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comprehensive in his field of knowledge ; great as an experimental student of 

 natural history, great asa poUtical economist, greater still as a religious and moral 

 philosopher ; whose memory is surrounded by an atmosphere in which historical 

 truth and mythological fable are blended in a manner which, while it illustrates 

 the character of Oriental thought, expresses also to us the extent to which that 

 memory has penetrated the minds and imaginations of perhaps a larger number of 

 persons than almost any other personage in history. 



We all remember that in the construction of his gi-eat architectural works 

 he made large use of wood which is called Cedar of Lebanon. One, indeed, of 

 them went by the name of the House of the Forest of Lebanon, a building of great 

 size, of which a large portion must undoubtedly have consisted of wood. When we 

 remember that for months he employed an army of many thousands of wood- 

 cutters to cut do^vn trees in Lebanon, besides great numbers of other workmen to 

 despatch the timber by sea to its destination, we shall obtain some notion of the 

 vast quantity of timber employed for the purposes for which Solomon designed it. 

 Was all tliis cedar-wood? Clearly not ; a gi-eat deal is distinctly stated to have 

 been " timber of fir," that is very probably, the wood of the Pinus Halepensis, a 

 tree which stUl grows on the lower slopes of the'Lebanon range. But after sub- 

 tracting from our estimate of the whole amount of [timber used such a quantity as 

 may be considered to fall under the description of fir-timber, there evidently 

 remains to be considered an enormous quantity of cedar properly so called. The 

 only question is, what was the tree which bears this name, was it the one which 

 we call Cedar of Lebanon or another ? I will endeavour (1), to state the qualifica- 

 tions which are ascribed in Scripture and elsewhere to the tree bearing this name ; 

 (2), to mention the claims of other competitors ; and (3), to lead to a conclusion on 

 the whole subject. 1. Let me mention that the Hebrew word which is rendered 

 "cedar "and which is virtually identical with the Arabic word by which the 

 Lebanon cedar is still called, is derived from a root which signifies "coiled "or 

 "compressed," and this conveys a notion of concentrated strength, one which 

 recommends itself strongly to our minds in reference to the cedar of Lebanon. 2. 

 The tree itself is described as tall, spreading, abundant, and loving the water, a 

 point of which I wiU ask you specially to take notice. 3. The timber is described 

 as useful for beams, pillars, boards, for carved work, and for masts of ships. 



We can have Uttle doubt as to the estimation in which the cedar was held 

 by the buUders of Solomon's temple and palaces, and we find in later days that 

 when the temple was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, it was the same timber which was 

 employed, and later stiirin the great restoration made by Herod. Again, when 

 Justinian built at great cost a church at Jerusalem in honour of the Blessed Virgin 

 Mary, he had difficulty in finding timber of sufficiently large scantling for the 

 roof until some cedar was procured from a place of high situation. And lastly we 

 are told that when the church of the Holy Sepulchre was rebuilt in the 11th century 

 after its destruction by the Mohammedan KhaUf Hakim, the roof of the Rotunda 

 was constructed of cedar beams. 



