wise more than
of the fool.... There is nothing better for a man than that he should
eat and drink.... A man hath no pre-eminence over a beast; all go to the
same place.... What hath the wise man more than the fool?... There is a
just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man
that prolongeth his life in wickedness.... One man among a thousand have
I found, but a woman among all those have I not found.... The race is
not to the swift, the battle to the strong; neither bread to the wise,
nor riches to the man of understanding.... On all things is written
vanity." Such are some of the dismal and cynical utterances of Solomon
in his old age. The Ecclesiastes contrasted with the Proverbs is
discouraging and sad, although there is great seriousness and even
loftiness in many of its sayings. It seems to be the record of a
disenchanted old man, to whom all things are a folly and vanity. There
is a suppressed contempt expressed for what young men and the worldly
regard as desirable, equalled only by a sort of proud disdain of success
and fame. There is great bitterness in reference to women. Some of the
sayings are as mournful jeremiads as any uttered by Carlyle, showing
great scorn of what ninety-nine in one hundred are vain of, and pursue
after, as all ending in vanity and vexation of spirit. We can understand
how riches may prove a snare, how pleasure-seeking ends in
disappointment, how the smiles of a deceitful woman may lead to the
chamber of death, how little the treasures of wickedness profit, how
sins will find out the transgressor, how the heart may be sad in the
midst of laughter, how wine is a mocker, how ambition is Babel-building,
how he who pursueth evil pursueth it to his death; we can understand how
abundance will produce satiety, and satiety lead to disgust,--how
disappointment attends our most cherished plans, and how all mortal
pursuits fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal soul. But why does
the favored and princely Solomon, in sadness and bitterness, pronounce
knowledge also to be a vanity like power and riches, especially when in
his earlier writings he so highly commends it? Is it true that in much
wisdom is much grief, and that the increase of knowledge is the increase
of sorrow? Can it be that the book of Ecclesiastes is the mere record of
the miserable experiences of an embittered and disappointed sensualist,
or is it the profound and searching exposition of the vanities of this
world as they appear to a lofty searcher after truth and God, measured
by the realities of a future and endless life, which the soul
emancipated from pollution pants and aspires after with all the
intensity of a renovated nature? When I bear in mind the impressive
lessons that are declared at the close of this remarkable book, the
earnest exhortation to remember God before the dust shall return to the
earth as it was, I cannot but feel that there are great moral truths
underlying the sarcasm and irony in which the writer indulged. And these
come with increased force from the mouth of a man who had tasted every
mortal good, and found it all, when not properly used, a confirmation of
the impossibility of earth to satisfy the soul of man. The writer calls
himself "the preacher," and surely a great preacher he was,--not to a
throng of "fashionable worshippers" or a crowd of listless
pleasure-seekers, but to all ages and nations. And if he really was a
living speaker to the young men who caught the inspiration of his voice,
how terribly eloquent he must have been!
I fancy that I can see that unhappy old man, worn out, saddened,
embittered, yet at last rising above the decrepitude of age and the
infirmities which sin had hastened, and speaking in tones that could
never be forgotten. "Behold, ye young men! I have tasted every enjoyment
of this earth; I have indulged in every pleasure forbidden or permitted.
I have explored the world of thought and the realm of nature. I have
been favored beyond any mortal that ever lived; I have been flattered
and honored beyond all precedent; I have consumed the treasures of kings
and princes. I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards; I made me
gardens and orchards, I made me pools of water; I got me servants and
maidens, I gathered me also silver and gold; I got me men-singers and
women-singers and musical instruments; whatsoever my eyes desired I kept
not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy,--and now, lo! I
solemnly declare unto you, with my fading strength and my eyes suffused
with tears and my knees trembling with weakness, and in view of that
future and higher life which I neglected to seek amid the dazzling
glories of my throne, and the bewilderment of fascinating joys,--I now
most earnestly declare unto you that all these things which men seek and
prize are a vanity, a delusion, and a snare; that there is no wisdom but
in the fear of God."
So this saddest of books closes with lofty exhortations, and recognizes
moral obligations which are in harmony with the great principle enforced
in the Proverbs,--that there is no escape from the penalty of sin and
folly; that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. The last
recorded words of the preacher are concerning the vanity of life,--that
is, the hopeless failure of worldly pleasures and egotistical pursuits
in themselves alone to secure happiness; the impossibility of lasting
good disconnected with righteousness; the fact that even knowledge, the
greatest possession and the highest joy which a man can have, does not
satisfy the soul.
These final utterances of Solomon are not dogmas nor speculations, they
are experiences,--the experiences of one of the most favored mortals who
has lived upon our earth, and one of the wisest. If, measured by the
eternal standards, his glory was less than that of the flower which
withers in a day, what hope have ordinary men in the pursuit of
pleasure, or gain, or honor? Utter vanity and vexation of spirit!
Nothing brings a true reward but virtue,--unselfish labors for others,
supreme loyalty to conscience, obedience to God. Hence, such profound
experience so frankly published, such sad confessions uttered from the
depths of the heart, and the summing up of the whole question of human
life, enforced with the earnestness and eloquence of an old man soon to
die, have peculiar force, and are among the greatest treasures of the
Old Testament.
The fundamental truth to be deduced from the book of Ecclesiastes is
that whatsoever is born of vanity must end in vanity. If vanity is the
seed, so vanity is the fruit. It is, in fact, one of the most impressive
of all the truths that appeal either to consciousness or experience. If
a man builds a house from vanity, or makes a party from vanity, or gives
a present from vanity, or writes a book from vanity, or seeks an office
from vanity,--then, as certainly as the bite of an asp will poison the
body, will the expected good be turned into a bitter disappointment.
Self-love cannot be the basis of human action without alienation from
God, without weariness, disgust, and ultimate sorrow. The soul can be
fed only by divine certitudes; it can be enlarged only by walking
according to the divine commandments.
Confucius, Socrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius declared the same
truths, but not so impressively. Not for one's self, not for friends,
not even for children alone must one live. There is a higher law still
which speaks to the universal conscience, asking, What is your duty?
With this is identified all that is precious in life, on earth or in
heaven, for time and eternity. Anything in this world which is sought
as a good, whose end is selfish, is an impressive failure; so that
self-aggrandizement becomes as absurd and fatal as self-indulgence. One
can no more escape from the operation of this law than he can take the
wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea. The
commonest experiences of every-day life confirm the wisdom which Solomon
uttered out of his lonely and saddened soul. If ye will not hear him, be
instructed by your own broken friendships, your own dispelled illusions,
your own fallen idols; by the heartlessness which too often lurks in the
smiles of beauty, by the poison concealed in polished flatteries, by the
deceitfulness hidden, beneath the warmest praises, by the demons of
envy, jealousy, and pride which take from success itself its
promised joys.
Who is happy with any amount of wealth? Who is free from corroding
cares? Who can escape anxiety and fear? How hard to shake off the
burdens which even a rich man is compelled to bear? There is a fly in
every ointment, a skeleton in every closet, solitude in the midst of
crowds, isolation in the joy of festivals. The wrecks of happiness are
strewn in every path that the world has envied.
Read the lives of illustrious men; how melancholy often are the latter
days of those who have climbed the highest! Caesar is stabbed when he
has conquered the world. Diocletian retires in disgust from the
government of an empire. Godfrey languishes in grief when he has taken
Jerusalem. Charles V. shuts himself up in a convent. Galileo, whose
spirit has roamed the heavens, is a prisoner of the Inquisition.
Napoleon masters a continent, and expires on a rock in the ocean.
Mirabeau dies of despair when he has kindled the torch of revolution.
The poetic soul of Burns passes away in poverty and moral eclipse.
Madness overtakes the cool satirist Swift, and mental degeneracy is the
final condition of the fertile-minded Scott. The high-souled Hamilton
perishes in a petty quarrel, and curses overwhelm Webster in the halls
of his early triumphs. What a confirmation of the experience of Solomon!
"Vanity of vanities" write on all walls, in all the chambers of
pleasure, in all the palaces of pride!
This is the burden of the preaching of Solomon; but it is also the
lesson which is taught by all the records of the past, and all the
experiences of mankind. Yet it is not sad when one considers the dignity
of the soul and its immortal destinies. It is sad only when the
disenchantment of illusions is not followed by that holy fear which is
the beginning of wisdom,--that exalted realism which we believe at last
sustained the soul of the Preacher as he was hastening to that country
from whose bourn no traveller returns.
ELIJAH.
NINTH CENTURY B.C.
DIVISION OF THE JEWISH KINGDOM.
Evil days fell upon the Israelites after the death of Solomon. In the
first place their country was rent by political divisions, disorders,
and civil wars. Ten of the tribes, or three quarters of the population,
revolted from Rehoboam, Solomon's son and successor, and took for their
king Jeroboam,--a valiant man, who had been living for several years at
the court of Shishak, king of Egypt, exiled by Solomon for his too great
ambition. Jeroboam had been an industrious, active-minded,
strong-natured youth, whom Solomon had promoted and made much of. The
prophet Ahijah had privately foretold to him that, on account of the
idolatries tolerated by Solomon, ten of the tribes should be rent away
from, the royal house and given to him. The Lord promised him the
kingdom of Israel, and (if he would be loyal to the faith) the
establishment of a dynasty,--"a sure house." Jeroboam made choice of
Shechem for his capital; and from political reasons,--for fear that the
people should, according to their custom, go up to Jerusalem to worship
at the great festivals of the nation, and perhaps return to their
allegiance to the house of David, while perhaps also to compromise with
their already corrupted and unspiritualized religious sense,--he made
two golden calves and set them up for religious worship: one in Bethel,
at the southern end of the kingdom; the other in Dan, at the far north.
It does not appear that the people of Israel as yet ignored Jehovah as
God; but they worshipped him in the form of the same Egyptian symbol
that Aaron had set up in the wilderness,--a grave offence, although not
an utter apostasy. Moreover, this was the act of the king rather than of
the priests or his own subjects.
Stanley makes a significant comment on this act of the new king, which
the sacred narrative refers to as "the sin of Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin." He says: "The Golden Image was doubtless
intended as a likeness of the One True God. But the mere fact of setting
up such a likeness broke down the sacred awe which had hitherto marked
the Divine Presence, and accustomed the minds of the Israelites to the
very sin against which the new form was intended to be a safeguard. From
worshipping God under a false and unauthorized form they gradually
learned to worship other gods altogether.... 'The sin of Jeroboam, the
son of Nebat,' is the sin again and again repeated in the
policy--half-worldly, half-religious--which has prevailed through large
tracts of ecclesiastical history.... For the sake of supporting the
faith of the multitude, lest they should fall away to rival sects, ...
false arguments have been used in support of religious truths, false
miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text
defended. And so the faith of mankind has been undermined by the very
means intended to preserve it."
For priests, Jeroboam selected the lowest of the people,--whoever could
be induced to offer idolatrous sacrifices in the high places,--since the
old priests and Levites remained with the tribe of Judah at Jerusalem.
These abominations and political rivalries caused incessant war between
the two kingdoms for several reigns. The northern kingdom, including the
great tribe of Ephraim or Joseph, was the richest, most fertile, and
most powerful; but the southern kingdom was the most strongly fortified.
And yet even in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam, the king of
Egypt, probably incited by Jeroboam, invaded Judah with an immense army,
including sixty thousand cavalry and twelve hundred chariots, and
invested Jerusalem. The city escaped capture only by submitting to the
most humiliating conditions. The vast wealth which was stored in the
Temple,--the famous gold shields which David had taken from the Syrians,
and those also made by Solomon for his body-guard, together with the
treasures of the royal palace,--became spoil for the Egyptians. This
disaster happened when Solomon had been dead but five years. The
solitary tribe left to his son, despoiled by Egypt and overrun by other
enemies, became of but little account politically for several
generations, although it still possessed the Temple and was proud of its
traditions. After this great humiliation, the proud king of Judah, it
seems, became a better man; and his descendants for a hundred years
were, on the whole, worthy sovereigns, and did good in the sight of
the Lord.
Political interest now centres in the larger kingdom, called Israel.
Judah for a time passes out of sight, but is gradually enriched under
the reigns of virtuous princes, who preserved the worship of the true
God at Jerusalem. Nations, like individuals, seldom grow in real
strength except in adversity. The prosperity of Solomon undermined his
throne. The little kingdom of Judah lasted one hundred and fifty years
after the ten tribes were carried into captivity.
Yet what remained of power and wealth among the Jews after the rebellion
under Jeroboam, was to be found in the northern kingdom. It was still
exceedingly fertile, and was well watered. It was "a land of brooks of
water, of fountains, of barley and wheat, of vines and fig-trees, of
olives and honey." It boasted of numerous fortified cities, and had a
population as dense as that in Belgium at the present time. The nobles
were powerful and warlike; while the army was well organized, and
included chariots and horses. The monarchy was purely military, and was
surrounded by powerful nations, whom it was necessary to conciliate.
Among these were the Phoenicians on the west, and the Syrians on the
north. From the first the army was the great power of the state, its
chief being more powerful than Joab was in the undivided kingdom of
David. He stood next after the king, and was the channel of royal favor.
The history of the northern kingdom which has come down to us is very
meagre. From Jeroboam to Ahab--a period of sixty-six years--there were
six kings, three of whom were assassinated. There was a succession of
usurpers, who destroyed all the members of the preceding reigning
family. They were all idolaters, violent and bloodthirsty men, whom the
army had raised to the throne. No one of them was marked by signal
ability, unless it were Omri, who built the city of Samaria on a high
hill, and so strongly fortified it that it remained the capital until
the fall of the kingdom. He also made a close alliance with Tyre, the
great centre of commerce in that age, and one of the wealthiest cities
of antiquity. To cement this political alliance, Omri married his son
Ahab--the heir-apparent to the throne--to a daughter of the Tyrian king,
afterward so infamous as a religious fanatic and persecutor, under the
name of Jezebel,--one of the worst women in history.
On the accession of Ahab, nine hundred and nineteen years before Christ,
the kingdom of Israel was rapidly tending to idolatry. Jeroboam had set
up golden calves chiefly for a political end, but Ahab built a temple to
Baal, the sun-god, the chief divinity of the Phoenicians, and erected an
altar therein for pagan sacrifices, thus abjuring Jehovah as the Supreme
and only God. The established religion was now idolatry in its worst
form; it was simply the worship of the powers of Nature, under the
auspices of a foreign woman stained with every vice, who controlled her
husband. For Ahab himself was bad enough, but he was not the wickedest
of the monarchs of Israel, nor was he insignificant as a man. It was his
misfortune to be completely under the influence of his Phoenician bride,
as many stronger men than he have been enslaved by women before and
since his day. Ahab, bad as he was, was brave in battle, patriotic in
his aims, and magnificent in his tastes. To please his wife he added to
his royal residences a summer retreat called Jezreel, which was of
great beauty, and contained within its grounds an ivory palace of great
splendor. Amid its gardens and parks and all the luxuries then known,
the youthful monarch with his queen and attendant nobles abandoned
themselves to pleasure and folly, as Oriental monarchs are wont to do.
It would seem that he was unusually licentious in his habits, since he
left seventy children,--afterward to be massacred.