We sometimes forget the moral suggestiveness even of our commonest institutions and plans of procedure. Every precaution that is taken for our preservation implies the presence of hostile elements in the society that is round about us.
Solomon may be taken in this instance as representing the great doctrine that men should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and afterward attend to minor matters, or even leave those minor matters to the adjustment of providence.
Solomon is represented as first most anxious about the Temple, giving himself wholly to its erection, occupying his thoughts night and day, turning every thing to account in its relation to the Temple. Having finished that marvelous structure, he was prepared to descend to other levels and do the commoner work which lay to his hand.
Many persons leave the temple half finished. What wonder if they go out to the war and return wounded and disabled? Our religious purposes are broken off. What wonder if our political ends pierce us and sting us by way of retribution?
“But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no servants for his work; but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and captains of his chariots and horsemen.”
The statesmanship of Solomon is as distinctly proved by this arrangement as by any thing we have yet seen in his whole policy. Solomon knew that one man was not as good as another, however much democratic philosophy may have endeavored to prove the contrary. One man is a genius, but another man is a slave—an imitator, a hewer of wood; very serviceable, and in fact indispensable, but not adorned with the very highest excellence and dignity of mind.
Solomon made a distribution of classes, saying in effect that some men can do the drudgery, some men can dig and build, some can pull down and take away and make ready for the exertions of others; the higher class of men can think and direct, for they are inspired with the genius of administration, and are men of powerful mind, of fertile resources in government and in war. So Solomon made the best use of the material at his disposal—not getting great men to do small work or setting small men to fail in great work.
Adaptation is the secret of success. For want of knowing this, many men fail in life.
There are employers who are making themselves but little better than toilers, when they might by an expenditure of money apparently distinctly not economical very greatly assist the progress and solidity of their fortunes. A man may be industrious in a way which involves the absolute frittering and humiliation of his energies.
We are to be careful not only to be industrious, but industrious about the right things and in the right proportion. A man might slave himself to death cutting down wood or in throwing away stones, but if some other man of inferior mental faculty could be employed to do that work the superior man should turn his attention to other and nobler pursuits, and thus with smaller expenditure of strength he might be doing immeasurably greater good.