and tender ties.' They say moro: Hear the dead-hear some of them, who, from the abyss of eternal flames, into which they are plunged for impenitency, exhort you to re this kind of grief, that we would wish you to ours. We have taught you to shed upon their tombs tears of tenderness: hear the dead, they preach with a voice more eloquent than Have you forgotten the relations we formed, and the ties that united us? Is it with games and diversions that you lament our loss? Is it in the circles of gayety, and in public places, that you commemorate our exit?' We have exhorted you to shed upon their tomb tears of duty to yourselves. Hear the dead; they preach with a voice more eloquent than ours. They cry, Vanity of vanities. All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The world passeth away, and the lusts thereof. Surely man walketh in a vain shadow,' Eccles. i. 2; Isa. xl. 6; 1 John ii. 17; Ps. xxxix. 7. They recall to your mind the afflictions! they have endured, the troubles which assailed their mind, and the deliriums that affected their brain. They recall those objects that you may contemplate in their situation an image of your own; that you may be apprised how imperfectly qualified a man is in his last moments for recollection, and the work of his salvation. They tell you, that they once had the same health, the same strength, the same fortune, and the same honours as you; notwithstanding, the torrent which bore us away, is doing the same with you. We have exhorted you to shed upon their tombs the tears of repentance. Hear the dead; they preach with an eloquence greater than ours; they say, 'that sin has brought death into the world; death which separates the father from the son, and the son from the father; which disunites hearts the most closely attached, and dissolves the most intimate O terrific preachers, preachers of despair, may your voice break the hearts of those hearers on which our ministry is destitute of energy and effect.-Hear those dead, they speak with a voice more eloquent than ours from the depths of the abyss, from the deep caverns of hell; they cry, Who among us shall dwell with devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Ye mountains fall on us; ye hills cover us. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, when he is angry,' Isa. xxxiii. 14; Luke xxiii. 30; Heb. x. 31. Hear the father, who suffering in hell for the bad education given to the family he left on earth. Hear him by the despair of his condition; by the chains which oppress him; by the fire which devours him; and by the remorse, the torments, and the anguish which gnaw him, entreat you not to follow him to that. abyss. Hear the impure, the accomplice of your pleasure, who says, that if God had called you the first, you would have been substituted in his place, and who entreats to let your eyes become as fountains of repentant tears. This is the sort of sorrow with which we should be affected for the death of those with whom it has pleased God to connect us by the bonds of society and of nature. May it penetrate our hearts; and for ever banish the sorrow which confounds us with those who have no hope. Let us be compassionate citizens, faithful friends, tender fathers, loving all those with whom it has pleased God to unite us, and not regarding this love as a defect; but let us love our Maker with supreme affection. Let us be always ready to sacrifice to him whatever we have most dear on earth. May a glorious resurrection be the ultimatum of our requests. May the hope of obtaining it assuage all our sufferings. And may God Almighty, who has educated us in a religion so admirably adapted to support in temptation, give success to our efforts, and be the crown of our hopes; Amen. To whom be honour and glory, henceforth and for ever. ON THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.“ 1 KINGS iii. 5-14. In Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give. And Solomon said, Thou hast showed unto thy servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son te sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant Ling instead of David, my father; and I am but a little child; I know not how to go out and come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, which cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give, therefore, thy servant an understanding heart, to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people? And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast thou asked riches for thyself; nor hast asked the life of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment: Behold I have done according to thy words. Lo, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches and honour; so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days. And if thou will walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then will I lengthen thy days. WO to thee, O land, when thy king is a child! In this way has the sage expressed the calamities of states conducted by men destitute of experience. But this general maxim is not without exceptions. As we sometimes see the gayeties of youth in mature age, so we sometimes perceive in youth the gravity of sober years. There are some geniuses premature, with whom reason anticipates on years; and who, if I may so speak, on leaving the cradle, discover talents worthy of the throne. A profusion of supernatural endowments, coming to the aid of nature, exemplifies in their character the happy experience of the prophet; I have more understanding than all my teachers. I understand more than the ancients,' Ps. cxix. 99, 100. It is to this petition so judicious, and to this reply so magnificent, that we shall call your attention, after having bestowed a moment on occasion of both. It occurs in the leading words of our text. It was a divine communication, in which the place, the manner, and the subject, claim particular attention. 1. The place it was in Gibeon; not the city from which those Gibeonites derived their name, who, by having recourse to singular artifice, saved their lives, which they thought themselves unable to defend by force, or to preserve by compassion. That, I would say, the city of those Gibeonites, was a considerable place, and called in the Book of Joshua, a royal city. The other was situate on the highest mountains of Judea, distant, according to Eusebius and St. Jerome, about eight miles from Jerusalem. Here we have an illustrious proof. Solomon, in the early periods of life, formed the correctest idea of government which had ever entered the mind of the profoundest philoso- We shall not enter into geographical disphers, or the most consummate statesmen. cussions. What claims attention is, a cirAwed by the sceptre, he acknowledged the cumstance of the place where Solomon was, impotency of his arm to sway it. Of the which naturally recalls to view one of the high privilege granted of God, to ask what- weaknesses of this prince. It is remarked ever he would, he availed himself solely to at the commencement of the chapter, from ask wisdom. What an admirable choice! which we have taken our text, that'te peoHow many aged men have we seen less en- ple sacrificed in high places. The choice lightened than this youth? On the other was, probably, not exempt from superstition: hand, God honoured a petition so wise, by it is certain, at least, that idolaters usually superadding to the petitioner every other en- selected the highest mountains for the exerdowment? he gave to Solomon wisdom, and cise of their religious ceremonies. Tacitus with wisdom, glory and riches; he elevated assigns as a reason, that in those places, behim to a scale of grandeur, which no prince ing nearer the gods, they were the more likeever did, or ever shall be allowed to equal.ly to be heard. Lucian reasons much in the Saurin, placed at the Hague as first minister of the persecuted Protestants, and often attended by illustrious characters, saw it his duty to apprise them of the moral sentiments essential for an entrance on high office and extensive authority. The Abbe fauTy, in his treatise on Eloquence, though hostile to Saurin, allows this Sermon on the Wisdom of Solomon, to be one of the best specimens of his eloquence. same way, and, without a doubt, less to vindicate the custom than to expose it to contempt. God himself has forbidden it in law. stance in Solomon's life among his frailties, We have, however, classed this circumrather than his faults. Prevention for high places was much less culpable in the reign of this prince, than in the ages which followed. In those ages, the Israelites violated, by sacrificing on high places, the law which for hade any sacrifice to be offered, except in the temple of Jerusalem; whereas, in the age of which we now speak, the temple did not exist. The people sacrificed on the brazen altar, constructed by the divine command. This altar was then in Gideon, where it had been escorted with the tabernacle, as we read in the book of Chronicles. 2. The manner in which the revelation to Solomon was made, supplies a second source of reflections. It was, says the historian, in a dream. We have elsewhere remarked, that there are three sorts of dreams. Some are in the order of nature; others are in the order of providence; and a third class are of an order superior to both. I call dreams in the order of nature, those which ought merely to be regarded as the irregular flights of imagination, over which the will has lost, or partially lost, its com mand. I call dreams in the order of providence those which without deviation from the course of nature, excite certain instructive ideas, and suggest to the mind truths, to which we were not sufficiently attentive while awake. Providence sometimes directing our attention to peculiar circumstances in a way purely natural, and destitute of all claims to the supernatural, and much less to the marvellous. the high duties on which it obliged him to enter. Thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, which cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Who is able to judge this thy so great a people?' And in God's reply, mark the opposite seal, with regard to this idea of the supreme authority. III. Consider, in Solomon's request, the sentiments of his own weakness and the consciousness of his insufficiency: 1 am but as a little child, and know not how to go out, and to come in: and in God's reply, mark how highly he is delighted with humility. IV. In Solomon's request, consider the wisdom of his choice; Give, therefore, unto thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people:' and in God's reply, mark how Solomon's prayer was heard, and his wisdom crowned. Four objects, all worthy of our regard. I. Consider in Solomon's request, the recollection of mercies. It was the mercies of David, his father. Solomon made this reference as a motive to obtain the divine mercies and aids his situation required. He aspired at the blessings which God confers on the children of faithful fathers. He wished to become the object of that promise in which God stands engaged to show mercy to thousands of generations of those that love him,' Exod. xx. 6. To most of the rebukes of their prophets, they opposed this extraordinary defence: This is the first object of our discourse. The privilege of an illustrious birth, I conSome dreams, however, are of an order su- fess, is sometimes extravagantly amplified. perior to those of nature, and of providence. This kind of folly is not novel in the present It was by this sort of dreams that God re-age; it was the folly of the Hebrew nation. vealed his pleasure to the prophets: but this dispensation being altogether divine, and of which the Scriptures say little, and being impossible for the researches of the greatest philosopher to supply the silence of the Holy Ghost, we shall make no fruitless efforts farther to illustrate the manner of the revelation with which Solomon was honoured. 3. A reason very dissimilar supersedes our stopping to illustrate the subject; I would say, it has no need of illustration. God was wishful to put Solomon to the proof, by prompting him to ask whatsoever he would, and by engaging to fulfil it. Solomon's reply was worthy of the test. His sole request was for wisdom. God honoured this enlightened request; and in granting profound wisdom to his servant, he superadded riches, and glory, and long life.—It is this enlightened request, and this munificent reply, we are now to examine. We shall examine them jointly, placing, at the same time, the harmony of the one with the other, in a just and proper view. Four remarks demand attention in Solomon's request to God, and four in God's reply, 1. Consider, in Solomon's request, the recollection of past mercies: Thou hast showed unto thy servant David, my father, great mercy' and mark, in the reply, how pleasing this recollection was to God. II. Consider, in Solomon's request, the aspect under which he regarded the regal pow. He considered it solely with a view to er. *Discours Hist. tom. v. p. 181. We are Abraham's seed; we have Abraham to our father.' Matt. iii. 9. What an apology! Does an illustrious birth sanction low and grovelling sentiments: Do the virtues of our ancestors excuse us from being virtuous? And has God for ever engaged to excuse impious children, because their parents were pious? You are the children of Abraham; you have an illustrious descent; your ancestors were the models and glory of their age. Then you are the more inexcusable for being the reproach of your age; then you are the faithless depositories of the nobility with which you have been intrusted; then you have degenerated from your former grandeur: then you shall be condemned to surrender to nature a corrupted blood, which you received pure from those to whom you owe your birth. It is true, however, all things being weighed, that, in tracing a descent, it is a singular favour of Heaven to be able to cast one's eyes on a long line of illustrious ancestors. I am not about to offer incense to the idol of distinguished families; the Lord's church has more correct ideas of nobility. To be accounted noble in the sanctuary, we must give proof of virtue, and not of empty titles, which often owe their origin to the vanity, the seditions, and fawning baseness of those who display them with so much pride. To be noble in the language of our Scriptures; and to be impure, avaricious, haughty, and implacable, are different ideas. But charity, but patience, but moderation, but dignity of soul, and a certain elevation of mind, place the possessor above the world and its max ims. These are characteristics of the nobility of God's children. In this view, it is a high favour of Heaven, in tracing one's descent, to be able to cast the eye on a long line of illustrious ancestors. How often have holy men availed themselves of these motives to induce the Deity, if not to bear with the Israelites in their course of crimes, at least to pardon them after the crimes have been committed? How often have they said, in the supplications they opposed to the wrath of Heaven, O God, remember Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, thy servants! How often has God yielded to the strength of these arguments? How often has he, for the sake of the patriarchs, for the sake of David, heard prayer in behalf of their children. Let these maxims be deeply imprinted on the heart. Our own interest should be mo tive sufficient to prompt us to piety. But we should also be excited to it by the interest of our children. The recollection of our virtues is the best inheritance we can leave them after death. These virtues afford them claims to the divine favours. The good will of Heaven, is, in son e sort, entailed on families who fear the Lord. Happy the fathers, when extended on the bed of death, who can say, My children, I am about to appear before the awful tribunal, where there is no resource for poor mortals, but humility and repentance. Meanwhile, I bless God, that notwithstanding my defects, which I acknowledge with confusion of face, you will not have cause to blush on pronouncing the name of your father. I have been faithful to the truth, and have constantly walked before God, in the uprightness of my heart. Happy the children who have such a descent; I would prefer it to titles the most distinguished, to riches the most dazzling, and to offices the most lucrative. O God, thou hast showed unto thy servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart! Here is the recollection of past mercies, the recollection of which God approves, and the first object of our discourse. II. Consider, secondly, in the prayer of Solomon, the aspect under which he contemplated the regal power. He viewed it principally with regard to the high duties it imposed. Thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen; who is able to judge this thy so great a people, which cannot be numbered? The answer of God is a correspondent seal to this idea of supreme authority. And what we here say of the regal power, we apply to every other of fice of trust and dignity. A man of integrity must not view them with regard to the emoluments they produce, but with regard to the duties they impose. What is the end proposed by society on elevating certain men to high stations? Is it to augment their pride? Is it to usher them into a style of life the most extravagant? Is it to aggrandize their families by the ruin of the widow and the orphan? Is it to adore them as idols? Is it to become their slaves? Potentates and magistrates of the earth, ask those subjects to whom you are indebted for the high scale of elevation you enjoy. Ask, Why those dignities were conferred? They will say, it was to intrust you with their safety and repose; it was to procure fathers and protectors; it was to find peace and prospe rity under the shadow of your tribunals. To induce you to enter on those arduous duties, they have accompanied them with those inviting appendages which soothe the cares, and alleviate the weights of office. They have conferred titles; they have sworn obedience, and ensured revenue Entrance then on a high duty is to make a contract with the people, over whom you proceed to exercise it; it is to make a compact, by which certain duties are required on certain conditions. To require the emoluments, when the conditions of the engagements are violated, is an abominable usurpation; it is a usurpation of honour, of homage, and of revenue. I speak literally, and without even a shadow of exaggeration: a magistrate who deviates from the duties of his office, after having received the emolument, ought to come under the penal statutes, as those who take away their neighbours' goods. These statutes require restitution. Before restitution, he is liable to this anathema, Wo to him that increaseth that which is not his own, and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay; for the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it,' Hab. ii. 6. 11. Before restitution, he is unworthy of the Lord's table, and included in the curse we denounce against thieves, whom we repel from the holy Eucharist. Before restitution, he is unable to die in peace, and he is included in the list of those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God.' But into what strange reflections do these considerations involve us? What awful ideas do they excite in our minds? And what alarming consequences do they draw on certain kings?-Ye Moseses; ye Elijahs; ye John Baptists; faithful servants of the living God, and celebrated in every age of the church for your fortitude, your courage, and your zeal; vou, who know not how to temporize, nor to tremble; no, neither before Pharaoh, nor before Ahab, nor before Herod, nor before Herodias, why are you not in this pulpit? Why do you not to-day supply our place, to communicate to the subject all the energy of which it is susceptible? Be wise, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth," Ps. ii. 10. III. We have remarked, thirdly, in the prayer of Solomon, the sentiments of his own weakness; and in God's reply, the high regard testified towards humility. The character of the king whom Solomon succeeded, the arduous nature of the duties to which he was called, and the insufficiency of his age, were to him three considerations of humility. 1. The character of the king to whom he succeeded. Thou hast showed unto thy servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in the uprightness of his heart; and thou hast given him a son to sit of this prince's reign: and the style in which David addressed him on his investiture with the reins of government, sufficiently proves, that he spake not to a child. He calls him wise, and to this wisdom he confides the punishment of Joab and of Shimei. upon his throne. How dangerous to succeed plain, it ought to be placed in the first year an illustrious prince! The brilliant actions of a predecessor, are so many sentences against the faults of his successor. The people never fail to make certain oblique contrasts between the past and the present. They recollect the virtues they have attested, the happiness they have enjoyed, the prosperity with which they have been loaded, and the distinguished qualifications of the prince, whom death has recently snatched away. And if the idea of having had an illustrious predecessor is on all occasions a subject of serious consideration for him who has to follow, never had prince a juster cause to be awed than Solomon. He succeeded a man who was the model of kings, in whose person was united the wisdom of a statesman, the valour of a soldier, the experience of a marshal, the illumination of a prophet, the piety of a good man, and even the virtues of a saint of the first rank. no 2. The extent of the duties imposed on Solomon, was the second object of his diffidence. Who is able to judge this thy so great a people? Adequately to judge a great nation, a man must regard himself as more his own, but wholly devoted to the people. Ade quately to judge a great nation, a man must have a consummate knowledge of human nature, of civil society, of the laws of nature, and of the peculiar laws of the provinces over which he presides. Adequately to judge a nation, he must heve his house and his heart ever open to the solicitations of those over whom he is exalted. Adequately to judge a people, he must recollect, that a small sum of money, that a foot of land, is as much to a poor man as a city, a province, and a kingdom, are to a prince. Adequately to judge a people, he must habituate himself to the disgust excited by listening to a man who is quite full of his subject, and who imagines that the person addressed, ought to be equally impressed with its importance. Adequate. ly to judge a people, a man must be exempt from vice: nothing is more calculated to prejudice the mind against the purity of his decisions, than to see him captivated by some predominant passion. Adequately to judge a people, he must be destitute of personal respect; he must neither yield to the entreaties of those who know the way to his heart, nor be intimidated by the high tone of others, who threaten to hold up as martyrs, the persons they obstinately defend. Adequately to judge a people, a man must expand, if I may so speak, all the powers of his soul, that he may be equal to the dignity of his duty, and avoid all distraction, which on engrossing the capacity of the mind, obstruct its perception of the main object. And who is sufficient for these things?' who is able to judge this thy so great a people? 2 Cor. ii. 16. 3. The snares of youth form a third object of Solomon's fear, and a third cause of his diffidence. I am but a little child; I know not how to go out and come in. Some chronologists are of opinion, that Solomon, when he uttered these words, I am but a little child,' was only twelve years of age, which to us seems insupportable; for besides its not being proved by the event, as we shall ex Neither do we think that we can attach to these words, 'I am but a little child,' with better grace, a sense purely metaphorical, as implying nothing more than Solomon's acknowledgment of the infancy of his understanding. The opinion most probable in our apprehension (and we omit the detail of the reasons by which we are convinced of it) is, that of those who think that Solomon calls himself a little child, much in the same sense as the term is applied to Benjamin, to Joshua, and to the sons of Eli. It was, therefore, I would suppose, at the age of twenty or of twenty-six years, that Solomon saw himself called to fill the throne of the greatest kings, and to enter on those exalted duties of which we have given but an imperfect sketch. How disproportioned did the vocation seem to the age! It is then that we give scope to presumption, which has a plausible appearance, being as yet unmortifi ed by the recollection of past errors. It is then, that a jealousy of not being yet classed by others among great men, prompts a youth to place himself in that high rank. It is then that we regard counsels as so inany attacks on the authority we assume to ourselves. It is then that we oppose an untractable disposition as a barrier to the advice of a faithful friend, who would lead us to propriety of conduct. It is then, that our passions hurry us to excess, and become the arbitrators of truth and falsehood, of equity and injustice. Presumptuous youths, who make the assurance with which you aspire at the first offi ces of state, the principal ground of success, how can I better impress you with this head of my discourse, than by affirming, that the higher notions you entertain of your own sufficiency, the lower you sink at the bar of equity and reason. The more you account yourselves qualified to govern, the less you are capable of doing it. The sentiment Solomon entertained of his own weakness, was the most distinguished of his royal virtues. The profound humility with which he asked God to supply his inability, was the best disposition for obtaining the divine support. IV. We are come at length to the last, and to the great object of the history before us. Here we must show you, on the one hand, our hero preferring the requisite talents, to pomp, splendour, riches, and all that is grateful to kings; and from the vast source opened by Heaven, deriving but wisdom and understanding. We must show, on the other hand, that God, honouring a prayer so enlightened, accorded to Solomon the wisdom and understanding he had asked, and with these, riches. glory, and long life. Who can forbear being delighted with the first object, and who can sufficiently applaud the magnanimity of Solomon? Place yourselves in the situation of this prince. Imagine, for a moment, that you are the arbitrators of your own destiny, and that you hear a |