He understood all about beasts and birds and insects and fishes. He knew what those words in the hundred and eleventh Psalm meant: "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein." By and by Hiram, King of Tyre, who had always loved David, on hearing that David's son was king, sent his servants to convey his greetings to Solomon. Then Solomon sent back a message to Hiram, asking him to allow his servants to help him in hewing cedar trees from Lebanon, as he was purposing to build a beautiful Temple for the Lord. He explained to Hiram that it had been in David's heart to build the Lord's House; but he had been a man of war; and though the Lord accepted the desire of David's heart, He told him that his son Solomon should be a man of peace, and should build Him a House. But the Lord had allowed David before his death to collect a vast number of materials of all sorts, as we read in the 22nd chapter of the First Book of Chronicles. David had employed clever masons to hew wrought and polished stones; he had prepared iron in abundance for the gates and hinges, and brass without weight. Then Hiram sent abundance of cedar and fir trees, for as David had said, "The House that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical." That is a long and a strange word, and it is only used that once in all the Bible! But it conveys this one lesson to us—that if we want God to dwell in our hearts, we must spare no pains to make them ready for His abode! Jesus says: "If any man love Me, My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him!" So Solomon began to build with all his heart, and such a Temple as he raised to the Lord was a glory and a joy to all beholders. [Illustration] XXXII. JEHU—THE ELEVENTH KING OF ISRAEL WE read of Jehu first in the time of Elijah, when God commissioned the Prophet to anoint Jehu as a future King of Israel, and announced that he would be used to punish Ahab and the Children of Israel for their idolatry and departure from the Lord. For some reason which is not told us in the Bible, it was not Elijah, but Elisha, who was in the end sent to anoint Jehu. We read the story of this in the 9th chapter of the Second Book of Kings. Elisha was now the Lord's Prophet in Israel. One day he said to one of the younger prophets with whom he lived: "Prepare yourself for a journey, and take this box of oil in your hand, and go to Ramothgilead." "When you get there, find Jehu, the son of Nimshi, and ask him to come with you into an inner chamber away from the rest of the company, and when you are there, take the box of oil and pour it on his head, and say: 'Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel.' Then open the door and flee, and do not wait a moment." So the young man went to Ramothgilead, and when he got there he found all the captains of the host sitting round Jehu. So he said: "I have an errand to thee, O Captain!"