CHAPTER XXXI.

THE SOUL'S BEST FOR GOD.

"All the drinking vessels of King Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold none were of silver; it was not anything accounted of in the days of Solomon."-2 CHRONICLES ix. 20.

"The question is not between God's house and His poor: it is not between God's house and His Gospel. It is between God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colours on our floors ? no frescoed fancies on our roofs ? no niched statuary in our corridors? no gilded furniture in our chambers? no costly stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of these been offered."J. RUSKIN.

"I will not feed on doing great tasks ill,
Dull the world's sense with mediocrity,
And live by trash that smothers excellence."

G. ELIOT.

"There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers."SENECA.

"When you grind your corn, give not the flour to the devil and the bran to God."-ANON.

IN the days of Solomon the glory of the kingdom of Israel culminated. The great and wonderful promises that had been made to Abraham when

he was yet a wanderer and a stranger in a strange land, old and childless, without so much ground of his own as to set his foot on, these promises were fulfilled in the peaceful, golden reign of Solomon. The kingdom, which had begun obscurely with Saul, had now gathered strength and grandeur, so that it ranked with the first-rate kingdoms of the earth. The kings of the ancient monarchy of Egypt and of the growing and enormous Babylon were treated with by Solomon on equal terms; his dominion extended to the frontiers of both; his ships sailed on every sea and poured the wealth of the world into his capital. Jerusalem was then probably the finest city in the world; and even in the far-off corners of his empire, in the midst of the pathless desert, the mighty masses of Baalbec and Tadmor told distant nations the majesty and greatness of Solomon; so that even to this day the people of the East, who have never seen the Old Testament, know well the name of Solomon, and have endless legends of his greatness and wisdom and unapproachable glory. With immense wealth, resistless energy, profound wisdom, and, above all, with the special protection and favour of God, Solomon raised his kingdom to the summit of earthly greatness, so that he became the admiration, or the envy, or the terror of all nations; "for King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom. And all the earth sought the face of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God

had put in his heart; and he had peace on all sides round about him; and he made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance; and Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. And the people were many as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry.'

And while the general routine of his kingdom was on this grand and majestic scale, every detail of his court and every particular of his complex empire seems to have received the impress of his skill and the sumptuous prodigality of his taste. The arms and armour of his guard, the furniture of his palace, the roads and the water-courses of the city, the details of his summer palace in Lebanon, everything that was his was grand, costly, the finest and best that money and skill and taste could produce; and everywhere the king himself was the chief mover, the mainspring of all this complicated and beautiful machinery, the one authority that called into existence and guided and directed all this wondrous result of the world's best and most beautiful. The Queen of Sheba seems to have specially marvelled at the thoroughness of the greatness of Solomon, that all his work was perfect, that nothing was beneath his notice, and that nothing ever satisfied him but the very best thing of the kind that could be procured. "All

the drinking vessels of King Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold: none were of silver; it was not anything accounted of in the days of Solomon."

Such, then, was the general character of Solomon's kingdom as recorded for us by the sacred historian. But why was all this handed down to us? Is it bare history of the past, curious, interesting, wonderful, but now past and gone and done with?

The old Christian writers delighted to find a second meaning beneath the surface of dry historical details; they claimed a mystical and perpetual application in these transient old-world circumstances which have been so carefully preserved for us. They sought and believed they found Christ, or His Church, or the life of the Christian soul, or all these together, in the pages of the Old Testament. Is there anything of the kind here?

"The days of Solomon "-what are they? Are they not these days of ours, and no other? Solomon, the son of David, the prince of peace, the king of God's chosen people, we know who this is for us; "a greater than Solomon is here." Solomon is the type, and Christ, the Son of David, is the everlasting and glorious antitype. Solomon reigned in his father's lifetime, and to Christ His Father has committed the kingdoms of this world. Christ is our King, and all the rules of His king

dom demand, and will be satisfied with nothing but our best. All must be gold; All must be gold; "silver is not anything accounted of" in these days of the Look at the Gospels; read "Be ye perfect, as your

greater than Solomon. the words of Christ: Father in heaven is perfect; a perfect model in Christ of a perfect law in God; the best, or nothing; pure gold, silver useless, "not anything accounted of!"* It must be God altogether or not at all; gold, all gold, pure gold, solid goldnot even that which is overlaid with gold, such are the vessels of honour in the Great King's court. The world is quite satisfied with gilt; the outside is strictly, severely, of necessity gold, but the inside may be anything we like. But "our God is a consuming fire;" He sits Himself as a Refiner; pure gold, solid gold alone will bear his scrutiny; the fire will try every man's work.†

Only let us remember this for our consolation, lest, knowing what we are, we despair and think that for us God's service is impossible. The quality of the gold is indeed absolutely and unalterably regulated, but the quantity is not invariable.

* "Perfection is the Christian's unattainable yet necessary aim and standard. Christian life is like those problems in mathe. matics which can never exactly be worked out, but only approximated to by series. You may labour on for years and never reach it; yet your labour is not in vain; every figure you add makes the fraction nearer the sum."-F. W. Robertson.

"What is the greatest and best that you would desire to realize? If God's highest is not your highest, you are an idolater. The Name that is above every name is not the name of your God."--F. W. Robertson.