Sulamith: A Romance of Antiquity

lcol, and Dardra, the sons of Mahol. But he was already beginning to weary of the beauty of ordinary human wisdom, and no longer did it have its former value in his eyes. With a restless and searching mind did he thirst after that higher wisdom, which the Lord possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old, set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was; that wisdom which was His great artificer when He set a compass upon the face of the deep. And Solomon found it not.

The king mastered the teachings of the magi of Chaldæa and Nineveh; the science of the astrologers of Abydos, Sais, and Memphis; the secrets of the Assyrian sorcerers, mystagogues, and epopts, and of the fatidicæ of Baktria and Persepolis; and he had become convinced that their knowledge was but the knowledge of mortals.

Also did he seek for wisdom in the occult rites of ancient pagan faiths, and for that reason visited idol-temples and offered up oblations to the mighty Baal-Lebanon