Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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By the death of Joab and Shimei, Solomon's kingdom was established, and
the glory and power of David was carried to a still higher point of
magnificence. Supported by the prophets on the one hand and by the priests
on the other, his authority was almost unlimited. We are told that "Judah
and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating
and drinking and making merry. And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from
the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt;
they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life. And
Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and
threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the
pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallow
deer, and fatted fowl." The wars of David were ended. Solomon's was a
reign of peace. "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his
vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of
Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots,
and twelve thousand horsemen." "And God gave Solomon wisdom and
understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand
that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all
the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was
wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and
Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all nations round about."
"And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all
kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom." The great power and
wealth of the Jewish court at this period are historically verified by the
traditions still extant among the Arabs of Solomon's superhuman splendor.

The story (1 Kings iii. 5) of Solomon's dream, in which he chose an
understanding heart and wisdom, rather than riches and honor, reminds us
of the choice of Hercules. It is not unlikely that he had such a dream, it
is quite probable that he always preferred wisdom to anything else, and it
is certain that his wisdom came from God. This is the only connection we
can trace between the dream and its fulfilment.

Solomon inaugurated a new policy by entering into alliances and making
treaties with his powerful neighbors. He formed an alliance with the king
of Egypt, and married his daughter. He also made a treaty of commerce and
friendship with the king of Tyre on the north, and procured from him cedar
with which to build the Temple and his own palace. He received an embassy
also from the queen of Sheba, who resided in the south of Arabia. By means
of the Tyrian ships he traded to the west as far as the coasts of Spain
and Africa, and his own vessels made a coasting voyage of three years'
duration to Tarshish, from which they brought ivory, gold, silver, apes,
and peacocks. This voyage seems to have been through the Red Sea to
India.[359] He also traded in Asia, overland, with caravans. And for their
accommodation and defence he built Tadmor in the desert (afterward called
Palmyra), as a great stopping-place. This city in later days became famous
as the capital of Zenobia, and the remains of the Temple of the Sun,
standing by itself in the midst of the Great Desert, are among the most
interesting ruins in the world.[360]

The great work of Solomon was building the Temple at Jerusalem in the
year B.C. 1005. This Temple was destroyed, and rebuilt by Nehemiah B.C.
445. It was rebuilt by Herod B.C. 17. Little remains from the time of
Solomon, except some stones in the walls of the substructions; and the
mosque of Omar now stands on the old foundation. No building of antiquity
so much resembles the Temple of Solomon as the palace of Darius at
Persepolis. In both buildings the porch opened into the large hall, both
had small chambers on the side, square masses on both sides of the porch,
and the same form of pillars. The parts of Solomon's Temple were, first, a
porch thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep; second a large hall sixty by
thirty; and then the holy of holies, which was thirty feet cube. The whole
external dimensions of the building were only sixty feet by one hundred
and twenty, or less than many an ordinary parish church. The explanation
is that it was copied from the Tabernacle, which was a small building, and
was necessarily somewhat related to it in size. The walls were of stone,
on extensive stone foundations. Inside it was lined with cedar, with
floors of cypress, highly ornamented with carvings and gold. The brass
work consisted of two ornamented pillars called Jachin and Boaz, a brazen
tank supported by twelve brass oxen, and ten baths of brass, ornamented
with figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim.

The Book of Kings says of Solomon (1 Kings iv. 32) that "he spake three
thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of
trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that
springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl and of
creeping things, and of fishes." He was, according to this account, a
voluminous writer on natural history, as well as an eminent poet and
moralist. Of all his compositions there remains but one, the Book of
Proverbs, which was probably in great part composed by him. It is true
that three books in the Old Testament bear his name,--Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But of these Ecclesiastes was
probably written afterward, and though the Song of Songs may have been
written by Solomon, it was probably the work of another, living at or
near his time.

But of the Book of Proverbs there cannot be much doubt. It contains some
of the three thousand of which Solomon was the reputed author. It shows
his style of mind very clearly,--the cool understanding, the calculating
prudence, the continual reference to results, knowledge of the world as
distinguished from knowledge of human nature, or of individual character.
The Book of Proverbs contains little heroism or poetry, few large ideas,
not much enthusiasm or sentiment. It is emphatically a book of wisdom. It
has good, hard, practical sense. It is the "Poor Richard's Almanac" of
Hebrew literature. We can conceive of King Solomon and Benjamin Franklin
consulting together, and comparing notes of their observations on human
life, with much mutual satisfaction. It is curious to meet with such a
thoroughly Western intellect, a thousand years before Christ, on the
throne of the heroic David.

Among these proverbs there are many of a kindly character. Some are
semi-Christian in their wise benevolence. Many show great shrewdness of
observation, and have an epigrammatic wit. We will give examples of each
kind:--

PROVERBS HAVING A SEMI-CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.

"If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread;
If thirsty, give him water to drink,
For thou wilt heap coals of fire on his head,
And Jehovah will reward thee."

"To deliver those that are dragged to death,
Those that totter to the slaughter,
Spare thyself not.
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not,
Doth not He that weighs the heart observe it?
Yea, He that keeps thy soul knows it.
And He will render to every man according to his works."

"Put not thyself forth in the presence of the king,
Nor station thyself in the place of great men.
Far better it is that one should say to thee,
Come up hither!
Than that he should put thee in a lower place,
In the presence of the prince."

"The lip of truth shall be established forever,
But the tongue of falsehood is but for a moment."

PROVERBS SHOWING SHREWDNESS OF OBSERVATION.

"As one that takes a dog by the ears,
So is he that passing by becomes enraged on account of another's
quarrel."

"Where there is no wood the fire goes out;
So where there is no talebearer contention ceases."

"The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is servant to the lender."

"The slothful man says, There is a lion without,
I shall be slain in the streets."

"A reproof penetrates deeper into a wise man
Than a hundred stripes into a fool."

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

"The way of transgressors is hard."

"There is that scatters, and yet increases."

"It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer,
But when he goeth his way then he boasteth."

PROVERBS WITTILY EXPRESSED.

"The legs of a lame man are not equal,
So is a proverb in the mouth of fools."[361]

"As a thorn runs into the hand of a drunkard,
So is a proverb in the mouth of a fool."[362]

"As clouds and wind without rain,
So is a man who boasts falsely of giving."

"A soft tongue breaks bones."

"As vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes,
So is the sluggard to him that sends him."

"The destruction of the poor is their poverty."

"A merry heart is a good medicine."

But what are human wisdom and glory? It seems that Solomon was to
illustrate its emptiness. See the king, in his old age, sinking into
idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the
moral of his own proverbs. He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand
the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it. This prudent
and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all
the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court. What a
contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34
and the same king in his degenerate old age!

It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of
Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story. With marvellous
penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and
paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful
darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only
sphere.

Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly
darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.

These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.

The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and
charm.

The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly
knowledge,--Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.

And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old
age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up. But though so sad
and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come.
Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking
out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a
despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it. It
describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited
worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.

The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing
new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving
in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the
world.[363] It declares that _work_ amounts to nothing, for one cannot do
any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces
sorrow; that pleasure satiates.[364] Knowledge has only this advantage
over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does
not make them better, and the end of all is despair.[365] Sensual pleasure
is the only good.[366] Fate and necessity rule all things. Good and evil
both come at their appointed time. Men are cheated and do not see the
nullity of things, because they have the world in their heart, and are
absorbed in the present moment.[367]

Men are only a higher class of beasts. They die like beasts, and have no
hereafter.[368]

In the fourth chapter the writer goes more deeply into this pessimism. He
says that to die is better than to live, and better still never to have
been born. A fool is better than a wise man, because he does nothing and
cares for nothing.[369]

Success is bad, progress is an evil; for these take us away from others,
and leave us lonely, because above them and hated by them.[370]

Worship is idle. Do not offer the sacrifice of fools, but stop when you
are going to the Temple, and return. Do not pray. It is of no use. God
does not hear you. Dreams do not come from God, but from what you were
doing before you went to sleep. Eat and drink, that is the best.[371] All
men go as they come.

So the dreary statement proceeds. Men are born for no end, and go no one
can tell where. Live a thousand years, it all comes to the same thing. Who
can tell what is good for a man in this shadowy, empty life?[372]

It is better to look on death than on life, wiser to be sad than to be
cheerful. If you say, "There _have been_ good times in the past," do not
be too sure of that. If you say, "We can be good, at least, if we cannot
be happy," there is such a thing as being _too_ good, and cheating
yourself out of pleasure.[373]

Women are worse than men. You may find one good man among a thousand, but
not one good woman.[374]

It is best to be on the right side of the powers that be, for they can do
what they please. Speedy and certain punishment alone can keep men from
doing evil. The same thing happens to the good and to the wicked. All
things come alike to all. This life is, in short, an inexplicable puzzle.
The perpetual refrain is, eat, drink, and be merry.[375]

It is best to do what you can, and think nothing about it. Cast your bread
on the waters, very likely you will get it again. Sow your seed either in
the morning or at night; it makes no difference.[376]

Death is coming to all. All is vanity. I continue to preach, because I see
the truth, and may as well say it, though there is no end to talking and
writing. You may sum up all wisdom in six words: "Fear God and keep his
commandments."[377]

The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches a great truth in an unexampled strain of
pathetic eloquence. It teaches what a black scepticism descends on the
wisest, most fortunate, most favored of mankind, when he looks only to
this world and its joys. It could, however, only have been written by one
who had gone through this dreadful experience. The intellect alone never
sounded such depths as these. Moreover, it could hardly have been written
unless in a time when such scepticism prevailed, nor by one who, having
lived it all, had not also lived _through_ it all, and found the cure for
this misery in pure unselfish obedience to truth and right. It seems,
therefore, like a Book of Confessions, or the Record of an Experience,
and as such well deserves its place in the Bible and Jewish literature.

The Book of Job is a still more wonderful production, but in a wholly
different tone. It is full of manly faith in truth and right. It has no
jot of scepticism in it. It is a noble protest against all hypocrisies and
all shams. Job does not know why he is afflicted, but he will never
confess that he is a sinner till he sees it. The Pharisaic friends tell
him his sufferings are judgments for his sins, and advise him to admit it
to be so. But Job refuses, and declares he will utter no "words of wind"
to the Almighty. The grandest thought is here expressed in the noblest
language which the human tongue has ever uttered.

Sec. 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as the Hope of a spiritual and universal
Kingdom of God.

Before we proceed to examine the prophetic writings of the Old Testament,
it is desirable to make some remarks upon prophecy in general, and on the
character of the Hebrew prophets.

Prophecy in general is a modification of inspiration. Inspiration is
sight, or rather it is insight. _All_ our knowledge comes to us through
the intellectual power which may be called sight, which is of two
kinds,--the sight of external things, or outsight; and the sight of
internal things, which is insight, or intuition. The senses constitute the
organization by which we see external things; consciousness is the
organization by which we perceive internal things. Now the organs of sense
are the same in kind, but differ in degree in all men. All human beings,
as such, have the power of perceiving an external world, by means of the
five senses. But though all have these five senses, all do not perceive
the same external phenomena by means of them. For, in the first place,
their senses differ in degrees of power. Some men's eyes are telescopic,
some microscopic, and some are blind. Some men can but partially
distinguish colors, others not at all. Some have acute hearing, others
are deaf. And secondly, what men perceive through the senses differs
according to what is about them. A man living in China cannot see Mont
Blanc or the city of New York; a man on the other side of the moon can
never see the earth. A man living in the year 1871 cannot see Alexander
the Great or the Apostle Paul. And thirdly, two persons may be looking at
the same thing, and with senses of the same degree of power, and yet one
may be able to see what the other is not able to see. Three men, one a
geologist, one a botanist, and one a painter, may look at the same
landscape, and one will see the stratification, the second will see the
flora, and the third the picturesque qualities of the scene. As regards
outsight then, though men in general have the same senses to see with,
what they see depends (1) on their quality of sense, (2) on their position
in space and time, (3) and on their state of mental culture.

That which is true of the perception of external phenomena is also true of
the perception of internal things.

Insight, or intuition, has the same limitations as outsight. These are (1)
the quality of the faculty of intuition; (2) the inward circumstances or
position of the soul; (3) the soul's culture or development. Those who
deny the existence of an intuitive faculty, teaching that all knowledge
comes from without through the senses, sometimes say that if there were
such a faculty as intuition, men would all possess intuitively the same
knowledge of moral and spiritual truth. They might as well say that, as
all men have eyes, all must see the same external objects.

All men have more or less of the intuitive faculty, but some have much
more than others. Those who have the most are called, by way of eminence,
inspired men. But among these there is a difference as regards the objects
which are presented by God, in the order of his providence, to their
intuitive faculty. Some he places inwardly among visions of beauty, and
they are inspired poets and artists. Others he places inwardly amid
visions of temporal and human life, and they become inspired discoverers
and inventors. And others he places amid visions of religious truth, and
they are inspired prophets, lawgivers, and evangelists. But these again
differ in their own spiritual culture and growth. Moses and the Apostle
Paul were both inspired men, but the Apostle Paul saw truths which Moses
did not see, because the Apostle Paul had reached a higher degree of
spiritual culture. Christ alone possessed the fulness of spiritual
inspiration, because he alone had attained the fulness of spiritual life.

Now the inspired man may look inwardly either at the past, the present, or
the future. If he look at the past he is an inspired historian; if at the
present, an inspired lawgiver, or religious teacher; if at the future, an
inspired prophet. The inspired faculty may be the same, and the difference
may be in the object inwardly present to its contemplation. The seer may
look from things past to things present, from things present to things to
come, and his inspiration be the same. He fixes his mind on the past, and
it grows clear before him, and he sees how events were and what they mean.
He looks at the present, and sees how things ought to be. He looks at the
future, and sees how things shall be.

The Prophets of the Old Testament were not, as is commonly supposed, men
who only uttered predictions of the future. They were men of action more
than of contemplation. Strange as it may seem to us, who are accustomed to
consider their office as confined to religious prediction, their chief
duty was that of active politicians. They mixed religion and politics.
They interfered with public measures, rebuked the despotism of the kings
and the political errors of the people. Moreover, they were the
constitutional lawyers and publicists of the Hebrews, inspired to look
backward and explain the meaning of the Mosaic law as well as to look
forward to its spiritual development in the reign of the Messiah.
Prediction, therefore, of future events, was a very small part of the work
of the Prophets. Their main duty was to warn, rebuke, teach, exhort, and
encourage.

The Hebrew prophets were under the law. They were loyal to Moses and to
his institutions. But it was to the spirit rather than to the letter, the
idea rather than the form. They differed from the priests in preferring
the moral part of the law to the ceremonial. They were great reformers in
bringing back the people from external formalism to vital obedience. They
constantly made the ceremonial part of the law subservient to the moral
part of the law. Thus Samuel said to Saul: "Hath the Lord as great delight
in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of
rams." And so afterward Isaiah declared in the name of the Lord, that the
sacrifices of a wicked people were vain, and their incense an abomination.

We read of the schools of the Prophets, where they studied the law of
Moses, and were taught the duties of their office. In these schools music
was made use of as a medium of inspiration.

But the office of a prophet was not limited by culture, sex, age, or
condition. Women, like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, and Noadiah;
inexperienced youths, like Jeremiah; men of high standing in society, like
Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman
Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living
poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or
assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men,
sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to
denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, it is no wonder that
they often shrank from their terrible office. Jonah ran to hide in a ship
of Tarshish. They have called their message a burden, like Isaiah; they
have cried out like Jeremiah, "Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak, for I am a
child"; like Ezekiel, they have been obliged to make their faces harder
than flints in order to deliver their message.

Dean Stanley, in speaking of the Prophets of the Old Testament, says that
their theology consisted in proclaiming the unity of God against all
polytheism, and the spirituality of God against all idolatry, in declaring
the superiority of moral to ceremonial duties, and in announcing the
supremacy of goodness above the letter, ceremony, or dogma. This makes
the contrast between the Prophets and all other sacred persons who have
existed in pagan and, he adds, even in Christian times. Dean Stanley says
the Prophets were religious teachers, without the usual faults of
religious teachers, and he proposes them as an example to the Christian
clergy. He says: "O, if the spirit of our profession, of our order, of our
body, were the spirit, or anything like the spirit, of the ancient
Prophets! If with us truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, were
a passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld with the same energy
as that with which we uphold our own position and our own opinions!"

The spirit of the world asks first, Is it safe? secondly, Is it true? The
spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it true? secondly, Is it safe? The
spirit of the world asks first, Is it prudent? secondly, Is it right? The
spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it right? secondly, Is it prudent?
Taken as a whole, the prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone.
It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days, with ramparts
broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill,
conveying in its long line of arches the pure rill of living water over
deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings
which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides
with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic
proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.

The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judaea were far higher in
their character than those which come occasionally to mankind through
dreams and presentiments. Yet no doubt they proceeded from the same
essentially Iranian faculty. This also is asserted by the Dean of
Westminster, who says that there is a power of divination granted in some
inexplicable manner to ordinary men, and he refers to such instances as
the prediction of the discovery of America by Seneca, that of the
Reformation by Dante, and the prediction of the twelve centuries of Roman
dominion by the apparition of twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so
understood four hundred years before its actual accomplishment. If such
presentiments are not always verified, neither were the predictions of
the Prophets always fulfilled. Jonah announced, in the most distinct and
absolute terms, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed. But the
people repented, and it was _not_ destroyed. Their predictions of the
Messiah are remarkable, especially because in speaking of him and his time
they went out of the law and the spirit of the law, and became partakers
of the spirit of the Gospel. The Prophets of the Jews, whatever else we
deny to their predictions, certainly foresaw Christianity. They describe
the coming of a time in which the law should be written in the heart, of a
king who should reign in righteousness, of a prince of peace, of one who
should rule by the power of truth, not by force, whose kingdom should be
universal and everlasting, and into which all nations of the earth should
flow. What the Prophets foresaw was not times nor seasons, not dates nor
names, not any minute particulars. But they saw a future age, they lived
out of their own time in another time, which had not yet arrived. They
left behind them Jewish ceremonialism, and entered into a moral and
spiritual religion. They dropped Jewish narrowness and called all mankind
brethren. In this they reach the highest form of foresight, which is not
simply to predict a coming event, but to live in the spirit of a future
time.