The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-05-05
Sermon.
THE GLORY OF SOLOMON.
BY PROF. DAVID SWING.


ike one of these. MATTHEW vi. 81
IL will perhaps be pleasure to many
of 20 to-day to leave for the hour the
prac cal lessons of our time and those
pressing duties which are taxing not
only the labors of mind and hand, but
the sympathies of the heart. AS pub
lie men feel compelled to break away
at intervals from their tasks and spend
days or hours where there are few
traces of man, and to which seclu-
sion the world with all its noise and
care, and even beauty is almost invisi-
BILE, so may we all as students of Chris
tianity and all morals and all duty find
some recuperative rest in running away
from the reforms and wrongs and rights
and pain which surround US, and in
rambling about or sitting down in med
itation in the once splendid, but now
lonely Kingdom of Solomon. Not only
should great mental laborers betake
themselves to the woods in a literal
fight, but we commoner people should
not fail to 90 spiritually from the tasks
which are taxing mind and spirit and
find in old literature or in old history a
scene which shall carry us away from
the WORKOUT side of self. Not all rest
comes from the transportation Of the
body to some remote and new place on
continent or in the isles of the sea !;
a cheaper and often better rest may
be found in the transfer of soul from
present to past, from work to play, from
studio to garden, from poetry to prose.
Furthermore, those of us who were
reared amid Bible studies formed in
youth strange conceptions of the per-
sons, places, and events which then
came into the field Of vision. AS the
home deserted in early childhood al
ways towers up like great castle when
it is seen in dim memory, its roof SEEM
ing sky high, its wall like piece Of
Roman masonry, its hallway baronial,
so the personages of the Old Testament
stand up before us in lofty stature,
Abraham, Moses, Joshua all seeming
higher than common men and having
snow white boards moving gently in a
wind forever vernal. Therefore, must
we go back in later years and learn the
truer story. From such revisiting come
rest and information.
The Palestine of Solomon thus ever
seen ceases to be continent, land
like that of North America, and, as we
revisit it, it retreats into such confines
as those which contain Maine or Mary
land. The square miles of Palestine
are II 900, those of Maryland 200.
1t was in nation as large as Maryland
the glory of the Hebrew kings expressed
itself. The railway which now leads
from the sea to Jerusalem is probably
fifty miles long so near is the heart OF
that old empire to its border. Some
historians say that in the time of this
magnificent Hebrew King there were
only 100000 Hebrews, and that the
Capital city could count as popula-
ton only 10000 or 10000. Cicero, in
some of his writings, makes light OF
the Jews for having such large god
and such small country-a satire ia
ken up by the French inidels in the
last century. The houses were gener-
ally of wood, and were small and poor.
And vet the satire of Cicero and Vol
taire was ill-timed, for human great
ness and power have sustained no i'm
portant relations to the square miles
of land and to the millions of souls
which may belong to the nation under
review. Edinburgh, Scotland, may in
mental worth surpass the domain OF
China; there was not long ago time
when Boston possessed more greatness
than there was in all the remaining
part of the continents of North and
South America. The god of Massa-
chusetts had a better kingdom than
that belonging to any deity of the two
hemispheres. When Athens was the
light of Greece and of the world, it had
a population of only 100000, the small
ness of the city being fully atoned for
by the quality of its citizens. All OF
Greece, including the Ionian Islands,
equaled only one-half the area there is
in the State of Ohio, and yet that little
peninsula intellectually ruled the hui
man family, and still deeply affects the
myriads who now live in Europe and
America. Out of that small republic
poured that kind of wealth which can
multiply with the multiplying people,
and which is free from the injury of de-
cav. When ST. 900 in money descends
to 100 heirs, the heirs receive only $40
each, but when a thousand dollars in
philosophy, or art, or language, or poetry
descends to a hundred near relatives,
each relative by magic of mathema-
tics inherits the whole amount. The
material property of Socrates and HON.
er went to their families in infinitesi-
NAL quantities, and in generation it
wholly disappeared, but their thoughts
i'll morals and poetry went to the hui
man race, and, although $500 years
have passed, these estates are still un-
loading vast fortunes to the far off de-