Page:The Relation of the Sunday-school System to our Christian Patriotism.pdf/6

6 of the church for eighteen centuries, to the spirit and practice of the most primitive Christianity, Jesus Christ himself.

While, however, our text asserts, with other Scriptures, the vast importance of educating the young for lives of righteousness, it conveys a lesson of the soundest political wisdom. “The preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem,” and the decay of his bodily strength admonished him that the end of his days could not be far off. It was natural, therefore, that his anxiety should be awakened respecting the future career of his son and heir-apparent; especially as Rehoboam gave but little promise of prudence and piety. The history of Israel and Judah had already shown, what the annals of other nations abundantly corroborate, that in the strongest hereditary despotism a monarch needs the utmost administrative sagacity to preserve his throne. The people, uprising in the original strength of their masses, may put down an imbecile or tyrannical king, and transfer the crown to the head of another, whose worth or talents have made him conspicuous, notwithstanding the lowness of his birth or the poverty of his life. Thus, then, speaks the royal preacher: “Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.”

This earnest counsel has yet more weighty meaning for us, my brethren, as Christian citizens of a wide and rapidly spreading republic. No monarch bears rule