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Show POLYGAMY HE CAUSE OF HIIF8 DOWNFALL Iter. Mr. Simp kin Talks of the Life and Death of Solomon. Jn (he last of a scries of sermons on tho lif'o of Solomon, delivered, by the licv. P. A. Simpkiu at Phillips. Consrc-gntional Consrc-gntional church, tho preacher found a tr.-ieily in the life-close of .Israel's greatest king. The llienio of tho evening centered in tho sunset of .Solomon's life. The cout rusts afforded by his youlli and ago, his religion and his indulgence, his earl' choice and li is mature developments, develop-ments, his essential greatness nnd his unworthy failures aro among the most startling in history. .Rev. Ir. Simpkiu said, in part : Stripped of all the mass of legend which tho oriental mind has woven about his name, set forth In tho merciless catalogue cat-alogue of moral dollwiuoncv th book of kings' records, the shadowed ago of the king, outworn by excess long before his Ono would have looked for the young dreamer of Gideon to find a larger ful-UlmcnL ful-UlmcnL Tho master builder of the Temple Tem-ple of .lehovnh should havo found an end Hooded with glory. I3ut for him whose life' had been brilliant with native na-tive and borrowed glory there Is onlv shadow relieved by the Hashes of a divine di-vine anger. The curtain or tho west was too thick to bo pierced- and painted by the fingers of I bat hope immortal which should have blazed In one to whom the Infinite Intimacies were permitted. And in what were tho rootlmrs of his decay? Whence came the shadows and the failure? The analyst of his character char-acter must put the linger upon two things. Ono of them was his amazing Indulgence In polygamy, and the lnflu-enco lnflu-enco exerted by It In that appeal to his lower nature that caused him to enshrine en-shrine the foul ethnic religions of western west-ern Asia in shrines that fronted the very temple of God. The polygamic poison was as much In the influence of tho associations it I brought as In Itself. Tho unspeakable ! corruptions of Chemosh. the unholy pine- I tlces of Moloch were horrible. biit Incidental. Inci-dental. Tho tragedy Is In this Solomon forgot God. It Is true that the Ideals of Solomon for Israel's development were likewise instrumental in breaking clown both the historic character of Israel and his own simple devotion. In spite of all that Solomon added to Israel of artistic bent and general culture, cul-ture, of world vision and power, of intensified in-tensified Hebraism In his own loss of vision and terrific devolution spiritual, his life Is ono to bo registered rather than admired, and his memory is a danger dan-ger signal rather than a. beacon on the road of the ages. |