he Book of Ecclesiastes which lead us to
suppose that before he died he came to himself, and was a preacher of
righteousness. This is the more charitable and humane view to take; yet
even so, his moral teachings and warnings are not imbued with the
personal contrition that endeared David's soul to God; they are
unimpassioned, cold-hearted, intellectual, impersonal. Moreover, it may
be that even in the midst of his follies he retained the perception of
moral distinctions. His will was probably enslaved, so that he had not
the power to restrain his passions, and his head may have become giddy
in his high elevation. How few men could have resisted such powerful
temptations as assailed Solomon on every side! The heart of the
Christian world cannot but feel that so gifted a man, endowed with every
intellectual attraction, who reigned for a time with so much wisdom,
who recognized Jehovah as the guide and Lord of Israel, as especially
appears at the dedication of the Temple, and who wrote such profound
lessons of moral wisdom, would not be suffered to descend to the grave
without the divine forgiveness. All that we know is that he was wise,
and favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and
fell in with the vices of Oriental kings, and lost the affections of his
people. He was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to
an abyss of shame,--a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which
all ages will lament.

In one sense Solomon left nothing to his nation but monuments of
despotic power, and trophies of a material civilization which implied
the decay of primitive virtues. He did not perpetuate his greatness; he
did not even enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom. Like Louis XIV. he
simply squandered a great inheritance. He did not leave his kingdom
morally so strong as it was under David; it was even dismembered under
his legitimate successor. The grand Temple indeed remained the pride of
every Jew, but David had bequeathed the treasures to build it. The
national resources had been wasted in palaces and in court festivities;
and although these had contributed to a material civilization,
especially the sums expended on fortresses, aqueducts, reservoirs, and
roads for the caravans, this civilization, so highly and justly prized
in our age, may--under the peculiar circumstances of the Jews, and the
end for which, by the Mosaic dispensation, they were intended to be kept
isolated--have weakene