Solomon had a great reputation for the conundrums and riddles that he made and guessed. The Solomonic navy visited all the world, and the sailors, of course, talked about the wealth of their king, and about the riddles and enigmas that he made and solved; and the news spread until Queen Balkis, away off south, heard of it, and sent messengers with a few riddles that she would like to have Solomon solve, and a few puzzles that she would like to have him find out: Queen Balkis was so pleased with the acuteness of Solomon, that she said: “I’ll just go and see him for myself.” Yonder it comes--the cavalcade--horses and dromedaries, chariots and charioteers, jingling harness and clattering hoofs, and blazing shields, and flying ensigns, and clapping cymbals. The place is saturated with the perfume. She brings cinnamon, and saffron, and calamus, and frankincense, and all manner of sweet spices. I shall take the responsibility of saying that all the spikenard and cassia and frankincense which the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon is mightily suggestive of the sweet spices of our holy religion.
I. Men require more of the spicery of religion to brighten their life and sweeten their disposition amid the capes and duties of life.
II. We need to put more spice and enlivement in our religious teaching.
III. We want more life and slice in our Christian work.
IV. We need more spice and enlivenment in our Church music.
V. The religion of Christ is a present and everlasting redolence that counteracts all trouble. It lifted Samuel Rutherford into a revelry of spiritual delight while hewas in physical agonies. It helped Richard Baxter until, in the midst of such a complication of diseases as perhaps no other man ever suffered, he wrote “The Saint’ Everlasting Rest.” And it poured light on John Bunyan’s dungeon--the light of the shining gate of the shining city. Oh, you sin-parched and you trouble-pounded, here is comfort, here is satisfaction. I cannot tell you what the Lord offers you hereafter so well as I can tell you now. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” May God grant that through your own practical experience you may find that religion’s ways are ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths are paths of peace--that it is perfume now and perfume for ever. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Spiced work
More than that, we want more life and spice in our Christian work. The poor do not want so much to be groaned over as sung to. With the bread, and medicines, and the garments you give them, let there be an accompaniment of smiles and brisk encouragement. Do not stand and talk to them about the wretchedness of their abode, and the hunger of their looks, and the hardness of their lot. Ah! they know it better than you can tell them. Show them the bright side of the thing, if there be any bright side. Tell them good times will come. Tell them that for the children of God there is immortal rescue. Wake them up out of their stolidity by an inspiring laugh, and while you send in practical help, like the Queen of Sheba, also send in the spices. There are two ways of meeting the poor. One is to come into their house with a nose elevated in disgust, as much as to say: “I don’t see how you live here in this neighbourhood. It actually makes me sick. There is that bundle; take it, you poor miserable wretch, and make the most of it.” Another way is to go into the abode of the poor in a manner which seems to say: “The blessed Lord sent me. He was poor Himself. It is not more for the good I am going to try to do you than it is for the good that you can do me.” Coming in that spirit, the gift will be as aromatic as the spikenard on the feet of Christ, and all the hovels in that alley will be fragrant with the spice. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Spiced life
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.)
