prematurely old, and worn out by self-indulgence, passed away without
honor or regret, at the age of sixty, and was buried in the City of
David; and Rehoboam, his son, reigned in his stead.

The Christian fathers and many subsequent theological writers have
puzzled their brains with unsatisfactory speculations whether Solomon
finally repented or not; but the Scriptures are silent on that point. We
have no means of knowing at what period of his life his heart was weaned
from the religion of David, or when he entered upon a life of pleasure.
There are some passages in the Book of Ecclesiastes which lead us to
suppose that before he died he came to himself, and was a preacher of
righteousness. This is the more charitable and humane view to take; yet
even so, his moral teachings and warnings are not imbued with the
personal contrition that endeared David's soul to God; they are
unimpassioned, cold-hearted, intellectual, impersonal. Moreover, it may
be that even in the midst of his follies he retained the perception of
moral distinctions. His will was probably enslaved, so that he had not
the power to restrain his passions, and his head may have become giddy
in his high elevation. How few men could have resisted such powerful
temptations as assailed Solomon on every side! The heart of the
Christian world cannot but feel that so gifted a man, endowed with every
intellectual attraction, who reigned for a time with so much wisdom,
who recognized Jehovah as the guide and Lord of Israel, as especially
appears at the dedication of the Temple, and who wrote such profound
lessons of moral wisdom, would not be suffered to descend to the grave
without the divine forgiveness. All that we know is that he was wise,
and favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and
fell in with the vices of Oriental kings, and lost the affections of his
people. He was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to
an abyss of shame,--a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which