Among princely cares, the ardent search of truth can seldom be enumerated, though it be a most honourable and beneficial employment. Those whom Providence has placed in an elevated situation are usually too much occupied with themselves, their pleasures, their pomp, and their ambitious projects, to listen to the dictates, or to search out the mysteries of wisdom. The concerns of an extensive empire furnish a plausible pretext for neglecting the great interest of piety, which a deceived heart is ready to plead in extenuation of a conduct condemned alike by reason, conscience, and revelation. But let the rulers of nations observe David, Solomon, and others of the kings of Israel; the splendour of whose earthly glory was eclipsed by the superior brightness of their heavenly wisdom; and whose names are written upon, the sacred page, not so much, because they were _men of rank_, as because they were _men of God_. The command of Jesus Christ is of prime importance and of universal obligation, "Seek FIRST the kingdom of God and his righteousness;" and unless it can be demonstrated that he has made one code of laws for the prince and another for the peasant, or that his precepts possess an accommodating flexibility suited to the prejudices and passions of mankind, no exception can be for a moment admitted. As there is no royal road to the heights of human science, but all who attain them must ascend by assiduous and persevering application, so there is none to the summit of celestial felicity; but persons of every class, rank, sex, and age, must follow Christ in the same unsmoothed path of repentance and self-denial. Hence, such is the bewitching influence of worldly splendour, so numerous and so powerful the attractions of opulence, that we have daily and hourly proofs of the apostle's statement: "Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence." But happily the long scroll of history is here and there embellished with a name, which combines the glory that confers pre-eminence in the present world, with the grace that secures everlasting distinction in the next. [Sidenote: Years before Christ, about 892.]