Solomon was young--scarcely twenty--when he ascended the throne. After his accession, whilst visiting the altar at Gibeon, we are told, he had a vision in which God asked him to express the innermost wish of his heart, with the promise that it should be fulfilled. He did not choose long life, nor riches, nor honour, nor the death of his enemies; but he chose wisdom, in order that he might rule his people with justice. In fact, this wisdom, this power of entering into the feelings and minds of the dissenting parties who appeared before him, of seizing on the true state of the case in spite of exaggeration and subtle arguments, Solomon possessed to an extraordinary degree. The Solomonic judgment is well known. By giving a verdict which was well adapted to reveal the real feeling of a mother, he recognised, in a dispute between two women for the possession of a child, on which side was truth, on which side falsehood. "Cut the child in half," he said. But its real mother could not accept this decision, and offered rather to give up her child. He was determined that no one in his kingdom should suffer from injustice. Though he may not have been the first that uttered the saying, "through justice a throne is established," yet it was a maxim after his own heart. The wisdom of Solomon is also displayed to great advantage in another direction, namely, in his poetic productions. These were chiefly allegorical poems (Mashal); in them he caused the lofty cedars of Lebanon, and the lowly creeping wall plants, to appear as the emblems of what is highest and humblest, quadrupeds, birds of the air, reptiles, and even dumb fish are given voice and speech. Each of these fables probably ended with an appropriate moral lesson. It has been related that Solomon composed three thousand of such fables and five thousand songs or proverbs. But Solomon was by no means the originator of this style of fiction. Long before him such compositions had been common among the Israelites. Standing on Mount Gerizim, Jotham, the son of the Judge Gideon, addressed the misguided people of Shechem in an ingenious parable. The prophet Nathan had disguised his exhortation to David respecting his sin with Bathsheba in the form of a parable. But though not the inventor of this branch of poetry, Solomon is still deserving of praise for devoting the time left unoccupied by the cares of government to its further development. His rare qualities of mind were displayed in yet another direction. In some of his compositions he delineates types of persons and things by means of allusions, the hidden meaning of which is left to guessing. Such enigmas, presented in a poetic form, were in those days the favourite diversions of social gatherings and feasts, and Solomon possessed remarkable ingenuity in devising these recreations of the human mind.