Rizpah’s loving fidelity has placed her in the front ranks of Bible women whose holy ministries have made them famous. She may very justly be characterized as the _Mater Dolorosa_ of the old dispensation. Her fidelity to the memory of departed loved ones has no equal in the history of the world. And all this without the sustaining grace of God, for it must be remembered poor Rizpah was but a heathen woman, in a rude, dark age of the world. How glad we should be, that in a world where there is so much to sadden and depress, we have a Saviour to go to who knows all about our sorrow, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and have blessed communion with Him in whom is the one true source and fountain of all true gladness and abiding joy! In a world where so much is ever seeking to unhallow our spirits, to render them common, how high the privilege of entering into the secret of His pavilion, and there, by consecration and prayer, receive strength for days to come. Such was not Rizpah’s privilege, hence her devotion is all the more remarkable. The history runs on. David had established his throne, and the visit of the Queen of Sheba marks the climax of the greatness of that kingdom, and the glory and wisdom of Solomon. It is a remarkable proof of the new spirit that had come upon the nation. Hitherto the people of Israel had been wholly agricultural. The great peculiarity of their country was its isolation, situated in the very midst of the nations of the earth, yet it was curiously shut in and shut out. A seaboard without a single navigable river, with a vast desert on the south, a lofty mountain range on the north, and that strange descent of the Jordan valley in the east going down more than a thousand feet below the level of the sea. But Solomon changed all that. His enterprise did not exhaust itself in building the Temple and palace of Jerusalem. He actually crossed the great desert to the south and at the head of the gulf that runs up to the east of the Arabian peninsula he made a harbor and himself superintended the building of a fleet of ships, and sent them to traffic in the east, and brought home the sandalwood and many of the treasures of the Indies, with which he enriched the palace and the garden. [Illustration: SOLOMON’S MERCHANT SHIPS.] Thus his merchants went away to strange lands, carrying with them wherever they went the tidings of their great king, of the Temple that he had built to Jehovah, the God of Israel; of the palace splendors; of his throne of state in the cedar Judgment Hall, a throne of ivory with golden lions on each step, and a footstool of gold.