King Hiram is one of the neglected characters of Bible history. The world is a busy world and has to make selection of the most eminent men and learn from them. And so we have these neglected " minor characters" as wecallthem. As, however, we are somewhat "minor characters" ourselves of very little importance to the great world, we ought to feel sympathetic towards this Phoenician king, It was his people that gave us an alphabet, and which first carried on an extensive commerce on anything like the modern scale, ing business from Tarshish, which was ely in Spain, to Ophir which it is thought was in the Persian Gulf, a kind of ancient Aden, an entrepot for Indian and other oriental produce which the Phoenicians, and for a time Solomon, thence shipped up the Red Ses to the Mediterranean lands. What do we not owe the Bible for preserving the only living figare of all that bassy Phoenician life?' 'The names of other kings are names' only from moorn mere antiquarian dry bones, This king lives before us. There is nothing narrow in Revelation. Its broad mantle covers all humanity, What kind of a man then was this the only Phoenician of whom I think we have any record? He is the good sensible plain man who does the work of the world, the kind of man who does most of the work of the charch too. No nation can have too many of this type of man. There is nothing brilliant about him. He bad n0 queens to come long journeys to beer him speak wisdom. He has left no Book of Prover behind bim Solomon; be doesn't seem to hi ey kind of repay tation at all in we day, It is not that be and similar plain men are fools, Not at all. Hiram was a warrior as well. He conducted a successful cam-to pay private, Still he was not brilliant like David and Solomon. A good many people woold have called him bumdram and doll, He never flashed and sparkled. He was not th for great ran who wou'd have graphy written, He was a sensible, plain man, We may dwell on this for a few moments, and then seo what a number of virtues this plsio man bad, and which all of us average evers-day men may aleo a ere is something cheering la this view of Hiram, The world has great mea, it needs them; we honour them, lecture about them, I hope learn from them. Abraham, David, Plate, Pascal, in thought; Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, in literature. What men What sans in the beatens! We thank God for all genius and eminence. The world is made by the revelations that come through personal agency, through men. is the essence of Christis only adequate reveal himself was through a man.
Bat we cannot all be grest, and we certainly sre not. There is no doubt about that. Hiram, however, puts courage into us "minor characters."" Solomon could never have built his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.