The king is dead; long live the king! This paradox expresses an important truth. Bathsheba recognized it when David on his deathbed promised her that Solomon, her son, should succeed him on the throne, and she said, "Let my lord king David live forever" (1 Kings 1:31).

I. SOLOMON IS DEAD.

1. His active form is no longer seen.

(1) He "slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 11:43). He has stiffened into a corpse. Perfectly passive now! What a moral! The doom of all Work while it is day.

(2) He was "buried in the city of David his father." He had a royal funeral. But all this state was simply to bury him - to put him out of sight. Much wisdom is buried alive in state display.

(3) Jeroboam may now return from Egypt. The protection of Shishak is no longer needed. Human wrath has its limitations. Not so Divine wrath (see Matthew 10:28).

2. Where is the disembodied spirit?

(1) Not extinct. Not in stupor. The term "sleep" relates to the body. It anticipates for it an awaking - a resurrection.

(2) Stirring in the world of spirits as it stirred when embodied in this world of matter.

(3) What a world is that! How populous! How darkly veiled! yet how interesting to us who are on our way thither!

II. BUT HE SURVIVES IN REHOBOAM. This fact is the ground of -

1. Rehoboam's claim to the throne.

(1) He is Solomon's representative. This is more than a law phrase. Had he not been the son of Solomon he would not have been invited to Shechem. We inherit responsibilities.

(2) Solomon lives in Rehoboam with a potency to move "all Israel." See the nation from Dan to Beersheba, under this influence, streaming down to Shechem.

2. The nation's suit to the claimant.

(1) In this they recognise the claim of Solomon's representative to the crown.

(2) Also that he may likewise oppress them as Solomon had done (see 1 Kings 4:7, 22; 1 Kings 9:15). From Solomon's oppressions they seek of Solomon, in Rehoboam, relief.

(3) How history verifies prophecy (see 1 Samuel 8:10-18).

III. SO SURVIVING, HIS INFLUENCE IS MODIFIED.

1. A new individual appears.

(1) Rehoboam is not the facsimile of Solomon. He is indeed the son of a wise man; but the son, not of his wisdom, but of his folly. His mother was an Ammonitess. This fact is emphasised, according to the Hebrew style, by being stated and restated (1 Kings 14:21, 31).

(2) His character is the resultant of the influences of Solomon, of Naamah, and of those which also flowed into the current of his life during the apostasy of his father. He became the impersonation of these various moral forces.

(3) The influence of Solomon in Rehoboam, therefore, is considerably modified. Parents are to a large extent responsible not only for their own direct influence upon the character of their children, but also for the contemporary influences to which they allow them to be exposed.

2. New relationships have therefore to be formed.

(1) The people suffered the imposts of Solomon while he lived. They grew upon them by degrees, and brought with them a system of vested interests. The whole system became so crystallized around the person of the king that it was difficult to obtain relief.

(2) Now Solomon is dead all this is loosened, and the opportunity is given for the nation to remonstrate. They are prompt to improve it.

(3) Jeroboam is not only present now, which he would not have been had Solomon lived, but is made the spokesman of the people.

(4) Rehoboam confesses the force of these altered circumstances in listening to the suit, and taking time to deliberate upon the nature of his reply. The value of influences is a most profitable subject for Christian consideration; present - posthumous (see 2 Peter 1:15). - M.

1. Proverbs, it has been said, are "the wisdom of many and the wit of one," at least they are most often trustworthy exponents of a uniform experience. And there is a proverb which tells us that no one ever became thoroughly bad all at once. And so it was with Solomon; as the stream of his career sweeps by us in Holy Scripture, windows, as it were, are opened for us through which we gaze out on that sunny flood, so full of promise, carrying on its bosom such rich opportunities and varied treasures, and we note that as it gets wider it loses its pure beauty, as it gets deeper it parts with its simplicity. Here and there these glimpses into his life prepare us for a catastrophe. It requires a vast store of wisdom to keep a man unspoiled amidst popular applause. The power of wealth with all its opportunities may very easily sweep away the calmer dictates of a higher reason. Solomon is the liberal patron of error. He is not an idolater; it would not be fair to call him that. But as he would tell us, "he is no bigot," that the Zidonians and Moabites were sincere in what they believed and practised. That his first duty was to the empire, and to consolidate the acquisitions which he had made. After all, there is an element of truth underlying all religions — "All worships are true." Take care, Solomon! The next step is only too easily taken,. which goes on to proclaim, "All worships are false." I suppose there is no chapter in Church history which we look back upon with such unfeigned horror and humiliation as that which deals with religious persecution. We never shall forget the fires of Smithfield, or look with anything but disapproval at the stern and repressive violence of the Puritan Rebellion. At the same time it must be remembered that there is one thing which, if less repulsive, may be equally deadly in God's sight. Toleration, which springs from a real respect for our neighbour's convictions, is one thing; indifference, which does not feel strongly enough to oppose, is another. At the present moment we are oddly enough confronted with these two developments combining in their efforts to weaken religion.

2. But Solomon does not stop at undenominationalism. No one does. It is an impossible position. He settles down a step further into aestheticism — the worship of the beautiful, the luxurious, the fascinating. A protest against Ritualism is, no doubt, an excellent thing in which every intelligent Churchman should join, if we mean by the term a religion which consists of mere rites and ceremonies, void of real significance, subversive of the sterner realities of religious truth. There is always a tendency, in view of the extreme difficulty of religion, to put up with something easy, in which the heart and the intellect, and the better part of man, need of necessity have no share. Some people think they can saunter into heaven on a ceremony; or be wafted there on the wings of music; or be carried there on a text of the Bible; or be admitted without any trouble, if they sufficiently protest against somebody else. But the very essence of religion is intense personal exertion and personal devotion, and religion has always had to pay the penalty of this difficulty, which belongs to all true excellence, in the various shifts and substitutes invented by indolent humanity. Ritual, music, the accessories of Divine service, are utterly abhorrent unless they mean something. Solomon was not spreading religion when he erected his numerous shrines for the manifold superstitions of the East, and their attractive rites. He was degrading it, he was vitiating the religious instinct and depraving the religious sense. Do let us remember, dear brethren, that all the beauty, all the magnificence of the services of the Church, are for the honour and glory of God, and that if we fail to honour Him, fail to find Him, fail to worship Him, they only add to our own condemnation.

3. But the worship of aestheticism has no finality about it. It is a religion of butterflies after all, who flit from flower to flower, who expand in the sunshine and die in the frost, who are here to-day and are gone to-morrow. Ephemeral, creatures of a day! Do not suppose it, for one moment, if any of you have given up vital belief, if you have teased to believe in God, that you will be able to go on finding religious satisfaction in beautiful sounds, and artistic sights; you will either get better, or you will get worse — and it is terribly easy to get worse. The end of Solomon's career is not encouraging; the best you can say of it is, that it is shrouded in gloom. It was an easy step from a worship of the beautiful to the nature-worship so-called, which was the distinguishing feature of so many of the cults which he imported to Jerusalem. There is a seamy side to many a renaissance, so-called, and there is a seamy side to much which is dignified now by the name of the love of the beautiful. Nature-worship in its simplest form, and apparently its least harmful form, takes the shape of the worship of what we take to be our own nature. It is startling to find how intensely people dislike anything in religion which is stern, or causes them trouble, or appeals to self-denial. This appears in all manner of little ways. Solomon erects his nature-shrine for the pent up denizen of the city, at some little distance outside, and tells him that it is far better for him to go and worship God in the green fields, and among the hedgerows, or even on the river, than to shut himself up in a musty church in Jerusalem. He will tell him that "the Sabbath was made for man," and that to fill his lungs with pure air, and to scent the flowers and be cheerful, is the best worship which God seeks from him. And the worshipper of nature comes back with a tired body, a dissatisfied mind, and a starved soul, and believes that he has spent a happy Sunday. There, in the old temple at Jerusalem, are the double sacrifices and the long round of services, because those who have studied the mind of God believe that He requires on His day a certain proportion of our time, not the smallest contribution which a Christian can make, at the earliest possible hour in the morning, or the latest moment at night. And if they ask for happiness and enjoyment, they remember how Mary says, "He fills the hungry with good things," or how the Psalmist says that God "never fails them that seek Him." But Solomon turns his back, his wisdom departs from him, and he seeks for other gods. He is indifferent, and he calls it toleration. He is intolerant, and he calls it religion. He dishonours the Church, and he thinks that he does God service. He becomes aesthetic, he is lingering now in the courts of the temple, he has turned his back on her realities, he is like a man who just stays a little longer to hear the anthem. He has turned his back, he is gone, he is worshipping nature, in all the downward gradations of that terrible cult. Wise Solomon! who began with building the temple, goes on by tolerating error, to become a besotted voluptuary, and to insult God. It is the history of many a soul, who has forgotten the lesson of his youth, who is false to his tradition, and falls below his own standard. "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceits? There is more hope of a fool, than of him."

(W. C. E. Newbolt, M. A.)