Of course, as sane men and women, we of today do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence that holds the worlds in the hollow of His hand had much interest in the fight. If this Intelligence were a Being, I can imagine Him looking over the battlement of Heaven and turning with a weary smile to Gabriel, saying, “Let ’em fight—what boots it! they will all be dead tomorrow, anyway.” It is a noteworthy fact that in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew the Inspired Writer traces the genealogy of Jesus direct to the Philistines. In the sixth verse we find “David begat Solomon of her who had been the wife of Urias.” Back of this is Ruth the Moabitess, who was the grandmother of David. There is no such thing as tracing a pure Jewish lineage back to the time of Moses. The Jews went a courting as soon as they arrived on the borders of Canaan; and the heathen quite fancied the Israelitish women from the first. In the book of Ruth, first chapter and fourth verse I see, “And they took them wives out of the country of Moab.” The houses of Capulet and Montague have ever intermarried—it seems a quiet way Nature has of playing a little joke. And after a painstaking study of the matter I am fully convinced that the sterling qualities in the Jew are derived from his Philistine ancestry. No one doubts that Solomon was the wisest man that ever was. His mother was a Philistine. Now no man is ever greater than his mother, and it is very plain that the great wisdom of Solomon was derived from this pagan woman whose body nourished him; in whose loving arms he was cradled; and whose intellect first fired his aspiration. This is all made plainer yet when we remember that David had many sons by Jewish women, and that all of these sons were positively no good—and some of them very, very bad. The facts are found in the Second Book of Samuel—a book, by the way, which no respectable girl should allow her mother to read. But if any captious critic arises and denies the Law of Heredity, for argument’s sake, I’ll waive this matter of maternal transmission of excellence and rest my case as to Solomon’s wisdom on the fact that he married over four hundred Philistine women. And as stated by Sir Walter Besant in a recent story, “a newly married woman always tells her husband everything she knows,” I will feel safe in saying that Solomon’s transcendent wisdom was derived from Philistinic sources.