God threatens that if they will not keep his commandments, and if they go and serve other gods, and thereby apostatize from him, then Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people; and when people look at the ruins of the temple, and ask, Why hath God done this? they shall receive the answer that this people rejected him, and therefore they suffered. Now, what does this teach us? That the safety of a land is in its moral, its spiritual, and its Christian character. All the battalions of Alexander, and Cæsar, and Napoleon combined, cannot shelter a land that is undutiful to God, untrue to its obligations, and that lives in sin before him. And on the other hand, let a land love God and honour him; let its people do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with him; and God will protect that land, and preserve it, and open out deliverances for it, in ways and by means the most unexpected, but thereby more demonstrative of their origin and birth in him.

Then we read in the conclusion of the chapter that Solomon, like an honest man, paid Hiram what he had stipulated to give him; and he also gave him certain cities in the land of Galilee. But Hiram seems to have been a calculating man of business, and never to have done anything without well weighing in his mind what it was worth. He saw that the cities that Solomon gave him were in Galilee; they were not fitted for his purpose; he was more of a sailor than an agriculturist; more of a commercial man than anything else; and as these cities were not near the sea coast he preferred not to have them; and, therefore, he called them the land of Cabul; that is, contemptible or worthless; and did not thank Solomon for them. The only cities

of use to him would have been cities placed near or by the mouths of great harbours or great rivers; and if Solomon had given him these he would have called them by a very different and more musical name.

We then read that Solomon made a navy of ships; and went to Ophir, supposed to be the East Indies; and that he got gold from there. In fact, during his reign it is supposed that much of India was visited by the ships of Tyre and Sidon; and the gold he received from its abundance must have been taken from some such land as that in which gold is now found in so great quantity.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

CHAPTER X.

ADVANCEMENT AND DECAY.

SOLOMON A TYPE.

THE VISIT OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. BOOK OF PROVERBS. IMPRESSIONS ON THE QUEEN. CHRIST'S GLORY. HIRAM'S EXPORTS.

We now arrive at that period in the history of this most illustrious monarch when his state, and pomp, and splendour, attained their culminating greatness. It is after this that his descent in character, in tone, in influence, and in power begins. One has so often noticed in the history of kings and rulers, and emperors and nations; that like the sun himself in his daily march, they seem to advance from the grey dawn, attain a meridian glory, and rest awhile as it were in

the zenith, and then gradually sink into decadence and decay; only it is too true that unlike the sun, their setting in the west is never to rise again in the beautiful and enduring east. We must also recollect that Solomon attained all that splendour of which each item is minutely detailed, in order to be a type, as he is so set forth in Scripture, of him who is the true Solomon; that is the true perfect, and the true peaceful, the Prince of Peace, the Prince of the Kings of the earth. And we shall find that our blessed Lord uses this very thought when he says, "The queen of the south shall rise up in judgment against this generation, and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth, to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here.”

This Queen of Sheba seems to have been as argued by some an Ethiopian queen, as thought by others an Arabian queen. Josephus calls her Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia. According to an Ethiopian writer it was by one of her merchants that she heard of Solomon. Hers was a country celebrated for its frankincense, gold, and precious stones. It is quite plain that the fame of Solomon, not merely his religious knowledge, but his secular and scientific knowledge, had spread over all lands, and had excited an intense admiration in the breasts of royal as well as scientific men. And when the Queen of Sheba heard of it, she resolved to come and see and hear this prodigy of the age-this phenomenon among kings-this rare instance of regal grandeur and of literary excellence; and to test his attainments by putting to him very difficult questions. This was a common course, eastern nations delight in puzzles, they delight also in proverbs, in witty aphor

isns, in expressions that are pregnant with precious thought, couched in few and pithy words. And if we open the Book of Proverbs, that book so much negleted, just because so little known; for in all specimens of condensed, practical, every-day wisdom, which I lave seen, there is nothing to approach the Proverbs of Solomon. In the Book of Proverbs we have probably a specimen of the answers that he gave to the Queen of Sheba; and it may in some degree be a solut.on of much that seems abrupt in that book if we take it as containing a series of answers to hard and difficult questions that this talented and truly enlightened Queen put to him. She told him all that was in her heart: and she brought, according to eastern custom, a present in her hand, before she ventured to ask him for information on the questions that puzzled and perplexed her. Solomon, with real condescension, did not think it beneath his dignity or his duty to lay aside questions of internal government or discussions, merely political, and to instruct this royal pupil in what related to science, to literature, to religion, to the present, the future, and the past. When the Queen of Sheba had seen his wisdom, so happy, so full, so inexhaustible; when she had seen the magnificent palace he had built, worthy of such a royal inmate when she had seen his table with all its luxuries his servants, and his political ministers, and their apparel, and his cup-bearers that poured out the wine and presented it to him; and his ascent-some steps of great magnificence-by which he went up to the house of the Lord; there "was no more spirit in her." I have read somewhere that in India some of the native princes have steps by which the king alone

enters the temple, and in some instances by which the king, or the ruler alone enters into the rooms of his own house, being consecrated for the footsteps of royalty. This seems to have been the case with Solomon. She was so struck when she contrasted this magnificent palace, this gorgeous furniture, this rich wisdom, this wonderful teaching, with her own barbarous and semisavage state as the ruler of Bedouins, and wandering Arabs, and unsettled and restless tribes, whose clothing by day was their only covering by night-that there was no more spirit in her; that is, she was overwhelmed; she had never seen such contrast to her ɔwn experience in her whole life before. At length she made a very proper remark to the King. "I heard a great deal about your splendour, I heard the report of your wisdom, but I had no idea that the one was so magnificent and the other so inexhaustible; and now I see with mine own eyes and hear with mine own ears, and I am more than astonished at all I have seen." May there not be here a lesson on a loftier level? The woman of Samaria heard of Christ's excellence and wisdom, and was struck with what she heard. When she returned and told her countrymen, and when they came, and saw, and heard, they said they needed not now her testimony; for they had personally seen, and could now admire and adore. May it not be so with many of us? When we become first acquainted with that blessed Saviour, that true Sacrifice, and discover how completely his precious blood can wash us, what sympathy he has with our sufferings; what ministry he will make to our necessities; what promises, what hopes, what joys, and what a glory, when he shall come and reign, and shine before his ancients gloriously; we