the power of the person, who with all his greatness may be capricious or inconsistent or one-sided, must be added the steadying and enlightening power of ideas.

NOTE. On the need beyond personal ascendancy, Professor Gardiner remarks, in "Exploratio Evangelica," p. 5: "It is true that in the presence of a mighty spirit and leader of men, his direct commands may be taken as principles of action, and not expressed in terms of the intellect. But in ordinary times, and among thoughtful men, religious doctrine is as necessary to the healthy and normal development of a community as are faith and self-denial."

Our survey of the times before the age of books has revealed literature as it were in the germ: the song, the mashal, the elegy, the folk tale, all like a runwild oral utterance. It is significant, however, Biblical that later, when the specific lines of literature are gathered into a permanent canon-law, prophecy, poetry

From Personal to

all are attributed to personal sources of this period. To Moses is ascribed the beginnings of law, to Samuel the beginnings of prophecy and statesmanship, to David the beginnings of lyric religious poetry. One more great name, that of Solomon, is connected with a literary type, the mashal or wisdom type; and his activity immediately succeeds to this period of the Semina Litterarum. Thus the great centers of literary light and influence are recognized as personal; but their personality is translated into abiding ideas.

THE

CHAPTER II

AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE

[Under the reign of Solomon, 970-933 B.C.]

HE founding of the Temple, in the fourth year of King Solomon's reign (1 Kings vi, 1) was deemed by the Scripture historians to mark an important date in the nation's life important both for the period that it closed and for the new order then opening. The number of years after the deliverance from Egypt was carefully noted, as if that closing period had its own meaning. The year of the king's reign, and the month, are noted with equal care, as if the event thus dated were an epoch for all time. When a nation can thus begin to number its years, and to set off periods of its history, its existence is beginning to show meaning and promise; it has an organic idea.

The religious import of the building of the Temple is obvious. The central worship of Israel, hitherto held in a tent, was now established in a permanent building. Here then was the religious capital of the nation: a center for the standard service and instruction, and a point of pilgrimage for the various annual feasts. But because religion in ancient times was never dissociated from civic, social, and business affairs, the import of this event for the nation's secular life was equally great. The Temple, in fact, was only one of a whole group of public buildings, which included not only the palace of the king but an extensive series of halls, courts, and porches, for civic administration and judg ment. As time went on it became the central place for

banking and business, for schools and tribunals, for archives and libraries. The distinctive national life, in short, was concentrated here.1

I. THE QUICKENED NATIONAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

The founding of the Temple is but one of many signs of the times indicating the birth of national self-consciousness among the scattered tribes, with the pride and patriotism corresponding. At this epochal point, with a feeling of rest, security, and realized hope, the Hebrew people could look back over the twelve generations of almost constant war and unsettledness, and of the gradual fusion of rival and turbulent tribes; until now Israel had become a united nation, with a definite standing among the nations of the earth.

The Larger

During the reign of Solomon the Israelites and their tributary peoples covered the largest expanse of territory the state ever controlled (1 Kings iv, 20, 21). As Civic Scale the reign was mainly one of peace, there was opportunity for domestic upbuilding and prosperity; and this showed itself especially in the king's extensive enterprises in building, which just for the Temple and the royal palace occupied a period of twenty years. To promote this industry, much of which was carried on by forced labor, and to provide for the lavish wants of the court, the kingdom was organized on an elaborate scale; in which the tribal divisions, inherited from more primitive times, were discarded from the machinery of government, and an organization more arbitrary and despotic took their place. To obtain materials for building, alliance was made with the neighboring kingdom of Tyre, in which were situated the celebrated forests of Lebanon. King Solomon also made commercial ventures on his own account; even to the extent of a navy of ships and a port on the Red Sea (1 Kings ix, 26), and a partnership in the Phoenician trade with Tartessus in Spain (1 Kings x, 22).

1 G. A. Smith, "Jerusalem," Vol. I, pp. 352 ff., 365.

With all this energy in government and commerce Solomon had also a disposition for display and luxury. His temper was that of the Oriental despot; sagacious indeed, and not willfully tyrannical, but self-indulgent and extravagant, to a degree that cost his kingdom dear. One thing, however, his reign did, in spite of the despotism it maintained and the hardships it caused: it raised the nation, hitherto absorbed in local and clannish affairs, to a broader plane of civilization, where they became aware of a world's interests and business. This brought its new sphere of relations and ideas.

Reflection in

Mind

The whole tone of the history of Solomon's time, as we have this in the books of Kings and Chronicles (1 Kings iv-x; 2 Chron. i-ix), strongly reflects the feeling the Popular of childlike wonder and zest with which the people, to whom such splendors and luxuries as Solomon's were strange and new, contemplated the more spacious order of things. His wisdom, his wealth, his regal display, his magnificent undertakings in architecture and trade, are told in such superlatives as indicate that the teller was not to the manner born. No other personage in Israel's history, in fact, is surrounded by such an atmosphere of legend and fancy as is King Solomon. The Scripture account, indeed, is sober in comparison with the marvels of many Oriental tales, supernatural and magical, that are told of him; but the heightened tone of the Scripture accounts themselves indicates that his memory lives in Israel's kindled imagination as his father David's memory lives in their affections.

All this indicates that under Solomon the people entered for the first time upon a stage of national life and civilization wherein their native genius was adapted to act freely and expand. The nomadic and pastoral life of the wilderness, or a life purely agricultural and rustic such as they had hitherto lived in Canaan, was not their most congenial

element. Their true field of development lay in a social and urban type of civilization: a life which opened into prosperous enterprise, business undertakings, the gain and care of wealth, intercourse and commerce with the world. And when they had surmounted their primitive conditions, and found themselves on the threshold of this kind of life, it was like awaking to a new world of thought and imagination.

Such awakening naturally finds outlet in expression wherein this attitude of mind has free and creative play. Accordingly, it is to this age that we trace the people's quickened response to a more liberal range of utterance and to literary values as such. We perceive it in the way the native literary forms pass from a run-wild and artless stage to a stage of self-conscious and disciplined cultivation. We perceive it too in the way the more dominating types of literature begin `to be developed.

II. INITIATIVE IN TWO GIFTED KINGS

Not only was the people of Israel responding to a new type and stage of civilization. Personal influence and ascendancy too was at its highest and wholesomest. Out of the times succeeding the chaotic era of the Judges had come names of strong personalities, whose power survived to tone up the people's mind: Samuel, the venerable last judge and king-maker; Saul, the ill-fated first king and military champion; Jonathan, the brave and chivalrous crown prince untimely slain; David, who as popular hero even in outlawry and forced exile showed his essential nobility and magnanimity of character, and in his succession to royalty not only established a capital and religious center but built himself into men's hearts in a love which condoned his faults; Joab, whose able generalship went far to atone for his hard arbitrariness of nature; and finally Solomon, whose sagacity and