We learn from verse 10 that God had taken pains to save Solomon from idolatry, (see 1 Kings vi. 12, and xi. 6). But what good is it for even God to try to save a man who will have his own way? And yet one would have thought that a man who knew what Solomon knew, would have not bowed down to gods of wood and stone! It is not always at our weakest place we fail! It is well for us to be aware of this. Who would have expected Moses to fail in his temper, or Elijah in his courage? Solomon must have hated himself when he bowed before these graven images, and must have looked with loathing on those filthy idols before whom he was prostrate, and yet he went on in his evil way. How the priests who offered the idolatrous sacrifices would rejoice in their illustrious pervert! Will any of us ever give the foes of God cause for exultation? Do not tell me that you are too well instructed! Are you wiser than Solomon? "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me."--Jer. ix, 23-24. You are safe only as you are willing to be led by the word of God. WHAT IS THE BIBLE TO YOU? Is it a lamp to your feet? Not merely a lantern to keep you out of the mire, but a treasure like that miner's lamp; a light by which he is not only guided, but able to walk in the shadow of death. All around him is the gas that would slay him, and yet by that lamp he walks to the place of safety! This is what the Bible must be to you, or it is nothing. Mind you, it is not enough for you to know the Bible. We have heard drunken men quote it with correctness, but it had not saved them from the demon which haunted them. It is an instructive thought that the man who wrote some of the Bible, who is spoken of in the pulpit as "The Wise Man," the author of the Book of Proverbs, was led away into sin and eternal disgrace. In fact, it matters not what we know, if we are not led of the Spirit we shall come to grief. The more deeply a ship is laden, if she gets aground, the more likely she is to become a wreck. It takes the wisest of men to make the fool Solomon became. Perhaps the most serious aspect of this story is, that it was not while the king was young, but when grey-headed, that he wandered from God, and this leads me to say that THE WORST CASES OF BACKSLIDING ARE AMONG THOSE WHO ARE NO LONGER YOUNG.