Thy soul to heaven in holy rapture mounts,
     And joys seraphic in its bliss recounts. 
     O thou sweet singer of a favored race,
     What vast results to thy pure songs we trace! 
     How varied and how rich are all thy lays
     On Nature’s glories and Jehovah’s ways! 
     In loftiest flight thy kindling soul surveys
     The promised glories of the latter days,
     When peace and love this fallen world shall bind,
     And richest blessings all the race shall find.

SOLOMON.

THE GLORY OF THE MONARCHY.

ABOUT 993-953 B.C.

We associate with Solomon the culmination of the Jewish monarchy, and a reign of unexampled prosperity and glory.  He not only surpassed all his predecessors and successors in those things which strike the imagination as brilliant and imposing, but he had such extraordinary intellectual gifts that he has passed into history as the wisest of ancient kings, and one of the most favored of mortals.

Amid the evils which saddened the latter days of his father David, this remarkable man grew up.  His interests were protected by his mother Bathsheba, an intriguing, ambitious, and beautiful woman, and his education was directed by the prophet Nathan.  He was ten years of age when his elder brother Absalom rebelled, and a youth of fifteen to twenty when he was placed upon the throne, during the lifetime of his father and with his sanction, aided by the cabals of his mother, the connivance of the high-priest Zadok, the spiritual authority of Nathan, and the political ascendency of Benaiah, the most valiant of the captains of Israel after Joab.  He became king in a great national crisis, when unfilial rebellion had undermined the throne of David, and Adonijah, next in age to Absalom, had sought to steal the royal sceptre, supported by the veteran Joab and Abiathar, the elder high-priest.

Solomon’s first acts as monarch were to remove the great enemies of his father and the various heads of faction, not sparing even Joab, the most successful general that ever brought lustre on the Jewish arms.  With Abiathar, who died in exile, expired the last glory of the house of Eli; and with Shimei, who was slain with Adonijah, passed away the last representative of the royal family of Saul.  Soon after Solomon repaired to the heights of Gibeon, six miles from Jerusalem,—­a lofty eminence which overlooks Judaea, and where stood the Tabernacle of the Congregation, the original Tent of the Wanderings, in front of which was the brazen altar on which the young king, as a royal holocaust, offered the sacrifice of one thousand victims.  It was on the night of that sacrificial offering that, in a dream, a divine voice offered to the youthful king whatsoever his heart should crave.  He prayed for wisdom, which was granted,—­the first evidence of which was his celebrated judgment between the two women who claimed the living child, which made a powerful impression on the whole nation, and doubtless strengthened his throne.