The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-05-05

at the age of eighteen. Five or ten Of
the first years may have been passed in
getting rid of royal rivals and in plan
ming temple, palaces, and the alliances
with neighboring tribes. Fifteen or
twenty years were the great buildings
in going up; thus allowing only eight
or ten years for that period over which
hangs the cloud of infdelity and ire
ligion. This cloud cannot be analysed
now because the component parts are
lost. The historians Of that day thought
their task done when they had given
the world some account of temple and
palace, plate, costumes, and music.
Then they cast cloud upon the Kings
last days and dismissed The theme.
This, then, we know-that Solomon
was less by much than our Washing
ton and our Gladstone, but he was
greater than Louis XIV, or Catherine
H., or Henry VIII, because he was
incapable of general cruelty; was true
to the kind of God he held in his mind;
was capable of study and fond of a
high literature, and was also capable
of liberation, of penitence, and of deep
piety. His many marriages were in
his time not sin, but rather virtue;
his heavy taxation of the people came
in an age when the mass of humanity
were considered as slaves and destined
to find their happiness in the splendor
of their country and their King.
The King was the agent of God, and
as the common man was to be a worm
for Gods sake, SO was the citizen to be
a worm for the Kings sake-an idea
which has not yet died away wholly
from either modern politics or religion.
What he was in all of his thoughts and
powers we know not, but in the writ
ings which have come to us he is seen as
a believer in one God, and thus one of
the lamp bearers in the night of our
common religion.
Upon his death his empire was rent in
twain. Ten tribes went after new Kings
and new ideas. They did not wish to
live the slaves Of such a centralized
magnifcence. The glory of Solomon
was beautiful thing, but it was too
costly and too useless. The mighty
display was closed. The good of Judah
found expression in Asa's long reign;
the other tribes followed the common
paths of right and wrong, war and
peace.
When Christ, a thousand years later,
was teaching in the same Palestine
which had once seen these palaces OF
art and love, luxury and gayety, and
vice, he stood there in his seamless
coat-his wrappings which contained
no purple and gold thread-and express
ed the thought that the lily growing at
his feet contained more real beauty
than was treasured up in the famous
glory of Solomon. That lily's splendol
was founded upon no wrongs done the
common people; its waters of senti-
ment were not human tears, its roots
did not exact blood from the human
heart, its pale face was not that of
poverty and death, the blossom stood
there in the most perfect simplicity,
wronging no One, meeting all, child,
man, woman, traveller, only to breathe
a wordless benediction its beauty be-
ing that Of the infinite creator. When
Christ looked down upon that flower
there was strange meeting of kindred
souls or things, for his splendor was
founded upon no wrong, no taxes, no
slaves, no tears, no blood, but upon
the greatness and equality of man, the
simplicity Of real grandeur, and upon
the moral beauty of the infinite Father.
While we thus gaze at Christ and the
wild lilies, the glory of palaces and
dishes Of solid gold fades and the true
splendor is seen to be that which in
some manner harms no one, but bless
es all, and which seems only one step
removed from the moral beau ty of God.
To our age, which see ms willing at
times, to initiate barbaric display,
come not only the lilies and the Christ
with their protest, but they are joined
by the soul of the crowned and jeweled
Hebrew, who says sadly: II have pur-
sued that path. All is vanity; all is
vanity"