Such are the beautiful tributes paid to women by Solomon, the wisest of men. Nor are the prophets behind in acknowledging the worth and quality of women. Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the prophet Joel wrote, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” In the Christian dispensation, the daughters as well as the sons were to be filled with the Spirit of God, and the Spirit would use their lips in the declaration of His truth as certainly as the lips of men, and Paul defined prophecy to be speaking “unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” It has been one of the devices of the evil one to padlock the lips of that half of the race who are most loyal to God and who have the most helpful knowledge of human nature. Aside from all these high social and spiritual relations of the Hebrew women, they had a legal status. The rights of the Jewish wife were carefully guarded. Her husband was not allowed to go to war for a year after they were married; and though the eastern institution of polygamy was not utterly prohibited, yet it was so restricted that it must not in any way invade the rights and privileges of the wife. If a husband became jealous of his wife’s fidelity, the legal presumptions were all in her favor. The husband was not allowed to inflict summary punishment; but she was subjected to an ordeal which could by no possibility work injury to her, unless through the guilt of her own conscience or the interposition of divine Providence.