for which he soon became famous; but no incident struck his contemporaries more forcibly than the following remarkable judgment. There appeared before him two women suing for justice. Their cause was a strange one. They lived together in the same house, and had each a child of exactly the same age. One night, one of these two children 'died. Now both women laid claim to the living infant, one of them declaring that the mother of the dead child had secretly changed it in the night for her own living one while she was asleep, the other affirming as positively that the living child was hers. The people thronged, in large numbers, to the place of judgment, to hear the king's decision. Solomon, after attentively listening to both parties, called for a servant, 'Divide,' he said, 'the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.' These words were scarcely uttered, when one of the women exclaimed in agony and horror, 'Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it.' But her companion said coldly, 'Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.' Then the king answered and said, 'Give to the first woman the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is its mother.'

Similar proofs of shrewd knowledge of life and human nature, and of ready presence of mind, spread Solomon's fame far and wide; and he was declared to be wiser than all others, even than all the children of the East, wiser than all the wise men of Egypt.' We are told that he was the author of three thousand proverbs, and of a thousand and five songs. Besides being a philosopher and a poet, he was well versed in the sciences of botany and of natural history: he could tell of all trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; and he could tell of beasts, of fowl, of creeping things, and of fish.' Nothing was too large, and nothing

EE

too trifling for his comprehensive mind and his all-embracing interest.

Under his rule, the empire was singularly powerful and prosperous. It comprised all the territories from the river of Egypt eastward and northward up to the Euphrates. It was disturbed neither by harassing warfare nor internal feud. It was acknowledged and respected by neighbouring kings and chieftains, who sought the great monarch's favour by presents and homage. Solomon himself prudently established friendly relations with other countries both near and distant. Egypt supplied him with horses, till then a very rare luxury in Palestine. From Arabia the caravans came laden with balms and spices for the royal palace. Ships sailed once in every three years westward to the seaport Tarshish or Tartessus in Spain, whose mines probably furnished him with stores of silver, or they ventured eastward to the coasts of Ophir or India, which yielded treasures of gold. Apes, peacocks, elephants' tusks, and other objects of curiosity or usefulness were brought home in abundance by enterprising mariners and merchants. Thus, for the first time, the wonders of remote countries broke upon the astonished and delighted eyes of the Israelites; and for the first time an intercourse was organised between the eastern world and the west, the birthplace of civilising arts.

Solomon's own royal state in Jerusalem was of unequalled splendour. His vast household demanded for daily consumption thirty measures of fine flour and sixty measures of other meal; ten fat oxen, twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred sheep, besides harts, and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl. Twelve officers had the care over the supply of these provisions, each of them for one month in the year. They were great chieftains, who deserved the name of princes. The royal stables numbered 40,000 horses and 12,000 horsemen,

while a large number of men were appointed to supply the necessary food. The vast army was commanded by the vigilant Benaiah. Zadok and Abiathar were the chief priests of the Sanctuary. But this unsurpassed pomp of the court was not burdensome or impoverishing to the land; for, says the Bible, Judah and Israel were numerous as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry. . . . And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.'

6

101. THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE.

[1 KINGS V.-VII.; 2 CHRON. II.—V.]

Splendid as were the life and habits of the young monarch, all his ideas of magnificence and grandeur were to be concentrated in the building of the Temple, the crowning act of his reign. The man of peace was permitted to erect a House for the Lord; a place for permanent and well-established worship. The site was chosen on the top of Mount Moriah, there where Abraham had once proved his readiness to offer up his dearly beloved son in obedience to God's command, and where more recently the angel of the Lord had stayed the pestilence and appeared to David on the threshingfloor of Araunah.

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the exodus from Egypt, in the fourth year of king Solomon's reign, the great work was begun. The king made a treaty of alliance with Hiram king of Tyre, who had entertained a sincere friendship for David, and who now extended it to his son. He rejoiced sincerely when he was informed of Solomon's project. He readily agreed to supply him with cedar-trees felled on Mount Lebanon, and to float them down along the seashore to Joppa, the

port nearest to Jerusalem. He was, in return, annually to receive from Solomon a considerable quantity of corn and oil. Tyrian and Hebrew workmen were jointly to be employed in large numbers, all of them to be paid by the Hebrew king. Cedars and cypresses were cut down in abundance. Stone and marble quarries freely yielded their treasures. Ships set sail eastward and westward, to bring back the choicest materials for the adornment of the House of God.

For seven years the work was unweariedly pursued. Energy went hand in hand with genius and skill. The Temple rose as if by magic. The sound of no hammer or any other iron tool was heard on the spot. The stones were cut to the required shape in their quarries, and then brought up to Moriah, there to be fitted together with nice precision. The Hebrew historian dwells with delight upon the description of this splendid undertaking which was so dear to the heart of every Israelite. He gives all the details with minute accuracy. Let it suffice to observe that the Temple of Solomon was built after the model of the old Tabernacle, only of far more extensive proportions; it was sixty cubits long, twenty broad, and thirty high; and of more durable and more costly materials. The large outer Court, the first chamber or the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, were all in a certain manner repetitions of the first design: for the Court contained the brazen altar of burnt-offerings and the huge brazen laver, and was a place of assemblage for the people; the Holy was adorned with the golden altar of burnt-incense, the candelabra, and the shew-bread table, and was reserved for the priests who officiated for the whole congregation; and the Holy of Holies enclosed the Ark of the Covenant with the Mercy-Seat and the mysterious Cherubim, and none was permitted to enter into it except the High-priest alone. All the parts of the house, the walls, the floor,

and the ceiling, were first covered with beams and boards of cedar, which were then overlaid with pure gold. The floor was spread over with the same precious metal. The walls all around, both from without and from within, were ornamented with carved figures of Cherubim and palmtrees and opening flowers. Round about the Temple ran a line of chambers for the use of the numerous priests, who lived or ministered within the sacred precincts. In the large outer Court the animal sacrifices were slaughtered and offered. Here the droves of sheep and the herds of oxen were led in and fastened to rings in massive stone walls. On each side of the Court were the kitchens where the sacrificial meat was prepared for the priests. Here were busily engaged the countless host of menials who took part in the duties of the Temple. The laver of brass, or the molten sea,' as it was called, which the priests used for their ablutions, rested upon twelve brazen bulls, and was capable of holding no less than two thousand measures of water. It was surrounded by ten smaller lavers of brass placed on wheels, which were richly ornamented by the skilful hand of Hiram, a Tyrian artist, the son of a Hebrew mother from the tribe of Naphtali. In front of the altar was a raised scaffold of brass, where king Solomon stood or sat when he attended the public sacrifices.

Behind the altar, the Court led into a beautiful porch, richly ornamented and decorated according to ingenious designs of Hiram. It was supported by a row of pillars, and was adorned with two gigantic columns of brass, called Jachin and Boaz, which rested upon golden pedestals, and were by Hiram carved, wreathed, and adorned with the utmost skill and delicacy. The porch was the entrance to the Holy. Folding-doors of olive-wood and a partition made by golden chains separated the Holy from the Holy of Holies. As in the Tabernacle, this most sacred and most important part of the Sanctuary was in