A Greater than Solomon.
By T. T. Munger
If a keen critic had been present when Christ compared himself with Solomon, he might have detected an undertone of low estimate of the great Hebrew king—a comparison that reached further than greatness in wisdom, and took in character. Such a critic might also have detected a comparison between Jonah and Solomon, unfavorable to the latter. Christ found in the preacher of repentance, who came to his duty after a signal experience, a sign of himself, but he found none in Solomon. He mentions him but twice, and then in terms of unfavorable contrast. The glory of the ideal king was not of a sort he liked; when put on to the full it was not equal to that of the lily of the field, because the flower simply reflected the glory of Him who made it, while Solomon shone in the glory of his own magnificence. Christ did not sentimentalize on floral beauty, but made a definition of glory: that only has true glory which illustrates the thought God put into it. In each mention of Solomon there is a tone of low estimate and rejection that the disciples seem to have caught, for he is not named in gospel or epistle, nor included in the heroical and saintly list in Hebrews, nor does he appear in the stupendous symbolism of the apocalypse. Both he and his reign represent the ease and external glory of the nation—not the struggles by which it achieved them. Neither he nor his reign stand for any great truth, or moral principle, or moral purpose. Christ turned his back, as it were, upon the splendor that still dazzled the Jewish mind and presaged its hopes, and bade it consider a lily, or anything else that was simply true to the law of its nature; if it could so understand a flower, it might perhaps learn to understand him who manifested God in humanity.