2 Chronicles 9:9 And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones… The fact is that the duties and cares of this life, coming to us from time to time, are stupid often, and inane and intolerable. Here are men who have been battering, climbing, pounding, hammering for twenty years, forty years, fifty years. One great, long drudgery has their life been. Their face anxious, their feelings benumbed, their days monotonous. What is necessary to brighten up that man's life, and to sweeten that acid disposition, and to put sparkle into the man's spirits? The spicery of our holy religion. Why, it between the losses of life there dashed a gleam of an eternal gain; if between the betrayals of life there came the gleam of the undying friendship of Christ; it in dull times in business we found ministering spirits flying to and fro in our office, and store, and shop, every-day life, instead of being a stupid monotone, would be a glorious inspiration, penduluming between calm satisfaction and high rapture. How any woman keeps house without the religion of Christ to help her is a mystery to me. To have to spend the greater part of one's life, as many women do, in planning for the meals, and stitching garments that will soon be rent again, and deploring breakages, and supervising tardy subordinates, and driving off dust that soon again will settle, and doing the same thing day in and day out, and year in and year out, until the hair silvers, and the back stoops, and the spectacles crawl to the eyes, and the grave breaks open under the thin sole of the shoe — oh, it is a long monotony! But when Christ comes to the drawing-room, and comes to the kitchen, and comes to the nursery, and comes to the dwelling, then how cheery become all womanly duties! She is never alone now. Martha gets through fretting and joins Mary at the feet of Jesus. (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon. |
    |