Well, my friends, you know that all theologians agree in making Solomon a type of Christ and making the Queen of Sheba a type of every truth seeker, and I take the responsibility of saying that all the spikenard, cassia and frankincense which the Queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon are mightily suggestive of the sweet spice of our holy religion. THE GENTILE MOTHER. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the Belleville parsonage. I had been trying for two years to preach, but to me the Christian life had been nothing but a struggle. I sat down at the table, took up my Bible, and asked for divine illumination; and it poured like sunlight upon my soul through the story of the Syro-Phenician woman. This woman was a mother, and she had an afflicted daughter. The child had a virulent, exasperating and convulsive disease, called the possession of the devil. The mother was just like other mothers; she had no peace as long as her child was sick. She was a Gentile, and the Jews had such a perfect contempt for the Gentiles that they called them dogs. Nevertheless, she comes to Christ, and asks Him to help her in her family troubles. Christ makes no answer. The people become afraid there is going to be a “scene” enacted, and they try to get the woman out of Christ’s presence; but He forbids her expulsion. Then she falls down and repeats her request. Christ, to rally her earnestness, and to make His mercy finally more conspicuous, addresses her, saying: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread [that is, the salvation appointed for the Jews] and cast it to dogs”--the Gentiles. Christ did not mean to characterize that woman as a dog. That would have been most unlike Him, who from the cross said: “Behold thy mother.” His whole life was so gentle and so loving, He could not have given it out as His opinion that that was what she ought to be called; but He was only employing the ordinary parlance of the Jews in regard to the Gentiles. Yet that mother was not to be put off, pleading as she was for the life of her daughter. She was not to be rebuffed; she was not to be discouraged. She says: “Yea, Lord, I acknowledge I am a Gentile dog; but I remember that even the dogs have some privileges, and when the door is open they slink in and crawl under the table. When the bread or the meat sifts through the cracks of the table or falls off the edge of it, they pick it up, and the master of the house is not angry with them. I do not ask for a big loaf; I do not ask even for a big slice; I only ask for that which drops down through the chinks of the table--the dogs’ portion. I ask only the crumbs.” Christ felt the wit and the earnestness and the stratagem and the faith of that woman. He turns upon her and says: “You have conquered Me. Your daughter is well now. Go home, mother; but before you get there she will come down, skipping out to meet you.”